White Nights (2 page)

And there were fewer people here than she’d expected there to be. Bella’s openings were always well attended, but even some of the people Fran had invited – people she’d considered friends – had failed to show. Perhaps they had only been polite when she’d mentioned the exhibition. They’d seen her art and didn’t care for it. At least not enough to turn out on a beautiful evening, when there were other things to do. This was the time of year for barbecues and
being on the water. Fran took the poor turnout personally.

Perez came up behind her. She sensed the movement and turned. The first thought, as it always was when he caught her in an unguarded moment, was that she wanted to sketch him. Her fingers itched to be holding charcoal. It would be a fluid drawing, no hard edges. Very dark. Perez was a Shetlander. His family had lived in the islands since the sixteenth century, but there was no Viking blood in him. An ancestor had been washed ashore after the wreck of a ship from the Armada. At least that was the story he told. She wondered if he’d just bought into the myth because it was a way of explaining his difference. The strange name. There were a few people in the islands with his dark hair and olive skin – black Shetlanders, the locals called them – but in this gathering he stuck out, looked exotic and foreign.

‘It seems to be going well,’ he said. Tentative. He seemed in a strange mood tonight. Nerves, perhaps. He knew how much this meant to her. Her first exhibition. And anyway, they were feeling their way in the relationship. She was keeping her distance, her independence. If she got tied up with Perez, she wouldn’t only be taking him on. It would be his family, the whole Fair Isle thing. And he’d be taking on a single mother. A five-year-old child. Too much to contemplate, she thought. Only she
was
contemplating it. In these long summer nights, when it never seemed to get dark, she thought of him. Pictures of him rattled around in her head, like old-fashioned slides dropping into a projector. Occasionally she got up and sat outside her house, watching the sun which never quite
set over the grey water, and thought about how she would draw him. His long body turned away from her. The bones under his skin. The hard spine and the curve of buttock. And it was all in her imagination. He had kissed her cheek, touched her arm, but there had been no other physical contact. Perhaps there was some other woman in his life. Someone he dreamed of when he too was kept awake by the light. Perhaps he was waiting for a decision from her.

Soon after they’d first met she’d gone south for a month. She’d told herself it was for her daughter’s sake. Cassie had been through the sort of drama that would traumatize an adult and Fran had thought time away from Shetland would help her recover. When Fran had returned Perez had contacted her, asking how things were with her and the girl. Professional interest, Fran had thought, hoping however that perhaps there’d been more to it. An easy friendship had developed. She hadn’t pushed it; she was still an outsider here and she wasn’t sure exactly what was expected. The failure of her marriage had shattered her confidence. She couldn’t face another rejection.

‘It’s not going well at all,’ she said now. ‘There’s hardly anyone here.’ She knew she sounded ungracious, but couldn’t help herself. ‘You’d think people would come, if only for the free wine and the chance to see Roddy Sinclair.’

‘But the people who are here are interested,’ he said. ‘Look.’

She turned away from him and back into the room. Perez was right. People had turned their attention from the wine and the music and had begun to promenade around the gallery, looking at the paintings,
stopping occasionally to concentrate on something specific. The space was evenly divided between her work and Bella’s. The exhibition had been designed as a Bella Sinclair retrospective. She was showing thirty years’ worth of art; pictures and drawings had been pulled in from collections all over the country. The invitation for Fran to show with her had come out of the blue.

‘You should be proud,’ Perez said. She wasn’t quite sure how to react. She hoped that he would say something flattering about her work. Tonight, jittery and exposed, she could use the flattery.

But his attention was turned to the visitors. ‘There’s someone who seems very keen.’ She followed his gaze to a middle-aged man, who was smart in an arty, unbuttoned sort of way. Slim, almost girlish figure. Black linen jacket over a black T-shirt, loose black trousers. He’d been standing in front of an early self-portrait of Bella. It was Bella at her most outrageous. She was dressed in red with a scarlet gash of lipstick as a mouth, her hair blown away from her face, at once disturbing and erotic. It was an oil, the paint thick and textured, the strokes very free.

