Текст книги "White Nights"

Автор книги: Ann Cleeves

Соавторы: Ann Cleeves
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‘Would you remember someone you’d seen briefly fifteen years ago? And he’d changed so much.’

‘Did he get in touch with you? You’re pretty famous now and you’ve written about the move to Shetland on your website. An email perhaps. I’ll be in Shetland, can we meet to talk about old times? We know he intended to catch up with friends when he was here.’

‘Not me, inspector.’

Perez thought Wilding would stick to whatever story he’d created. Perhaps he even believed it. Perhaps it was true. He stood up. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Wilding. If you remember anything, please get in touch.’

‘Of course.’ Wilding was playing the good-natured host once more. He took Perez’s mug, walked with him back to the car. There he stood for a moment and gave a malicious grin. ‘I’ve asked Fran Hunter to manage the interior design of the house for me. I can’t think of anyone better, can you?’

‘No,’ Perez said. ‘I don’t think I can.’

Chapter Thirty-nine

Kenny heard the news about the bones in the Pit o’ Biddista on Radio Scotland while he was washing up the breakfast dishes. Edith had already left for work. Now the gathering of the people on the cliff the night before made sense to him, and since hearing the radio report he’d been waiting in the house all day for the police to turn up. Because the bones must belong to Lawrence, mustn’t they? That would explain his sudden disappearance. Lawrence might have told Bella that he was leaving the islands, but something had happened before he could get on the ferry or the plane. Not an accident. Lawrence had grown up on the cliffs, had been more sure-footed than any of them. Nor suicide. Kenny knew Lawrence too well to believe that. But an act of violence. That would explain his absence, the years without a letter or a phone call.

Kenny was almost pleased that the body had been found. Thinking that a few bones, like the carcase of a sheep in a ditch, was all that was left of his brother made him feel ill, but still it was a kind of relief. What had hurt most since Lawrence had disappeared was thinking he hadn’t cared enough about him to keep in touch. He’d pictured Lawrence in a strange town, a strange country even, with a new family. A blonde wife, because Lawrence liked blondes, two sons. He’d be older, his hair grey but still thick and curly. They’d be sat together at the supper table, laughing at one of Lawrence’s silly jokes, not thinking at all about the family back in Shetland. But if Lawrence had died without leaving the islands there had been no perfect family, no laughter.

By ten o’clock he’d still not heard from the detectives working the case. Kenny phoned the police station in Lerwick and asked to speak to Jimmy Perez. A young woman said he was out. Could another officer help? Kenny tried to imagine talking to someone else about Lawrence, that big Englishman for example, but the idea horrified him. He asked the young woman to tell Inspector Perez to call him back as soon as possible. He gave her his phone number in Skoles and his mobile number, made sure she repeated them.

‘It’s urgent,’ he said. ‘Tell him it’s urgent.’

By midday there was still no word from Perez. Kenny had gone out briefly to finish singling the second field of neeps, only because he knew there was mobile reception there, and he could see the road right to the end of the valley. He thought Perez might drive out to talk to him, rather than phone. If they’d found out that the bones belonged to Lawrence they would want to tell him in person. Kenny couldn’t quite explain the excitement he was feeling. It was different from when he’d asked to see the body of the hanged man. He’d known deep down that person wasn’t Lawrence and, even if it had been, he would still have to live with the thought of his brother abandoning him. This time he thought there really might be an end to the waiting and to the feeling he’d been rejected for all these years.

He went to the house, intending to phone the police station again, but instead he found himself phoning Edith at the care centre. She answered with her calm, businesslike work voice.

‘Edith Thomson speaking.’

He could picture her in her office, behind her desk, with the photo of Ingirid and Eric on the windowsill behind her. The photo of him which she said she liked the best, pushing his boat into the water.

Now, he wasn’t quite sure what to say.

‘I wondered if you might like to have lunch with me.’ Suddenly he wanted to see her. He felt like a young man asking a woman out for a date, all shaky and nervous. He’d felt a little that way around Jimmy Perez’s mother.

‘What’s happened?’ Her voice was alarmed. He had never before offered to take her out to lunch when she was working. Not even on her birthday or their anniversary. He knew she liked to eat with the people who used the centre. She said it kept her in touch with how things were going there.

‘Have you not heard the news on the radio?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve been very busy today. I’ve hardly moved out of the office.’ He could imagine her, frowning with concentration, tapping away on her computer.

