by Ann Cleeves
‘Christopher!’ Perez’s voice seemed very loud.
The person with the knife turned towards him, and that, Willow realized, was what Perez wanted. The blade was no longer directed towards the boy. ‘Just walk towards us, Christopher. Willow’s here too. You know who she is – the detective from Inverness. She’s going to take you home.’
Willow got to her feet. Christopher was yelping now, a strange mewing sound. Perhaps he’d been making the noise all the time, but she’d been concentrating so hard that she hadn’t heard it. She walked towards him, ignoring the knife, her arms outstretched. The boy seemed incapable of movement. She almost reached him, was close enough to see that he was trembling and that his face was waxy and white, without expression.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you back to Hesti.’
There was a moment of stillness and silence, as the three of them were held between the fire and the sea. Christopher began to move towards Willow. The killer waivered, shifting focus between Perez and the boy, not willing, it seemed, to attack either. Willow allowed herself to breathe again. All would be well.
Then there was a high-pitched scream and another figure, strong and agile, leapt towards them from the mist, knocking Perez off-balance. The scene came to life again: the blade flashed once more in the glow from the fire, as the killer’s arm was raised high, preparing to strike. Willow pulled Christopher towards her. She felt a sharp pain on her cheek and her hand. The knife was raised again, but Willow kicked out and hit it away. Perez and the newcomer were still grappling on the ground, and Willow watched in horror as they both rolled away towards the cliff edge, into the fog and out of sight. The flames had died back to embers by now, so there was no sound but the waves breaking at the bottom of the cliff. Then there was a scream and the distant but definite noise as someone hit the rocks below.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Perez had resisted the temptation to call out to Christopher as he climbed the hill towards the bonfire. He’d hoped he’d find the boy safe, staring into the flames; hoped that the notion of a killer luring Christopher to danger was a Gothic fantasy, born in his own mind from anxiety and this strange, changing weather. But he was taking no chances. If Christopher had lit the fire to let the people who cared for him know where he was, then the killer might know too. Then Perez would need the element of surprise.
When he reached the top of the hill, he circled the fire at a distance, moving as quietly as he could, very slowly. He saw the boy on his first circuit – as Perez had suspected, Christopher was looking at the fire, apparently entranced – but for the moment Perez said nothing. He wanted this over, and the last thing he needed was for their suspect to hear him and slip away into the fog. He knew Willow was right about the murderer’s identity, but they still had no evidence. The boy was safe where he was, so Perez waited.
There was a sound behind him, but he could see nothing. This was like a children’s game – hide-and-seek in the dark. It could be nothing at all, or a foolhardy sheep. Still he waited, his eyes fixed on Christopher. He’d always had the ability to be patient. Another sound, and this time there was another movement, this time in front of him: their suspect, quick and silent as a lynx. Christopher saw too and was obviously scared. Perez was about to move, when Willow slid into the picture; she must have been the person he’d heard behind him. He thought how reckless she was, how brave and very foolish, and then he walked forward, into the light of the fire, because he’d seen the knife in the killer’s hand, and that flicked a switch in his brain and stopped him thinking clearly.
Everything was confusion. It was the fog and the fire and the odd sounds made by the boy. The killer’s arm was raised and the blade flashed towards Willow; Perez imagined it piercing her flesh, the blood and the pain. But before he could get to her, he was knocked to the ground by a new attacker. It was the last thing he’d been expecting, though he realized immediately that he should have known. As he fell, hard on the bare rock, the case finally made sense. He tried to get to his feet, aware of Willow only yards away from him, but the assault had winded him and the attacker came at him again. They tumbled together down the steep bank towards the cliff edge, and Perez thought how foolish he’d been not to know that there’d been two people chasing Christopher over the hill. After all, the killer couldn’t have been working alone.
He wondered if it would feel like flying, that moment between leaving land and hitting the water. Then he remembered Cassie and Willow and the baby, and he came to his senses. This was no time for melodrama; he had responsibilities. He stuck his heels into the soft grass to slow himself down. He and his assailant were entwined like lovers, but the person in his arms was still fighting, pushing Perez away now, in an attempt to escape. Perez came to a stop, trapped behind a scrubby gorse bush, but Charlie Moncrieff had freed himself and Perez watched, helpless, as the boy flew on to his death.
