by Ann Cleeves
‘Do we know if Emma’s mother owned her own place?’ This was Sandy again. ‘Perhaps Emma could have inherited, if a house was sold when the woman died?’
‘I checked that while I was in Orkney.’ Willie had filled Perez in with the information, the night they’d got drunk on Highland Park whisky. ‘The shop was sold when Kenneth Shearer was sent to prison. The family rented a house in Kirkwall after that. So there’d have been no big payout on the mother’s death.’
‘So where was Emma getting the money?’ Willow leaned forward across the table. ‘If we can trace that, perhaps we have our killer.’
Soon afterwards, they drove north to Deltaness. Willow had gone ahead with James Grieve, and Sandy was driving. Perez said little. He couldn’t stop thinking about Emma Shearer. Claire Bain had talked of violence stalking Emma throughout her life and now it seemed that was true. As they passed Tingwall Airport, one of the small inter-island planes took off, silver and gleaming in the bright light. It wheeled south and Perez thought it could be heading for Fair Isle. They drove on in silence, past the township of Brae where Margaret Riddell had worked, and on through Mavis Grind, the narrowest point in the Shetland mainland. It was said that Vikings had dragged their longboats across the gap to save rowing around the top of the island and that here you could chuck a rock from the Atlantic into the North Sea. Perez had never tried, but he thought it’d have to be a pretty powerful throw.
Turning down the narrow track towards the sea, it was as if they’d wandered into another country, a low-lying place of water and sunshine. The bare hills were behind them. Sandy parked at the foot of the dunes and they got out, pulled on scene-suits and headed up the path, past the daisy chain of lochans. A uniformed female officer nodded to them as they went past. ‘This is the agreed access route,’ Sandy said. ‘There’s been someone here all night. This morning we’re having to turn away the dog-walkers and joggers. And the nebby souls who think there’s something exciting about a dead middle-aged woman.’
Perez saw Willow, dressed in a white scene-suit that hid any early sign of the pregnancy. She must have heard their car and seen them walking up the path towards her, but she seemed lost in thoughts of her own. She stood, watching James Grieve from a distance. It seemed that they were getting on well enough to work together, but there was no intimacy and Perez realized now how much he missed it. He should apologize for his first reaction to her news, but something – pride or resentment at the demands being made upon him – made it impossible.
James Grieve was already at work. Perez and Willow walked together towards him.
‘Do you think this is where she was killed?’
Willow shrugged. ‘Let’s wait until James has worked his magic before we make a judgement about that. I’d say she might have been dead when she got here, though. She’d be heavy to carry all this way, even for a fit and healthy man, but I thought there were drag marks in the shingle at the car park and on the path.’
‘So, what’s the plan for today?
‘Come with me to speak to the Moncrieffs. I haven’t met the parents yet and, according to the kids, it’s not the happy family everyone thinks. Let’s see if they’ve had any contact with Margaret recently. She enjoyed a moral crusade, it seems. If they had a secret they’d rather keep hidden, and Margaret found out about it, that would be a motive.’ A sudden breeze caught Willow’s hair and she pushed it away from her face.
‘You think one of them killed Emma, Margaret suspected and they killed her to stop her speaking?’
There was another quick grin. ‘Or Robert and Belle worked together? That makes more sense logistically. It’s only a theory, but it’s possible, don’t you think?’
They found both adult Moncrieffs at home. The house seemed to have descended even further into chaos. There was a pile of damp washing in a plastic laundry basket at the bottom of the stairs and the kitchen floor was sticky and covered in crumbs. Belle was stirring soup in a pan at the stove.
‘Jimmy, you always seem to catch me at mealtimes.’ She nodded to the table. ‘You’ll be welcome to join us. Robert always works from home on a Friday afternoon.’
Moncrieff had opened the door to them and stood now, openly hostile, leaning against the wall. He wouldn’t have made the invitation.
Perez shook his head. ‘You’ll have heard about Margaret Riddell? We have a few questions.’
