Ann Cleeves - White Nights

‘So you visited quite often?’

‘I was here a lot,’ Aggie said. ‘Somehow I never quite settled in Scalloway. Maybe it was my fault that my husband was the way he was. My heart was never in it – the marriage or the work.’

Perez looked at Martin, expecting some sort of reaction – a defensive comment or an attempt at humour – but there was nothing.

‘What about you, Martin? Did you spend much time in Biddista?’

‘I was a teenager,’ he said. ‘Into hanging around with my mates, football, music. There wasn’t much to bring me to Biddista. And I liked the hotel in Scalloway, talking to the visitors, helping my father in the kitchen. It suited me fine.’

Perez returned his attention to Aggie. ‘Did you keep in touch with Bella too?’

‘Oh, aye. I’d go and visit her at the Manse. She liked to have me as an audience when there was nobody better around. She liked to show off her fancy house and her fancy furniture. Having me there made her realize how much she’d moved on.’

‘You sound quite bitter.’

‘Do I?’ She seemed surprised by the thought. ‘No, I was never jealous of Bella. She wasn’t a contented woman. However much she had, it was never enough for her. And she never had a child of her own. I know she wanted that. Physically, like a craving or an addiction. She talked about it to me. She had all those new friends around her, all those men to admire her, but it was her old pals she confided in. These days having the baby she wanted would be easier. She’d have been able to arrange it. Then things were more old-fashioned and Bella always wanted to do things the traditional Shetland way. You needed a husband before you had a child and Bella couldn’t get herself a husband. Not one who would suit, at least. There were lots of men, all drawn to her, but none of them wanted to marry her or give her a baby.’

‘Did you ever get invited to Bella’s parties?’

‘Not as a guest.’ Aggie smiled. ‘And I wouldn’t have wanted that. I’ve never been easy talking to strangers and Bella’s parties were full of folks I didn’t know. It would have been like the hotel in Scalloway, only worse. I’ve always been kind of shy.’

‘But sometimes you were there?’

‘Aye, sometimes I’d help out. Prepare the food, clear up afterwards.’

‘You worked, skivvying for Bella Sinclair?’ Martin sounded horrified.

‘Well, isn’t that what you do, son, in the Herring House restaurant? And it wasn’t really work. It was just helping out, if I was around.’ Aggie smiled. ‘I didn’t even get paid that often – not a real wage. Bella would bring me back a present from her travels – something pretty I’d never get the chance to use – or she’d put a twenty-pound note in a thank-you card. We’d been at school together. We’d gone our separate ways but we were friends.’

‘What about the other people in the valley?’ Perez asked. ‘Did Bella employ them too?’

‘Edith came in occasionally when there was a big party, but not so often. She never really got on with Bella. She’d had two children very close together and though they were a bit older by then she still had her hands full with them. And Kenny’s father was still living. He was a demanding old man.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Well of course Bella paid Lawrence and Kenny to work on the Herring House. It was one of those jobs we thought would never get finished. When she bought the building first we all decided she was mad. It was just a shell with a rusty corrugated-iron roof, nowhere near the size it is now. They almost built it from new, just using the old stone and some of the old timber. And now look how lovely it is, with the gallery and the restaurant.’

‘The restaurant’s a recent feature,’ Martin said. ‘It only opened five years ago.’

‘What about the gallery?’ Perez asked. ‘When was that completed?’

‘The boys worked on it in stages,’ Aggie said. ‘Because they could only do bits and pieces in the evenings. Kenny had the croft and Lawrence was doing building for other folks in the day. Folks who were willing to pay. It was almost finished when Lawrence left the island. We decided he waited until it was done before he went. He couldn’t bear to leave it half finished.’

‘Did he tell you he was going?’

‘No, but I wasn’t surprised when he went. He’d been kind of restless all that summer.’

‘That was the hot summer, the summer Bella had her house parties.’

‘That would have been the one. Kenny had some work away for part of it. He wasn’t around so much. But Lawrence was there. Bella would invite him as a guest to the parties.’

‘What did he make of it all?’

‘He behaved like a great court jester, playing to the gallery. I hated to see it. He was a good man but he had a sort of short fuse on him. He should have carried himself with a bit more dignity. He believed all those fancy artists and writers thought he was such a clever, witty fellow, but they were laughing at him behind his back. Calling him a clown.’

‘You sound as if you were very fond of him, Aggie.’

She blushed. Very suddenly, so he felt as if he’d hit her with his words, marked her face.

‘I didn’t mind him playing the fool. Better that than when he lost his temper. Besides, he didn’t try so hard for me as he did for the soothmoothers.’

‘Were you ever more than friends, Aggie?’

He thought she would blush again, but she answered with great dignity. ‘We were friends. Nothing more than that. All that showing off wouldn’t have suited me, and I was married to Andrew.’ Then she paused. ‘I always felt a little bit sorry for Kenny. He was the one playing second fiddle. He was the quiet one, the dark horse; Lawrence was full of laughter and sunshine, all show.’ She looked up at him. ‘Take no notice of me. I’m just being foolish.’

But that summer Kenny was in Fair Isle, Perez thought. A boat or plane ride away.

‘Tell me, Aggie, did Roddy spend much time in Biddista then? He’d only have been a boy. How old? Five? Six? At school in Lerwick during the week, but he’d maybe come to visit at the weekends.’

‘Most weekends. And sometimes during the week too. He could twist Bella round his little finger even then. “I’ve got a tummy ache, Auntie. I can’t go to school.” And there was one period when Alec was away in the hospital and he went to the school in Middleton. Aye, he was always in the Manse, getting under my feet when I was trying to get things ready for the people who were staying.’

‘Do you remember any of the visitors, Aggie? Any of the men who came up from the south to stay with Bella?’

‘I never really met them,’ she said. ‘They were so loud and full of opinions I wouldn’t have known what to say to them.’

‘You never met any of them again?’

‘How would I do that?’

‘Two of them came back,’ Perez said. ‘Peter Wilding was one. He lives in the house next door. He uses the post office. He hasn’t changed so much. Did you never recognize him?’

‘No,’ Aggie said very quickly. ‘How would I remember him after all this time?’

‘And he never said anything to you? Not a hint about the old times?’

‘Nothing. He’d certainly not mind me, after all. I’d be pouring the drinks and clearing plates. Would you remember the face of a waitress who served you in a restaurant fifteen years ago?’

‘No,’ Perez admitted. ‘Probably not.’

‘Who was the other man who came back?’ Martin broke into the conversation abruptly. It was hard now to believe that he was a man famous for his jokes, for laughing at his father’s funeral.

‘That was Jeremy Booth, the man who was found hanged in the hut on the jetty. He was here that summer too.’