Then he moved on to stand next to Roddy Sinclair and to stare at a work of Fran’s, a drawing of Cassie on the beach at Ravenswick. Something about the intensity of his looking made her uncomfortable, though it wasn’t the sort of picture that would allow him to recognize Cassie in the street. He looked horrified, she thought, not keen. As if he’d just witnessed an atrocity. Or seen a ghost.

‘He’s not local,’ Perez said. Fran agreed. It wasn’t just that she didn’t recognize him. It was the man’s
style, which marked him out as a soothmoother. The clothes; the way he held himself and looked at the picture.

‘Who do you think he is?’ She looked over her glass, tried not to seem too obvious, but still he was staring at the drawing, lost, so she didn’t think he’d notice even if he turned round.

‘Some rich collector,’ Perez said, smiling at her. ‘He’s going to buy everything here and make you famous.’

She giggled. A brief release of tension. ‘Or the arts reporter for one of the Sundays. I’ll feature in an article about the next new talent.’

‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

She turned to look at him, assumed that he was joking again, but he was frowning slightly.

‘Really,’ he smiled again. ‘You are very good.’

She wasn’t sure what to say, was groping for something witty and self-deprecating, when she saw the man turn round. He fell to his knees, much as Roddy had done when he was playing the violin. Then he put his hands over his face and began to weep.

Perez thought that at this time of year everyone went a bit crazy. It was the light, intense during the day and still there at night. The sun never quite slipping behind the horizon, so you could read outside at midnight. The winters were so bleak and black that in the summer folk were overtaken with a kind of frenzy, constant activity. There was the feeling that you had to make the most of it, be outside, enjoy it before the dark days came again. Here in Shetland they called it the ‘simmer dim’. And this year was even worse. Usually the weather was unpredictable, changing by the hour, rain and wind and brief spells of bright sunshine, but this year it had been fine for nearly a fortnight. The lack of darkness hit people from the south too. Occasionally their reaction was even more extreme than the locals’. They weren’t used to it: the birds still singing late into the evening, the dusk which lasted all night, nature slipping from its accustomed pattern, all that disturbed them.

Watching as the man dressed in black knelt in the pool of sunshine and burst into tears, Perez thought it was a case of midsummer madness and hoped someone else would deal with it. It was a theatrical gesture. The man wouldn’t have come here on his own
initiative. He would have been invited by Bella Sinclair, or been brought by a regular visitor. The Herring House wasn’t easy to get to from the south, even once you reached Lerwick. So it would be about a woman, Perez thought. Or he would be another artist, wanting to draw attention to himself. In his experience, people who were really depressed, who felt like crying all the time, those people didn’t seek out the limelight. They hid away in corners and made themselves invisible.

But nobody went to the man’s assistance. The people stopped talking and watched in a fascinated, embarrassed way as he continued to sob, his face turned up now to the light, his hands at his sides.

Perez could sense Fran’s disapproval beside him. She would expect him to do something. The fact that he wasn’t on duty meant nothing. He should know what to do. And it wasn’t only that. She took advantage of the fact that he was devoted to her. Everything had to be at her pace. How long had he waited for this date? He was so desperate to please her that he would fit in with her plans. Always. He hadn’t realized before how subject he was to her will and the knowledge hit him suddenly. Then, immediately after the rush of frustration, he thought how churlish he was being. She’d nearly lost her daughter. Didn’t she deserve time to recover after that? And surely she was worth waiting for. He walked up to the weeping man and squatted beside him, helped him to his feet and led him away from the public’s view.

They sat in the kitchen where the young chef, Martin Williamson, was filling trays of canapés. Perez knew him, could have given his life history, told you the first names of his grandparents after a few seconds’
thought. The Herring House had its own restaurant and he ran that. Tonight, herring featured of course. Small slices curled on circles of soda bread. It had been pickled and there was a clean scent of vinegar and lemon. There were local oysters and Shetland smoked salmon. Perez hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and his mouth watered. Martin looked up as they came in.

