by Ann Cleeves
He was glad when his phone rang. It did no good brooding. As he picked it up, he wondered if it might be Willow, asking if she could come over, wanting to talk not about the case, but about their relationship. He would put her off. He wasn’t in the mood. He felt too brutal, too cold. But it was Duncan.
‘Is it Cassie?’ Perez had a moment of panic. ‘Is she ill?’
‘She’s fine,’ Duncan said. His voice was a little slurred. Perez thought the man had been drinking. ‘She’s fast asleep. But there’s something I need to tell you.’ He paused. ‘I’m planning a move away from the islands. The business in Malaga has taken off. I need to be there.’
‘What about Cassie?’
‘She stays with you. Obviously, she stays with you. Soon she’ll be old enough to come out for the holidays, and I’ll come north to see her when I need to be in the UK.’ Duncan paused again. ‘You’re a better father than I could ever be.’
The line went dead and then rang again immediately. This time it was Helena Fleming on a very bad line.
‘Jimmy, I’m speaking from Burra, from the beach there. I think we’ve found Emma’s shoes.’
Perez was still absorbing Duncan’s words and it took him a moment to realize what she was telling him. Helena continued before he could answer. ‘I mean the shoes that she usually chose to wear with the dress we found her in. The dress that she died in. They’re yellow, patent leather.’ Another pause before she added, ‘Daniel identified them. He would know them, I think.’
‘Are they above the tideline? Will they be safe for a while?’ He thought Helena might be imagining things; she was as obsessed as he was by Emma Shearer.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’re below high-water line, but the tide’s going out.’
‘I’ll come along. Will one of you be able to wait for me?’ He could hear children’s voices in the background and wondered what they could have been doing there on a beach in the dark, felt a prickle of disapproval and then of suspicion.
‘Just a moment.’ There was a murmured conversation. ‘Will you be able to give me a lift home to Deltaness? Daniel will take the children back and I’ll wait.’
‘Sure.’ He was glad that Helena would be the person waiting for him and not Daniel. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Twenty minutes.’ He paused. ‘Have you touched the shoes?’
‘Christopher tripped over them in the dark. It freaked him out, big-style. He recognized them. Apart from that, no. We were about to leave anyway.’ A pause. ‘We were here with the Moncrieffs. They’ve already headed back for Deltaness. They didn’t say, but I could tell they think I’m making a fuss over nothing.’
He’d already pulled on his coat and had his car keys in his hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Definitely not a fuss over nothing.’
By the time he pulled into the car park there was a moon, full and white, and he didn’t need the torch he was holding to make his way down the path. He’d been here a couple of times with Cassie the summer before. Hardly ever before that. This was a place for families. Local families; it was off the usual visitor route. He saw Helena as he turned to walk down the steps cut into the cliff. She was sitting on a rock, staring out at the sea, but she must have heard him coming because she stood up and looked his way.
‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Are you cold?’ Compassion his default mechanism. Willow had once called it his secret weapon.
‘No, I came well prepared for Shetland weather. The forecast was good, but I’m starting to realize you can never rely on it.’ She was in a sweater. Maybe one of her own creations.
‘Four seasons in a day.’ The Shetland cliché. He felt awkward standing here, next to her, though he wasn’t quite sure why. ‘Where are these shoes?’
She pointed and now he did use his torch. The shoes stood just below the tideline where the shore was damp and hard. It should have been perfect for footprints, but the sand had been churned by too many feet and he thought it would be impossible to make out any individual marks. Helena must have guessed what he was thinking. ‘I’m sorry! When Christopher screamed, we all rushed to see what was the matter. We didn’t touch the shoes, though. He’d backed away from them and was pointing down at them. Our focus was on him at first.’
The shoes were caught in the torch beam. As Helena had said, they were yellow patent leather – what Perez thought might be called a court shoe. Plain, elegant, with a small heel. They hadn’t been washed here at high water. They were clean and dry and stood together facing the horizon, perfectly aligned, except that one was tipped on its side, where Christopher had kicked it. They matched exactly the colour of Emma’s dress.
