Shetland 05: Dead Water (21 page)

‘Have you heard about John Henderson?’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s dead,’ Perez said. He wished she’d invite him in. It felt strange carrying on a conversation like this on the doorstep. Almost disrespectful. ‘He was stabbed yesterday morning in his garage at Hvidahus, and his body was moved to the junction down towards Evie Watt’s place. Made to look like a straw dummy. You’ll have seen them there, kind of scarecrows, in the run-up to the wedding.’

The Fiscal stared at him. ‘What is going on here, Jimmy? Two violent deaths in North Mainland in less than a week. And what is that strange young woman from the Hebrides doing to stop it?’ Her voice was high-pitched and shrill.

Perez found it hard to believe that she didn’t know about Henderson’s murder. Surely her assistant would have been on the phone to her as soon as he’d been notified by Willow Reeves. ‘Your office didn’t let you know?’

‘They’ve been told not to disturb me when I’m on holiday.’ Still she was poised on the doorstep. Did she really expect him to go away and let her get to her boat? He couldn’t understand her reaction.

‘We should talk about this,’ Perez said. ‘It must be related to the Markham killing, and you’re involved with that. You found the body.’

‘And that was why I took leave.’ Her voice was sharp. ‘There was a conflict of interest. I do see that. Besides, Inspector Reeves made it very clear that she’d prefer me not to supervise the case.’

‘We should talk,’ Perez repeated. ‘You’re a witness of sorts.’

And only then did she move aside and let him in. She made coffee for him without asking if he wanted any. They sat in the kitchen. Perez had never been in the house before and it was rather grand, in a sleek, minimalist way. Clean lines, white walls, everything freshly plastered, the corners sharp as blades. No untidiness here. He wondered what Sandy Wilson had made of it.

‘Did you know Henderson?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I’d met him of course. Social occasions. Regattas. He was a great seaman. Instinctive.’

‘What was your impression of him? As a man, not a sailor?’

She considered. ‘He was quiet, thoughtful. Shy perhaps. Not one to put himself forward in a group. From what I’ve heard, he was quite different from Jerry Markham.’

‘So you have no idea what connection there might be between them?’

She shrugged again. ‘None at all.’

They sat in silence. Perez thought he liked her much better this way – quiet, a little unsure. ‘I have to ask you where you were yesterday morning,’ he said. ‘Early. I know where you were later in the morning. You were at Hvidahus then with Evie Watt and Joe Sinclair to look at the tidal-energy site.’

Suddenly she was herself again, fierce and intimidating. ‘Are you accusing me of murder, Inspector Perez?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not. But you should tell me where you were. You know how these things work.’

‘Oh yes.’ Suddenly she seemed very tired. ‘I know how these things work.’

‘John Henderson lived at Hvidahus,’ he said. ‘That’s where he was murdered. Did you see anything unusual? A car at his house?’ But he thought it likely that the man was already dead when the tidal-power working group had been there.

‘No,’ she said. ‘There was nothing unusual.’

‘So where were you before you set out for your meeting?’

‘I was here, Jimmy. I made some phone calls. From my work mobile, so I suppose I could have made them from anywhere. But my car was parked up on the road. Everyone in the village would have seen it.’

Perez nodded. Rhona Laing wasn’t stupid. He’d check and find that everything was as she’d said. But a car wasn’t the only way to travel round Shetland. The Fiscal had a fine boat, and most of Shetland’s communities could be reached from the water. There’d been no roads in Shetland for centuries – all travel had been by sea. Perhaps this wasn’t much of an alibi; he’d ask around and see if the boat had been there all morning too.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Rhona Laing closed the door gently behind Jimmy Perez and stood for a moment, leaning against it, as if blocking the way to other unwelcome intruders. Then she went upstairs and stood, hidden by the curtain like some nosy Shetland wife, to watch him walk back down the bank. Only when she saw his car drive up the hill towards Bixter did it feel as if she was breathing again.

Has it come to this? That I hide in my house like a common criminal?

