Ann Cleeves - Thin Air

‘Who are you?’ Ian glared at the older man. Polly thought he looked like a gorilla picking a fight with another male for supremacy of the troop. Eleanor had always called him, with amused affection, her alpha male.

Hillier barked back his name. ‘I own Springfield House hotel. Your friend here was trespassing.’

‘So you own this place too, do you?’ Polly could tell that Ian longed for a fight and realized he’d wanted to hit someone ever since he’d been told that Eleanor was dead.

‘I know the owner.’

‘And that gives you the right to throw your weight about, does it? To intimidate women?’ Ian was bristling with aggression, so now she was almost more frightened of him than of Hillier.

‘I’m not intimidated,’ she said. ‘It was a misunderstanding. Let’s go.’ She squeezed past the older man and out of the front door, pulling Ian after her by the sleeve of his jacket. He resisted for a moment, then the fight seemed to leave him altogether and he followed her.

Hillier stood in the doorway watching them. He was still smiling and called after them. ‘Do you know who lived in this place?’

Curiosity got the better of her. Ian was walking back to his car, but she paused for a moment. ‘Who?’

‘Sarah Malcolmson,’ Hillier said. ‘The girl who was blamed for Peerie Lizzie’s death. This was her family’s house.’

Time stretched and had become unimportant. The long-case clock in the corner had just struck eleven, but it was light and the team was still working, sitting in the yellow morning room in Springfield House. Occasionally they heard the drinkers in the public bar coming out to the courtyard to make their way home. Willow was uneasy. Just being here made them compromised – they were enjoying the hospitality of potential suspects after all. The remains left on the sideboard were of the supper provided by Charles and David. And earlier Perez had wandered off on his own to talk to George Malcolmson and that was unforgivable. Any information that the man provided would be uncorroborated, but it wasn’t the breach in protocol that made her so angry, it was the attitude of Jimmy Perez. His driving away on his own had felt like a personal affront. Why hadn’t he discussed his ideas with her first?

Sandy sat between them and seemed to have been infected by her anxiety. He looked at them like a child sensing tension between parents and wondering if he was to blame.

‘I went to the school this morning,’ he said. ‘Just on the off-chance. I thought I might find the lassie Eleanor saw on the beach. If her mother was with her that day, she might have seen what was going on at Sletts. We know that Vaila Arthur turned up to see Eleanor the afternoon before the party; a witness might have noticed someone else.’

‘Any luck?’ Willow was glad to be distracted.

‘No one in the school meets that description, but the teacher thought she saw the child with a woman coming off the ferry on Friday afternoon.’

‘Just holidaymakers then,’ Willow said. ‘Probably not relevant.’

Perez looked up and she thought he was about to contradict her, but he said nothing. He had Eleanor’s notes spread on the table between them and was occasionally writing in a book of his own.

‘So what did you get from the Malcolmson house, Jimmy?’ Willow finally found the silence unbearable. ‘Did you speak to Lowrie again? We still don’t know if Eleanor contacted him for more details of Peerie Lizzie before heading north.’

Perez looked up. ‘No. Lowrie and Caroline were down at Vidlin, looking at the house they’re planning to buy. I spoke to George, though.’

‘Anything?’ Don’t go all brooding and mysterious on me again, Jimmy Perez. I can’t stand it.

‘The young maid who was looking after the Geldard child was a relative of his,’ Perez said. ‘Her family had lived in Utra, that derelict croft on the way to Sletts. After the tragedy she was sent south. She married a man from Inverness and there was a child apparently, who turned up for Sarah’s funeral, surprising them all.’

‘It should be possible to trace her. We should be able to track down Sarah’s married name. Sandy, will you get on to that tomorrow?’

Sandy nodded. ‘You think it might be important?’

‘We won’t know until you speak to her!’ Immediately Willow felt guilty, because it wasn’t Sandy who had provoked her anger. ‘And, Jimmy, perhaps you can talk to Lowrie. It’s become more important now to know what contact he had with Eleanor before the party. If she spoke to Charles Hillier before she came here, she’ll have known that the nursemaid in the Peerie Lizzie story was Lowrie’s relative. She would surely have wanted to talk to Lowrie about that, either in London or here.’

Perez nodded and returned to the notebook.

A silence. Now the light was fading. Willow wondered how Perez could possibly see to read. She reached out to switch on a lamp and his face was transformed into a series of planes and shadows. She felt an irrational urge to touch his forehead, because in the artificial light it looked hard and smooth like metal. He looked up and caught her eye and she turned away. She’d been caught staring like an awkward teenager.

‘I wonder if Eleanor had already found Sarah Malcolmson’s daughter,’ he said. ‘There’s a name here on the page after she’d contacted David and Charles. Monica. No surname even. I can’t see how she might feature here, other than as a part of the Unst ghost story.’

‘Any contact details?’ Willow leaned forward, but found Eleanor’s handwriting impossible to read. Perez must have spent hours working through the book, becoming accustomed to its eccentricities.

‘No, perhaps she’d only got as far as tracing the name.’

‘Something else for us to work on tomorrow.’ She stretched, suddenly exhausted. ‘I’m away to my bed. I wake up so early here and I need some sleep.’

Perez didn’t move. She saw that the notebooks had become an obsession. ‘Jimmy,’ she said, ‘you need to rest. It’ll wait until tomorrow.’

Then he did look at her and, like an obedient child, he got to his feet.

She woke early, as the sunlight filtered through the crack in the heavy curtains onto her face. So at least the fog had cleared. She made tea and showered. Yoga, a ritual from her childhood in the commune, and then she felt ready for the day, suddenly full of energy and optimism. Today there would be a break in the case. The kitchen was unusually quiet. No David. No smell of coffee. Willow had a sudden panic that the men had run away, packed a few things into their car and taken the first ferry out; even that they had left the night before. Perhaps their questions about Eleanor had frightened them off. She hadn’t seen them since dinner; later in the evening she’d collected a supper tray from the kitchen herself. They could be south to the mainland by now on the first plane to Aberdeen. Though she couldn’t conceive what reason either of them might have for killing Eleanor Longstaff.

It was still too early for the real guests to appear for breakfast, and downstairs the house was empty. She walked through the grand entrance hall and tried to imagine what the place had been like in Gilbert and Roberta Geldard’s day. There’d have been more servants. Someone would already be up sweeping the floors, lighting a range in the kitchen, and the big front door would be thrown open to let in the air. Perhaps Elizabeth had been unable to sleep because of the bright sunshine, even so early in the day. And she’d run out through the open door down to the shore to play. Then a mist had rolled in from the sea without her noticing and the tide had come in and surrounded her. She’d been stranded on a sandbank and drowned.