Ann Cleeves - Red Bones

Sandy wondered fleetingly if he should try writing to his mother. ‘I don’t suppose you kept her letters?’

‘I did actually. Isn’t that sad? I have them all in a folder. When I feel especially lonely I re-read them. And do you know, she probably thought I just glanced at them then threw them away.’

Sandy didn’t know what to say so he kept quiet. That was what Perez did. ‘Just give her time and sense that you’re really listening to her.’

‘Would you like to see them?’ Gwen stubbed out the cigarette and looked at him through narrow eyes.

‘Very much.’

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can do this entirely sober. Will you have a drink with me?’

He nodded. It wasn’t even as if he wanted a drink now, though he could have used one earlier. He didn’t want to break the mood.

‘Wine?’

He nodded again.

She came back into the room with a bottle of red wine and two large glasses, which she held by the stems between her fingers. She uncorked the wine and left it on the low table beside him, then went out again. When she returned she was carrying a folder full of letters. She sat on the sofa beside him, so close that he could smell her perfume and the cigarette smoke that remained in her hair.

‘This is the most recent. It arrived yesterday. That was why I was so surprised when she phoned me. We didn’t communicate by phone very often, and what new could she have to say?’

‘Did you keep the envelope?’ Sandy asked.

‘No.’

‘I wondered when it was posted.’

‘Oh, I can tell you that. Just the day before I got it. I was impressed – it had come all that way.’

She handed him the sheet of paper. It was A4, white, unlined. It seemed to him that the writing was very neat. He thought it was a strangely old-fashioned way for someone so young to keep in touch with her mother. He always phoned home and even Evelyn used email.

Dear Mum

It’s been a very odd week. On Tuesday there was a terrible accident. Mima, who lives at Setter where the dig is based, was shot. It’s hard to imagine a tragedy like that on a place like Whalsay. Apparently one of the islanders was out after rabbits and she was hit by mistake. She was wearing my coat. I can’t help feeling responsible. You’ll say that’s the old paranoia coming back and perhaps you’re right. Her death has unsettled me. Don’t worry though. I’m fine, keeping on top of things. And yes, I am eating.

Then today we made a tremendous discovery on the dig – silver coins which prove that I was right about the building there. There’s some talk about recreating the house as it would have been in the fifteenth century, but that’s a long way off. Sometimes I’m not sure that I’m up to carrying it through, then I think it would be the most exciting project in the world. And I’m here at the start of it.

How are things going with you? I heard you on the Today programme earlier this week and thought you kept your cool very well. Look forward to hearing from you. See you soon.

Love, Hattie

‘What do you think?’ Gwen had almost finished her first glass of wine.

Sandy’s mind went blank and he forced himself to come up with a response. ‘She doesn’t sound so depressed.’

‘That’s what I thought when I first read it, now I’m not so sure. “Sometimes I think I’m not sure that I’m up to carrying it through”. Perhaps that means she was thinking about killing herself.’

‘No,’ Sandy said. ‘It means she was making plans for the future. That’s what it sounds like to me.’

‘If you’re right, something must have happened between her writing the letter and phoning me. Don’t you think so? Or at least she came to see events in a different way.’

Sandy didn’t know what to think. He had very few opinions of his own. He said nothing.

‘I mean, this letter is quite calm. But by the time she phoned me she sounded really distressed.’

‘Have you saved her message on your mobile?’

‘Yes.’ She fumbled in her bag and pulled out her phone.

‘I’d like to take the SIM card with me, let my boss hear it. And there are other things we could learn. Like where she was calling from. It might help.’ He wasn’t sure he could face hearing Hattie’s voice now. Not in this room with her mother listening. But Gwen James hadn’t taken any notice of him; she was already pressing buttons.

‘Mum! Mum! Where are you? Something dreadful’s happened. I can’t believe it. I think I was wrong about Mima. I need to talk to you. I’ll try later.’ The voice was high-pitched with panic. Sandy remembered Hattie sitting at the table in the Utra kitchen, smiling at something Evelyn had said. She’d been upset when she’d learned Mima was dead, but this was quite different. This was real distress.

‘Had Hattie ever tried to kill herself?’ he asked. ‘I know she was ill in the past.’

‘No,’ Gwen said listlessly. She was still staring at her phone. ‘Once she said she wished she was dead but that’s not quite the same, is it?’

‘No.’

‘When I read the letter I thought she was OK. Upset about the old woman but basically fine. I’ve lived with anxiety about my daughter. Some people think I’m hard-hearted because I don’t talk about her, because we didn’t live together. It would have been easier to have her here where I could keep an eye on her, but she needed her own life. Sometimes I don’t think about her for a whole working day; then I feel guilty. I dreamed that one day the anxiety would stop, that I could stop worrying about her. There’d be some magic new medication or she’d find a man to love her and take care of her. Over the winter it seemed that had happened. Shetland had worked some sort of magic. She still had her bad days, but she seemed calmer, almost happy.’ She paused, breathed in a sob. ‘Now I’d give anything to have the worry back.’

Sandy held his glass and sipped the wine. He wished he could say something to make it easier for the woman. Perez should have come. He would have known what to say.

‘Do you think Hattie killed herself?’ Gwen’s question came at him so hard and fast that it made him blink.

‘No,’ he said without thinking. Then, blushing, realizing what he’d done, ‘But you mustn’t take any notice of me. That’s just my opinion and I get things wrong all the time.’

She looked at him. ‘I’m grateful that you’ve come all this way.’

‘My family is from Whalsay. If you’d like to come back and see where she stayed, we’d be happy to show you.’

Standing outside the flat on the pavement with the woman’s SIM card in his pocket and the file of letters in a supermarket carrier bag, Sandy thought he hadn’t achieved a lot. What would Perez say? And the Fiscal? All that money to send him and really he’d not found out much at all. He couldn’t face the rattle of the Underground, the blank faces. He looked at the map under a streetlamp and walked through the mild city night all the way back to his hotel.

Perez watched the ferry carry Sandy away from Whalsay on his way to London and thought this must be what his own parents had felt when he was twelve and he was sent off from Fair Isle to stay in the hostel at the Anderson High School in Lerwick: responsible for his loneliness and as if they’d deserted him. All day whenever his phone rang Perez thought it would be Sandy, stranded somewhere, or lost in the city.

He found Berglund still in the Pier House Hotel. He seemed to have taken up residence at the table by the window, turning the place into his office, filling it with his laptop computer and his piles of paper.

‘You’ll have heard about Hattie?’ Perez said.