‘This isn’t convenient.’ Moncrieff’s words, sharp and arrogant, made Perez feel like an ignorant island boy again. A servant in the big house. He kept his temper and his voice even.
‘A formal interview in the police station would be even less convenient, I’d have thought. There’s already a gang of reporters camping out in Lerwick, eager for news on the case. This is a little more discreet. But your choice, of course.’ He nodded towards Willow. ‘This is Chief Inspector Reeves from Inverness. She’s the senior investigating officer and she wanted to meet you.’
There was a silence.
‘I’m sure lunch can wait.’ Belle’s voice was conciliatory. She seemed calm, unflappable. Perez remembered that she worked in PR; she’d have been in uncomfortable situations before. ‘We’ll go through to the sitting room, shall we?’
The room was high-ceilinged and rather grand, in a battered country-house sort of way. Furniture that might be antique and worth a fortune or picked up in a charity shop – two sofas covered in green fabric with a design in white showing hunting scenes, a desk with a leather top, a large sideboard, elaborately carved, holding glasses and decanters. The long window looked out to the garden and the sycamore plantation. The room would always be dark, and even today, with bright sunshine outside, it was gloomy. Robert and Belle sat on one sofa, Willow and Perez on the other.
Perez waited for Willow to begin the conversation. This was her shout. Besides, despite himself, he felt again the old childhood sense that he was an impostor here.
‘Margaret Riddell was your patient?’
‘You know she was.’
‘Had you formed any opinion of her mental health?’
‘Are you saying she committed suicide?’ Moncrieff leaned forward. ‘She didn’t consult me at all. I couldn’t have predicted such a severe depression.’ Covering his back.
‘You thought she was depressed?’
‘No! I knew she’d become obsessed with the family at Hesti and she blamed them for the death of Dennis Gear.’
‘What form did that obsession take?’
‘As far as I could make out, she was an old-fashioned gossip. She was lonely and bored and she took an unhealthy interest in other people’s affairs. That doesn’t amount to a psychiatric illness, in my book.’
‘When did you last see Margaret?’ This time Willow’s question was directed to both Robert and Belle.
‘I haven’t seen her since the Sunday teas,’ Moncrieff said. ‘My God, that’s less than a week ago. It feels as if this nightmare has been going on for an eternity.’
‘Mrs Moncrieff?’ Willow turned to his wife.
‘I saw her on Wednesday night,’ Belle said. ‘The night of the thick fog. I was upstairs, saying goodnight to the youngest children and drawing their curtains, and she was standing outside. There’s a small length of pavement just outside the house and she was there. It seemed odd.’
‘She was watching the house?’
Perez thought Willow seemed particularly interested in this.
‘That would have been very weird, don’t you think?’ Belle gave a little laugh. ‘Why on earth would she? No, she seemed to be waiting for someone. Perhaps she’d arranged for a lift. Robert and I went out that night. Some friends in Hillswick had invited us for dinner. We decided to organize a taxi so that we could both have a drink. We thought Martha could mind the children for the evening. It would do her good to take some responsibility. When the taxi arrived ten minutes later, there was no sign of Margaret. I’d forgotten all about it until now.’
‘What time was that?’ Willow was leaning forward so th
at Perez could only see Robert Moncrieff on the adjoining sofa. He was giving nothing away.
‘I can’t be precise,’ Belle said, ‘but the taxi was booked for eight-thirty, so sometime before that.’ A pause. ‘Was I the last person to see her alive?’
Willow didn’t answer. ‘What time did you get back from your friends in Hillswick?’
‘Not late.’ Robert answered this time. ‘We weren’t much in the mood, actually. We were certainly home by eleven. Belle went straight to bed. I watched a bit of TV and I wasn’t very much later.’
‘And there was no sign of Margaret then?’
