Ann Cleeves - White Nights

‘They can’t have been friends though. A strange kind of friendship at least, to see someone you know upset and do nothing to help him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Wilding was at the party at the Herring House last night. Bella invited him. She likes famous people. He was there when the stranger had that turn. If he’d known him he surely would have said so then.’ Then Perez remembered Bella mentioning the man, only she’d described him as a collector.

‘You can’t think of anyone else round here who might have been putting up the dead man? We can’t find a car.’

‘No one around Biddista takes in paying guests.’

‘What time did you leave the Herring House?’

‘It was probably about eleven before I’d finished clearing up.’

‘I understand Roddy Sinclair kept you company.’

‘We had a few drinks. There were plenty of bottles open. It would have been a waste not to finish a couple of them.’ Martin grinned. Is he really like some carefree child? Perez thought. Is it true that he wasn’t even moved by his father’s death?

‘He invited you back to the Manse to carry on with the party?’

‘He said he’d promised Bella he’d stop drinking on his own. I think she worries about him. He gets a bit wild sometimes. Last time he was home she suggested he go somewhere to dry out.’

‘Did he?’

‘Of course not. He’s young. He drinks a lot. He’s only different from any other Shetland boy his age because he has more money. He’ll grow out of it.’

‘You didn’t go with Roddy to the Manse?’

‘No, I knew I’d be there all night. He started to make a bit of a noise as we left the gallery. Dawn has to be up early for work and I knew she’d not appreciate the racket. That brought me to my senses.’

‘Was anyone around?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Any lights in the houses?’

‘I’m not sure. This time of the year when it’s not so dark out, you don’t really notice.’ He paused. ‘I think Wilding was back sitting at his upstairs window looking out.’

‘Can you remember when he left the party?’

‘Sorry. I was in and out of the kitchen all evening. People seemed to disappear quite quickly after the chap caused the scene. Roddy played a couple of numbers then everyone drifted off. I guess Wilding went then.’

‘Do you know anything about this?’ Perez slipped the flyer cancelling the exhibition on to the counter.

Martin read it, frowning. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Who died? Bella didn’t say anything about cancelling to me.’

‘Nobody died,’ Perez said. Only an Englishman dressed in black . ‘It seems to have been some sort of practical joke. Or someone wanting to wreck the opening. These were all over Lerwick yesterday.’

‘It’s pathetic.’ For the first time in the conversation Martin seemed serious. Intense.

‘What is?’

‘People being so jealous of Bella. Because she’s good at what she does and makes money from it.’

‘Do you have anyone specific in mind?’

Before Martin could answer, the child turned back from the toybox to face them.

‘Look at me!’ She was wearing a clown’s mask. Her hair, caught in the elastic, stuck up around it. The mask was identical to the one the stranger was still wearing as he hung in the jetty hut waiting for the crime-scene investigator from Inverness. Perez felt his stomach flip as it had earlier that day. With a flight of fancy he thought the mask stopped the child looking human. It was as if someone had stolen her soul.

But Martin only laughed. ‘Hey, Alice,’ he said. ‘Where did you get that? It’s really freaky.’

The girl giggled and ran out of the shop into the sunshine without answering.

The child ran into her grandmother’s house, leaving the door ajar after her. Her mother wouldn’t be at home. Perez knew that, as he knew all the other things about the family, the information gathered without any effort on his part, over the years. Dawn Williamson was a teacher at Middleton, the nearest primary school. Martin and Aggie looked after the girl between them while she was at work. Dawn was an incomer, so his understanding of her background was a little sketchy. She’d already moved to Shetland, was already teaching in the school when she took up with Martin.

Perez took the carrier bag of food back to Sandy, left it on the harbour wall beside him and crossed the road again before the man discovered his requests hadn’t been exactly met. He stood on the pavement outside Aggie’s house and knocked at the door. He liked Aggie. He’d returned to Shetland just in time to be involved with her husband’s accident. He’d taken a statement from her, had respected her calm, the way she refused to speak badly of the dead man.

Aggie let him in. She recognized him at once.

‘Jimmy Perez, what are you doing in Biddista?’ There was a trace of nervousness in her voice. Wherever you were in the world, a policeman on your doorstep meant trouble. When he didn’t answer, she went on, ‘Well, come away in. You’ll tell me in your own good time.’

He couldn’t think that he’d seen Aggie since her husband’s funeral, but she’d not changed – a trim, slight woman now in her early sixties. Standing at the square table, covered in patterned oilcloth, she was preparing for baking. In front of her stood a set of scales, a china bowl, a bag of flour and another of sugar, three eggs loose on a saucer, a wooden spoon. He could have been in his mother’s kitchen in Fair Isle. She had a mixing bowl of exactly the same pale yellow. Aggie had been greasing a baking tray with a margarine wrapper. Alice had run ahead of him and was sitting on a tall stool drinking juice from a plastic beaker. The clown’s mask had been pushed back from her face but still rested on top of her head.

Aggie wiped her hands on a dishcloth. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you’ll take a cup of tea while you’re here.’ She pushed the kettle on to the hotplate of the Rayburn. The first trace of surprise at seeing him on the doorstep had disappeared. But then nothing seemed to shock her. She hadn’t been shocked when her husband walked off the dock into the water.

He looked over to the granddaughter and she realized he didn’t want to talk in front of the child.

‘Come away, Alice,’ she said. ‘A lovely day like this, you don’t want to be stuck indoors. There’ll be time enough for that when you start school. Outside with you.’ She opened the kitchen door and chivvied her into a long, narrow garden. They watched her climb on to a wooden swing, still holding the woollen toy in one hand so she had to grasp one of its limbs and the rope together. The rope looked like something you might see on a ship. Like the rope forming the noose around the Englishman’s neck.

‘There’s a dead man in Kenny’s hut,’ Perez said. Again he didn’t think this could be news to her. She’d have seen Sandy sitting on the wall all morning. Surely she’d have gone out to ask him what he was doing there. But if it was old information, she wasn’t letting on.

She’d already started beating the sugar and margarine and looked up sharply.

‘Not Kenny? No, of course, it can’t be Kenny. He walked past the house a little while ago. Fast, as if he didn’t want to speak. Who then?’

‘An Englishman,’ Perez said. ‘A stranger. He was at Bella Sinclair’s party last night, but nobody seemed to know him.’

‘How did he die?’ she asked.

‘We don’t have all the details yet. He’s hanging from one of the rafters.’ He paused. ‘You weren’t there, at Bella’s party.’

Not a question, and she picked up on that. ‘But you were? I’d heard you’d become friendly with Duncan Hunter’s wife.’