Ann Cleeves - White Nights

‘Hi Willy. It’s Kenny. You mind me from Biddista? You taught me everything I know about boats.’

The old man turned very slowly, opened his eyes and smiled.

‘Of course I mind you, man.’

‘I’ve just come to see how you’re feeling.’

‘Not so well. Things are such a muddle in my head these days. Don’t get old, man. There’s no pleasure in it.’

‘We had grand times, didn’t we, Willy? Those summers when you took us all out fishing. There was the group of us. Bella and Alec Sinclair, Aggie Watt, my wife Edith, who looks after you here, and Lawrence and me.’

Willy sat quite still, staring into space with a sort of fierce concentration.

‘You do remember Lawrence, Willy? My brother Lawrence?’

There was a moment while Willy stared into space.

‘He left Shetland,’ Kenny said. ‘We all thought he left Shetland because Bella Sinclair turned him down.’

‘No,’ Willy said firmly. ‘He’s still here.’ He raised a shaking hand to grasp his tea. ‘He didn’t go anywhere.’

‘Where is he?’

But Willy seemed not to have heard the question. ‘He’s a great one for the fishing,’ he said, and he started a story about taking the boat out with a couple of Englishmen. It was all about a big party Bella was holding and how she wanted fish to serve her guests. Willy gutted them for her and took the heads off. He described that in great detail, the gutting of the fish, as if Kenny had never done it for himself. In the end Kenny only listened with half his mind.

‘Was Lawrence there that night?’ he asked in the end. He wanted to get home in case Jimmy called at Skoles.

‘Of course he was. He wanted fish too.’

Willy closed his eyes again, then opened them slowly. ‘That Englishman came to see me,’ he said. ‘Full of questions. But I told him nothing.’

Kenny was going to touch his hand again, to prompt him back to the present, when the mobile in his pocket started to buzz. He fumbled to get it and answered just before the message service cut in. It was Jimmy Perez. Kenny stood up and walked with the phone out into the car park. Willy seemed not to notice his leaving and the other people watched him go without interest. There were a couple of gulls, very noisy, fighting over a scrap of bread, and for a moment he was distracted. Soon he realized there was no real news.

‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you.’

‘I heard about the bones you’d found.’

‘I should have come to tell you, Kenny. But we were so late finishing last night I didn’t want to trouble you. And this morning I’ve been working on the case.’

‘Is it Lawrence?’

‘We won’t know for a while.’

There was a pause. Kenny could tell he was going to add something more, but couldn’t help interrupting. ‘Can’t you do something with DNA?’

‘We’d need bone marrow to do a standard DNA test, and because of where the bones were found we don’t have that. There is a tooth and it’s possible that we could get some dentine. But there’s another test. Mitochondrial DNA. It’s passed down the maternal line. It means you and Lawrence would share it.’ Kenny was trying to focus, to take all this in, but found his thoughts swimming. This is what Willy feels like. He can’t keep a hold on what’s happening around him. He forced himself to listen again to what Perez was saying.

‘Could we take a DNA sample from you? Do you understand, Kenny? We need your DNA to identify your brother.’

‘Of course you can. Of course.’ Kenny felt ridiculously pleased that there was something he could do to help.

‘I’ll come in this evening to take a swab. But it might be very late. Or I could send someone else…’

‘Don’t worry, Jimmy. I’d rather you came. I’ll just stay up until you arrive. It doesn’t matter how late you are.’

‘And Kenny, it’s going to take longer than we’d like to get an answer. About two weeks, because it’s not a standard sort of test. I’m sorry.’

Kenny stood for a moment. He was tempted to go back to Willy, to find out what he knew. Then he realized there were other people in Biddista who should be able to tell him.

When he came back from seeing Wilding in Buness, Perez returned to the station. He phoned the pathologist in Aberdeen to check the situation on identifying the fragment of bone, then called the Thomson house. Nobody was at home. He knew what Kenny would be thinking and when finally he spoke to him on his mobile he could sense how much he needed an answer.

‘I’m sorry, man. I wish I could make it happen more quickly.’ Perez felt helpless because the test was completely out of his control. But all the time he was thinking that really it didn’t matter. He had a sense of events moving quickly, racing away from him. He thought the case would reach a climax before the results of the mitochondrial DNA test were returned.

He found Taylor at the desk he’d taken over in the incident room. He’d just finished a phone call and an A4 pad covered with scribbled notes lay in front of him. Taylor was hunched over them.

‘I’ve been on to Jebson in West Yorkshire to see if they’ve had anything back yet on emails to and from Jeremy Booth. Post too. They had a search team going through the house. The bin hadn’t been put out since he left and they thought they might find a letter.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘No mail. Jebson did come up with an interesting email contact though. A woman called Rita Murphy who runs a theatrical agency. I’ve just been talking to her. Booth was on her books, had been for years. She comes from Liverpool, like me. We hit it off and she’s been dead helpful.’

Taylor took a swig from a can of Coke. Perez thought he must be exhausted, running on caffeine and will power. ‘It seems Booth hadn’t done much through her in the last few years – most of his time was spent running his own business – but Rita said he liked to keep his hand in by doing bits of theatre if it was offered. They kept in touch, anyway. It sounds as if they’d become good mates.’

‘Was she representing him when he took on the work with The Motley Crew fifteen years ago?’

‘Yeah, she was just starting up then. She’d seen him in an amateur play and thought he was good, offered to take him on.’

Perez remembered the performance in the Herring House, the tears. Oh, he was good, he thought.

‘How did the work on the boat come about?’

‘She’d been in college with the guy who dreamed up the idea of the theatre in the boat and he asked her to find him a couple of actors. It was Booth’s first professional work. That’s why she remembers it.’

‘I don’t suppose he talked to her about it afterwards? Or that she remembers what he said?’

‘No detail. He called in to see her when he got back. She said he’d enjoyed the acting, travelling round the coast, but he seemed a bit low. She’d expected a blow-by-blow account of the season but he didn’t want to talk about it much. She put that down to the recent separation from his wife and daughter. But if Bella sent him away with a flea in his ear, perhaps that explains it.’

‘Did he tell her that he was planning to come back to Shetland?’

‘He went over to Liverpool a few weeks ago. It was about the time that his daughter got in touch with him. Perhaps he was curious to see the girl before he made a commitment to meet her. I can imagine him hanging around the school, waiting to see what she was like.’

What would he have done if he hadn’t liked the look of her? Perez wondered. Made some excuse? Run away again?

Taylor was still sketching out the possible scenario. ‘He went to see Ms Murphy while he was in Merseyside. We’ll probably never know if that’s why he was there, but anyway, they met for lunch in a bar. Rita said Booth was really elated. It sounds as if they had a lot to drink. He told her then that he was taking on a bit of work in Shetland. “Don’t worry, darling. You’ll get your ten per cent. But this is a bit of private enterprise.”’