‘No.’ They answered together, united at least in this.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
They bought food from the Deltaness community shop – rolls from the Walls Bakery, cheese, crisps and fruit – and sat on the beach side of the shingle bank in the sun to eat lunch and talk about the case. On the horizon, the bank of cloud still lingered. Willow had decided this was better than going all the way back to the ops room in Lerwick, or commandeering the community hall and causing a fuss. Sandy listened while she and Perez talked about their meeting at the big house and then he had a question of his own.
‘You didn’t ask about Emma’s childhood injuries?’ He was still haunted by the thought of that, wondered how he’d manage in a city force where he’d come across similar horrors all the time. ‘Moncrieff almost laughed when I mentioned PTSD.’
‘No.’ Willow bit into an apple. ‘I wanted to keep that little bit of information to myself for a while.’ She paused, changed tack. ‘Did you notice, Jimmy? It was only Belle who saw her in the fog that Wednesday night. Robert didn’t see her. Or so he says.’ She tucked the apple core carefully into a brown paper bag and put it into her jacket pocket.
‘You think Margaret might have been waiting for Robert?’
‘It’s a possibility, don’t you think? And perhaps she came back later, once he got home.’ Willow sat for a moment then, staring out to sea, so focused that Sandy was expecting some great revelation at the end of her reverie. But it seemed she was only thinking through practical matters.
‘I’d like you to go and see Lottie this afternoon, Sandy. Magnie will be out at work and I’ve asked his permission to go through Margaret’s things, so we can pick up those old love letters from Dennis Gear. Get Lottie talking about those times. She’ll speak to you. You talk the same language.’
‘So does Jimmy!’
‘But Jimmy would scare her.’ She shot a quick look at Perez. ‘He has a manner about him that can be a bit cold and intimidating at times. You don’t.’
And so Sandy found himself standing outside Margaret’s door to search for a pile of ancient love letters. He couldn’t see how they could be of any meaning to the current investigation. Willow seemed to have a fascination with history; she said tensions and problems of the present could be traced back to events of the past. He couldn’t see how that could work, when Emma Shearer hadn’t even been alive at the time of the love affair.
The dead woman’s house had been sealed, and a constable he didn’t recognize stood at the door. He’d been pulled in from Inverness and just seemed desperate to get home to his family. Sandy could understand that. He couldn’t wait to get back to Yell and Louisa. He realized he’d never written love letters to her, only boring texts. Maybe he should write something – a letter that they could hang on to, show their children. But he wouldn’t know where to start.
Vicki’s team had already been in for a first sweep. Sandy could see fingerprint powder on the window ledges and the kitchen worktops. He found the letters where Willow had said they’d be and read them carefully, before slipping them into a clear plastic envelope. Then he went outside and took off his gloves before knocking at Lottie’s door. He found that his hand was shaking as he gripped onto the envelope. He felt under pressure to get something interesting from Lottie. Willow had put her faith in him.
The woman who opened the door to him was thin, with wispy white hair and a frightened gaze, but he could see some resemblance to her sister.
‘You’re the policeman from Whalsay.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. I’m just here for a chat.’
She sat him in her living room and he heard her in the kitchen making tea, opening a tin for something she’d baked. When she returned, it was with mugs, not a pot on a fancy tray. She set them on the table and came back with a quarter of a fruitcake. ‘I made this for Emma, but then she never came, of course, and I’ve been eating it ever since. It’s saved me having to cook. It’ll not have dried out, being in the tin.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be splendid. A good fruitcake improves with keeping.’ He paused, feeling his way. Lottie had brought up the subject of Emma, so perhaps he should follow her lead. ‘Did she speak much about her time in Orkney?’
‘Not very much. She wasn’t happy there.’
‘Was she happy here?’
‘They’re not an easy family, the Moncrieffs. Your boss will have told you I worked for Robert’s father?’
Sandy nodded, but said nothing. Perez had taught him the value of silence.
‘He was a hard man. He expected too much of the boy. If you get bullied, you’re likely to turn into a bully yourself.’ Lottie stared out of the window. Sandy wondered what her parents had been like with her. And with Margaret.
‘Did Robert bully his children?’
