Ann Cleeves - White Nights

When Perez arrived at the house in Ravenswick it was half-past midnight, but Fran was still up. She’d said that she would be. There’d been a brief guarded phone call with Taylor listening in. He was on the hill and his mobile reception was dreadful, so her words kept breaking up.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she’d said. ‘It doesn’t matter how late it is. I’ve been to see Bella. It’s important.’

She would have told him over the phone what was troubling her, but Perez didn’t want that. He was focused now on the climbers sifting through debris and he didn’t want to prolong the conversation. Taylor was critical enough as it was. He was right: Perez should have organized a more thorough search of the cliff and the cave when Roddy’s body was found. This wasn’t the time for a personal conversation.

When he got to her place, she was sitting at the table reading. The house was quiet. No music. He watched her through the window, one side of her face caught in the glow of a table lamp. She must have heard his car as a background noise in her head, but she continued to read, frowning with concentration, her attention held by the words on the page. She only turned when he tapped at the door and walked in. Then she stood up and put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.

‘You’re cold,’ she said. ‘The water’s hot if you want a bath.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.’ On the way back he’d wondered what she could want to talk about. It sounded ominous. ‘We need to talk.’ Sarah had said that when she’d told him she was leaving him. It had come as a complete shock. Perhaps he should have seen it coming, but it had never occurred to him. He’d known she was sad, but had thought it was the miscarriage. She would need time to get over that. He needed time himself to come to terms with it. He hadn’t realized he was the problem.

‘It’s about the case,’ Fran said now. ‘I think it could be important.’

He felt relief, followed by irritation. He’d hoped he could forget the case for the night.

‘I went to see Bella. She thinks she knew Jeremy Booth after all.’

‘She recognized the name?’

‘Perhaps that was partly it. I think it’s more that she’s been hiding in the past. Escaping from Roddy’s death by living in her memories. She remembered seeing him. Her memory will be very visual, and although he’d changed a lot something about his face came back to her.’

‘Where did she know him from?’

‘Shetland. Biddista. One summer she seems to have run a sort of artists’ commune in the Manse. He turned up and stayed. I don’t think she can remember how she came to invite him, only that he was there. And that he was an actor with a fondness for practical jokes.’

‘When was that?’

‘About fifteen years ago. That was what she said, but she was very vague about the details.’

‘Why would he have wanted to spoil the opening of her exhibition after all this time? Does she know?’

‘He’d told her he was in love with her, apparently! But she hadn’t heard from him since then. She said she didn’t recognize him on the night of the exhibition.’

‘Are you sure? It seems a bit odd, memories of that summer only coming back to her now.’

‘Bella is a bit odd, don’t you think? Especially now, with Roddy gone. She told me she’d put that summer out of her mind – I suppose because it was when Lawrence left. I’m not sure. I think she’s reliving happier times now – when Roddy was a child – and former glories. All those men besotted with her. It’s an escape from the grief.’

‘But nobody else in Biddista remembers Booth.’

‘It was fifteen years ago. That summer strange people were coming and going to the Manse all the time. I’d have been astonished if anyone had recognized him.’

He was surprised that he didn’t feel more tired. Driving to her house, his mind had been clear, as if the evening was just beginning, as if he’d just finished a normal day’s work. ‘Would you mind if I had a drink?’ he asked.

‘Of course. What would you like? Wine, beer whisky?’

‘White wine please.’ The drink of summer afternoons. He imagined the house party at the Manse all those years ago. Bella’s guests would have been sitting in the garden drinking chilled white wine, talking painting and politics.

‘That wasn’t all Bella said.’ Fran must already have had a bottle of wine open in the fridge. She poured a glass for them both. ‘She thinks Peter Wilding was there that summer too.’

‘Is the woman mad? Playing some sort of crazy game?’

‘Really,’ Fran said, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s so fanciful. Suddenly all these people who seemed unrelated turn out to have been in the same house at the same time. And Bella, who claimed not to know them, remembers as if by magic.’

‘I know,’ Fran said. ‘But I do understand what she’s saying. She’s been so caught up in the present that she’s had no reason to revisit those days. You know how self-absorbed she is. I understand what it’s like when I’m working. The art is all I think about really, even when I’m reading a story to Cassie, even when I’m spending time with you, it’s at the back of my mind. You’re the same when you’re working on a big case. She had no reason to think about the past. Now her memories of those times have become very clear. It’s her way of blocking out what happened to Roddy.’

‘It still seems preposterous to me.’ Perez drank some wine. ‘Like a kids’ game. Or Up Helly Aa after the parade. The guisers all wearing masks and running from one hall to another. I’m never part of the squad, so I bump into people and can’t quite recognize them, though I know they’re familiar. That’s how I feel now; I’m losing track about what’s real and what’s pretend.’

‘I know,’ she said again.

‘Am I talking rubbish?’

‘I think I know what you mean.’ She paused. ‘There’s a photograph. That might help pin things down. And masks figure there too.’ She laid a faded colour photograph on the table and turned the lamp so it was fully lit.

‘They’re dressed up for a dinner party,’ she said. ‘Fancy dress too, in a way. The masks must be significant, mustn’t they?’

Certainly that, Perez thought, but I’m not quite sure how. He’d thought he was inching towards a solution. Had he been wrong?

‘That’s Wilding,’ Perez said, pointing to the dark man. ‘He’s hardly changed. How can she not have recognized him?’

‘It was a long time ago, in a different context. But he must have remembered being here. Why didn’t he say something to Bella when he asked to rent the house from her? That seems most odd to me.’

‘And there’s Bella. She always wore red in those days. It was her sort of trademark.’

‘You knew her then?’

‘Knew of her, certainly. She was a local celebrity even in those days.’

‘Bella thinks that’s Booth.’ Fran pointed to a figure on the back row. With his long hair and beard, his rather thin face, he looked like a Renaissance representation of Jesus. The Last Supper, Perez thought.

‘Who are the others?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. Lawrence isn’t there, though. She expected him to come. She thought he would propose to her that night, but he didn’t turn up. Isn’t it sad?’

‘It is if it’s true.’

‘You don’t believe her?’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t know who or what to believe.’ He drank more wine, a good mouthful, not a sip. ‘I should tell Taylor.’

‘Won’t he be asleep?’

‘I don’t think he ever sleeps.’ He took another drink. ‘Could I ask him over? We won’t disturb you.’