‘Were there other folk here when you found them?’
‘No. Lots of people around earlier in the day, but they drifted away over the afternoon. We built a fire, roasted marshmallows with the kids. It was good to be away from Deltaness for the day. I don’t think any of us was in a hurry to get back.’ Helena paused. ‘But then Deltaness came to us, didn’t it?’
‘Whose idea was it to make the trip here?’
‘Belle’s. She phoned last night and suggested it.’
‘Could the shoes have been there all day?’ Perez knew that wasn’t possible. They would have been disturbed by the water. But he wanted to hear what she would say. He thought she was too intelligent to lie to protect her family and friends, but when they were stressed, people did strange things.
‘Absolutely not. We were sitting just here. One of us would have noticed. Anyway, they’re below the tideline.’
There was a moment of silence when they both considered the implication of that. The shoes must have been arranged as they were, either by one of the Moncrieffs or one of the Flemings. Or by some stranger who’d been hiding in the shadows. And that seemed pretty unlikely.
‘Christopher thought he saw someone just before he fell over the shoe.’ Helena must have realized she sounded desperate because she added, ‘He doesn’t make stuff up.’
‘Did anyone else know you were planning a visit to Burra?’
She shook her head.
Perez took photos of the shoes and the scuffed sand. The flash seemed to startle Helena; she started shaking and wrapped her arms around her body as if she was very cold. He thought she might seem to be holding everything together, but she was scared, struggling. He pulled on gloves and scooped up the shoes into an evidence envelope. There was nothing more to be done here. And in the morning any evidence would have been washed away. ‘Let’s get you home.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s such a long drive for you. Perhaps I could get a minicab.’
‘Really, it’s not a problem at all.’ He thought she didn’t relish the idea of spending time with him as they drove north. ‘Besides, at this time on a Saturday night, you could wait ages for someone to come out here to pick you up.’
He lit the way for her up the steps. At the top, before turning back towards the road, they stopped for a moment and looked back at the beach, black sea and waves breaking white in the moonlight. Peaceful and perfect.
They talked little on the drive back. Helena sat beside him, but shrank into the corner next to the passenger door, wrapped into her jersey. He thought she still seemed a little shaky. He was about to ask about the children – how Christopher was getting on at school, if there been more incidents with matches – when words suddenly seemed to spill from her.
‘It seemed so staged. The shoes on the beach. Like someone’s idea of installation art. Or as if someone was playing games with us.’
‘Any idea who might want to do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘One of the Moncrieff children? If they found the shoes in their house and thought it would be a good joke? Something to scare us. A kind of tasteless prank that when wrong when Christopher was the person to find them. Maybe they couldn’t admit they’d done it when they saw how upset he was.’
Perez thought about that and decided it could be a reasonable explanation. He wondered where the shoes had
been found, though. A search team had gone through Ness House. There would be one way to find out for sure if this was an elaborate childish hoax – they should be able to check the shoes for fingerprints. He wondered what Moncrieff would say when he asked to take Charlie and Martha’s prints and found himself looking forward to the confrontation. As he drove, his mind was wandering. If Emma had worn the shoes without tights or stockings, might there be a possibility of finding DNA on the insole? He would like to be certain that they belonged to her.
When they got back to Hesti, Daniel was still up, waiting. Helena had invited Perez in for coffee. Her husband didn’t seem overjoyed to see him, but he was more relaxed than Perez remembered.
‘Did the kids get to bed OK?’ Helena was at the sink, filling a kettle with water.
‘Fine. Ellie was asleep by the time we hit the bridge to Scalloway. I carried her into her room. She’ll be a bit sandy . . .’
‘No worries, she can have a bath in the morning. What about Christopher?’
‘Still awake. Glued to his computer. I thought it was better not to make a fuss.’
‘Yeah, no school in the morning.’