She shook her head. ‘According to Emma, he didn’t really see them enough to bully them. Not when they were tiny. Once they were old enough to be proper companions, he was around more. But he’s a competitive man. He needs them to succeed. Charlie is a great sportsman and Robert’s there for every competition, cheering him on. But not always in a good way, you know? He hates it when Charlie loses. And Martha rows for the Deltaness Ladies in the regatta now. I’m not sure Robert cares so much about that. It seems Charlie is the important one.’
‘So, Robert never hit the children?’ The question was tentative and Lottie took a long while to consider. In the end Sandy added: ‘Because Emma was beaten herself, you see. Nobody realized at the time, but Professor Grieve found old injuries when he did the post-mortem.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lottie said at last. ‘Robert’s father hit him, but that wasn’t so strange in those days. As I said, Robert wasn’t around so much when the children were small. Not his fault maybe; he’d have been busy with work.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘And then he and Belle are often out in the evening. They’re great ones for dinner parties. I’d say Robert is cold rather than cruel.’
There was another silence. Companionable, not awkward. Sandy cut another slice of the cake, out of politeness.
‘We need to talk about Margaret,’ he said after several mouthfuls.
‘She was an unhappy woman.’ Lottie might have been continuing the same conversation they’d had about Emma and Robert. ‘Never content. She looked back at her marriage to Neil as if it were perfect, but all the time she was with him she complained about him.’ A pause. ‘Poor man, I wasn’t surprised when he left her to find some joy in his life.’
‘Did you ever say that to Margaret?’
There was a sudden quick grin and the thin, grey face lit up. He saw for a moment how she would have looked as a girl. ‘I would never have dared,’ she said. ‘We were all frightened of Margaret. She had such a sharp tongue on her. It would cut you in two.’
He smiled back and put the plastic envelope on the coffee table between them. ‘It seems she was happy with Dennis Gear. She kept his letters at least.’
The woman opposite stared at him as if he were mad. ‘Margaret told you that Dennis wrote those letters to her?’
‘Well, they were in her house.’ Sandy felt himself floundering now. The woman who had seemed so frail and kind was suddenly hard, angry. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d said to hurt her.
‘She stole them,’ Lottie said. ‘Dennis wrote those letters to me.’ Another pause. ‘
And she stole him from me too. All those years ago.’
‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
‘I was working in Ness House for Robert Moncrieff’s parents. Keeping the house for them and looking after Robert too. His mother was a nervy woman. She didn’t like Shetland from the start. I think they gave her tranquillizers to keep her calm. Some days she was hardly herself at all. Hardly awake. That was the year Margaret was south, training to be a teacher. Dennis and I became friendly. You know how it is in a place like Deltaness. You bump into each other in the kirk or at weddings and parties, and suddenly you realize it’s more than friendship. He was making a go of Hesti then. The oil terminal was being built and he got work there too and the pay was good. He was a young, strong man and he was willing to work.’
‘I see.’ Sandy wasn’t sure he did understand, but he wanted the woman to tell the story in her own way. He imagined himself as Dennis Gear, back in the Seventies, with a croft and extra work with the oil, good money coming in. Of course he’d want a woman. Someone to share his life with, work with him on the land and give him bairns. Lottie had kept house for the Moncrieffs and looked after their son. She had an even temper and a sense of humour. He could see how Dennis might be attracted. ‘And that was when he wrote those letters to you?’
‘He was a soppy thing on the quiet. Romantic.’ She softened for a moment before her back straightened again. ‘Then Margaret came back from the south, with new fancy clothes and on the hunt for a man of her own. She always wanted what someone else had.’
‘And she wanted Dennis Gear.’
‘For a while. Until someone better came along. And Dennis allowed himself to be swept away with her plans for his house and her talk of new ideas. What was I? A skivvy in the big house. Not worth bothering with.’ Lottie looked up and there were tears in her eyes. ‘He’d had a taste of something different from his new friends at Sullom Voe. I was just boring.’
