Ann Cleeves: Thin Air

The room was very warm and she felt that she might fall asleep in the hard chair, and when she woke up all this would be a dream.

‘I’ll walk back with you,’ Caroline said. ‘There might be some news.’

Her voice sounded hard, detached, as if she didn’t care about Eleanor at all. Why wasn’t she more upset? Polly had the idea that Caroline just wanted her out of the house before her in-laws returned. Perhaps a hysterical friend would reflect badly on her. Caroline was an academic, always measured and precise. It also occurred to Polly that Caroline might not believe her story and that she wanted to check out the facts of Eleanor’s disappearance for herself.

They took a different route back to the holiday cottage. Caroline led the way through the garden where hens scratched behind wire mesh, over a stile and onto short cropped grass. She seemed very at home here.

‘Would you ever live in Shetland?’ Polly asked suddenly. ‘Would Lowrie want that?’

‘Maybe. If I could think of something to do all day. We’ve talked about it. I wouldn’t want to bring up kids in the city.’ Caroline gave a sudden grin. ‘He has this idea about setting up a business here. Soft fruit grown in polytunnels. High-end jams and preserves.’

‘And you wouldn’t mind that? Leaving behind your friends. And everything that goes with being in town. Theatre on your doorstep. Shops and bars and restaurants. Even Lerwick’s miles away.’ Polly found herself distracted from her anxiety by this new Caroline, who wore wellingtons, could negotiate a barbed-wire fence with ease and could contemplate making a home in this barren landscape where the seasons were so extreme.

‘Ah, we might have to compromise on the exact location. Unst might be a step too far for me. And I love Grusche and George to pieces, but I wouldn’t want to be next door to the in-laws.’ She paused for a moment and looked back over the croft. ‘Sometimes Grusche treats Lowrie as if he is nine years old and can’t clean his teeth without being reminded.’

They came to the brow of a low hill and Polly got her bearings. She could see the track to their house and the beach ahead of them. Ian and Perez were still on the sand, but they were heading back to Sletts. There was a view south of cliffs and headlands.

‘If Eleanor fell over a cliff,’ she said suddenly, ‘she could lie on the rocks below for days without being found.’

Ahead of them was a drystone circle with a gap in the side. A skua, which seemed to Polly as big as an eagle, suddenly dived at them straight from the sun. Polly shrieked. She could feel the air of its wing-beat on her face. Caroline gave a little laugh. ‘It’s only protecting its nest. If you put your hand in the air, it’ll aim for that and miss your face.’ She pointed at the stone circle. ‘That’s a planticrub. People used to grow cabbages in there as food for the sheep. I suppose the wall sheltered the plants from the salt wind.’

She was about to walk on and Polly could see that her friend had made the decision that this would be her home. She was buying into the history and the culture already. But Caroline’s subject was human geography, and Polly thought she’d always be an outsider here, an observer. She’d regard her neighbours with the same amused objectivity as when she was studying migrant workers for her PhD.

Polly couldn’t imagine life in the city without her friends. Because they’d always been there, she’d never felt the need to build a wider social circle and somehow, at this moment, Marcus didn’t matter. The shock of the diving bird had provoked a panic that was unlike anything she’d experienced in everyday life. At work she was a competent professional, choosing stock for the private subscription library where she worked, advising the historians and students who used it. But here the faintness of the day before had returned. She bent, rested her hands on her knees and felt the blood come back to her head.

‘Do you want to rest for a bit?’ Caroline was solicitous, but smug too. She was fit and she could have continued walking for miles. Polly thought again with surprise that the woman had no real concern for Eleanor’s safety. Her head was full of her new husband and her plans for the future.

They sat with their backs to the wall. The sun had heated the stones and they were out of the wind.

Polly felt herself falling asleep again and wondered how she could do that when Eleanor still hadn’t been found. She stood up, shaking her limbs to feel more awake, and for the first time looked into the planticrub. No sign that anything had been grown there for years. Cropped grass and a scattering of sheep droppings. And an iPhone with a distinctive pink case, which Polly recognized as Eleanor’s.

Jimmy Perez could sense the tension of the man walking beside him. He seemed rigid, like a robot. Each footstep was heavy and, looking back over the sand, Perez was surprised that their prints weren’t very different, that the ones left by Ian Longstaff were no deeper than his.

‘You’ve been married for three years?’ Here on the beach they could be miles away from the tasteful holiday house of Sletts; Perez felt they were contained in a bubble formed by the natural sounds. There was a breeze blowing from Norway and the tide was sucking on a bank of shingle close to the water. A faint heat haze blurred the distant horizon.

‘Just over three years. I was doing the sound on one of her shows.’ Ian looked at him. There was a barely contained frustration that was turning into anger. ‘But we’re wasting time here. We should be looking for her.’

‘People are looking,’ Perez said. ‘Local people who know the land. We’d just be in the way. Now talk me through everything that’s happened since you arrived in Shetland. You arrived on the ferry from Aberdeen yesterday morning?’

‘I wanted to bring my car,’ Ian said, ‘so we decided on the ferry instead of flying. And in the end Marcus brought his too. We didn’t know what it would be like here. Whether there’d be shops. You know…’

‘Oh, we’re almost civilized these days.’

Ian stopped walking and grinned, despite himself. ‘Yeah, well. Neither Nell nor me really does country. We weren’t sure what we’d find.’

‘Did you stop in Lerwick at all? For shopping? Breakfast?’

‘We had breakfast on the boat and decided to head straight north. We’d stocked the boot with enough food and booze to last for months, and Caroline had said she’d sort out milk and bread. I’d looked on the map. Before then I hadn’t realized how far it would be.’

‘Two long, skinny islands and two ferries – and that’s after you get to Toft on Shetland mainland,’ Perez said, as if he had all the time in the world.

‘It was late morning by the time we arrived. We’d arranged to get into the house early, and Polly made lunch.’ He stopped again and stared at Perez. ‘Do you really want all this stuff?’ Terns screamed overhead.

‘I do.’

‘Eleanor hadn’t slept much on the boat from Aberdeen. She’s like a kid when she’s excited. Hyper. When we’d cleared up lunch she said she wanted to rest before the wedding.’

‘Was she really excited?’ Perez asked. ‘Not anxious and depressed?’

‘They’ve told you about the baby.’ He stared out towards the water. ‘It was her second miscarriage. She wants a child. Of course she was upset and angry. Eleanor has always got what she wanted.’ He paused. ‘That makes her sound horrible, but things have always come easily to her. Liberal, arty family with enough money to indulge her. She’s bright enough to pass exams without too much effort. Then this happened. Something that couldn’t be put right with money or hard work. It floored her.’