‘There’s been another body,’ he said. ‘An old one.’

There was a pause at the end of the line.

‘And you think it might be Lawrence?’

‘I think it must be.’

‘I can’t get away,’ she said. ‘You can come here if you like, though. Of course you must come here.’

But just having spoken to her had calmed him. ‘Maybe later. I know you’re busy at lunchtime.’ He replaced the phone, thinking there was nothing after all to be anxious about. Nothing had changed, except his idea of what might have happened to Lawrence. He looked in the fridge for something to have for his lunch, but there was nothing there that he wanted to eat. He thought he would go to the shop and buy something. A pie or a burger, and a cake. Aggie didn’t close until one and he would get there just in time. It would do him good to get away from the croft, even if it was only for a while.

The shop was empty and Aggie sat reading, just as she always did if she was on her own. She was surprised to see him.

‘Kenny. What can I do for you?’ They’d known each other since they were babies and yet she always kept her distance from him. A certain formality. Had she been that way even when she was a child?

‘I fancied something tasty for my dinner,’ he said. ‘Edith buys all the healthy food. Today I thought I’d like something a bit different.’

‘Comfort eating,’ she said, and smiled.

He knew then that she’d been thinking exactly the same thing as him about the bones the police had found.

She looked at her watch. ‘There’ll be no one else in the shop now. Why don’t you come next door with me? I could do you sausage, egg and chips. Would that suit you?’

The invitation shocked him. She’d come to Skoles when they’d had a bit of a party at Christmas or New Year, but she’d never invited them into her house. Aggie and Edith had got on well enough when they were young, but the women had never been great friends, at least not since Lawrence had gone. Lawrence had seemed to hold the whole of Biddista together.

‘I’d like that very much,’ Kenny said. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

‘Not at all.’ She smiled, and he saw that she had quite a pretty face. ‘I like comfort food myself.’

She brought up the subject of Lawrence while she was cooking the chips. She cooked them the old-fashioned way, with oil in a big pan and a basket, so there was the noise of them frying. She had her back to him, so it was hard to tell what she was thinking. The sausages were in a frying pan and they smelled very good. She’d made him a big mug of tea as soon as they got into the kitchen and he sat with his boots off at the table, drinking it. He was just thinking it was a pity she’d never remarried when she started speaking.

‘Have the police been in touch with you?’

‘About the bones in the Pit? No. I phoned Jimmy Perez this morning but he was out.’

‘You think it’s Lawrence?’

‘I think it was too much of a coincidence for it not to be.’

‘I suppose they’ll be able to tell,’ she said. ‘All those things you read about. Forensics.’

‘I just want to know,’ he said.

She cracked three eggs on the side of the pan and added them to the sausages, lifted the chip basket so it rested just above the oil, then turned round to him.

‘I felt that way when Andrew drowned,’ she said. ‘But sometimes I think hope is better.’

‘Do you remember that summer when Lawrence disappeared?’ he asked. ‘I wasn’t here. I was away in Fair Isle, working.’

She took two plates from the warming oven at the bottom of the Rayburn, carefully lifted out the eggs – two for him and one for her – and the sausages, then shook the oil from the chips and tipped them on to the plates.

‘I wasn’t here then. I was in Scalloway.’ She pushed a knife and fork across the table to him. He couldn’t tell what she made of the question. He didn’t know what she was thinking at all. ‘Eat up while it’s hot.’

‘But you’d hear what was going on. What were folks saying?’

‘Just what they’ve been saying ever since. That he asked Bella Sinclair to marry him and she turned him down, so he took a great temper on him and left the islands.’ She picked up a chip with her fingers and blew on it before putting it into her mouth. Then she frowned. ‘He did have a temper, Kenny. You know he did. You remember when we were children, him scrapping in the schoolyard. The teacher having to pull the boys apart. He always had to be the best, the strongest. Always in competition, even with you.’

Kenny thought of the two of them racing to finish singling the neeps. Lawrence was the quickest, but his own rows were the neater. He wasn’t sure there was much of a competition, but it was true that Lawrence always wanted to win.

‘You never heard anything else? That he’d picked a fight over work? Fallen out with anyone?’

It occurred to Kenny that he might have to apologize to Bella when all this was over. Perhaps she’d had nothing to do with his brother’s disappearance after all.

‘No,’ Aggie said. ‘I heard nothing like that.’

