Ann Cleeves: Dead Water

‘We think he was murdered,’ Sandy said. ‘His body was found at Aith Marina and there was a head-wound. We’ll know more tomorrow, when a team comes up from Inverness.’

There was an explosion of sound then. Maria was shouting and crying. Sandy wasn’t given to fancies, but he thought there was the pain of labour in it. It was as if she were giving birth to her son again, screaming her way through the agony. Markham stood in front of her and held her tight until she was quiet.

‘Jerry was our only one,’ he said, looking over his wife’s head at Sandy. ‘After him Maria could have no more children.’

Sandy wanted to get out of there, to give them some time to grieve alone. He hated sitting in the big clean space, watching the woman he remembered as strong and full of laughter falling apart. But in the morning the new inspector from North Uist would fly in on the plane and she’d want to know what he’d found out. This was the only chance he’d have to ask his questions before she took over the investigation.

‘What car did Jerry drive?’ he asked.

‘An Alfa Romeo.’ Markham was still holding his wife to his chest, rocking slightly as if he were comforting a fretful baby. ‘One of the small, sporty ones. Red, of course. A ridiculous thing. Old now. He bought it when he first moved to London.’

‘Maria said Jerry was here to work.’ Sandy couldn’t imagine what a fancy reporter from a London paper was doing in Shetland. How could what was happening here be of interest there?

‘Jerry said there was a story.’ Markham spoke quietly. Maria was so still now that Sandy wondered if she’d passed out, if she’d worn herself out with her sobbing. Markham stroked her hair. ‘He’d persuaded his boss it was worth following up and that he’d be the best person to do it, because of his local connections. So he’d get a few days home, all expenses paid, and the chance of a scoop too.’

‘What was the story about?’ Outside there was a sudden burst of laughter. Local diners were making their way to their cars and home.

Markham shrugged. ‘He’d asked if I could get him into Sullom Voe. Did I still have any contacts there? I thought there’d be nothing at the terminal that would interest the paper. The oil’s running out, after all. That place is old news. But I arranged for him to visit the press officer.’

‘And that was where he was today?’

‘Yes,’ Markham said. ‘That was where he was today. We were expecting him back for dinner; when he didn’t turn up, we thought he’d bumped into old friends. You know how it is here, coming back. I tried to phone, but there was no answer. No reception, we thought. It never occurred to me that anything would have happened to him. We worried about him sometimes in London. But not here. Here we expect everyone to be safe.’

He was still talking when Sandy stood up. Sandy thought Markham was reluctant now to let the detective go. His face was tight with the effort of holding himself together. With just Maria for company, he’d not manage it.

Sandy drove north again. The windows were still lit in Jimmy’s house. He wanted to stop and ask advice. What should I do first? Tell me how I should run things. But he drove past and went to the office, got onto the computer to check the registration number of Jerry Markham’s car, phoned Davy Cooper, who was on watch at the marina, and asked him to wander round the car park and see if it was there. Sandy hadn’t noticed it, and he thought he would have noticed such a flash car. Morag had left a note that she’d fixed accommodation for the Inverness team in Lerwick.

Sandy returned to his flat in the early hours of the morning. He switched on the television, with the sound very low – a young family lived underneath him and he didn’t want to wake them. He drank a can of Tennent’s without bothering to get a glass, then set his alarm clock and went to bed. He slept immediately. Even when he was worried, Sandy Wilson had no trouble sleeping. Jimmy Perez had always said that was a gift. Sandy thought it was one of the few he possessed.

It was Willow Reeves’s first murder investigation as SIO. The boss had called her into the office and said he’d like her to take it on. ‘It takes a special sort of understanding to work in Shetland. They’re on the edge of the known universe up there and they think the normal rules of life don’t apply to them. They’re mad buggers.’ The implication was that she was a mad bugger too – though she came from the far west and not the far north – and that for her the case would be a piece of piss. No pressure then. If he’d known exactly where she’d come from, and how her family had been, he’d really have considered that she was crazy, but she never talked about that at work. What business was it of theirs?

They landed in Sumburgh on the first flight out of Inverness and her initial thought was how big and grand everything was. It was like a real airport, with the car-hire office and the lounge and the cafe. Everything shiny in the sunshine. Vicki Hewitt, the CSI, had worked in Shetland before and greeted the sergeant who met them like an old friend. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘How’s Jimmy Perez?’

The sergeant shrugged and muttered in an accent Willow struggled to understand. ‘Not so good. It’s taking a long time.’

They all knew the story of Jimmy Perez and how his fiancée had got caught up in a murder investigation on Fair Isle, how she’d been stabbed by a psycho and how Jimmy blamed himself. It had been talked about in canteens throughout the Highland and Islands Police for months. There were people who blamed Jimmy too. What was he thinking, involving his woman in his work? Willow had never expressed an opinion. One thing she’d learned growing up in the commune in North Uist was that often it was best to keep your mouth shut. At least until you knew what you were talking about.

The sergeant drove them north up a fine, straight road, pointing out landmarks on the way as if he were a tour guide. She had hundreds of questions to ask him about the case. Overnight she’d read the preliminary report from Shetland and everything she could find about Jerry Markham. In her briefcase there was a file of cuttings of the stories he’d written. ‘Tell me about Markham,’ she said at last.

Sandy Wilson didn’t seem offended by the interruption. ‘His father was from the south,’ he said. ‘But his mother was a Shetland woman, and Jerry was born here and grew up here.’

‘You knew him?’

‘Oh aye, but I’ve not seen him since he moved to London.’

‘So you wouldn’t know why anyone would want to kill him? There were no rumours? No stories of enemies or grudges?’ She understood that in small, tight communities grudges could be held for generations.

‘He worked as a reporter on the Shetland Times for a while,’ Sandy said. ‘Before he got that chance to work on the London newspaper. It didn’t always make him popular. Folk don’t like their dirty washing done in public. And it’s read by everyone. Maybe he thought he was practising for the big time while he was here, always on the lookout for the exciting story. But that was ten years ago. I don’t think it could be the cause of him getting killed yesterday.’

Suddenly he crossed the road and pulled the car into a lay-by. He nodded down the bank towards a big house that stood right on the shore. It was built of grey stone and there was a high stone wall all round it.

‘That’s the Ravenswick Hotel,’ Sandy said. ‘Jerry’s parents own it. Peter and Maria Markham.’

‘What do local people make of them?’ Willow thought it must be expensive, keeping a place like that going. None of the hotels on the Uists were that big or that smart.