Ann Cleeves - Red Bones

He was reassured by the idea that she’d got a lift and left the island, that she was safe and well on the NorthLink ferry, going south to meet her mother. Sandy had been right. There was no need to make a fuss. He’d give Joseph a ring and tell him to hold off the search until he’d spoken to the ferry company in the morning.

Now Billy did stand to go. ‘Let’s hope the bairn is still asleep, eh?’ Perez was so obsessed with thoughts of Hattie that it took him a moment to realize he was talking about his son.

Sandy woke very early to a beautiful morning. There was sunshine and very little wind. The house was quiet, not even his father was up. He got out of bed and decided this was the earliest he’d been awake for years, maybe since he was a bairn, unless he was called out to some emergency at work. It was all this healthy living, he thought. It was no good for a man. It was making a mess of his body clock. In the kitchen he made coffee and drank it outside. Through the open door he heard the sound of the cistern refilling upstairs. He didn’t want to talk to either of his parents, so he set his mug on the doorstep and walked away from the house.

Without thinking he found himself on the way to Setter. His head was full of the missing Hattie. He thought Perez was right and she’d just run away. There were times when Whalsay got to him like that. He just wanted to turn his back on the place and never come home. And Hattie was such a frail and nervy young woman. Pretty, with those big black eyes, and he could see that some men would find her attractive. Men who wanted a woman they could look after and protect. But Sandy thought life with Hattie would be kind of complicated and he liked to keep things simple.

When he got to his grandmother’s croft, he let the hens out before going into the house to have a piss and make another cup of coffee. There were signs that someone had been in the kitchen: a half-full bottle of Grouse and an unwashed glass, an ashtray full of cigarette butts. That would be his father. Sandy knew Joseph came to Setter to escape Evelyn and to remember Mima in peace. The kitchen had a squalid feel to it that made Sandy feel miserable. He hated to think of his father sitting alone here, smoking, drinking and grieving.

Outside the sun was still low. It glittered on the sea, a silver line at the horizon mirrored again on the loch at the end of the field. A twisted, woody lilac bush, bent by the wind, was coming into bloom close to the house. Over the water, a scattering of gulls was making a terrible racket and in the clear morning light they looked very white against the sky. He remembered Anna’s words: ‘You’re lucky to have been born here.’ He supposed on a day like this the place was kind of perfect.

He walked across the field towards the dig, his coffee mug still in his hand, and paused as he always would now at the spot where he’d found Mima’s body. Would it be such a terrible thing to give up his work in Lerwick and take over Setter? He was good with beasts and it would make his father awful happy. If he sold his flat he could bring some cash and some energy into the place, make a real go of it. But even as the thought came into his head, he knew it was impossible. He’d end up hating his family and the island. It was better to stay as he was and just come every now and again to visit.

By now he’d reached the practice trench where his mother had found the skull. He peered inside. What was he expecting? More bones, growing out of the ground, an elbow maybe, bent like a huge potato tuber? Or a row of toes? Of course there was nothing, except the earth scraped flat by his mother’s trowel.

He sauntered on to the deeper trench where the medieval house had stood, where the silver coins had lain hidden for hundreds of years. He knew he was putting off his return to Utra. He couldn’t face the stoic good cheer of his father or his mother’s restless energy. He had a hazy recollection of television documentaries. What if he found a whole heap of coins, gold and silver, jewellery maybe? He had a picture of a pile of rubies and emeralds glinting in the morning sunshine. Wo uldn’t that be considered treasure trove? Wouldn’t it make enough money so his parents could take a holiday, so they wouldn’t have to work quite so hard to keep up with the Cloustons and the other fishing families? He checked himself: he was making up fairy tales in his head again. As a child he’d been told stories of the trows who hoarded shiny, glittering objects, but it would never happen in real life.

But as he approached the rectangular hole in the ground, for a moment it seemed as if the childish fantasy was being played out in real life. The sunlight was reflected from an object within it, a dull gleam that might be buried treasure.

He looked down, excited although he knew how foolish he was being, and saw Hattie James lying at the base of the trench. She was on her back and she stared up at him. Her face was marble white in the shadow. She was dressed in black and the image had the washed-out look of a photographic negative. Even the blood looked black – and there was a lot of blood. It had spurted into wave-shaped patterns on the bank of the trench and seeped into the soil. It was on her hands and her sleeves and on the big brutal knife with which, it seemed to Sandy, she’d slit her wrists. The cuts weren’t made across the wrists, but were deep, lengthways slashes, almost up to her inner elbow. The sunlight continued to reflect from the knife blade and made a mockery of the earlier image he’d formed in his head.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her face, the sight and shape of it were swimming in front of him. He realized he was about to faint and leaned forward, forcing himself to stay conscious. He turned away, then had to look back to check it wasn’t some awful nightmare. He couldn’t phone Perez until he was certain. Then he went back to the house to call the inspector’s mobile.

Perez answered immediately, but when Sandy explained in a stuttering sort of way what he’d found, there was a complete silence.

‘Jimmy, are you there?’ Sandy felt the panic taking over. He couldn’t deal with this on his own.

And when Perez did reply his voice was so strange that Sandy could hardly recognize it.

‘I was at Setter last night,’ Perez said. ‘I looked across the site, but not in the trenches. I should have found her.’

‘There would be nothing you could do.’

‘I persuaded myself that she’d gone out on the ferry,’ Perez said. ‘I should have been more careful, brought people out to do a proper search. She shouldn’t have had to be there on her own all night.’

‘She would have been dead by then,’ Sandy said, and again: ‘There would be nothing you could do.’ It seemed odd to him that he had to reassure his boss. Usually Perez knew what to do in every situation; he was the calm one in the office, never flustered and never emotional. ‘Will you come over? Or is there someone I should call?’

‘You’ll need to get a doctor to pronounce her dead.’

‘Oh, she’s dead,’ Sandy said. ‘I’m quite sure of that.’

‘All the same,’ Perez said. ‘We need it official. You know how it works.’

‘I’ll get Brian Marshall. He’ll be discreet.’

‘I’m on my way then.’ Just from the way the inspector spoke those words Sandy knew Perez was blaming himself for Hattie’s death and he always would. He wished Perez didn’t have to see the white face in the shadow of the trench, the long, deep cuts to the white inner arms, the blood that looked like tar. He would like to protect his boss from that sight.

While they waited for the doctor to arrive, they stood by the edge of the pit that Sandy now thought of as Hattie’s grave. Perez was in control again, quite professional.