Chapter Forty

Back in the house, Kenny sat in his chair in the kitchen and dozed. He wasn’t used to eating such a big meal at lunchtime. The telephone woke him with a start. He rushed into the hall, thinking it would be Jimmy Perez, but it was Edith. He looked at his watch and saw that it was three o’clock.

‘Are you OK, Kenny? Is there any news?’

He felt guilty then. He should have phoned her. She’d have been worrying about him all afternoon.

‘No news,’ he said. ‘But I’m fine.’ He didn’t tell her about the big fried meal Aggie had cooked for him. He’d enjoyed the meal so much that it seemed like a guilty secret. He knew Aggie wouldn’t tell anyone about it.

‘Do you still want to come over?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He didn’t feel panicky any more, but the lunch with Aggie had given him a taste for company.

When he walked into the care centre through the big double doors and saw the people sitting in the sunny room, dozing or chatting, he thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to end his days here. He would be with people he knew, people he’d grown up with. He waved to Willy, who sat a little apart from the others, staring out of the window. Willy waved back at him with a great silly grin, and Kenny gestured with his hand to show that he’d come back to chat to him later.

Edith came out into the hall to greet him. He thought what a nuisance he must be to her, more like a child at times than her man.

‘Come into the office,’ she said. ‘I’ve asked Sandra to make us some tea.’

He sat in the easy chair on the other side of her desk. He thought this was where people would sit when there was a problem with a relative she was looking after. Maybe even if a client had died. He supposed she would arrange for tea to be brought then. She would pour it out for them, from the china teapot which sat there on its tray. She thinks the bones belong to Lawrence too, he thought. She’s treating me like a grieving relative.

‘I wish Perez would phone and let me know what’s going on,’ he said.

She reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to you until he has information. It can’t be easy identifying a body from a few scraps of bone.’

Kenny considered this. Sometimes he watched police shows on the television. In those shows test results seemed to come back within hours. But those programmes weren’t set in Shetland. Perhaps there was no one here competent to do the tests. The samples would have to be sent south and that would take time.

He sipped from the cup, which seemed very fragile in his big hand. There was a plate with little square biscuits covered in sugar. He took one and dipped it into the tea. It tasted of coconut.

‘Do you remember anything of that time Lawrence disappeared?’ he asked.

She poured tea for herself. ‘I’ve been trying to think ever since you phoned. Bella had a heap of people in the Manse. Sometimes Willy took them out fishing. They’d come back and build a fire on the beach to cook the fish. They all drank too much. Lawrence spent quite a lot of time with them. You know how he liked a party.’

Kenny nodded.

‘I was so busy then,’ she said. ‘With the children and your father and trying to keep things tidy on the croft. You were in Fair Isle. It wasn’t easy.’

‘I shouldn’t have gone,’ he said. ‘I see that now.’

She gave a little laugh. ‘We needed the money. Don’t you remember all the plans we had? And it was worth the work, wasn’t it? We have a lovely home now.’

Kenny thought he would give up the lovely home to have been in Biddista when Lawrence disappeared. He’d gone to Fair Isle with Edith’s encouragement. She’d wanted their children to have the things her parents had never been able to afford for her.

‘I just think you have to wait,’ Edith said. ‘Perez will get in touch with you as soon as he knows anything. After all these years you can wait a few hours.’

He knew she was right, but he couldn’t face going back to the croft and just sitting there, hoping the phone would ring.

‘I’ll have a talk to Willy, see if I can cheer him up.’

‘You do that. But he’s quite confused today. A bit agitated. Don’t be upset if he doesn’t know you.’

‘Has Wilding been in to see him again?’

She frowned and he remembered how Wilding’s visit to the centre had upset her. ‘Not here, but he could have visited him at the sheltered housing over the weekend.’

‘Do you think I should call in on Wilding, ask him what he wants from the old man?’

‘I’m overreacting, I expect. It’s probably nothing. Just a writer’s curiosity. I’d like to know what he’s up to, but I wouldn’t want you going to see him on your own. Not with everything that’s happened since he arrived. Wait until Martin can go with you.’

‘Wilding’s a weak sort of man. I can’t see him killing anyone.’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it’s the weak ones who are most violent?’

There was a knock at the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go. There’s a meeting. Something I can’t cancel. My boss has come up from Lerwick.’

He leaned across her desk and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you at home.’