The ordinary domestic conversation touched Perez more than he would have thought possible. He stood and waited while the coffee was being made. They sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee, the shoes in the clear plastic envelope on the table between them.
‘You think these belonged to Emma?’ Perez directed the question to Daniel.
‘She certainly owned a pair just like that.’ He paused. ‘She liked things matching, tidy, and they’re exactly the same colour as her dress.’
‘Do you happen to know her shoe size?’
‘Four.’ No hesitation. The blush came a moment afterwards. It must have seemed a very intimate piece of knowledge. Perez wondered how he would explain it to his wife later.
He turned the envelope upside down. The size was clearly marked on the sole along with the maker’s name. Four.
‘Can you explain how the shoes came to be there?’ Perez tried to keep the question light, conversational, but thought it still sounded like an accusation.
‘Helena and I were talking about it. We wondered if it could have been one of the Moncrieff kids. Their idea of a sick joke.’
Perez nodded. He could see this would soon become the accepted story. ‘Is that their style?’
‘I don’t know the older ones so well. But don’t all teenagers want to cause a stir? Disturb their parents.’
‘Maybe.’ But Perez thought he’d never been like that. He’d upset his parents at times – they’d always wanted him to stay in Fair Isle, take over from his father as skipper of the Good Shepherd, the island’s mail boat, work on the family croft – but he had never meant to.
There was a silence. Perez knew he should go. It would be late by the time he got back to Ravenswick and he should probably leave a message for Willow and tell her about the shoes. She was still in charge of the investigation. But he felt a kind of lethargy. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect to go back to an empty house.
‘Could Martha or Charlie have brought the shoes to the beach? Were they carrying their own bags?’
‘We were all carrying bags,’ Helena said. ‘That’s how it is for a day’s outing to the beach with kids. You take so much stuff. Food, towels, spare clothes.’
‘A bag they kept an eye on? Or that the rest of the family wouldn’t look inside.’
‘They had personal rucksacks. Martha seemed to have brought schoolbooks, but I didn’t see her look at them.’
‘Big enough to fit the shoes in?’
The Flemings looked at each other. ‘Yeah,’ Daniel said. ‘I guess.’
Perez thought they would have agreed, whatever the size of the bag. It was a convenient way of tying up the story. And even if the teenagers denied the stunt with the shoes, who would believe them, once the story had become established? That was how gossip worked; like fake news, it undermined the truth and left everything uncertain.
Chapter Forty-Three
Willow woke early and stretched for her phone. An automatic response when she was working. It was Sunday, a week since Emma Shearer’s body had been found in the Hesti byre, and still, it seemed, they were no closer to finding the killer. Traditionally a day of rest in Shetland, but there’d be no time off for her. She sat up in bed and, looking down past the steep town roofs to the harbour, saw that the sun was shining again. There was a text message from Perez, sent the night before at eleven: Looks as if we’ve found Emma’s shoes. No further information. She felt an irritation that verged on anger. Any other subordinate and she’d be straight on the phone, demanding details and to know why he hadn’t made more of an effort to contact her the night before. With Perez these days, though, she had to be careful and weigh her words.
In the basement kitchen Rosie was feeding the baby. She’d already set out breakfast for Willow. ‘Just help yourself.’ Then, as Willow poured orange juice and ate some muesli: ‘What’s Jimmy P. been doing with himself? We’ve hardly seen him this time. Have we done something to offend him?’
Willow forced a smile. ‘Ah, you know how it is in the middle of an investigation. No time to breathe.’
Back in her room in the attic. she pushed the window open and looked down on the Lerwick lanes. Two elderly women in Sunday-best coats made their way slowly up the steep slope towards the early service in the Methodist chapel. Willow went through her regular morning yoga exercises, but found it hard to lose the tension that had been the result of the text message, her preoccupation with Perez. In the end, she gave up and phoned him.
‘Jimmy, tell me about these shoes.’
