Shetland 05: Dead Water (25 page)

‘Or perhaps the conversion thing was all bollocks,’ Willow said. ‘He went along with it to get inside Annabel’s knickers. And he was here to make a bit of money to impress his new woman. Perhaps the blackmail theory still holds.’

There was a silence. Perez got to his feet to pour more coffee. He had ideas about the case – he always believed more in the personal than the political – but it was Willow’s place to move the investigation forward. In the end she threw the responsibility back to him.

‘What do you think, Jimmy? Where do we go next?’

‘I’d like to talk to Evie again,’ he said. ‘If Markham’s change of heart was genuine, then Evie would be the person he’d feel the need to meet. He’d want her forgiveness, wouldn’t he? He’d want to set things straight between them, before going back to start his new life with Annabel Grey.’ Perez drained his mug and ran again in his head the conversations he’d had with Evie Watt. ‘She told me Markham had tried to phone her, but she claims that she hadn’t met him. Perhaps we need to check that. Evie looks young, right enough, but perhaps Sue Walsh was mistaken, and Evie was the woman Markham met at the Bonhoga.’

‘So that’s your plan for tomorrow, Jimmy?’

He wondered at Willow’s change of tone. One day yelling at him for doing his own thing. Now giving him a free hand. ‘Aye, if there’s nothing else you want me to do. It’ll mean a trip back to Fetlar, to her parents’ place.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Willow said. ‘A day-trip to an off-island. If that’s OK with you, Jimmy, of course.’ Her voice was mocking now, with some of its old edge. ‘And we should fit in a visit to Captain Sinclair, the harbour master, too.’

Then Perez’s anxiety returned, eating away at the new confidence. Maybe she didn’t trust him to do his work on his own. Maybe she’d been told that he wasn’t fit to be let out without a minder.

He was about to answer when there was a cry from the bedroom: ‘Jimmy! Jimmy!’ It was Cassie’s voice, confused and panicky.

He was on his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to go. Will you see yourselves out?’ He didn’t care that this might sound rude. He’d already forgotten all about the case. When he got to the girl’s room she was sitting upright.

‘I was having a dream,’ she said. ‘A terrible dream.’ He saw that she’d wet the bed, and he helped her out and cleaned her and changed the sheets. He sat by her, stroking her hair away from her face until she slept. He thought he would do anything in the world to make her happy.

The next day was still and clear, and the drive to Toft for the Yell ferry had the feel of a holiday day out. He’d picked Willow up at the police station after dropping Cassie at school, and she fed back to him the overnight news as he drove north.

‘Vicki Hewitt thinks she’ll wrap up her work at Hvidahus today.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘Henderson’s killer was careful. No footwear prints in the garage. Loads of fingerprints of course. Mostly the ones you’d expect. Evie’s naturally. Everything in the kitchen clean.’

‘So nothing useful.’ Perez turned and smiled at her and wondered why it mattered what she thought of him.

The lad taking their money on the ferry to Yell had been at school with Perez and chatted to him through the open car window all the way across. News of other school friends. Weddings and babies. He’d never been the most tactful of men. ‘And who’s this?’ Nodding towards Willow, a great smirk on his face, as if she couldn’t hear him.

‘Ah,’ Perez said. ‘This is my boss.’

Then the drive across the length of Yell, bare hillsides scarred with black peat banks. Yell had its bonny places, but you couldn’t see them from the road north. On the crossing to Fetlar they got out of the car and watched the island approaching. The noise of the engine meant they wouldn’t be overheard.

‘So how will we play this, Jimmy?’ The wind was catching her hair, blowing it across her face. ‘I don’t want to imply that I think Evie’s been lying to us. Especially not in front of the parents. They’d never talk to us again.’

Perez thought of Francis and Jessie. They’d be protective of their daughter. And they’d been friends of Henderson and would be grieving in their own right. No doubt they’d have had hassle from the press too. ‘Let’s phone and let them know we’re coming. Then, when we get there, we’ll explain about Jerry Markham’s girlfriend turning up from nowhere. That will seem courteous, as if we want to tell them before the media get hold of the news.’ He considered. ‘It’s odd that the press hasn’t mentioned Grey already. You’d think they’d have tracked her down by now, even if she’d been hiding away from the world until a couple of days ago. Do you think he was trying to keep his new relationship secret?’

‘In my experience,’ Willow said, ‘most blokes would want to be seen out with a young woman as good-looking as Annabel. He’d be parading her in front of everyone who’d ever known him.’