Kenny sat beside Willy in the lounge. The staff were bringing round cups of tea on a trolley, stopping beside each person in turn. Willy already had his, but it sat untouched on the table beside him. His chin was on his chest and his eyes were half closed. It was very warm in the room and Kenny could see why some users of the centre spent all day dozing. He could feel himself nodding off too. He patted Willy’s hand just to wake him, though he didn’t seem properly asleep, just daydreaming. He was surprised at how cold the hand felt.

‘Hi Willy. It’s Kenny. You mind me from Biddista? You taught me everything I know about boats.’

The old man turned very slowly, opened his eyes and smiled.

‘Of course I mind you, man.’

‘I’ve just come to see how you’re feeling.’

‘Not so well. Things are such a muddle in my head these days. Don’t get old, man. There’s no pleasure in it.’

‘We had grand times, didn’t we, Willy? Those summers when you took us all out fishing. There was the group of us. Bella and Alec Sinclair, Aggie Watt, my wife Edith, who looks after you here, and Lawrence and me.’

Willy sat quite still, staring into space with a sort of fierce concentration.

‘You do remember Lawrence, Willy? My brother Lawrence?’

There was a moment while Willy stared into space.

‘He left Shetland,’ Kenny said. ‘We all thought he left Shetland because Bella Sinclair turned him down.’

‘No,’ Willy said firmly. ‘He’s still here.’ He raised a shaking hand to grasp his tea. ‘He didn’t go anywhere.’

‘Where is he?’

But Willy seemed not to have heard the question. ‘He’s a great one for the fishing,’ he said, and he started a story about taking the boat out with a couple of Englishmen. It was all about a big party Bella was holding and how she wanted fish to serve her guests. Willy gutted them for her and took the heads off. He described that in great detail, the gutting of the fish, as if Kenny had never done it for himself. In the end Kenny only listened with half his mind.

‘Was Lawrence there that night?’ he asked in the end. He wanted to get home in case Jimmy called at Skoles.

‘Of course he was. He wanted fish too.’

Willy closed his eyes again, then opened them slowly. ‘That Englishman came to see me,’ he said. ‘Full of questions. But I told him nothing.’

Kenny was going to touch his hand again, to prompt him back to the present, when the mobile in his pocket started to buzz. He fumbled to get it and answered just before the message service cut in. It was Jimmy Perez. Kenny stood up and walked with the phone out into the car park. Willy seemed not to notice his leaving and the other people watched him go without interest. There were a couple of gulls, very noisy, fighting over a scrap of bread, and for a moment he was distracted. Soon he realized there was no real news.

‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you.’

‘I heard about the bones you’d found.’

‘I should have come to tell you, Kenny. But we were so late finishing last night I didn’t want to trouble you. And this morning I’ve been working on the case.’

‘Is it Lawrence?’

‘We won’t know for a while.’

There was a pause. Kenny could tell he was going to add something more, but couldn’t help interrupting. ‘Can’t you do something with DNA?’

‘We’d need bone marrow to do a standard DNA test, and because of where the bones were found we don’t have that. There is a tooth and it’s possible that we could get some dentine. But there’s another test. Mitochondrial DNA. It’s passed down the maternal line. It means you and Lawrence would share it.’ Kenny was trying to focus, to take all this in, but found his thoughts swimming. This is what Willy feels like. He can’t keep a hold on what’s happening around him. He forced himself to listen again to what Perez was saying.

‘Could we take a DNA sample from you? Do you understand, Kenny? We need your DNA to identify your brother.’

‘Of course you can. Of course.’ Kenny felt ridiculously pleased that there was something he could do to help.

‘I’ll come in this evening to take a swab. But it might be very late. Or I could send someone else . . .’

‘Don’t worry, Jimmy. I’d rather you came. I’ll just stay up until you arrive. It doesn’t matter how late you are.’

‘And Kenny, it’s going to take longer than we’d like to get an answer. About two weeks, because it’s not a standard sort of test. I’m sorry.’

Kenny stood for a moment. He was tempted to go back to Willy, to find out what he knew. Then he realized there were other people in Biddista who should be able to tell him.

Chapter Forty-one

When he came back from seeing Wilding in Buness, Perez returned to the station. He phoned the pathologist in Aberdeen to check the situation on identifying the fragment of bone, then called the Thomson house. Nobody was at home. He knew what Kenny would be thinking and when finally he spoke to him on his mobile he could sense how much he needed an answer.

