Ann Cleeves - Thin Air

She looked at him and wondered what she’d missed. What had Jimmy Perez picked up from the conversation?

‘I went to the opening of the exhibition with Fran,’ he said. ‘It was held last summer, a few months before she died. The artist was a Londoner, who’d moved north for a while. There were a number of reasons, I think. A recent divorce, a sense that she wanted her work to move in a new direction and that Shetland might inspire her. Perhaps she was friends with one of the guys at Shetland Arts. We met her and talked for a bit. If I’d known her name I’d already forgotten it. Fran dragged me along to a lot of those occasions…’

He paused. Willow could see that he was remembering Fran Hunter, the love of his life. She had the uncharitable thought that no woman would ever compete with Fran in Perez’s life. Fran would remain saintly and beautiful in his mind. She’d died before the couple had fallen into a boring rhythm of domestic chores and petty irritation, while the relationship was still fresh and exciting. Before Fran had developed wrinkles or middle-age spread.

‘So tell me, Jimmy,’ Willow said, pulling his attention back. ‘Why do you think this Monica is the one mentioned in Eleanor’s notebook?’

Perez tried to re-create the evening of Monica Leaze’s exhibition in his head. He hadn’t particularly wanted to be there; the discussion about the trip to the Yell gallery was the nearest he and Fran had come to a real row. He’d faced up to her in the small house in Ravenswick: ‘I never know what to say to that arty lot, and I’m working an early shift tomorrow. You don’t need me there.’ He often felt awkward with her friends – shadowy, not a person in his own right. Sometimes they patronized him. But in the end he’d agreed to go with her. In the end he always did what he knew would make her happy.

‘I’ll drive,’ she’d said. ‘Then you can have a few glasses of wine, and anyway there’ll probably be somebody there that you know.’ And she’d run her finger down his neck, the promise of future compensations.

The gallery was new and seemed to rise organically from the pebble beach. One side was tucked into the hill, the other had a big window that enclosed the exhibition space and let in the clear northern light. The building had won an architectural award for its eco-design. They’d seen the artist outside on the way in. She’d been nervous and sneaking a quick cigarette before the public arrived. Fifty-something with wiry dark hair and button-eyes. Her nervousness had endeared her to Perez.

And so had her art. They were domestic pieces. Mostly interiors of ordinary rooms. Sometimes with a fragment of a person: a leg with a thick, wrinkled stocking and a slipper in front of an old-fashioned gas fire; a hand pouring milk from a plastic container in an untidy kitchen. In the paintings there was often an object that shocked. In an old-fashioned parlour set for afternoon tea – sandwiches with the crusts cut off, a tiered plate of iced fancies – a line of cocaine on an octagonal mirror. In an elderly woman’s bedroom, on a dusty dressing table, a gun.

He’d been fascinated by the paintings, and while Fran caught up with her friends he’d stared at them. He’d decided they were like the photographs of crime scenes. Each piece held a narrative, a history of the room’s owner. Then he’d come to the portrait of the child and he hadn’t known what to make of it. At first sight it was a child from a different era. Dark hair twisted into loose ringlets and tied with white ribbons. A white dress. But the girl had a contemporary face. Knowing. A smile that might have been mischievous or complicit. Perez had stood and looked at it for a long time, and despite his reluctance to talk about art with Fran’s friends – he was always anxious that he would show himself up in front of them – he’d sought out Monica to ask her about the painting. But Monica was standing with a glass in her hand, flushed and talkative, laughing a little too loudly, and he knew this wasn’t a good time. So despite telling Willow that they’d chatted for a while, there’d been no real conversation. He’d stood on the edge of the crowd, listening, while she talked about her inspiration: ‘I glory in the commonplace made weird.’

Instead the gallery owner had come up to him. Perez had met him once at a similar occasion, when Fran had turned out again to support one of her colleagues.

‘What do you think of them?’ The owner frowned.

‘I like them.’

‘I don’t think they’ll do well here. We sell mostly to tourists, and these are too urban. Or suburban perhaps. I’ll keep a few pieces, though. Leaze is a big name after all. And the portrait of the girl. At first glance that’s a traditional work and it might appeal to a grandparent. Something a bit odd about her, though, don’t you think? Disturbing.’

Perez had agreed that there was. Then the evening was over and they’d driven to get the last ferry to Shetland mainland. And three months later Fran was dead. It occurred to him now, in a moment of complete madness, that the painting – so like the image of Peerie Lizzie described by the Sletts women – had somehow foreshadowed the tragedy.

He blinked quickly, dragged his attention back to the kitchen at Springfield and tried to describe the exhibition to Willow and Sandy. ‘Monica Leaze made this painting of a child. White dress and white ribbons. Just like everyone describes Peerie Lizzie.’

‘So you think she saw the ghost too? And painted her?’ Willow leaned forward across the table and her long hair brushed his arm. He tried not to jerk his hand away.

That hadn’t been the way he’d been thinking, but he considered the idea. ‘Maybe. I suppose it’s one explanation.’

‘And Eleanor had tracked Monica down and arranged to meet her when she was coming north?’

‘I think they must have met at some point,’ he said. His mind was racing, chasing wild notions that refused to be pinned down.

‘Eleanor must have had a busy afternoon the day of the party.’ Willow sounded unconvinced. ‘Vaila Arthur turned up to tell her story into the recorder; we think Charles Hillier might have tried to catch up with her at some point, either during the day or later in the evening; and now you decide that Eleanor and Monica had a meeting too. Just in the couple of hours that her friends took to walk along the cliff path. And knowing that they could come back at any time. It would only take a sudden rain squall to send them back to the house.’

They sat for a moment in silence.

‘Maybe the party wasn’t Eleanor Longstaff’s first trip to Shetland.’ This was Sandy, nervous that he might be making a fool of himself, looking up from his mug. ‘I mean she was always travelling on business, wasn’t she? So why couldn’t she have come here? If she’d thought her husband would laugh at her for believing in Peerie Lizzie, she could have pretended she was in Brussels…’ he paused, struggling to think of another suitable destination, ‘… or New York. Their only contact would be by mobile phone and the calls could come from anywhere.’

Another silence. Now that the words were spoken, Perez thought how obvious this was.

‘Sandy Wilson, you’re a bloody genius, and when this is all over I’m going to take you out and get you pissed.’ Willow was laughing. ‘Contact the ferry terminal and the airport. Let’s see if we can track down if, and when, Eleanor arrived. She’d most likely have flown from London via Aberdeen to save time, and she’d have needed photo ID even for domestic flights, so she’d have used her own name. Then we track her movements. Who did she meet when she was here? And why have none of the buggers come forward when they heard about her death?’ She stood up.