Perez scrambled back to the others. Willow stood, white and still as a statue, next to Martha Moncrieff, the young woman who had killed two people and had provoked the death of her brother.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Martha didn’t speak to Jimmy Perez as they walked down the hill, arm-in-arm, following Willow and Christopher. Willow thought she must be in shock. She’d seen her brother die and must know that she was responsible. How would she live with that? Perez was holding her tight because he was frightened she might escape, though from a distance Willow thought they looked like father and daughter.
Later, in the police station, Martha couldn’t stop talking. After so many years of keeping secrets, there was a lot to explain. The grey solicitor sat by her side, but Martha barely acknowledged him. She’d said she didn’t want either of her parents there, and Willow thought Perez was too close to the case, so she and Sandy sat on the other side of the table. Mostly listening. Martha looked as if she hadn’t slept for a week, and Willow wondered how Robert and Belle hadn’t picked up on that, how they could be so careless, so disengaged.
‘A rescue team has climbed around the rocks at the bottom of the cliff,’ Willow said. ‘They found Charlie’s body. He would have died at once. He wouldn’t have felt any pain.’
Martha looked at her. Her eyes were blank and dead. ‘He shouldn’t have been there. I didn’t ask him.’
‘But he wanted to help you. He always wanted to help you. He just couldn’t find the right way.’
There was a moment of silence. Martha closed her eyes briefly and, when she opened them again, it was as if it was too hard to talk about her brother. Perhaps it was too soon for her to grieve. Instead her question was about the younger boy.
‘Is Christopher OK?’
‘It’s hard to tell,’ Willow said. ‘No physical harm.’
Martha nodded. ‘I shouldn’t have agreed to meet him, when he phoned me. Who’d have listened to him anyway? A weird kid with a forensics fixation. But I’d kind of lost it by then. Become a bit paranoid.’
‘He recognized the pattern on the sole of your trainers,’ Willow said, ‘from the photo of the barbecue that he’d printed from his computer. You were on the lounger, with your feet towards the camera. He’d watched the CSIs examining the prints in the barn and he’d seen your footwear marks on the sand at Burra by Emma’s shoes, before everyone else rushed over to muddle them. He’s got one of those memories that holds on to patterns.’
Martha looked up. Dark eyes in a white face. ‘Christopher didn’t think I could have killed anyone. He had a bit of a crush on me. You know.’
Willow remembered the boy’s face as it had been in the same photo. Rapt. Not because of the bonfire, but because he’d been so close to Martha. The girl he’d described as cool.
Martha was still talking. ‘He just wanted me to explain, but I couldn’t think of any sort of reasonable explanation. Then the fog came down. I lost him on the hill until he lit the fire, and I couldn’t let him go then. He knew too much. I think I was kind of crazy.’
‘You took the knife with you. It
must have been in your mind that you’d kill him.’
Martha turned away. ‘I always carried the knife. It was a kind of comfort. I thought one day I might need it.’
‘And Charlie?’
Again she refused to talk about her brother. ‘I told you. I didn’t want him there. It was my fight.’
Willow looked directly at the girl. ‘You didn’t use the knife to kill Emma?’
‘No.’ Martha had been nibbling her nails, and the skin around them. Now she laid her hands flat on the table in front of her. ‘There would have been blood in her car then; and besides, I wanted to see her hanging in the barn where Dennis Gear killed himself. That’s how I pictured it when I was planning her death.’
‘You couldn’t manage that by yourself, though, could you, Martha? It would have taken more than one person to string her up. Was Charlie in it from the beginning?’
‘No!’ Martha rose to her feet and the words came out as a scream. ‘He was at football practice that morning. I was the one who killed her.’
‘But later, he came and helped.’
Martha sank back into her chair. ‘My brother’s dead,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that enough for you? Let them remember him as he was. Don’t drag him into this.’