‘I’m sorry, man. I wish I could make it happen more quickly.’ Perez felt helpless because the test was completely out of his control. But all the time he was thinking that really it didn’t matter. He had a sense of events moving quickly, racing away from him. He thought the case would reach a climax before the results of the mitochondrial DNA test were returned.

He found Taylor at the desk he’d taken over in the incident room. He’d just finished a phone call and an A4 pad covered with scribbled notes lay in front of him. Taylor was hunched over them.

‘I’ve been on to Jebson in West Yorkshire to see if they’ve had anything back yet on emails to and from Jeremy Booth. Post too. They had a search team going through the house. The bin hadn’t been put out since he left and they thought they might find a letter.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘No mail. Jebson did come up with an interesting email contact though. A woman called Rita Murphy who runs a theatrical agency. I’ve just been talking to her. Booth was on her books, had been for years. She comes from Liverpool, like me. We hit it off and she’s been dead helpful.’

Taylor took a swig from a can of Coke. Perez thought he must be exhausted, running on caffeine and will power. ‘It seems Booth hadn’t done much through her in the last few years – most of his time was spent running his own business – but Rita said he liked to keep his hand in by doing bits of theatre if it was offered. They kept in touch, anyway. It sounds as if they’d become good mates.’

‘Was she representing him when he took on the work with The Motley Crew fifteen years ago?’

‘Yeah, she was just starting up then. She’d seen him in an amateur play and thought he was good, offered to take him on.’

Perez remembered the performance in the Herring House, the tears. Oh, he was good, he thought.

‘How did the work on the boat come about?’

‘She’d been in college with the guy who dreamed up the idea of the theatre in the boat and he asked her to find him a couple of actors. It was Booth’s first professional work. That’s why she remembers it.’

‘I don’t suppose he talked to her about it afterwards? Or that she remembers what he said?’

‘No detail. He called in to see her when he got back. She said he’d enjoyed the acting, travelling round the coast, but he seemed a bit low. She’d expected a blow-by-blow account of the season but he didn’t want to talk about it much. She put that down to the recent separation from his wife and daughter. But if Bella sent him away with a flea in his ear, perhaps that explains it.’

‘Did he tell her that he was planning to come back to Shetland?’

‘He went over to Liverpool a few weeks ago. It was about the time that his daughter got in touch with him. Perhaps he was curious to see the girl before he made a commitment to meet her. I can imagine him hanging around the school, waiting to see what she was like.’

What would he have done if he hadn’t liked the look of her? Perez wondered. Made some excuse? Run away again?

Taylor was still sketching out the possible scenario. ‘He went to see Ms Murphy while he was in Merseyside. We’ll probably never know if that’s why he was there, but anyway, they met for lunch in a bar. Rita said Booth was really elated. It sounds as if they had a lot to drink. He told her then that he was taking on a bit of work in Shetland. “Don’t worry, darling. You’ll get your ten per cent. But this is a bit of private enterprise.”’

‘Did he say what sort of work it was?’

‘“Promotional street theatre”.’ Perez could hear the quotation marks in Taylor’s voice, thought that might describe the pantomime at the cruise ship and in Lerwick. He wasn’t sure it covered the drama at the Herring House though.

‘Rita thought it was weird that he’d consider doing work like that. She said usually he was a bit picky. He liked real theatre, not the arty stuff. She thought it would be some sort of conceptual theatre – whatever that is – because he said it was linked to an art gallery. When I told her what was actually involved she said she was surprised he hadn’t just left and come home. It wasn’t acting at all. A kid straight out of school could put on a costume and hand out a few flyers. And Booth could be very arsy when it came to work.’

‘So she thought he’d been hired to do the work by the gallery?’

‘That was the impression he gave at first. Later he said what a great opportunity it was – a chance to get close to a real celebrity. “This could be my big chance, darling. The time to hit the jackpot. My little bit of luck. And if I hadn’t been watching the telly the other night, I’d never have known.”’ He went all mysterious on her after that. She didn’t really take any notice. He was always talking about hitting the big time. All actors do.’

Perez sat for a moment in silence, wondering how this information fitted in with his ideas about the case.

‘Do you have any idea which television programme he was talking about?’

‘Wouldn’t it have been that documentary about Roddy Sinclair?’

Perez didn’t watch much television, but the uncertain theories in his head about how Booth had died suddenly shifted and came into focus.