‘You don’t mind if we just sit here for a while?’

‘You’ll have to stay well away from the food. Health and safety.’ But he grinned. He’d been happy as a child, Perez remembered. Perez had seen him at weddings and parties, had an image of him always laughing, in the middle of the mischief.

Now he went back to his work and took no notice of them. The sound of fiddle music came from the gallery. Roddy had been brought back to fill the awkward silence and get the people in the mood again for spending. Still the stranger was sobbing. Perez felt a moment of sympathy, thought how heartless he was to have been distracted by the food. He couldn’t imagine making a show of his grief, thought that something dreadful must have happened for the man to be crying in public. Or that he was ill. That must be it.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘It can’t be that bad, can it?’ He pulled up a chair for him, settled him into it.

The man stared at him as if he was realizing for the first time Perez was in the room.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. It was a childish, unsophisticated gesture which made Perez warm to him for the first time. He dug in his pocket for a handkerchief and handed it over.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ the man said.
He was English, but not southern English, Perez thought. He thought of Roy Taylor, a colleague who worked out of Inverness. He came originally from Liverpool. Was this man’s voice like Roy’s? Not quite, he decided.

‘We all feel like that sometimes.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Jimmy Perez. I’m a detective. But that’s not why I’m in the Herring House. My friend’s one of the artists.’

‘Herring House?’

‘This place. The gallery. That’s what it’s called.’

The man didn’t respond. It was as if he’d shut down, was lost again in his own grief, as if he’d stopped listening.

‘What’s your name?’ Perez asked.

Again there was no response. A blank stare.

‘Surely there’s no harm in telling me your name.’ He was starting to lose patience. He’d thought this was the night when he could sort things out with Fran. He’d imagined staying at her house. There’d been fantasies which would have shocked the people who knew him, which had shocked him. Cassie would be sleeping at her father’s. Fran had told him this, and that was a good sign, wasn’t it? Usually he found it too easy to be swept up in other people’s emotions. Today he had an incentive to resist this weeping stranger.

The Englishman looked up at him.

‘I don’t know my name,’ he said flatly. No drama now. ‘I can’t remember it. I don’t know my name and I don’t remember why I’m here.’

‘How did you get here? To the Herring House? To Shetland?’

‘I don’t know.’ Now there was an edge of panic in the man’s voice. ‘I can’t remember anything before the painting. That painting of the woman in red hanging on the wall out there. It was as if I was born staring at that painting. As if that’s all I know.’

Perez was starting to wonder if this was some sort of practical joke. It was the kind of prank Sandy would think was funny. Sandy, who came from Whalsay and worked with Perez, had a juvenile sense of humour. The whole team would know the boss was here tonight with the English lady artist and he wouldn’t put it past them to try to wreck his evening. They would think it a great joke.

The man had no sign of a head injury. He looked so sleek, so well-groomed it was hard to think he might have had an accident. But if it was an act, he was convincing. The tears, the shaking. Surely that would be hard to fake. And how would Sandy know him? How would he persuade this man to set up the stunt?

‘Why don’t you empty out your pockets?’ Perez said. ‘There’ll be a driving licence, credit cards. We can give you a name at least, track down some relatives, some explanation of what might have happened.’

The Englishman stood up, reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘It’s not there,’ he said. ‘That’s where I always keep my wallet.’

‘You remember that, then?’

The man faltered. ‘I thought I did. How can I be sure of anything?’ He began in a slow, meticulous way to search the other pockets. There was nothing. He took his jacket off and handed it to Perez. ‘You check.’

Perez did, knowing as he did that there would be nothing to find. ‘What about your trousers?’

The man pulled out the pocket linings, stood there looking terrified and faintly ridiculous, the white cloth hanging against the black trousers.

‘You had nothing with you?’ Perez asked. ‘A bag? A briefcase?’ He realized he was sounding desperate. His fantasy of a night spent with Fran was fast disappearing.

‘How would I know?’ It came out almost as a scream.