Willow didn’t answer; she thought Martha knew exactly what she was doing. If she stuck to her story, there was no way they’d prove Charlie’s involvement. But Willow knew that even a young woman as strong as Martha couldn’t have arranged the body in the byre on her own, and Charlie had probably helped to drag Margaret’s body to her final resting place too. ‘Why did you kill Emma Shearer, Martha?’
There was another moment of silence. The solicitor coughed and shuffled.
‘Because she was evil.’ Martha paused. ‘I think she wanted me to kill her. She was taunting me, daring me to do it.’
Willow said nothing and waited for the girl to continue.
‘When she first came, it was little things. Nips and slaps when we didn’t do what she wanted. We’d been spoilt rotten, she said. We needed to learn some discipline.’ Martha sat on her hands, as if to stop herself biting her nails. ‘Other people had said we were spoilt too, so I thought she was right.’
‘You didn’t tell your parents?’
‘Emma said they wouldn’t be interested; they were too busy to be bothered. That seemed about right. Once or twice I did say something to them, but they only went back to Emma and then things got worse.’ There was a moment of silence. Willow was aware of Sandy beside her and could sense his shock and horror. She thought he was too soft-hearted for this work. Martha continued talking: ‘When I got older, she made my life even more of a misery. It wasn’t physical then. Not usually. She pulled me apart, told me how rubbish I was, put stuff on Facebook that my friends could see. And it was unpredictable. Sometimes she pretended she was my mate, apologized for all the bad things, asked me to forgive her. And for a while I’d believe her, because I wanted it to stop so much. But it never lasted. I couldn’t trust her. I couldn’t trust anyone. She just said the nice things to play with my head.’
‘And she demanded money from you.’
Martha looked up. ‘How did you know about that?’
Willow didn’t answer; she wanted Martha to continue her story. But she thought: The handbag. Emma could never have afforded that herself.
‘Yeah, she demanded money,’ Martha said. ‘First she took all my allowance and then I ended up stealing from Mum and Dad, so I had more to give her. They were so wrapped up in themselves they didn’t even notice the cash was missing.’
‘And Emma taught you to drive?’
Martha nodded. ‘On the tracks around Suksetter. That was another time when I believed things could get better, when I thought she was being kind.’ For the first time she sat more upright in her seat and looked directly at Willow. ‘I despised myself for not standing up to her. For not being strong enough. And she’d taunt me and tell me how pathetic I was. She was right, wasn’t she? I was pathetic. The only way I could fight back was by killing her.’
‘Why now?’ Willow asked. ‘It won’t be long before you take your Highers and get away to college or uni.’
‘Because I’m not the only person in that family, am I?’ Martha’s voice was suddenly fierce. ‘Emma had already started having a go at Kate. And I wouldn’t be around any more to protect her.’ Only then did the tears stream silently down her cheeks. She was still crying when Willow left the room.
Chapter Fifty-Four
‘Cruelty spreads, don’t you think? Perhaps it passes down the generations – inherited, like blue eyes.’ Willow clasped her hands around a mug of tea. ‘Or like a tendency to compassion.’ Her voice had been serious, but with the last words she flashed a look at Perez. A touch of humour, an in-joke that Sandy didn’t quite understand.
They were in Perez’s house. Although Cassie was still with Duncan Hunter, so there was no need to be quiet, Sandy thought they were unnaturally restrained, muted. It should have been like the old times: the three of them together, winding down at the end of a case; but even though he was fizzing with joy because he had a secret of his own, this didn’t feel much like a celebration. Emma Shearer’s murder had so much hurt at the heart of it. There was nothing straightforward about the case, and no monster to blame. Except perhaps Kenneth Shearer and, if you dug back far enough, you might find a reason for his cruelty too.
Perez was sitting at the table by the window. He was staring out towards Raven’s Head, apparently lost in thought. It was already late evening, but the sun was still shining. The inspector turned back into the room.