Her plans for the day – to take out the boat with a picnic, to explore the voe and to moor up at a little beach for lunch – now seemed impossible. She had once represented a client with agoraphobia, and although she’d been professional throughout the court proceedings, her impulse had been to shake the woman. What was wrong with this person? Was it such a huge step to open the front door and walk out onto the pavement? Now, for the first time, Rhona Laing began to understand the irrational fear of the space outside one’s home. The stranger’s face. The unfriendly buildings. The threatening landscape. It would be easy to curl up in her chair with her back to the window. To drink tea or whisky. To shut out the world.

But to start down that path would be the worst possible mistake. Rhona could see that. And if she were in the house she’d be trapped, at the mercy of telephone calls and people knocking at her door. Perez might come back. Willow Reeves with her wild, untidy hair and her staring eyes might turn up with questions. Rhona thought she could mislead Perez, but the woman from the Hebrides would be harder to deceive. She couldn’t face it.

So she went into the kitchen and finished preparing a packed lunch. She cut the sandwiches with a good, sharp knife so that the edges were neat and wrapped them in foil. She put fruit and biscuits into a bag and made a flask of coffee, poured milk into a little jar that she kept for the purpose. Pulled her oilskins from the cupboard under the stairs and went to her bedroom for a spare jersey, because in Shetland the weather could change in a second. And then she left the house, locking it behind her, and walked swiftly down to the marina, keeping her eyes on the path. She had a sense that only on the water could she come to terms with what had happened. The water was where she felt safe. It felt as if she was running away forever.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Perez found the Belshaws’ home immediately. It had been built in the last ten years, one of the wooden Scandinavian kit-houses that had suddenly appeared all over Shetland. Theirs was painted pale blue, almost grey, two storeys and a wooden deck at the front facing towards Aith. It looked as if it should have a sauna at the bottom of the garden, but instead there was a swing and a climbing frame, a couple of plastic toy cars, a trampoline surrounded by a net. Behind, in the shelter of the house, he glimpsed a small vegetable patch, the rich soil newly dug.

Perez knocked at the door and Andy Belshaw answered immediately. He was wearing jogging trousers and a rugby shirt, carpet slippers on his feet. He looked pasty and tired.

‘I thought you might turn up,’ he said. ‘I heard about John on Radio Orkney. A dreadful business. Come away in.’ Perez thought he’d already picked up something of the Shetland accent.

‘You didn’t hear about it until this morning?’

‘No,’ Belshaw said. ‘We switched the phone off last night because Lucy was ill. I checked for messages when I heard the radio piece. We’d had a couple of calls, people letting us know what had happened.’

He led Perez into the kitchen. It seemed that Belshaw had been in the middle of stacking the dishwasher. There was no indication, here at least, that he’d been working. No laptop. Everywhere signs that this was a family home. Drawings on the fridge door, a pile of children’s clothes stacked on an ironing board in the corner. In a basket in the corner, knitting needles and some skeins of wool.

‘Is that why you’re at home today?’ Perez asked. ‘Because of John’s murder? I know you were close friends. I could understand if you were too upset to go in.’

‘We were very close. But no, my daughter’s still not well. Tonsillitis. It’s hard for the school to get a replacement for Jen at the last minute, and easy enough for me to work here. We’d fixed all that up last night. I’m glad, though. I wouldn’t want to be onsite this morning. I couldn’t concentrate.’ He shut the door of the dishwasher and switched on the kettle.

‘Have the press been onto you about it?’

‘No, why would they?’ A slight frown to suggest that he was puzzled by the question. Perez was unconvinced. Henderson might not have worked directly for the terminal, but he’d been employed by the Harbour Authority piloting within Sullom Voe. Belshaw must have realized that eventually the terminal would get a mention in the media and it was his role to manage that information. Surely he’d have prepared a statement. And surely, in this situation, a sick child wouldn’t keep him away from the site.

‘I was thinking it was quite a coincidence,’ Perez said. ‘Two murders, both in North Mainland. Jerry Markham was visiting the terminal the afternoon he died, and John Henderson was based with the Harbour Authority, just across the voe from you.’

There was a silence broken by the click of the kettle switching itself off. Belshaw stared out of the window.

‘And you think the press will make the connection?’ he said at last. ‘What a nightmare! The environmental campaigners will have a field day. There’s nothing they like better than a juicy conspiracy theory.’

