Ann Cleeves - Cold Earth

He realized that sounded like an excuse for his own inaction. Again he wondered if he’d overstepped the mark. It wasn’t his place to tell a superior officer from the mainland what to do.

‘Of course, Jimmy. I’ll get a couple of my team onto it. Anything else you’d like me to do, while I’m idling my time here at HQ?’

He knew she was teasing him.

‘Could you see if Vicki Hewitt is free to come up with you? It’s a nightmare of a scene. The landslide went straight through the house and then they had to bring in heavy machinery to clear a path and dig out a lot of the interior. And it’s still raining. But I’d like her to look at it. At the interior of the house and at the debris trapped behind the wall where we found the body.’

‘Can you email me the photos, Jimmy?’ She was in work mode now. Efficient. Buzzing with energy. ‘And anything else that you have.’

‘Book yourself onto the first plane into Sumburgh tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll be at the airport to meet you.’

‘I’ll pack a bottle of that island malt you like.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Anything else I can fetch you from the civilized world?’

He almost said something soppy. Just you – that’ll be enough for me. But he caught himself just in time. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘a change in the weather. Before the whole island washes away.’

Perez phoned just as Sandy was pulling into the car park to the side of the Brae Co-op. The children in the school across the road were on their mid-morning break and although there was still a bit of a drizzle, they were out in the yard, chasing and shouting. The worst of the rain had stopped, and Sandy thought they were like cows, let out after being in all winter, frisky and a bit mad.

‘The woman’s death wasn’t an accident,’ Perez said. ‘She was already dead before the landslide happened. James Grieve has it down as murder.’

Sandy took a while to make sense of that. ‘But the killer couldn’t have known about the landslip.’

‘Of course not.’ Sandy could tell that Perez was using his patient voice. People in authority, those who knew him well, had been using the same tone to Sandy since he was a boy. It wasn’t that he was stupid, but they realized he needed to think things through in his own time. ‘Perhaps the killer planned to dispose of the body and the landslide got in the way. Or perhaps the woman was left at Tain – it seems as if there were no regular visitors, and the murderer could have been away from the islands before she was discovered. We don’t even know for certain that she was killed at the house.’ Perez paused. ‘But this is a murder investigation now, Sandy. It’s even more urgent that we identify the victim. So be thorough and don’t take any crap from the manager. Come back with a name for me.’

No pressure then.

The school bell rang as Sandy got out of the car and the pupils ran inside. The shop was large and well stocked. It served the whole of North Mainland. A big new hotel had been built for oilies just down the road and Sandy assumed that would be good for business too. A couple of women were walking down the aisles and a young man stood behind the till, with the bottles of more expensive wine and spirits on a shelf behind him. He was reading a magazine that he was hiding under the counter and had the look of someone who was counting the minutes until a colleague took over at lunchtime. Sandy didn’t recognize him.

‘Where’s the manager?’

The boy looked up. The shape of his nose was hidden by an explosion of acne. He seemed suddenly more interested in the world around him. ‘Are you the police? Colin said you’d be coming.’

‘Colin?’

‘The manager. Colin Sandford.’

Sandy did recognize that name. He’d played five-a-side football with Colin for a few seasons, until work had got in the way or it had seemed too much effort to go out in the evening.

‘Can I speak to him?’

The boy pressed a button and spoke into a microphone. ‘This is a staff announcement. Mr Sandford to the tills, please.’ The message echoed through the store and the assistant beamed. Hearing his own voice was the most excitement he got in his working day.

Sandy was led to a glorified cupboard that Colin called his office. It had his name on the door and piles of toilet rolls under the desk.

‘Have you tracked down a credit-card purchase for the twelfth? We think it would have been about midday, but my boss wanted you to check an hour either side, just to be sure.’ Sandy had never taken to Colin. He was one of those English men who considered himself superior to the islanders and talked at length about what he was missing out on, by being there. His partner had come to work at Sullom Voe and Colin had followed. In the south he’d worked in a flashy car showroom, and he usually managed to squeeze into the conversation the fact that he’d been salesman-of-the-year three times running. And that he’d had a company Beamer.

‘I have checked.’ Colin smirked. He’d had the same expression every time he’d scored a goal in the Clickimin Leisure Centre, turning round as if he expected applause from a non-existent crowd. ‘The only credit-card use within those two hours was for multiple purchases.’ He paused and as Sandy was about to ask another question, he added: ‘None of the customers bought any champagne. It must have been a cash purchase.’

‘Were you on duty that day?’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t on the shop floor all the time.’

Hiding out in here, while your minions did all the work.

‘Did you see this woman?’

Perez had got an artist friend of Fran’s to do a drawing from the photograph they’d taken of the dead woman’s face. No gashes or broken skin. The original drawing had sat on Perez’s desk after they’d scanned and printed out copies. Sandy had caught the inspector brooding over it.

Colin stared at the picture. ‘Is she foreign?’

‘We don’t know! We haven’t got an identification for her yet.’

‘We get some foreign workers in here. They work at the new hotel as chambermaids or waitresses.’ He sniffed. ‘It’s hard to tell them apart.’

‘We think she lived in Ravenswick,’ Sandy said. ‘She was swept out of her house by the landslide.’

‘I don’t recognize her.’ Colin was prepared to be definite now.

‘Was that lad on the till here on Tuesday?’

‘Peter. Yes, but you won’t get much sense out of him. He’s thick as mince.’

‘Can you take over from him, so I can chat properly?’ Sandy hoped there’d be a sudden rush of demanding customers as soon as Colin got behind the counter.

‘I don’t do the tills unless there’s an emergency. Carolynn’s stocking up. I’ll get her out front. You can talk to Peter in the staffroom.’

The staffroom was a slightly bigger cupboard, with a Formica table, a kettle, an ancient and very grubby microwave and a small fridge. They were still surrounded by towers of toilet rolls and tins of soup. Peter had become a cocktail of anxiety and excitement. Sandy thought he’d probably watched too many US crime shows.

‘What am I supposed to have done?’

‘Nothing at all.’ Sandy nodded towards the kettle. ‘Any chance of a coffee? I bet you could do with one too.’

‘My break isn’t for another forty minutes. The boss’ll be expecting me back.’

‘Well, this is police business and it might take a while. I won’t tell him about the coffee, if you don’t.’

Peter switched on the kettle and pulled a jar of instant coffee from a cupboard. He spooned it into stained mugs. He seemed happier moving. Sandy wiped the table with a tea towel, before putting the drawing of the dead woman in front of the man.