Ann Cleeves - Thin Air

There was a rush of sound and a white figure appeared in front of him. It was Grusche in an old-fashioned cotton nightgown and a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. ‘Who is it? Lowrie, is that you?’ She sounded older than Sandy remembered, panicky and frail. He realized that if she’d come out of a lit bedroom, he would be just a shape to her.

‘It’s Sandy Wilson. The detective from Lerwick.’ ‘Sandy, what are you doing here at this hour of the morning? You scared me.’ She reached out for a switch and suddenly the room – a small scullery with space for boots and coats – was full of light.

He blinked. ‘Polly Gilmour is still missing. Jimmy Perez sent me here to see if she’d wandered this way.’

‘We’d have told you if she was here, Sandy. Of course we would. Caroline phoned earlier to say she was missing.’ She paused. ‘These have been terrible times. I’ll be glad when the English people go south again. They’ve brought nothing but trouble.’

Sandy thought that Caroline was English too, but perhaps Grusche already counted her as local.

‘Could I speak to George?’

She hesitated for a moment. ‘He’s asleep,’ she said. ‘He’d been drinking all evening and I sent him to bed.’ Her voice was bitter. Sandy decided you could never tell what went on between a man and his wife. The picture they showed to the world could be quite different from what went on in the home. It started with the wedding – all music and smiling, a kind of performance – and then unless you were lucky things started to crack. Maybe Grusche was so eager for Lowrie to move back to Shetland because George provided no companionship for her at all.

She stood where she was, poised between the bedroom and the kitchen, as if she was unsure whether to go with him or back to her bed. In the end she wrapped the shawl around her head and led him into the kitchen.

‘I should try to wake George,’ Sandy said. Perez had told him to speak to the man.

‘You’d be wasting your time,’ Grusche replied. ‘You’ll get no sense out of him when he’s like this.’ She stood blocking the door and he saw she was adamant that her husband shouldn’t be disturbed.

‘Does it happen often?’

She shrugged and moved to the Rayburn and lifted the kettle onto the hot plate.

‘Often enough. He needs help, but I don’t think he really wants to change. He’s not been the man I married since he left the lighthouse service.’

‘It must be hard living with him.’ Sandy couldn’t see how this had anything to do with the two murders, but he knew that Jimmy Perez wouldn’t walk away if a witness was just about to speak to him.

‘Not really. He’s a good man. He works hard and he’s always been a good father to Lowrie. He can be the life and soul of a party. He just needs a drink before he can face new people or difficult situations, and then he can’t stop drinking when he’s had a few drams inside him. There are lots of Shetlanders who are just the same.’

Sandy thought that was true too.

The kettle on the hob whistled. Grusche made the tea.

‘What do you think happened to Polly?’ she said. She put a mug of tea on the table in front of him.

‘I’m not sure.’ Sandy sipped the tea. ‘It was very foggy. It’s easy to lose your way.’

‘She’ll maybe have been chasing after Eleanor’s ghost-child,’ Grusche said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She thought that she’d seen Peerie Lizzie. It seems the spirit appeared to her on the night of the hamefarin’. And then again on the beach the next day.’ Grusche paused. ‘Caroline and I took her out for lunch in Yell and I thought she was kind of obsessed with all that nonsense. I suppose if your best friend is killed, you lose your perspective. It’d be easy to start believing in the spirit world. And she was determined to track the lassie down.’ She paused. ‘Polly seemed rather mad to me, Sandy. I don’t think she’s entirely safe to be left alone. You need to find her.’

Sandy wasn’t sure what he made of that, but he supposed that Willow and Jimmy would be interested in Polly Gilmour’s state of mind. ‘You’ve known her for a long time?’

‘She was one of Lowrie’s friends since they started at university together.’

‘And what did you make of her?’

‘She was a quiet little thing,’ Grusche said. ‘Always overawed by Caroline and Eleanor. Grateful for their attention. They loved having an admirer, of course. It was very good for their egos to have Polly hanging on their every word. I knew that she’d do well, though. She worked very hard. And she wasn’t one then for weird imaginings.’

‘But that last time you saw her, when you took her out to lunch, you thought she was a bit flaky?’ Sandy asked.

‘She said she didn’t believe in the ghost, that there’d be some rational explanation for the girl she’d seen, but I think she was trying to convince herself as much as us. It’d be easy enough to frighten Polly and tip her into a panic.’ Grusche stared at Sandy as if she was telling him something important. ‘If that was what you wanted to do.’

‘Caroline said Polly had a panic attack at the dinner tonight and that’s why she ran out.’ Sandy finished his tea and thought he should get back to Sletts and see if there was any news of the woman. He shouldn’t sit here in the warm gossiping, though it was pleasant to be inside.

Grusche stood too and led him back to the front door. ‘They should never have dragged her and the others out to that dinner. It was Caroline’s idea. Lowrie was all for leaving them alone last night.’

‘Caroline’s a strong woman,’ said Sandy.

‘She is.’ Grusche allowed herself a smile. ‘But she loves my boy to bits, and in the end that’s all that matters.’

Sandy didn’t quite believe that. He thought Caroline might turn into one of those bunny-boilers, very jealous and possessive. He wondered how Lowrie would be in twenty years’ time. Would he be asleep in his bed after too much whisky and a day of being nagged by his strong woman? He thought Grusche wouldn’t have been an easy person to live with, either. Perhaps George could deal with her better when he was still working his shifts in the lighthouse and there was an escape for him every month. Perhaps she’d been happier then, when she just had Lowrie to keep her company. Caroline and Lowrie would be working and living together every day, though. Sandy couldn’t see how that arrangement could work successfully.

‘I should go and see what’s happening,’ he said. ‘Polly might be back at Sletts now and we could be worrying over nothing.’

‘Aye, maybe.’ But he could tell that Grusche wasn’t convinced. As he left the house, the cockerel in the hen house began to squawk and he saw that it was almost morning.

Willow made her way down to the beach and felt a sudden spurt of anger. What the shit am I doing here? I’m the senior investigating officer in this case, not a rookie plod to be ordered around by the great Jimmy Perez . He wouldn’t have spoken to a male superior officer like that!

The anger was directed first at herself, because she hadn’t taken charge of the search when she’d had the chance. Because she’d allowed the man to walk all over her. Then it was turned towards Perez, who’d been cold and uncommunicative since they’d left Springfield House. What was it about the man that turned her into a pathetic girl, unable to assert her authority for a moment?

The tide was out and she walked on the damp sand, which was ridged, hard under her feet. Here the fog was patchy; sometimes it was so dense that she lost all sense of direction and wandered towards the water, and occasionally it lifted so that she could make out the lights in Sletts. She was shouting Polly’s name and swinging her torch in an arc so that it would be seen from all directions, but she felt this was pointless. Why would Polly be on the beach, when the holiday house and safety were close by? Surely there would be nothing in Sletts to scare her. No, Jimmy Perez was going it alone again, playing the hero. This was more about his ego, and proving to himself and to the world that he was back at the top of his game, than saving a young woman’s life.