‘
I’m
making the connection.’ Perez raised his voice. ‘The fact that two men are dead is more important to me than the oil terminal getting a bit of bad publicity.’

There was another silence. Perez could just make out the faint hum of a children’s song somewhere in the house. He thought the sick daughter must be watching television in her room and wondered how old she was. Absent-mindedly Belshaw spooned instant coffee into two mugs.

‘Look,’ Perez said, ‘is there anything going on at the terminal that I should know about?’ He felt his temper fraying, could feel the strands of control splitting like pieces of rope. His depression manifested itself in anger.

‘What sort of thing?’

‘You tell me! Dodgy investments, backhanders to contractors, people playing fast and loose with health and safety? Best to let me know, so we can clear this up quickly. The press will find out anyway. And if you don’t cooperate now, you could find yourself charged with obstruction.’

‘What are you saying, Inspector?’ Belshaw seemed even paler, and as he set the mug on the table in front of Perez his hand was shaking.

‘I’m saying that Markham was sniffing round Sullom Voe on the afternoon he died for a better reason than the details of the expansion of the site for gas. He could have got that from a press release and a quick phone call. So what was he doing there? Really?’

‘Really? I don’t know any more than you do.’ Belshaw was almost shouting. Righteous indignation or panic? Perez couldn’t tell. ‘You know that I work for BP and have absolutely nothing to do with the gas terminal. Besides, renewables versus fossil fuels
has
been covered a few times before. Of course I asked him if there was anything else he might be interested in. But, honestly, he just seemed to be going through the motions. He asked all the right questions, but it seemed to me that he didn’t really care. I thought he’d been sent there by his editor.’

Belshaw stood with his hands flat on the table, his face flushed.

A child called from upstairs. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ She’d heard the shouting through the open door and was scared. Belshaw said nothing. He filled a tumbler with juice from the fridge and left the room. Perez heard murmured voices as Belshaw reassured the girl. Perez stood up and prowled around the kitchen, noticed that from the window there was a bird’s-eye view of the marina. If the weather had been clear on the afternoon of Markham’s death, there would have been a good view of the killer lifting the body into the yoal. Belshaw must have come back very quietly, because Perez was suddenly aware that the man was standing behind him.

‘That’s why we bought this site,’ Belshaw said. ‘For the view.’

‘I don’t suppose you saw the Fiscal’s boat leave early yesterday morning?’

If Belshaw was surprised by the sudden change of subject, he didn’t show it. ‘I didn’t see it,’ he said. Then: ‘I’m sorry that I overreacted. I was close to John Henderson. He made friends with me when I first arrived in the islands. It feels as though I’ve lost an older brother.’ He turned and sat down again at the table. Perez joined him.

‘How did you first meet him?’ Perez asked.

‘At the sports centre in Brae. I used the gym and so did he. He guessed I might be feeling a bit isolated and invited me to join the five-a-side team.’ Belshaw looked up. ‘He was godfather to our son.’

‘Did you know his wife?’

‘Yes, she loved company and we’d call to see her, even when she was very ill. It was never a
sad
house. John was great with her – natural. You could tell they had a special relationship.’ Belshaw looked up over his coffee cup. ‘I don’t know how he could be so patient, so calm about her dying. I’d have been angry at the world.’

Oh yes,
Perez thought.
I know how that feels.

‘Then you ran the children’s football team together?’

‘Neil, my son, is a sports fanatic. I set up the team at Brae and asked John to come along to help. At first it was a kindness. I thought it might distract him from Agnes’s death. But he was great with the kids. Better than I’d ever be.’ He looked up again. ‘Oh God, the boys on the team will be devastated. I should phone their parents.’ But he made no move to leave his seat.

‘What did you make of John’s marriage to Evie?’

‘I was delighted, and so was Jen. Evie’s a lovely girl and we thought he deserved to be happy, maybe start a family. He was a lot older than her of course, but there was no reason why that shouldn’t work. It was a whirlwind romance. I think they only started dating six months ago, but John said he had no time to waste. Most people were never given a second chance of happiness. He said he didn’t deserve her, but he was going to grab his chance with both hands.’ Belshaw looked at Perez. ‘How is Evie taking this?’