‘What documentary would that be?’

‘It was one of a series. Sort of a fly-on-the-wall look at contemporary artists. The cameras followed Roddy round for a week.’

‘I think I read about it in the Shetland Times,’ Perez said. ‘The BBC came here to film him during the music festival last year.’ Then he remembered that Kenny had talked about it and been involved in it too.

‘Some of it was set in Glasgow. Him playing at a folk club, meeting up with his friends, talking about his music – but there were a couple of scenes in London and quite a long piece filmed in Shetland. The Herring House featured, I think, and there was an interview with Bella. I remember one part where they followed Roddy into the Biddista shop – there was a bit of banter with the customers – and another of him playing music in the school where he used to go.’

‘The high school?’

‘Nah, these were little kids. It must have been the local primary.’

‘In Lerwick?

‘Out in the wilds somewhere, I thought.’

‘Can we track down a copy of the film?’ Perez asked.

‘If you think it’s important.’

Perez didn’t answer, but he was thinking it would confirm to him who’d killed three people. Proving it, though, would be quite a different matter.

Perez arrived at Middleton School just as the children were leaving. He’d asked Taylor if he’d like to come too, thought Taylor could do with a break from the incident room, some fresh air, cold turkey from the caffeine. And if Perez did the driving he might even catch some sleep in the car. But the conversation with Booth’s agent seemed to have had a strange effect on Taylor. He sat at his desk, frowning, oblivious to the activity around him. He was quite still. The restlessness and fidgeting seemed finally under control. He didn’t even ask why Perez wanted to go to Middleton. He seemed preoccupied with concerns of his own.

‘Are you OK?’

Taylor turned then, flashed a grin, which immediately disappeared.

‘Yeah, fine. Things on my mind. You know. Nothing to do with this case. Work-related, stuff happening back in Inverness.’

Perez didn’t think he could push it. They’d reestablished a delicate balance in their friendship. He wanted to keep things that way.

It was classic Shetland weather, breezy with flashes of bright sunshine, and as Perez got out of his car a group of children ran out of the school into the wind, arms outstretched, yelling and laughing. He envied their energy. He waited until the playground was empty before he went inside. Dawn Williamson was in the school library, sitting on one of the small chairs in front of a computer. He stood for a moment watching her, but her body blocked his view of the machine so he couldn’t see what was on the screen.

‘Don’t you have a PC at home?’ Everyone did now. Most Shetlanders shopped online. One time, when you went south, people gave you a list of goodies unobtainable in the islands to bring back. Now people bought their CDs, books, clothes and even household items on the internet.

She turned, startled by his voice, then smiled, reassured, when she recognized him.

‘The hard drive’s crashed,’ she said. ‘I’ve only had the bloody thing for six months. It’s a real nuisance. Martin used it for work. Even Aggie had become a convert – she’s really interested in family history and there’s loads you can do online. I’ve just sent it back to the manufacturer. It was still under warranty and I couldn’t get anyone to come out to fix it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve a few more questions.’

She stood up and leaned against the desk so she was facing him. Something about his expression seemed to panic her.

‘Is anything wrong, inspector? What’s happened now?’

‘There’s nothing new,’ he said. ‘Just questions.’

‘We’re all so jumpy. I heard you’d found another body down the Pit. It’s horrible, unbelievable. What do I tell Alice? I hoped she’d be protected, growing up here.’

Perez thought of the bullying he’d endured when he moved from the small Fair Isle school to the hostel in Lerwick. Kids were cruel wherever they lived. He didn’t think people were so different because they lived in Shetland. Not the children or the grown-ups.

‘It’s about the television documentary on Roddy Sinclair. You remember it?’

‘I’ll never forget it,’ she said. ‘You won’t believe the excitement it caused, the BBC coming to the school. They were here for three days and in the end the scene only lasted for about five minutes. The kids loved it.’

‘Roddy was never a pupil here, though, was he? He lived in Lerwick when he was in the primary.’

‘Dramatic licence, I suppose. Middleton’s a bit more scenic. And I think he did come here for a few weeks when he was very young. It was when his father was first diagnosed and had to go away to Aberdeen to hospital. His mother went too and Roddy stayed with Bella. He has come in to do some music with the kids since he started recording. They loved him, of course. There was enough of the rascal in him to appeal to them.’

‘How long did the BBC spend filming in Biddista?’