‘The cruelty ended up hard and brutal within the Moncrieff household. That was fertile ground for Emma’s need to hit out in revenge for all that had been inflicted on her. She needed someone to hurt. She’d been showing signs of damage while she was still in Orkney, but the authorities couldn’t see or refused to acknowledge it. Emma saw the Moncrieff kids as fair targets. In her mind, they had everything she’d missed out on.’
‘I don’t see how Robert and Belle Moncrieff couldn’t have known what was going on. Martha said she tried to tell them at first, but they took no notice.’ Sandy still didn’t get that: one of their children had been so sad and screwed up that she’d been willing to commit murder to stop the bad things happening, and they hadn’t realized. ‘There was abuse going on right under their noses and they did nothing.’
‘They were self-centred, wrapped up in their own lives,’ Perez said, ‘and Robert’s childhood had been cold and unloving too. Perhaps he thought that was how family life was meant to be.’ He turned to Willow. ‘You worked it out, didn’t you? You knew what had gone on. You were ahead of the rest of us, as usual.’
There was a silence.
‘I think Christopher worked it out before any of us,’ Willow said. ‘Though he didn’t want to believe that Martha could be a killer.’
‘And she tried to send him over the cliff to his death!’
‘I’m not sure she would actually have done that. But by then, who knows? Martha was certainly a little bit crazy by the end.’
‘How did you know it was her?’ Sandy thought Willow must be a mind-reader or a magician.
‘It was when Magnie told me about Emma leading the chants when Christopher strayed into the beach party. Such a cruel thing. I wondered what it must be like to live with her.’ Willow looked up, grinned. ‘Magnie left a message on my phone a couple of hours ago. He wanted me to know where he was the night his mother died – with a woman in Lerwick. Someone he works with. A married woman. He was trying to protect her honour.’
‘Start from the beginning.’ Perez shifted his chair so that his back was facing the window and he was closer to them. ‘Talk us through it.
‘Emma Shearer arrived in Ness House not long after Kate was born. Martha was nine. Cheeky, a bit spoilt. Used to getting her own way. She wouldn’t have been an easy child and, in Emma’s life, violence was the way difficult behaviour was kept und
er control. Emma was hardly more than a child herself, damaged and out of her depth. According to Martha, the abuse wasn’t extreme at first: a slap, rough handling when she was lifted out of the bath, a pinch that might have been accidental. I’m guessing that Emma was feeling her way, seeing what she could get away with. But she enjoyed the power she had over Martha. The sense of control. And as Martha got older, she strengthened her grip and the abuse became emotional rather than physical. Relentless and it went on for years.’
‘What about Charlie?’ Perez asked. ‘Did Emma have a go at him?’
Willow shook her head. ‘He was a different kind of child. Placid and eager to please. Perhaps he reminded Emma of her brothers, and we know she’d been kind enough to them. I think Charlie probably saw what was going on, though, and felt guilty about doing nothing to stop it. That’s why he helped Martha move Emma’s body to Hesti and why he followed her up the hill today. It must have been hard for him, confusing. He’d been brought up to believe that men should be strong and powerful, but he was helpless to stop Emma bullying his sister. She was too controlling. He must have felt like a coward.’
‘I still don’t get how the girl managed to kill Emma Shearer.’ Sandy thought he understood the provocation now, the motive. In the interview room he’d heard Martha’s description of that Sunday morning, but he still couldn’t see how this crime had been carried out, how a moody sixteen-year-old would have the nerve to plan and execute it.
‘It was as you thought. She waited in the back of Emma’s car on the Sunday morning. Martha knew Emma had planned a day out and would come to the car eventually. Her parents were busy – Robert had taken Charlie to play football, and Belle was at the hall preparing for the teas. Martha had overheard the phone conversation between Helena and Belle the night before. Helena had said they were planning a family walk and wouldn’t be at home.’ Willow turned to Perez. ‘Martha said she chose Hesti to display Emma’s body because Dennis Gear had killed himself there. She has a taste for the theatrical, I think. The Gothic. And she resented Daniel because he was so sympathetic to Emma. She didn’t mind at all that he became a suspect. That was why she left Emma’s bag in the boatshed; she knew the couple had met there.’
