Ann Cleeves - Thin Air

‘Maybe, but it seems more calculated than that to me.’ And Willow wasn’t sure if a woman of Eleanor’s background would be so impressionable, however desperate she was for a baby. ‘I wish I knew what game she was playing.’

‘Is it relevant that her body was found where Vaila saw the girl?’

‘I don’t know. It’s certainly an odd coincidence.’ Willow paused. ‘I wish I knew what had happened to that digital recorder. Vicki Hewitt did a thorough search of Sletts before she left and she wouldn’t miss something like that.’

‘I thought ghosts were supposed to be scary,’ Sandy said. ‘Vaila Arthur didn’t give you the impression that she was frightened. Maybe it’s because we’ve all grown up with stories of the trowes, so we take weird things in our stride.’

‘Trowes?’

He shifted in his seat. ‘Little men who live under the ground. They can lure you down to their halls with fine music and, when you wake up, you find that you’ve lost a hundred years.’ A pause. ‘Nobody believes it, of course. It’s just stories for bairns.’

‘Naturally.’ She kept her voice serious. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘Talk to those English folk and find out if they have any idea why Eleanor might have kept her research secret?’ He sounded as if he didn’t like the idea much.

‘I suppose we should.’ She wondered why she was as reluctant as Sandy to talk to the people at Sletts. She turned in her seat. ‘Did you believe Vaila? Did she see her ghost?’

He paused for a moment. ‘I’m with her husband. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I don’t think she was making it up. Not deliberately. She was desperate for a baby and she saw what she wanted to see.’

In the house on the shore at Meoness, Polly thought she was unravelling just as she’d suspected Eleanor of doing when anger and depression at the loss of a child had made her so low. It was the fog closing them in, and the sense that they were all trapped. Her nerves were fraying and she was finding it impossible to sleep, even when she took pills. She was haunted by the light nights and by the horror of all that had happened. She couldn’t understand why the men didn’t make more fuss about the possibility of their leaving. Now she was desperate to return to London, to busy streets and colour, to daily newspapers that arrived on time and regular visits to the gym. To the comfort and routine of the Sentiman Library.

They sat in Sletts, looking occasionally out at the grey world beyond their window. The detectives had returned their laptops and phones and the men both seemed to be engrossed in the screens. Marcus was planning a trip for another rich client who was obsessed with climbing Kilimanjaro before he died, and she supposed that Ian was working too. He was checking his emails and suddenly turned into the room, frowning. ‘All these ghouls sending messages about how sorry they are that Eleanor’s dead. It’s nonsense, of course. They just want to be part of the drama. She’d upset half of them, and the other half were embarrassed when she had the miscarriage.’

Polly thought that was probably true. She was trying to read, but couldn’t concentrate and sneaked a look at Marcus’s screen. He was putting together information for his client and there were images of lush vegetation and stunning views from his previous trips to Tanzania. She wondered again what this man who was so well travelled and attractive could have seen in her. Now he was leaning back and had his feet on the rungs of a dining chair. He was wearing the sandals he’d had on when they first met, and his feet were brown, long and bony. She longed to reach out and stroke them, but realized how insensitive that would be when Ian must be coming to terms with the idea that he’d never have physical contact with Eleanor again.

Marcus had burst into her life like a being from a different planet. She’d booked the trip to Morocco in the middle of the winter. An impulse when she’d been with Caroline and Eleanor one night, and their lives had seemed so much more exciting than hers. It had been just before Eleanor had lost the child and her friend had been full of fun and mischief: ‘Go on, Pol! What have you got to lose?’ One click of the mouse sent her credit-card details into the ether, and a fortnight later she’d arrived at Agadir airport and there was Marcus, holding a card with her name on it, leaning against a pillar and grinning in a way that was ironic and welcoming at the same time. I’m just playing at this tour-leading shit, but I’ll make sure that you have a good time. And he did. The other members of the party were elderly Germans who went to bed at eight-thirty every evening and spoke little English. In the warm evenings she and Marcus explored the walled city of Taroudant and watched the swifts soaring overhead, and it felt quite natural when he put his arm around her shoulders on the way back to the hotel. She was dazzled by the place and the man. And by the fact that she’d had the courage to respond to him. Her boyfriends at college had been shy and earnest and she’d always imagined that she’d end up with someone like that, an academic or a research scientist who spent his working life in a lab coat. Not an adventurer with brown, bony feet who wandered the world. Someone who’d been to public school and who’d grown up in a grand country house.

She’d returned to England at the end of the holiday with no expectations of seeing him again. This was a holiday fling and she’d be grateful for the memories. She imagined telling the girls about Marcus and showing them her photos. ‘This is the night we stayed in the Berber village. Here we are on a trek through the mountains.’ He’d bought her earrings in a souk and waited while she had henna painted on her hands. ‘So that you don’t forget me.’ As if she ever would. At his request she’d entered her mobile number into his phone, but she’d put his asking down to a form of politeness. Or the collection of trophies. Perhaps he had a list of numbers of the women with whom he’d slept when he was leading his tours.

He’d phoned two days later. ‘That’s spooky,’ she’d said, making every effort to keep the excitement from her voice, ‘I was just thinking about you.’ And that was quite true, but it would have been so whenever he’d called. She couldn’t stop thinking about him.

‘Would you like to meet up?’ His voice had faded away at the end of the sentence and it had occurred to her for the first time that he might be nervous too, that phoning his customers out of the blue for a date wasn’t his usual way of operating.

‘Yes.’ Because what else was there to say; and he’d told her one night, sitting outside in the warm darkness, that he loved the fact that she never wasted words.

And a few weeks later he was practically living in her flat when he was in England, and she became used to him kissing her goodbye in the early mornings, and returning from work occasionally to find that his rucksack was parked just inside the door and he was sitting on the little balcony outside her flat, his brown feet on the rail, drinking tea or beer. He’d jump up to greet her and begin asking her about her work. Only when he’d listened to her tedious stories of eccentric researchers into rural English myths would he begin his travellers’ tales.

She’d thought at first that he might be with her for her money, the security of a London crash pad when he was in the UK. She had no confidence in her ability to attract a man. Her parents had died one after the other within six months, leaving her the house in Manchester, so she had some savings as well as the flat in London. His tours were pricey, but he wasn’t travelling continuously and sometimes he only had a couple of clients. They provided a way for him to see the world, but would never make his fortune. Then he’d taken her to see his mother and she’d seen that money probably wasn’t an issue. There were paintings on the wall worth more than her parents’ suburban home.