She listened to his explanation. ‘And do you buy it? That the older Moncrieff kids somehow found the shoes and put them on the sand as a kind of joke?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But . . . ?’ Because she could hear the hesitation.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just too simple. It makes life too easy for them all.’
‘But why would an adult do it? If the killer had kept the shoes for some reason, or they fell off Emma by mistake during a struggle, why not get rid of them? Why make a show of leaving them where two families were having a party? And when we’d assume that one of those people must have murdered Emma?’
There was a silence. ‘Perhaps that’s why they were left there,’ Perez said at last. ‘To point us towards the Moncrieffs or the Flemings.’
‘You really believe in this mysterious, shadowy stranger seen by an eleven-year-old child? An eleven-year-old with behavioural problems.’ There was no immediate answer and she continued: ‘How would this stranger know that they’d be there? The families only decided the night before that they were going on the outing.’
‘They live in Deltaness.’ His voice was patient. ‘Where neighbours see things and talk. Someone would have noticed Belle buying picnic food in the community shop, or seen Robert driving away with surfboards on the roofrack. After that, it would be easy to guess where they were heading. Burra’s where Shetlanders go for a day on the beach.’ He paused. ‘There are very few secrets in the islands.’
‘So, what do we do now?’ She thought suddenly that she couldn’t live in a place like this, where people thought they knew you from the purchases you made in the community shop, or the company you kept. She didn’t want to be anonymous, but she needed more privacy than this. Perhaps Perez had done her a favour by not welcoming the news of her pregnancy. Now she could choose her own place to bring up her child.
‘I think we should talk to Martha and Charlie, don’t you? As you said, a teenage joke is the most likely explanation.’
‘So, we head out to Deltaness?’
‘No,’ Perez said. ‘I think a more formal interview is in order. I’m not suggesting we charge them. Nothing like that. But let’s invite the parents to bring the kids down to the police station. I don’t see why we should be running after them all the time.’
‘I don’t know,
Jimmy. Moncrieff was already talking about complaining through his solicitor.’ She remembered that Perez had been to school with Moncrieff and thought there might be some lingering antagonism. His judgement might be slightly flawed.
‘If Robert Moncrieff wants his solicitor present, that’s fine. At least the kids will take us seriously.’
‘Will he get a lawyer on a Sunday?’
‘Oh, Robert Moncrieff usually gets what he wants, whatever the time or the day.’
It was almost lunchtime before they all gathered at the police station. There was no Belle. She was at home, playing the good wife.
‘Someone has to look after our younger children.’ Robert Moncrieff’s voice was self-righteous and a little too loud. He had dressed in his meeting wear of shirt and jacket, to remind them of his professional status.
Martha and Charlie looked younger than Willow remembered, freshly scrubbed. Charlie seemed watchful; his mouth kept twisting into a nervous grin. Martha was sullen. The solicitor was a middle-aged mainland Scot in a suit and tie. Perez seemed to know him and nodded when he came in. ‘So, Inspector,’ the lawyer said, ‘how do you think we can help you?’
‘We’d like to talk to Martha and Charlie.’ Willow interrupted before Perez could speak. ‘Nothing formal. Just a chat, away from the distractions of home, in the hope that they’ll remember things better.’ A pause to make sure he’d understood that she was the person in charge. ‘I’m sure nobody wants to be here longer than needed. We’ve all got better things to do on a Sunday. So, I propose two separate interviews that can be conducted at the same time. That way, nobody’s hanging around twiddling their thumbs. I’ll talk to Martha, and Inspector Perez here will chat to Charlie. And as you’ve kindly agreed to come along to help, we can have a responsible adult in each room with the young people.’ She looked up. ‘I take it everyone agrees?’
Willow sat in a small, overheated room with Martha and the solicitor. He’d told her his name, but she’d forgotten it immediately. He was that sort of person. They sat round a coffee table, not across a desk. Willow had arranged both rooms that way. She’d made it clear that this was a serious matter, by dragging the family all the way down to Lerwick. No need to turn it into an interrogation. The girl was already tense, defensive.
