Ann Cleeves - Red Bones

Sandy had expected Perez to come all the way back to Whalsay with him but the inspector asked to be dropped at his house in Lerwick. He said he didn’t need to be in Whalsay; he had other work to do and he should let the Fiscal know how the interview had gone with Gwen James. He’d come back to the island when there was word on the date of the bones.

In Utra, Sandy’s mother hardly seemed to notice he’d returned. Michael and his family were due in on the last plane from Edinburgh. Sandy had thought she’d be full of things to say about Hattie, but the girl’s death seemed to have slipped from Evelyn’s consciousness, pushed out by essentials like what the baby might eat for breakfast and whether Amelia could possibly cope with towels that didn’t match the bedlinen. Sandy was surprised that the whole family would make the trip from Edinburgh to Whalsay. He wondered what his sister-in-law hoped to get out of the trip. Did she think Mima had anything worth leaving?

Joseph had made himself scarce too. Evelyn said he was in Setter making sure the Rayburn was lit and the house fit for Sandy to stay in.

‘I’ll go and see if he needs a hand.’ Sandy had bought a bottle of single malt at Heathrow. He tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket and walked down the track towards Setter. The weather was fine and still. He thought in London it would never matter what the weather was like and which way the wind was blowing.

Joseph was squatting in front of the Rayburn. The fire had gone out. He was plaiting twisted pages of newspaper and laying kindling on top of it. He heard Sandy come in and smiled when he saw who it was.

‘There’s a pile of peats in the yard. You’ll not go cold at least.’

Sandy took the bottle from his jacket with the air of a conjuror. ‘You’ll take a dram.’

‘Aye well, maybe a small one. Can’t go back drunk with Michael and his wife about to arrive. What would your mother say?’

They smiled conspiratorially.

‘Well,’ Sandy said, ‘if it gets too much for you over the next day or two you can always hide away here.’

Joseph put a match to the paper and the kindling flared and caught. He set a peat on top of it, then another. The smell of peatsmoke filled the room, caught Sandy’s throat and reminded him so vividly of Mima that he had to blink to be sure she wasn’t there too.

Sandy turned away and brought two tumblers from the cupboard on the wall, rubbed the dust away with a tea-towel hanging on the range, poured out the whisky. His father shut the Rayburn door. They clinked glasses, a silent toast to Mima, and settled to drink.

‘Did you hear they’d found some more old bones after Mother dug up the skull?’ Sandy thought his father would surely know. He never seemed to be listening to gossip, but he had Mima’s genius for sniffing out what was going on in the island. ‘They could belong to an ancestor of ours. What do you think?’

‘I think they should stop digging up the Setter land.’ The voice was hard, quite unlike Joseph’s. Sandy looked up, shocked. He’d never heard his father talk like that before, even when he was a boy and he’d misbehaved. Joseph continued: ‘I think if they hadn’t been mucking around here my mother would still be alive.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Two deaths in a week,’ Joseph said. ‘When was the last time anyone died from anything other than natural causes on Whalsay?’

Sandy wasn’t sure his father was expecting a reply, said nothing.

‘Well?’ Joseph demanded.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ve been trying to think,’ Joseph said. ‘My father was lost at sea. That was more than fifty years ago. I can’t mind any accidents since then. And now two people dead in a week. I never liked the idea of strangers rooting around in the ground and I wasn’t the only person in the island to feel that way. Mima was an old woman but she wasn’t ready to die. The English lass was a child. Now you say they’ve dug up a pile of bones.’

‘Not a pile,’ Sandy said. ‘And old bones. Likely hundreds of years old.’

‘I don’t care. I’ll go and see that Paul Berglund tomorrow morning before the funeral. I’ll tell him I want them to leave. I don’t care what arrangement he made with Mima. This is my land now. It shouldn’t be disturbed.’

Sandy sat, feeling the heat come off the Rayburn and the whisky in his throat, wondering what he could say to make his father less miserable. It wasn’t like him to be superstitious. Why hadn’t he realized his father was so upset? Joseph would never let on what he was feeling, but Sandy should have known Mima’s death would have hurt him more than he was showing.

‘I’ll speak to Berglund,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll have enough to do tomorrow.’

‘Your mother won’t like it.’ Sandy expected another sly conspiratorial smile, but Joseph was quite serious. ‘You know she has plans for this place.’

‘A fancy museum, with her in charge,’ Sandy said. ‘Aye well, she’ll have to find herself another project, something else to fill her time.’

‘It hasn’t been easy for her, living with me. I was a poor sort of catch as a husband. We never had as much money as the other families in Lindby.’ Joseph reached out and poured himself another dram. Michael and the Edinburgh wife were forgotten. ‘You should be easier on her. She hated it when we couldn’t give you things the bairns from the fishing families had.’

‘You’ve always looked after her well enough,’ Sandy said. ‘We never went short.’ Outside it was already starting to get dark; it was still early in the year and the sun was low in the sky.

‘That was down to her more than me. She was a magician with money, always had a way to make it stretch.’ Despite the warmth still left in the day, Joseph reached his hands out towards the range. His face was a shadow.

‘What do you plan to do with Setter?’ Sandy asked. As he did with Perez, he felt his relationship with his father was different from how it had been in the past, more equal. He was being taken more seriously. And he thought if he could bring his father back to practical matters the man might be more his old self. ‘I wondered if you’d consider moving back here.’

‘Oh I don’t think I could do that!’

‘Why not?’

‘You can never go back. Never relive your life.’ Joseph drained his glass, paused. ‘I wondered if you’d want Setter. I always thought I’d make a good crofter out of you. You’ve got a way with the beasts.’

‘No!’ Sandy realized he sounded horrified and that his father would be offended, but he could think of nothing worse. To live where his mother could always find him, to have his life the subject of island speculation, his girlfriends scrutinized. To have his skills always measured against those of his father. ‘I have thought about it,’ he said. ‘But it wouldn’t work. I’ve got my job. I love it.’ As soon as the words were spoken he knew they were true.

‘Of course,’ Joseph said. ‘It was a stupid thought.’

‘I’ll see Berglund in the morning, tell him we want the place to ourselves for a while.’

‘Aye, you do that.’ Joseph got up. He walked towards the sink to rinse his glass under the tap.

‘Leave it,’ Sandy said. ‘I’ll see to it later.’ He stood too. They faced each other. There was a moment of silence.

‘We’d best get back,’ Joseph said at last. ‘Your brother should be here soon. Evelyn will be sending out a search party.’

They walked together through the dusk to Utra and arrived just as Michael’s hire car appeared at the end of the track. The stars were coming out.

The day before Mima’s funeral, Anna took the afternoon ferry to Lerwick to pick up her dress from the dry-cleaner’s. It had been loose round the waist before she became pregnant and it still fitted now. This was her first trip there with the baby. She felt self-conscious pushing the pram down the street in Lerwick, like she was an impostor, a little girl playing at mummies and daddies. She still didn’t quite believe in her role as mother.