‘So why the secrecy?’

‘The Christian thing? Maybe she has a tendency to evangelize in the pub? Might be a tad embarrassing in front of a bunch of hard-nosed journos?’

‘Aye,’ Perez said. ‘Maybe.’ The ferry was slowing as they approached Fetlar. He opened the door of the car. ‘Do you want to see Evie on her own? You obviously got on well with her, and it might be easier for her to talk to a woman. An outsider. And there are things most of us would prefer not to say in front of our parents.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Willow got into the car beside him just as the ramp was lowered.

There was phone reception as soon as they drove ashore. Perez made the call, thinking that one of the parents would answer and they’d be more likely to respond to a Shetland accent.

‘Yes?’ It was Evie’s mother. Aggressive, ready to attack.

‘It’s Jimmy Perez, Mrs Watt. One of the detectives investigating John’s murder. How is Evie?’

A silence. ‘Ah, Jimmy, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. It’s like she’s frozen solid from the inside.’

‘We’re in Fetlar.’ A ringed plover was running along the shingle behind the beach. ‘I was hoping we might come to talk to her.’

‘Oh, come along, Jimmy. Of course. Anything we can do to help.’ He heard the relief in her voice and understood that she and Francis would be glad of company, someone else to distract Evie for a moment, to take the responsibility away from them.

By the time they got to the house there was the smell of baking in the oven. Jessie wouldn’t think to ask them in without offering food. The parents stood in the yard as Perez parked the car, grave and silent, and so still that they reminded him of a grey photo of old crofters, the sort you might see in Vatnagarth museum. He couldn’t decide what they expected from the detectives. Hope that there would be a resolution and that things would return to normal, that the traditions of boat-building and crofting would seem important to them again? He introduced the couple to Willow.

‘Evie’s in her room,’ Jessie said. ‘Would you mind waiting a while before talking to her? She’s only just fallen asleep and she must be exhausted.’

‘Of course.’

In the kitchen Jessie put on the kettle and lifted a tray of biscuits from the oven, slid them onto a cooling rack. The parents were waiting for them to speak, for an explanation of their arrival. Perez looked at Willow, but still there was an awkward silence. Perhaps, like him, she wasn’t quite sure what to say.

‘Have you found him?’ Francis said at last. ‘Have you found John’s killer? Is that why you’re here?’

‘No,’ Willow said. ‘We have more questions. And some information. We wouldn’t want Evie to read about it in the press.’

Then the door opened and Evie appeared. It seemed she hadn’t been asleep at all, as if she would never sleep again.

Chapter Thirty-One

Willow took Evie for a walk along the crescent of sand that she’d seen from the Watts’s kitchen window. With the flat land behind it, the beach reminded her of home on North Uist. There was a place very similar close to the commune, low ground just in from the sea, fertile strips of machair planted with crops. For the first time in months, she thought maybe she should take a trip back to the Hebrides and spend a week or so with her folks. The spring was always a busy period for them and she’d enjoy working on the land again.

Jessie had been pleased when Willow suggested the walk.

‘What a good plan! It might bring some colour back into your cheeks, my love.’ And Evie had been compliant. An obedient daughter doing as she was told. Not really caring, Willow saw. Nothing would matter to her now. Not the green tidal energy she’d been planning in the Sound off Hvidahus or her role in the church. The life had gone out of her. The parents watched from the doorway until the women had taken the path across the fields. Not waving, but looking as if this was a farewell, as if Evie was starting out on a long voyage.

They walked between the tide line and the water. There was that sense of free floating, of the air and the sea all around them. The tide was low, but there were no other footprints on the beach. Evie was wearing a long hand-knitted cardigan, the colour of heather, and though it wasn’t a cold day she huddled inside it.

‘Every day is worse than the one before,’ she said. ‘At first there was just shock, and I thought I could deal with it. With my faith, and the help of my friends and family, I thought I could cope with anything. But I can’t. Not this.’

Willow had nothing to say.

‘Everyone thought John was the lucky one,’ Evie went on. ‘Lucky to be marrying me, I mean. A widower. So much older. But it was quite the other way round. I couldn’t believe my good fortune when he asked me to marry him. I’d dreamed of nothing else since our first date. Of that ring on my finger. Sharing the rest of our lives.’

Willow bent to pick up a shell. It was pink and perfect, a series of shining chambers inside, smooth to the touch.

