Ann Cleeves - Too Good to Be True

A young waitress came to take his order. Perez wiped a patch in the mist on the window so he could see into the street, but it soon steamed up again. He tried to order his thoughts about the Anna Blackwell case but the young mothers’ voices intruded.

‘I feel dreadful,’ one of the women said. ‘I didn’t want to sign that petition to get rid of Miss Blackwell in the first place, but Sarah is chair of governors and she’s always in the school. I thought her reasons for thinking Anna was no good must be real.’

There was a moment of silence. ‘Well, we didn’t know then that Tom and Anna were such…’ There was another pause… ‘friends.’

‘You can see why Sarah would have wanted her out of the village.’

Perez had always thought there was a lot of gossip in Shetland, but he had rarely heard anything there that was quite as toxic as this. He could understand for the first time why Sarah was so upset that she had called for his help. It must be a nightmare to face this malice wherever she went.

The talking continued. ‘Do we know for certain that Tom and Anna were lovers? Gail, you knew Anna better than anyone. Lucy stayed at your house the night it all happened.’

So this was Gail Kerr, the woman from the farm who’d had Anna’s daughter for the sleepover. She was stocky, a bit older than the others, and she didn’t seem to have a baby with her. She was wearing an anorak over a scruffy sweater. The others seemed to have made more of an effort with their appearances. Some were rather glamorous, shiny and made-up. They could have been in a fancy restaurant instead of a scruffy cafe.

‘Well, my brother Sandy saw them walking together through the woods,’ said Gail, resting her elbows on the table. ‘He said they were so wrapped up in each other that a bomb could have dropped and they wouldn’t have noticed.’

The waitress brought Jimmy’s coffee. It was hardly warm and didn’t taste of anything.

‘But you don’t really think he killed her?’ the first woman said. ‘Not Tom! He’s a doctor. A kind man. He looked after my mother when she had cancer and he couldn’t have been more caring.’

‘It’s just too much of a coincidence.’ It was Gail again. ‘Something weird was going on there. If the Kings didn’t kill her, they drove her to suicide.’

Jimmy Perez couldn’t stand any more of their unkindness. He drank his coffee in one go, paid the bill and went outside.

Next to the cafe an estate agents’ office was advertising houses to let. On impulse Perez went inside. A middle-aged woman in a suit looked up from her computer screen.

He showed his ID. ‘Do you manage a property owned by Doctor King?’

‘The house in Woodburn Close? Yes, that’s one of ours.’

‘I’m making inquiries about the most recent tenant,’ he said. ‘Anna Blackwell.’

The estate agent turned round in her chair to give him her full attention. ‘She was the woman who died.’

‘That’s right,’ Perez said. ‘I assume she had to provide a deposit before she moved in? Someone had to vouch for her?’

‘No…’ The woman paused. ‘It was a more informal arrangement.’

‘In what way informal?’

‘I understood that she was a friend of Doctor King’s. He said there was no need for her to pay in advance. He could vouch for her.’

Perez considered this. How had Tom King met the young teacher before she moved to Stonebridge? A thought leapt into his head. Was it possible, even, that he was the father of her child?

‘Do you have a previous address for Miss Blackwell?’

The woman turned back to the keyboard. ‘Yes, we do have that, I think, because we had to send out a contract before she moved in.’ She hit a button and a printer began to whir. She handed a sheet of paper to Perez.

The address was in Berwick, just south of the border, in England.

‘I believe that was her parents’ address,’ the estate agent said. ‘Miss Blackwell had been at university in Edinburgh and had just finished her degree. She suggested the Berwick address would be the best one to use.’

Perez wondered why Anna’s parents hadn’t come forward to take care of their granddaughter, Lucy, after her mother’s death. He’d assumed that there was no close family. It seemed very sad that the grandparents had allowed the little girl to be sent off to be cared for by strangers. Perhaps Anna’s parents were old-fashioned and didn’t approve of a child born out of marriage.

Outside in the street, the village was very quiet – there were no children’s voices. Soon it would be lunchtime and they would be out to play again, Perez thought. Stonebridge seemed sad without them.

Jimmy Perez was thinking that he’d go back to the Stonebridge Hotel for lunch when he saw a woman leaving the cafe where he’d had coffee earlier.

The woman was alone. The other yummy mummies must still be inside talking, he thought. It was Gail, the mother from the farm, and she made her way towards a battered Land Rover parked in the wide main street. He caught up with her just before she opened the Land Rover’s door.

‘Could I have a word?’

She turned round and stared at him. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m a detective. My name’s Jimmy Perez. I’m just checking some details concerning Anna Blackwell’s death.’

‘But she killed herself.’ Gail was still staring. ‘According to the local police the case has been closed.’

Something in her eyes made him ask, ‘Do you think it shouldn’t have been?’

She looked at him carefully. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I can’t stay here and chat. I’ve got to get home for a delivery of feed for my hens. Why don’t you come too and we can talk? I might even find some soup for your lunch. I’ve got to come back to Stonebridge to collect my little girl from school at three o’clock and I can give you a lift back then.’

So Perez climbed in beside her and Gail drove out of the village. It seemed like a sort of escape. He realised how trapped he’d been feeling in the village with its bitchy women and the dark woods all around it.

They took a lane that rose sharply away from the river, and as they rounded a corner there was a view of a whitewashed house at the end of a rough track. ‘I love this place,’ Gail said. ‘I was born here and I can’t imagine living anywhere else.’

She parked the Land Rover in the farmyard. Perez could see sheep on the hill behind the house and hens in a small orchard beside the yard. He thought it looked like a child’s idea of a farm rather than the real thing – it could have come from a picture book. Gail seemed to read his thoughts.

‘It’s only a smallholding really,’ she said. ‘My parents sold off most of the land years ago. Now my brother and I run it almost as a hobby. We’re trying our best to make a go of it. Sandy has a full-time job working for the forestry commission, and that just about keeps us afloat.’

‘What does your husband do?’

There was a moment’s silence and then Gail answered:

‘He died three months ago in a car crash. He had real plans for the place. He thought we should turn some of the buildings into holiday lets. Without him I can’t seem to work up the same passion for the project, but I’ll try to make a go of it as a tribute to him.’

She opened the farmhouse door and led him into a cluttered kitchen. ‘Will you have some soup?’

He nodded and sat at the table. He thought how strong she must be to carry on with her everyday life when her husband had so recently passed away. Perez had been good for nothing for months after Fran had been killed. He’d just brooded.

‘Lucy Blackwell stayed here the night Anna died?’ he asked.