Ann Cleeves - Cold Earth

At once Willow was a child again, at home in the commune in North Uist. It was the heyday of the establishment; three families and assorted hangers-on were living in the big laird’s house and the surrounding farm buildings. She was outside on a blowy spring day. Golden light broken up by cloud shadows that raced across the headland. Her father was turning the sandy soil in the vegetable garden so it would be ready for planting. That was the sound she could hear now. A spade slicing into the earth and then the thud of soil landing in the previously dug trench. Except that now the soil was being tipped onto her. It wasn’t rain on her face, but the wet earth that had already covered her body, trapping her legs and arms and making movement impossible.

She tried to scream, but as she opened her mouth, it was filled with mud. She spat it out and began to yell for help. The cry seemed to disappear into the dark, and all the time above her she heard the sound of the spade cutting and lifting and felt the soil as it rained down on her body and her face.

Jane walked with Perez and Andy back towards Gilsetter. Perez’s appearance had shocked her, but she was pleased that he was there. It was easier than being on her own with Andy, who was trailing behind them like a recalcitrant toddler. Perez had lost phone reception again once they’d left Tain and she could tell that he was preoccupied. There’d been a message that had disturbed him and he’d said he would walk with her back to the house, so that he could use their landline. She knew he’d have questions for Andy too, though. He’d have questions for them all. She still wasn’t sure where it would all end.

The Lerwick bus drove along the main road, lighting their path so that for a moment there was no need for her torch. It stopped to let off a passenger, and briefly the land around Gilsetter could be seen clearly in its headlights. Glancing up, Jane caught sight of a figure in the field beyond the house, a silhouette. And a reflected gleam. Then the bus drove on towards town and everything was dark again.

‘What’s your father doing out at this time of night?’ Because she’d seen that the figure had been standing next to Kevin’s new drainage ditch. It was her husband’s pride and joy, and who else would be standing in the rain inspecting his handiwork? He’d said he’d line the ditch with concrete, so there’d be no chance of floodwater seeping into the ground and drowning the polytunnels. ‘He told me he was taking the evening off.’

Andy gave a non-committal grunt, but Perez had already started to run, with a speed and lack of concern for his own safety and comfort that seemed like panic. Or desperation. The evening flights must just have come into Sumburgh, because now there was a steady stream of cars and taxis heading north, their headlights passing over the scene and then disappearing, so that the activity in the field had the jerky, flashlit appearance of an early cartoon. Every couple of seconds she caught sight of Perez. First he was vaulting over a wall, then sprinting across the open field towards the figure by the ditch.

There was no sound. He was too far away already for them to hear his laboured breathing or pounding feet. This was a silent movie. The person standing next to the ditch seemed oblivious to his approach. If it hadn’t been for Perez’s desperation, the scene would have been ridiculous. Then Jane thought she could hear something. The thin cry of an injured animal. She peered through the darkness, but the traffic had disappeared; other cars coming from the airport had probably been held by the traffic lights controlling the one-way system further south. Everything was quiet and dark once more.

All that Perez could think, as he started to run towards the ditch, was that he couldn’t let this happen again. He couldn’t see in detail what was happening on the hill, but he’d recognized the person standing there and he’d picked up Willow’s message explaining that she intended to visit. As he moved, time seemed to be working differently; it warped and stretched. In reality it must only have taken minutes to reach the field where the ditch had been dug, but in his head it took hours. In his head he wasn’t even in the present. He was back in Fair Isle, running to the loch where Fran – his love, the woman he would marry – was dying of a stab wound. He’d seen the knife that killed her as a flash of blue lightning at the same time as he’d caught the glint of a murderer’s spade reflected in a bus’s headlights. He was a crazy Time Lord trying to turn back the clock, to save this woman when he’d failed to save the other. As he forced himself to maintain the pace and his heart thudded with the effort, the same phrase pounded to the rhythm of his footsteps. Oh, please God, not again.

The digger, dressed in dark clothes, was almost invisible, even when headlights swept across the field. The spade gave no reflection, its surface dulled now by the earth. Perez crouched behind a drystone dyke to catch his breath. Just for a moment, because time was flying on, unreliable. In another minute Willow could be dead. He hadn’t been seen, but was close enough to hear the shovel as it sliced through the earth, and the soil landing in the trench below. There was a Maglite torch in his pocket and he held it in his hand, balanced and comforting. He switched it on at the moment that he leapt down from the wall, and the killer was caught in the full beam. Perez had anticipated an attempt to run away, for in the last two days there’d been an increased desperation in the killer’s responses. No matter that there was nowhere to run to – no boats or planes this late in the evening – Perez still expected flight. Instead there was silence and stillness. Simon Agnew threw down his spade and held his hands out wide. A gesture of surrender or resignation, almost that of a charismatic believer giving themselves up to God. Perez was reminded for a second of the third woman in his life, his ex-wife Sarah, who’d been a member of a happy-clappy church. Again time seemed to collide. He knelt on the edge of the ditch.

There were two eyes, blinking as if the torchlight was painful, and a face so muddy that at first he couldn’t tell it was still uncovered. He pushed the torch into the mud at the top of the trench, then slid in beside Willow and pushed the soil away from her neck and body with his hands – careful, like someone moulding a sculpture out of sand, scared that he would hurt her if he used the spade. He glanced back up at Agnew. He hadn’t moved. When Willow’s body was free, Perez put his arm around her neck and lifted her into a sitting position. He found he was murmuring reassurances, the same words he used to Cassie when she had nightmares. He forced himself to stop. Willow wasn’t a child and she’d hate being treated like one. Now at last Agnew dropped his hands to his side, but still he stood motionless.

The next half-hour passed in a blur. Looking back, Perez saw the action as a series of unrelated scenes. Jane Hay taking charge of Simon, despite Perez’s protestations, and pushing him towards Gilsetter. Furious, and showing a courage that would surely keep her family together. Andy at her side, proud and protective. Jane calling back across the ditch, ‘We’ll look after him there, Jimmy, until Sandy arrives.’ So Perez realized he must have phoned Sandy. Or Jane had. Willow fierce and more angry than he’d ever known her, when he suggested calling an ambulance. ‘All I need is a bath and a very large drink.’ A pause. ‘Now!’ Willow stumbling away into the dark, so he’d followed her and wrapped her in his coat and started walking with her up the bank towards his house. Sometimes he was almost carrying her. All the way he was offering a prayer of thanks to a God he’d never quite believed in, even as a child.