Ann Cleeves - Dead Water

Willow slept deeply, without dreams, and woke to the sound of gulls and a foghorn – childhood noises, comforting. Outside the light was grey and she could see nothing from her window, not even the blurred outline of the island of Bressay. The mist hid everything.

When she got to the police station Perez was already there. She saw his black hair through the opaque glass pane in the incident-room door and recognized him from that. She opened the door and went in. He was using a corner of the long table as a desk. He’d never mentioned the fact that she’d taken over his office.

‘Could you not sleep, Jimmy?’

He looked up, his face a series of planes and shadows. It could have been carved roughly from some hard wood.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not very well. And Cassie always wakes early, so I dropped her at her friend’s house and came along here. She’s staying at her father’s tonight.’

Willow saw that Cassie was always at the front of his mind, his most important preoccupation.

‘Anything come of your chat with Brian?’

He hesitated and she felt the return of the anger. Why was he so determined to go it alone? If he’d obtained information from Brian in the Bonhoga, he should have been on the phone to her immediately. What right did he have to keep it to himself? Was he trying to protect someone here? One of his old cronies? The Fiscal? But then the thought of Perez as a corrupt officer was so ludicrous that she smiled.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said. ‘You can tell me then.’

She set the coffee in front of him and felt suddenly like some sort of therapist or counsellor. Go on, Jimmy, tell me all about it. And when he did speak, it was as if he’d bought into that fantasy too.

‘Ah, the ideas I’m carrying around in my head, you’d think I was mad,’ he said. ‘You’d think I was stark staring bonkers. You’d lock me up and throw away the key.’

She thought that was just another way of shutting her out, and she had too much pride to grovel to him.

‘We’ll stick to the facts then, shall we, Jimmy?’ Her voice was frosty. ‘The theories can come later.’

As soon as she’d spoken she realized her mistake. If she’d gone in gently and played the therapist, he’d have confided in her, but now she was just his boss again. He’d be worried about making a fool of himself.

He put a photograph of Evie Watt on the table in front of her. It wasn’t the one they’d used on the board here in the incident room, and Willow wondered where Perez had found it. It had been taken at some Shetland Island Council function and Evie was smartly dressed in a skirt and a jacket, looking oddly grown-up. Willow had only ever seen Evie in jeans before.

‘Brian thought this might have been the woman who met Markham the morning before he died.’

‘Is he sure?’ Willow remembered the young woman on the beach in Fetlar, her anger and her grief. Surely her judgement couldn’t be that flawed. Evie Watt was no killer.

Perez shrugged. ‘Brian’s a reformed junkie. He’s never been sure of anything.’ He paused and was about to continue when Willow broke in.

‘Hardly a star witness then. I’ll need more than that, Jimmy.’ She waited for him to continue, to defend his position, but Perez just shrugged again. He’d become moody, the man she’d first met when she arrived on the islands. She’d made this man coffee, bent over backwards to be pleasant to him and he behaved like a graceless and uncommunicative teenage boy.

‘Anything else?’

‘I went past the track to Evie Watt’s croft yesterday afternoon. Where you found John Henderson’s body. They’ve turned it into a kind of shrine. Flowers, candles, you know.’

She nodded.

‘I found this there.’

It had been on the table all the time, but she’d been focused on Evie’s photo and she hadn’t noticed it. The postcard in the clear-plastic evidence bag. He slid it towards her. She turned it over. Nothing written on the back.

‘It’s the same as the one Jerry Markham sent to Annabel,’ she said. ‘There were others in his briefcase next to the body.’

‘There’ll be hundreds of them floating around Shetland,’ Perez said. ‘They were handing them out free in the Bonhoga. It could mean nothing.’

But she could tell that he believed it was more important than that. ‘If it had come loose from a bouquet or a gift, surely it would have a message on it,’ she said.

‘That was my thought.’

‘So, Jimmy, what conclusion have you come to? What was this thing doing there?’

‘The killer could have taken it from Markham’s briefcase.’ His voice was quiet, tentative. Was he worried that she would mock him for his ideas? Surely he must know her better than that.

‘A trophy, you mean?’ She frowned.

‘Or a memento.’

‘And then he left it at the place where John Henderson died. Why would he do that?’ Willow was struggling to understand this.

‘I don’t know. To link the killings. As a sign? A message?’

‘Who to?’ Perhaps Perez is crazy, she thought. Perhaps he was right when he said he was mad.

‘Ah.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘That’s the important question, isn’t it?’

‘To Evie Watt, do you think?’ Willow found herself groping towards an explanation. ‘Perhaps she did meet Markham in the Bonhoga, after all. Perhaps he passed on information. Something he’d discovered in his research.’ Suddenly she was excited. She could feel the possibility that she might connect all these unrelated strands of the investigations. ‘His story. The story that brought him to Shetland in the first place. Something to do with her work? The green energy? The Fiscal was on the working party for the tidal-power project. The Power of Water. Perhaps that’s the reason Markham’s body was left on the water at Aith. Another message. To a twisted mind. And Markham met Henderson too, perhaps looking for more information, or giving it. And the postcard is a message to Evie to keep her mouth shut. What do you think, Jimmy?’

She could tell he was considering the theory, running through the facts in his head. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, it could have worked that way.’ She thought he seemed almost relieved. She wanted to ask him what weird and dreadful scenario he’d conjured up. Why is my theory so much more attractive to you? But she was a detective and not a shrink, and she was exhilarated because all these disparate facts were finally hanging together. So instead she concentrated on actions for the day.

‘I’d like to see Joe Sinclair.’ She looked at Perez. ‘He was on the working party with Rhona Laing and Evie, but not a suspect in any way that I can see. An impartial witness. And I’d like to see the site for the tidal-energy project. He could talk me through it, couldn’t he? All the technical stuff?’

Perez hesitated for a moment and then nodded.

‘I was thinking I’d take Sandy with me,’ she went on. ‘Let him out of the office for a while.’ And there’s no way I can put up with your moods today.

Perez nodded again. She stood up, irritated by his silence.

‘Would you mind if I spoke to Rhona?’ he asked. She was on her way out and she had to turn to look at him. ‘I know you saw her yesterday, but she left a message on the answer phone the evening before. Wanting to talk to me. You wouldn’t mind?’

She froze, her hand on the door, revisited by the old suspicion that Rhona and Perez might be colluding over some part of the investigation. But if that was the case, Perez had no need to ask her permission before talking to the woman. He could just have picked up the phone. At least now he was keeping her informed.