Ann Cleeves - Thin Air

Hillier laughed. ‘Let’s see what we can do, shall we? We’d want to do all we can to help our friends in the police.’ He took Sandy into a small lounge and brought a tray of tea, with little home-made shortbread biscuits.

‘What’s this about?’ he asked. His head bobbed forward and Sandy was reminded again of a bird, a parrot maybe. His eyes were beady and bright. ‘Are you allowed to say?’

Sandy thought that by now there’d be no point in keeping secrets. ‘A visitor to the island died,’ he said. ‘It’s a possible suspicious death.’ He was expecting more questions, but the man dipped his head again towards his tea and said nothing.

Willow Reeves was at her parents’ place in North Uist when the call came from Jimmy Perez. The commune had come together for a working lunch and they were sitting round the long table in the old barn. Time had snapped like elastic released from tension and she was a kid again. Everything was the same – the taste of home-made bread and vegetable stew, the murmured voices that hid dissent and frustration under a veneer of politeness. Except that there were no children at the table. The individuals she remembered as being strong and flexible now had grey hair and arthritic joints. No new members had joined since she’d signed up for the police service. There were no families to boost numbers for the island school. The communal ideal of shared ownership and shared beliefs seemed to be unappealing to Thatcher’s children.

She muttered an apology and went outside to take the call. Her mother, Lottie, had been delighted to see her and Willow had enjoyed her time here, felt better for the mindless physical exercise and the organic food. And she’d banished the guilt that had bothered her every time she’d phoned them and heard her mother’s wistful but undemanding enquiry about when she might be planning a visit. Her relationship with her father had always been more problematic and now, after a fortnight, she was ready to leave. The unexpected contact with the outside world came as a relief.

‘I’m sorry to bother you.’ Perez’s voice sounded distant. ‘I know that you were spending some time with your folks.’

‘Is it work, Jimmy?’

‘We’ve got a suspicious death. A woman from the south here for a hamefarin’ in Unst. No obvious cause of death, but she’s kind of posed, so I don’t see it as natural causes. James Grieve is booked onto this evening’s flight.’

James was the pathologist, based in Aberdeen. She’d met him in Shetland on a previous case. Another investigation featuring a posed body.

‘I know that you’re on leave,’ Perez said, ‘but I thought I’d contact you first.’ A pause. ‘I thought that you’d want to know.’

There was a moment of pleasure because she could tell that he wanted her there; she was his first choice. She was already calculating flight times and possibilities. She should get the next plane from Benbecula if she left in ten minutes. ‘Can you book me onto the last flight from Glasgow, Jimmy?’

‘For today?’

‘If that’s all right with you, Inspector.’ Mock-stern because, in theory, she was his boss when it came to serious crime in the Highlands and Islands.

‘I won’t get to meet you from Sumburgh,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking that I should stay here in Unst tonight. You know what a trek it is back to the mainland. I’ll arrange for a hire car to be waiting for you at the airport and book you onto the last ferries up. Will you bring James? I’ll sort out accommodation for you both too.’

When she told her parents that she’d been called back to work they said they were disappointed, but she thought they were as relieved as she was to see her go. She reminded them of the time when the commune was thriving, when there was the noise and clutter of children running through the yard. They saw how supple she was when she worked in the field, and they saw themselves thirty years before. Her father waited at the airport until her plane took off. She saw him, still and impassive as it taxied along the runway.

James Grieve was short and smart, and every time she saw him she was reminded that once he’d been a medic in the army. His plane had arrived into Sumburgh before hers and he was waiting for her, a leather holdall at his feet and his coat folded over one arm. His shoes were so highly polished that they glinted in the sunlight.

He gave a tight little smile. ‘Chief Inspector, we meet again.’

She drove north over smooth roads, past the places that reminded her of her previous visit to Shetland. Jimmy Perez had been on sick leave then, unbearable at times, angry and uncommunicative. He’d sounded better on the phone. She thought they’d work well together and was aware of another emotion too, a kind of anticipation, but knew better than to think in that way. She was always disappointed in her relationships with men and it was best to remember that this visit was just about work. Perez could have contacted her sooner if he’d had a more personal reason; besides, he was still grieving. They bypassed Lerwick and continued north, had ten minutes’ wait for the ferry at Toft and were the last car aboard the boat from Gutcher to Unst. She’d looked at the map in the plane and knew where she was going.

Perez was waiting for them at the side of the road by a telephone kiosk. She’d phoned him when they’d arrived in Unst. He was dark and untidy, his hair just a little too long. When she pulled in he directed her to park beside the community hall. ‘We can walk from here.’

They climbed out of the car and there was a moment’s awkwardness. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Here we are again.’

Then James Grieve began asking questions about the dead woman and the scene, and Perez was leading them across sheep-cropped grass and she had to pay attention to his detailed description of what had happened. Willow found that she’d lost all track of time. Midsummer in the Uists was light enough, but here they were much further north and although it was already evening there was a clarity that made it feel like early afternoon. Sandy Wilson was waiting by a stile in a gap in a drystone wall. He’d caught the sun and his face was freckled like a schoolboy’s. He grinned at her and she thought that he, at least, was pleased to see her.

‘I’ve tracked down Vicki Hewitt,’ he said. ‘She’ll be on the first flight tomorrow. I’ll go out early and pick her up.’ Vicki was the crime-scene manager and had to come in from the mainland too.

‘Follow the sheep track,’ Perez said. ‘That’s the route we’ve all used.’

She saw the standing stone first. It was enormous and shaped into a point, and Willow found her attention wandering. She was thinking about the people who’d worked the monumental lump of rock and fixed it into the peat and was wondering what significance it might have had for them. She thought too that there’d been a settlement on this land more recently than the stone had been erected. Crumbled drystone dykes marked field boundaries and two higher walls formed the corner of what might once have been a house. The land had supported many more families in previous generations in Shetland.

As they got closer Willow saw the woman in the water. She was dark-haired and pale-skinned, and Willow saw what Perez meant about the body having been posed. Even if the victim had been taken ill or tripped into the water, she wouldn’t be lying like this, flat on her back, with her head pointed directly towards the stone. And she couldn’t see how it might be suicide. ‘You say there was a note?’

‘An email,’ Perez said. ‘Sent to one of her friends. Don’t bother looking for me. You won’t find me alive. ’

‘You could read that as a suicide note.’