Ann Cleeves - Thin Air

‘A bit harsh.’ Perez kept his voice light. He didn’t want to make too much of this and frighten the man into clamming up. ‘But you stayed friends?’

‘I adored her. Better to stay friends than to lose contact altogether, I thought. One day she might need me, and I’d come rushing to the rescue like a knight on a white charger and she’d realize that I was the man for her all along. Then I came to my senses and saw that living with her would be a nightmare.’

‘Ian managed it, though, did he?’

Lowrie hesitated. ‘Ian’s a very different kind of man.’

‘In what way?’ Perez was genuinely interested. He thought that of all the incomers Ian was the person he understood least.

‘He’s very certain. There are no doubts with Ian. Once he knows where he stands on an issue there’s no moving him.’ Lowrie slowed in his walk and turned to Perez. ‘He was like that when he decided that Eleanor was ill and needed to be in hospital. The rest of us couldn’t see it. We knew she’d hate it.’ He paused. ‘I went to see her in there. I didn’t tell the others, but I just slipped in on my own after work. It looked pleasant enough, like a kind of hotel, but she was so miserable. It was making her more crazy than losing the baby. I told her she should leave. She was a voluntary patient. There was nothing to stop her.’

‘And did she take your advice?’

‘Yes. She signed herself out the next day.’

‘What did Ian make of that?’

‘I didn’t tell him I had anything to do with it.’ Lowrie grinned briefly. ‘Too much of a coward. Ian has a lousy temper. I’m not sure what Nell said to him.’

‘Did you see her on her own after that?’

There was a pause. Perez wondered if Lowrie was preparing to lie. ‘Once,’ he said at last. ‘Ian was working away and I went to her house. She seemed better. She thanked me for giving her the confidence to leave the hospital. I asked how Ian had taken it and she said he’d realized she wasn’t ill, just sad. And she’d decided not to get so hung up on the baby thing. Maybe it’s just nature telling me I’d be a crap mother. I’ve got a wonderful man and that should be enough .’

‘Did you believe it would be enough for her?’ Perez asked.

‘I think I did. She seemed calmer, better than she’d been for ages.’

‘Did she talk to you about her ghost project?’

There was a long pause and Perez expected another confidence. ‘No,’ Lowrie said. ‘She didn’t talk about her work at all.’

‘It seems odd that she didn’t ask you about the project before she headed north for the party. We know she researched the background to Peerie Lizzie. She’ll have known that the nursemaid in the story was a relative of yours.’

Lowrie continued his walk. ‘Maybe she realized that Caroline and I were too wrapped up in the wedding to have given any time to her. Sensitivity wasn’t exactly Eleanor’s strong point, but she’d have seen we’d be too busy to help with a TV show.’

Perez thought about that. The Eleanor who’d been described to him was self-centred and passionate about her work. He couldn’t believe that she’d turned away from a useful source of information just because Lowrie was planning his wedding. It wouldn’t have taken more than a quick phone call after all.

‘Did she ask to meet you at all in the last few weeks? More recently than when you met her for that drink?’

‘Not to discuss her work!’

‘But to discuss anything?’ They’d come to a piece of driftwood. It was huge and twisted, white as bone. The trunk of a tree, sculpted by the water. Perez sat on it, forcing Lowrie to stop too.

‘The six of us had dinner together about a month ago, to make final arrangements for the wedding in Kent and to talk about their trip north. You’d have thought they were trekking to the South Pole, the fuss they all made about it.’ He sat beside Perez. ‘What are all these questions about, Jimmy?’

‘Eleanor met a man sometime before you were married. We’re trying to trace him. It might not be important, of course, but it’s a loose end.’

‘Is that the guy Caroline saw her with in the restaurant in Bloomsbury?’ Lowrie gave a little laugh. Perez thought he sounded almost relieved. ‘Well, that wasn’t me. Caroline rushed straight home that night and told me she’d seen Eleanor with a stranger. She made a big drama of it. I said if Eleanor was having an affair I wouldn’t be so surprised, but it was none of our business.’

Perez wondered about the implications of that. Only the day before he’d been in London, but now he found it hard, looking out at the North Sea, to imagine himself back in the little French restaurant in Bloomsbury and to recapture the image described by the waiter of the couple sharing a meal. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Caroline had told Lowrie about seeing Eleanor; her loyalty to her fiancé would be greater than her loyalty to her friend. ‘And Eleanor never contacted you about her television project? Not even an email?’ This was what he found most difficult to believe.

Another hesitation. ‘Sorry, not even an email.’ He turned away, so Perez couldn’t see his face. If Lowrie was lying, what possible reason could he have?

They stood up to continue their walk.

‘What’s the talk on the island about Hillier and Gordon?’ Perez asked. ‘Your mother bakes for them and they buy your eggs, so you probably know them as well as anyone.’

‘Are you saying that that makes us suspects, Jimmy?’ Lowrie’s voice was suddenly hard and reminded Perez of Caroline.

‘Of course not. But you’ll have heard what people are saying about them.’

‘A gay couple taking over the big house, do you mean? Things have moved on. We’re not as bigoted as we used to be, even here in Unst.’ Lowrie paused. ‘There was some excitement because some folk recognized Charles Hillier from the television. He was quite famous at one time. One of those cheesy stage magicians. He did clever tricks, despite the dreadful patter. I was fascinated with them as a kid, got a magic set for Christmas. But most of us were just glad the house wasn’t going to be allowed to fall into disrepair. None of the locals could have afforded to take it on.’ He paused again. ‘I only met them a couple of times, but they seemed fine men. I’m sorry that Charles is dead.’

‘Does the name Monica mean anything to you?’ Perez asked.

‘In what context?’

‘I’m not sure. Your father said that a mysterious woman turned up to your great-aunt Sarah’s funeral. A daughter nobody had ever heard about. Could it have been her?’

Lowrie shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about that. Sorry.’ It was as if he was bored by the whole conversation. Perhaps, like Caroline, he wanted to get back to planning his new life in Shetland. Perhaps young Shetlanders had learned to let go of the past. Perez thought it was hard now to picture him as a young man obsessed with Eleanor Longstaff and desperately in love. Or even as an older friend who’d visited her in psychiatric hospital and listened to her troubles. He seemed cold and disengaged.

Throughout the interview with the detectives Polly wanted to ask if they would still be allowed to leave the following day, but she felt it would seem selfish to press the point. She sensed the officers’ disapproval already: they considered the group at Sletts as spoiled incomers whose lives were too affluent and too easy. In the end it was Marcus who put the question, when Perez and Willow were on their feet on their way to the door.

‘Polly and I have to start home tomorrow. We need to be at work on Monday and we’re booked onto the overnight boat south. I suppose that is OK.’ Not tentative as she would have been, but breezy, confident. ‘I mean, it’s not as if we knew the man, and we’re not even sure yet that it wasn’t an accidental death.’