‘I don’t think I believe in God any more,’ Evie said. The confession was defiant. She sounded like a three-year-old shouting out forbidden smutty words:
bum, willy, poo
. Willow was sure she hadn’t admitted any loss of faith to her parents. But this anger was surely healthier than the dumb compliance that she’d shown in the house.

‘Have you any idea what Jerry Markham might have wanted to talk to you about?’ Willow asked. ‘You said he’d left a message on your voicemail.’

‘No!’ It was as if bereavement had given her the licence to be rude. Perhaps for the first time in her life. ‘I don’t care about Jerry. I don’t give a shit about him.’

Willow wondered if Perez had behaved like this when his fiancée had died. Had he stamped his feet like a three-year-old and yelled at strangers. Perhaps in his own way he was still doing that. ‘Would the message still be on your phone?’ she asked.

Evie looked at her. ‘I deleted it. Why?’

‘Because if we find out why Jerry came to Shetland it might help us make an arrest, lock up John’s killer.’

‘I never believed in the death penalty,’ Evie said. ‘Not before this happened. I thought it was barbaric. Now I think I’d be prepared to kill the bastard myself. I’d stab him as he stabbed John.’ She picked up a pebble and hurled it into the water.

‘Jerry Markham had a new girlfriend,’ Willow said. ‘A young woman named Annabel Grey.’

‘Is that relevant?’ Evie’s voice was flippant. ‘I can’t imagine Jerry going for very long
without
a girlfriend.’

‘He met her in the winter, an advent course at a church in north London.’

There was a pause. ‘You’re telling me that Jerry got religion?’ Now the woman sounded incredulous.

‘According to Ms Grey.’

‘Then she’s lying!’ Suddenly Evie took off her shoes and rolled up the legs of her jeans. She ran towards the sea. A tiny wave rolled over her feet. The water must have been freezing, but it was as if she hadn’t felt its iciness. When Willow joined her she was still standing there, staring out to the horizon. ‘Jerry was a committed atheist. He mocked me for my faith. There is absolutely no way he’d have changed his mind on that. He was too proud to admit anything beyond his own experience. Too arrogant. And even if he had been tempted to explore belief, he’d have kept it secret. Trust me, turning up at a church just wasn’t his style.’ She looked up at Willow. ‘What’s she like, this Annabel Grey?’

Willow thought for a moment. ‘Young,’ she said. ‘Tall. Pretty.’

‘Of course.’ Evie’s voice was bitter. ‘Any girlfriend of Jerry’s would have to be pretty.’ She continued in a rush, an admission of hatred: ‘I’ve been thinking that it was Jerry’s fault. That John’s dead, I mean. It was Jerry coming back that started this off. If he’d stayed away, I’d be married by now. I’d be happy.’

‘We don’t know yet what happened, what triggered these dreadful events.’ But Willow thought that was probably true. Out at sea there was a huge tanker on the way south. Was that carrying crude oil from Sullom Voe? She turned back to Evie. ‘Jerry hadn’t mentioned in his voicemail message that he had a girlfriend?’

‘He didn’t tell me anything. The message was just:
Please call me back.
Something of that sort. A request. But I owed him nothing.’ Evie walked on through the shallow water. Willow couldn’t see her face and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

‘Weren’t you interested in knowing why he wanted to see you?’
Because surely we’re all interested in ex
-
boyfriends
.
Especially the ones who have dumped us
,
the ones we really adored
.

‘Perhaps I was a bit curious.’ Evie stopped, watched the tide suck at her toes, the tiny eddies in the sand. ‘But I didn’t see him.’ She focused on a gull tugging at a bit of seaweed on the shore. ‘I’d been besotted with him, you know. Part of me was afraid that all the old feelings would come back if we met, that some of the old attraction would still be there. I didn’t need the complication. And I thought he’d want something. Jerry always did want something.’

‘Might Jerry have contacted John?’ Willow thought if the man had been desperate for Evie’s forgiveness, he might have asked her fiancé for help in setting up the meeting. Jerry had been at Sullom Voe on the afternoon of his death. John Henderson had been working there, just across the water from the terminal. She imagined how that conversation might have gone:
I took advantage of your woman, got her pregnant and dumped her. Please help me to put things right.
You’d think that Jerry Markham would have realized that the right thing to do just before the marriage was to leave things alone. To stay away. But then Markham had always been self-absorbed and self-indulgent. He’d probably be selfish even in this.