Ann Cleeves - Red Bones

‘I’ll just light a fire in there,’ Joseph said. ‘A day like this, a fire would be kind of comforting.’

‘Do that.’ Evelyn looked round from the sink and smiled at him.

The fire was made and they sat in there drinking tea. The weather had changed and there was a rattling of rain against the window. Drawing the curtains, Sandy thought the wind had gone northerly; a north wind always brought the weather into this side of the house. The baby was quiet now, but Michael and Amelia hadn’t reappeared. Evelyn took up her knitting. She found it impossible to sit and do nothing, even on a day like today.

Suddenly she seemed to make up her mind about something.

‘Robert spoke to me,’ she said. ‘He wants you to sell Setter to him.’

‘I know.’ Joseph looked up from his tea. ‘He spoke to me about it too.’

Sandy could tell his father was angry, though there was nothing in his voice to give him away. It was quiet and even.

‘You won’t sell it to him, will you?’ Evelyn continued to knit, the needles clacking a background rhythm to her words.

‘I won’t. I told him: Setter is not for sale.’

Evelyn seemed not to hear the last words, or perhaps she already had her own speech prepared in her head and nothing would stop it coming out. ‘Because if you are going to sell, I think we should approach the Amenity Trust. We need the money right enough, and I think they would give us a decent price. The coins the lasses found would give the place an even greater value, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t you listen to a word I say, woman? Setter is not for sale.’ It came out as a cry. Not so loud but much louder than he usually spoke, the words passionate and bitter. The sound was so shocking that the room fell silent. Even the knitting stopped. Looking around the room, Sandy saw Michael in the door, frozen and horrified.

Sandy didn’t know what to do. Occasionally his father teased his mother about her projects and her meddling into other folks’ business but he never raised his voice to her. Sandy hated what was going on in his family. For the first time he began to think he would find it hard to forgive Ronald for killing Mima. He hoped Perez was right and someone else was responsible. Someone he would feel it was OK to hate.

In the end it was his mother who put things right. She set down her knitting and went up to his father and put her arms around his shoulder. ‘Oh my dear boy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

Over Joseph’s head she motioned to her sons to leave them alone. Sandy thought his father was crying.

Embarrassed, Sandy and Michael stood in the kitchen. Sandy longed to get out of the house. ‘You’ve not been into Setter since you got back,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come? See the old place?’

‘Aye. Why not? Amelia’s asleep on our bed. She finds this sort of family occasion exhausting.’

Sandy bit his tongue. Another sign of his greater maturity.

They walked to Setter despite the wind, which made it feel like winter again, and the sudden showers of rain. Sandy felt more awake than he had all day. The range was still alight in the kitchen. Sandy brought in peat from the pile outside and set it beside the Rayburn to dry for later. Without thinking he poured a dram for both of them.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Mother tells me you don’t drink any more.’

Michael smiled. ‘Oh, don’t believe everything she tells you. I make an exception for special occasions.’

‘It seems so strange in here without Mima, don’t you think so?’

‘When I was growing up,’ Michael said, ‘there was one time when I believed Mima was a trowie wife. Did you ever hear those stories?’

Sandy shook his head. The trows were part of Shetland folklore, but he’d never believed in them, even when he was a peerie boy.

‘Maybe it was before you started school. It was one of those crazes that start suddenly then disappear. They said she was a trowie wife and she’d put a spell on her husband and made him die. For a couple of weeks I wouldn’t come here on my own. Then the kids had something else to talk about and I forgot all about it. Until now.’

‘Are you saying it was a trow killed Mima?’

Michael laughed out loud. ‘A trow named Ronald? I think he’s kind of large, don’t you?’

Sandy was tempted to tell Michael that maybe Ronald wasn’t the culprit but things between the men seemed easy now and he didn’t want to spoil that.

‘Mother’s right about Setter,’ Michael said. ‘Father should sell it.’

‘He’ll never do that.’

‘I don’t think he’ll have any choice,’ Michael said. ‘How much do you think he makes from the crofting? I doubt Duncan Hunter gave him a pension plan and he’s not getting any younger.’

‘They manage OK.’

‘Do they? I don’t understand how.’

They sat for a while in silence. Sandy offered Michael another dram but he shook his head. ‘I should get back and see how Amelia’s getting on.’

Sandy would have liked to ask about Amelia. What possessed you to take up with a woman like that? But what good would it do? They were married with a bairn. Michael would have to make the best of it. ‘Will you find your way back?’ Michael laughed again. ‘Oh, I think I’ll manage.’ The first thing Sandy did when he was on his own was to change out of his suit. Then he began to think of what Michael had said about their parents’ income and the implications of it. It kept him up late into the night. Once he got up to make coffee, but the rest of the time he sat in Mima’s chair, thinking. He would have liked to discuss his thoughts with Perez. Perez would likely reassure him that he wasn’t on the right track at all. He was Sandy Wilson and he always got things wrong. But Perez must have thought Sandy would want to be on his own on the evening of his grandmother’s funeral and he never turned up.

Perez woke the next morning to the sound of his phone ringing. Again his first thought was of Fran and Cassie and their safety in London. The voice was English and female, and at first he didn’t recognize it. Suddenly he lost control of his imagination; gothic images of spilled blood and smashed limbs flashed into his head. The woman was a nurse in accident and emergency, he thought. Or a cop, specially trained to break bad news.

‘Inspector Perez, I’m sorry to call you so early.’

He struggled to sit upright in the bed and to clear the nightmare pictures from his mind.

‘This is Gwen James, inspector. You asked me to contact you if Hattie had been in touch with the psychiatric nurse who looked after her when she was ill at university.’

At last he felt he had a grip on the conversation. ‘And had she?’

‘Not recently, I’m afraid, but the nurse thought you’d find it interesting to talk to him. He didn’t feel he could discuss Hattie’s case with me.’ Her voice was tight, clipped. Perez thought she’d had a battle over that. She’d demanded information and the nurse had stood up to her. A brave man.

She waited impatiently while he found paper and pencil to write down the man’s number. The bedroom was cold. He’d found it stuffy and airless after his discussion with Berglund the night before and had switched the heating off. Shivering, he got back into bed to complete the call. Despite her apparent impatience, in the end Gwen was reluctant to end the conversation.

‘Did you find Hattie’s letters useful, inspector?’

‘Thank you. Very. We will get them back to you as soon as we can.’

‘When you have news about the circumstances of Hattie’s death, you will tell me?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He switched off the phone before she could ask any more questions.