Ann Cleeves: Dead Water

Sandy Wilson was still in the office when the call came through. He recognized the Fiscal’s voice and his first thought was that he was in trouble: some procedure not properly followed. He knew she thought very little of him and wasn’t surprised. He thought very little of himself. His boss, Jimmy Perez, was still on sick leave, inching his way back into work a couple of days a week, and it gave Sandy nightmares to think that in reality there were times when he was in charge.

‘Sergeant Wilson.’ Everyone in Shetland was on first-name terms. Except the Fiscal. Sandy knew he should listen carefully to what she was saying, but found his attention wandering. This was a nervous reaction to stress, which had got him into trouble since he was a peerie boy in the school in Whalsay. From his office window he looked down towards the harbour. The Bressay ferry had just left for the island across the Sound. The gulls were fighting over a scrap of rubbish on the pier.

‘So I need you here. Immediately. You do understand?’ Rhona Laing’s voice was sharp. Obviously she had expected a swifter response from the detective. Rhona had never thought very much of Sandy, as a man or as a police officer.

‘Of course.’

‘But before you leave you must tell Inverness. They’ll need to send a team. The Serious Crime Squad and the CSIs.’

‘They won’t get here until the morning now,’ Sandy said. He was on firmer ground here and could understand the practicalities. ‘The last plane from Inverness will already have left.’

‘But we need their advice, Sergeant. I’ve tied the yoal to my mooring in Aith. I assume I leave the body where it is. The forecast is good tomorrow, so it should be safe enough there, if it’s properly covered. We should mark off the marina as a crime scene and keep people out. But we’ll need screens too. You know how people gawk. And tomorrow’s Saturday, so there’ll be a lot of people about.’

‘You’ll not be popular keeping folk away from their boats on a weekend.’ Sandy scratched his arm and thought there was nothing better than a bit of fishing at this time of the year. At last you could feel that the long, dark winter days were over.

‘I don’t aim to be popular!’ the retort came, sharp as gunfire.

‘Did you recognize him?’ Sandy asked. ‘The dead man, I mean.’

There was a pause at the other end of the line and he understood that she was considering the matter. He thought people always looked different when they were dead, and if you didn’t know them well, it wasn’t always easy to identify a body. But when the answer came it was unequivocal. ‘I didn’t, Sergeant. And that’s another reason why I need you here. If he’s a Shetlander, I assume you’ll be able to tell us who he is.’

There was a pause. Sandy could hear the sound of water in the background. The Fiscal must still be at the marina, using her mobile. She was lucky to get any reception. That part of the island was a black hole when it came to phones. ‘I’ll send some people over to secure the site,’ he said, ‘and contact Inverness. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘Good.’

He knew she was about to end the conversation and almost shouted, to hold her attention: ‘Miss Laing!’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘Should I tell Jimmy? Inspector Perez?’ This had been troubling him since he first realized the implication of her call. Jimmy Perez wasn’t himself, hadn’t been since the death of his fiancée. He was given to black moods and bouts of rage that came from nowhere. His colleagues were sympathetic and had given him time. He’d come back to work too early, they said. He was depressed. But after six months their patience was wearing thin. Sandy had picked up mutterings in the canteen: maybe Perez should resign and devote himself to looking after Duncan Hunter’s child. Promotion in the Shetland police service was about filling dead men’s shoes. Perhaps Perez should do the decent thing: move on and give somebody else a chance to do the job properly.

At first there was no answer from Rhona Laing. Sandy wondered if her phone had cut out. Then she spoke. ‘I don’t know, Sandy. That’s a judgement for you to make. You know Jimmy better than I do.’ And her voice was almost human.

He put off the decision until he’d spoken to Inverness. There was a new man in charge there. He was English, and Sandy had to concentrate hard to understand the accent. ‘I’ll send up an inspector and a team,’ the man said. ‘You know Roy Taylor went back to Liverpool?’

‘I’d heard.’ Sandy thought it was all change now. Jimmy Perez was a quite different man, and Roy Taylor had moved south. Sandy had never enjoyed change. He’d grown up on the small island of Whalsay and it had been a huge adventure to go south to train for the police service.

‘Taylor’s replacement is a woman.’ The superintendent came from London and his voice made Sandy think of gangster movies. ‘Grew up in North Uist. Almost one of you.’

No, Sandy wanted to say. The people of the Uists are quite different. They speak Gaelic, and the crofts are all sand and seaweed. A different landscape and a different culture. In the Hebrides you can’t get a drink on a Sunday. Only an Englishman could think a Hebridean would have anything in common with a Shetlander. He’d spent two days in Benbecula on a training course with the Highlands and Islands Police and thought he knew all about the place. But he said nothing. He wouldn’t mind having a boss who was a woman.

‘She’s called Reeves,’ the superintendent went on. ‘Willow Reeves. You’ll meet her and her team from the plane?’ Sandy was thinking that didn’t sound much like a Hebridean name. Weren’t they all MacDonalds in the Western Isles? The superintendent had to repeat the question. ‘You will meet them from the morning plane? Find them accommodation and show them the ropes? I take it Jimmy Perez is still out of action?’

‘He’s back part-time,’ Sandy said. ‘Still under the doctor.’

‘Will he be up for this?’ The superintendent’s voice was uncertain.

‘I think he’d want to know,’ Sandy said. ‘I think he’d hate something like this going on in his patch and not knowing.’ This had only just come to him, but now he was sure it was true.

‘So you’ll do that, will you, Sandy? You’ll tell him. I don’t want Perez finding out on the grapevine and thinking we’ve excluded him on purpose. These days he can be a prickly sod.’

Sandy replaced the phone and felt overwhelmed by the choices he had to make. The Fiscal expected him in Aith, which was a good half-hour’s drive to the north, and the superintendent wanted him to talk to Jimmy Perez, who lived in Ravenswick to the south of Lerwick. Sandy was happier when he was told what to do. More than anything in the world he longed for Jimmy Perez to be back and normal, clever and sharp. And telling him what to do.

He got back on the phone and organized a couple of uniformed officers to get to Aith and screen off the crime scene. ‘We’ll need someone on duty there until the team from Inverness gets in.’ When he told his colleagues that the Fiscal had found the body, he sensed their hostility. She wasn’t a popular woman. He couldn’t think of anyone in the islands who liked her or who would consider her a friend. When he went outside to pick up his car, the light was starting to fade. Perez would be at home because it would nearly be Cassie’s bedtime. Cassie, the child of his lover, left to him in her unofficial will. The only reason, Sandy thought, that Perez hadn’t run away from the islands and the memories of Fran’s death.

The house was a converted chapel, very low and small, with a view over Raven’s Head and down to the houses by the pier. Perez’s car was parked outside. The door opened before Sandy reached it, and Jimmy Perez stood there, a mug of coffee in his hand. He looked as if he hadn’t slept since Fran had died and was skinny and unshaven. Though he’d never been a tidy man, Sandy thought. He’d never much been one for caring about his appearance.