Ann Cleeves - Dead Water

‘As long as you don’t tell Maria I’ve started smoking again.’ Markham didn’t even raise his head to look at Perez.

Perez sat beside him. The bench was damp.

‘Do you have news?’ Now Markham did turn round. ‘You know who killed my son?’ The English accent was stronger than ever.

‘No. Not yet.’

Markham stubbed out his cigarette, buried the end in the earth beside him. ‘More questions then.’

‘I was hoping for a conversation,’ Perez said. ‘I’m not sure I understand which questions I should be asking. And you knew your son. I don’t think I ever met him.’

Markham didn’t answer immediately. A blackbird was singing somewhere in the bushes.

‘We spoilt him. He was our only son. I suppose it was natural.’ He paused. ‘I’d never have let on to Maria, but I was pleased when he got that job in London. I thought it would be good for him, standing on his own two feet. He was never financially independent, but I didn’t mind that. It was never about money.’

‘What did you mind?’ Because Perez could tell that something was troubling the man.

‘He was self-centred. Believed the world revolved around him. Our fault. Like I said, the way we brought him up. It’d have been different if he’d had brothers or sisters.’ Another pause. ‘Maria could deny him nothing. It didn’t make him popular here. Perhaps he needed that ruthless streak, for the work he was doing, but I hated it. It wasn’t the way a man should behave.’ He stared over the garden. Perez wondered how it must be to feel that way about your son. It would be worse perhaps than grieving over the boy’s death. ‘I wondered if the way he acted had made him a victim.’

‘He’d made enemies here in the islands then?’

Peter Markham shrugged. ‘Nobody who cared enough about him to kill him.’ He turned so that he was facing Perez. ‘Sometimes I think we should have forced him to stay here and look after Evie. She could have made him accept some responsibility. But Maria wouldn’t have it. An island girl wasn’t good enough for her boy.’

‘Jerry told you he was in Shetland this time for work.’

‘That’s right. I think he’d persuaded his editor that he needed to cover the gas coming ashore. The new energy.’

‘Is that what he told you?’

‘I’m not sure that he told me anything. I was busy. That day we were rushed off our feet. That was the impression he gave his mother.’

‘His editor didn’t know anything about a story,’ Perez said. ‘Jerry had arranged to go to a meeting about the tidal energy, but he’d told her he was taking leave.’ He paused. ‘She thought he might be ill. Suffering from stress. Burnout. She said he hadn’t been himself since before Christmas. Not so sharp.’

‘Jerry was fine,’ Markham said. ‘He would have told his boss he was unwell to get a few days away. He believed his own fiction sometimes. That was what made him such a good liar.’

‘Did he often tell lies?’ Again Perez was shocked that Markham could describe his son in such a clear-eyed way.

‘He was a writer,’ Markham said, as if that explained everything.

‘Why would he come home,’ Perez said, ‘if he wasn’t here for work?’

‘He would have needed money. That was why he usually came back.’ Markham took a crumpled cigarette packet from his coat pocket and struggled to light one, drawing deeply when he managed it.

‘Had he asked you for a loan?’

‘Oh, he wouldn’t have asked me,’ Markham said. ‘As I said, his mother would refuse him nothing.’

‘Is it OK if I talk to Maria?’

‘Why not? She’ll believe her son’s a good man, whatever you say to her.’

Perez found the man’s cynicism unbearable. He stood up. Markham spluttered on his cigarette. ‘I loved him, you know,’ he said. ‘I just wish things could have been different.’ Another cough. ‘I wish he could have been different.’

Maria was in her nightclothes and dressing gown and in the living room the curtains were still drawn. Perez opened them and saw that Peter Markham was still on his bench in the garden below. The flat smelled stale, and Perez wondered if Maria had washed since Jerry’s death. She had family in the islands. Why weren’t they looking after her?

‘Have you thought of moving out for a little while?’ he asked. ‘There are people who would put you up.’

She looked horrified at the prospect, and he thought briefly that she would never leave the flat at the top of the hotel. Like Miss Havisham in the Dickens book he’d read at school, she’d stay there mourning Jerry until she was covered in cobwebs and dust.

‘I couldn’t face it,’ she said. ‘Not yet. People want to visit, but I tell Peter to send them away.’

‘Did you give Jerry some money when he came home this time?’ Perez was sitting on a low easy chair and he was so close to her that he could keep his voice very quiet. Almost like a lover’s whisper.

‘I offered,’ she said. And she turned to Perez, her eyes feverish and sparkling, glad of a reason to be proud of her boy. ‘I offered him money, but he said he didn’t need it. “I won’t need your cash ever again.” That was what he said.’

‘What do you think he meant by that?’

‘He was on the track of a story.’ Maria was animated again. Manic. ‘A story that would make his fortune.’

‘Is that what Jerry told you?’ Perez spoke again in his soft seducer’s voice. ‘That his story would make him a fortune?’

But she seemed caught up in her memories and didn’t answer directly. ‘That was what Jerry always wanted,’ she said. ‘Fame and fortune. From when he was a little boy. He thought he’d find it in London, but all the time it was here.’

‘What did he tell you about his story?’ Perez thought this was like groping in the dark for a shadow that kept slipping out of reach.

‘Nothing!’ Maria sat suddenly upright and he thought he caught the smell of spirit on her skin. She’d been drinking as well as taking prescribed medicine. Not this morning perhaps, but last night. Perez imagined her and Peter sitting in this room and drinking away the guilt in silence. ‘It was secret.’

‘Is that why Jerry’s editor knew nothing about it?’ Perez asked. ‘Because he needed to keep it to himself?’

Maria nodded energetically. ‘Anyone might betray him.’ Perez thought that sounded more like her son’s statement than Maria’s, and another scene came into his head. This time he pictured Maria and Jerry sitting in this room the night before the journalist died. Dinner was over and they were drinking. No Peter this time. He wouldn’t be able to face it. He’d be downstairs playing the gracious host in the bar. But mother and son. Maria delighted to have her boy home, perhaps sitting literally at his feet. Good wine. The most expensive the hotel could provide. No expense spared for the prodigal son. And Jerry holding forth, talking about his plans, refusing her money with a grand gesture: ‘Just you wait. I’ll never need to borrow from you again.’

‘But he’d have confided in you,’ Perez said gently. ‘He’d have told you what his story was about.’

Maria looked at him as if she suspected Perez of betraying Jerry too.

‘It might help us find out who killed him,’ Perez said. ‘We have to know what brought him here, what he was planning to write about.’

She looked at him, seemed at last to be wavering, to be ready to tip over the edge and answer. Then there were footsteps on the stairs. Peter, chilled now and ready to come into the warm, appeared at the door.

‘Jimmy!’ he said, his voice so jolly that he must have been practising the tone all the way from the garden. ‘Still here then? I was just going to make some coffee. You’ll join us?’