Текст книги "Red Bones"

Автор книги: Ann Cleeves

Соавторы: Ann Cleeves
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Chapter Forty-one

Anna Clouston walked up the hill towards the hall. She felt oddly liberated without the baby. Lighter and lightheaded. A pool of mist had gathered in the low ground by the loch, so it looked as if the hall was stranded on its own island. Even the landscape seemed different.

When she opened the door she was surprised that Evelyn was the only person there. The trestle tables had been pushed together to run along the long side of the hall and Evelyn was covering them with white cloths, shaking the material out so they flapped like sails. Smaller tables had been set, cafe-style, in the middle of the hall. The speakers would have the best chairs at one end, with a table for their notes, and there was a screen and data projector. The urn was already hissing for tea. Everything was organized and efficient.

Evelyn was wearing an apron, but Anna could tell she’d dressed up for the occasion. She had green dangly earrings, little court shoes with heels.

‘What would you like me to do?’

‘You can fetch me the cups and saucers from the cupboard,’ Evelyn said. Then: ‘Sandy’s picked Gwen James up from Sumburgh. He gave her a tour of the island – showed her the Bod and the dig at Setter, the place where Hattie died. It seems kind of ghoulish but she wanted to see it. She’s in the Pier House now getting ready. He’ll give her a lift up just before we start.’

‘Right.’ Anna couldn’t understand how Gwen James could bear to be here. If anything had happened to her son, if he had been found in a hole in the ground like that, Anna wouldn’t want to be paraded in the hall in front of staring people, all of them strangers. She wouldn’t want to eat meringues and drink weak tea. What sort of mother could this woman be?

She set the cups and saucers out close to the urn, wiping each one with a clean tea towel as she brought it out of the cupboard, just as the island women always did.

‘I’m surprised you’ve not got more helpers,’ she said.

‘Oh, I told Jackie I’d manage. Joseph came along earlier to help shift the furniture.’ Evelyn had moved from the tables and was pinning photos of the dig site up on the walls. One showed Hattie and Sophie both crouched at work. Hattie had looked up at the camera and smiled; Anna couldn’t remember ever having seen her appear so happy. It was a good photo. She wondered who’d taken it. Ronald, maybe. He’d spent a lot of time on the dig the summer before. Evelyn went on: ‘Jackie says Andrew’s agitated again today. She’ll be in as soon as she’s settled him. He won’t be coming. Just as well. We don’t want a scene.’

Anna thought Evelyn preferred it this way: completely in control and in charge. She could understand that.

The door of the hall opened and Anna saw a silhouette framed by the filtered light of the low sun behind him. Another bank of mist had come in from the sea. The figure moved further into the room and she recognized Jimmy Perez. He seemed surprised to see Anna there. She guessed he’d hoped to catch Evelyn on her own and now he was weighing his options and wondering how best to play the situation. Evelyn had her back to the door and hadn’t seen him.

‘Evelyn.’

The woman turned sharply. ‘Oh, Jimmy. You’re early. We’re not starting until seven.’

‘I was hoping to catch you for a word on your own. Perhaps we could go back to Utra for a few minutes.’

Evelyn paused for a beat, seemed to straighten her back. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible, Jimmy. There’s far too much to do before the other folk turn up.’

‘Really, I think we might be better talking now.’ He paused. ‘We don’t want a scene later.’

That word again, Anna thought. Scene. What is it that they’re scared of? She would have offered to go out so they could talk on their own, but knew that was the last thing Evelyn wanted.

Evelyn seemed to consider. She looked quite calm. ‘Oh, I don’t think we need worry about that, do you, Jimmy? You know I’m the last one to cause a fuss. There’s no hurry. You know I’m not going anywhere.’

Anna had the sense that the conversation had a meaning she didn’t understand. Perez stood for a moment then nodded, he turned and left. Once he’d gone, Evelyn lifted the hem of her apron and wiped her face with it. Her only gesture of weakness. Then she bent and lifted a pile of dinner plates from the cupboard. ‘The cakes can go on here,’ she said. ‘There should be napkins somewhere. We’ll wrap them with clingfilm until the speeches are over.’ She made no reference to the conversation between her and Perez.

In the end, Anna had to admit, the event was a triumph. It struck just the right note. Once Evelyn took off her apron she became a different person – confident, knowledgeable, charming. Even the islanders were impressed. She welcomed the guests into the hall and brought the locals and the incomers together. She walked Gwen James round all the photos and talked about what a delight Hattie had been to have on the island. Such an enthusiast: ‘She made the history seem so real for me. I could see Whalsay through the eyes of the Setter merchant. These were our ancestors but it took an outsider to bring them to life.’ When she introduced the speakers, she spoke fluently and without notes. ‘The untimely deaths of two of our project’s greatest supporters is a tragedy. But we owe it to them to continue the work at Setter and to make it a success.’

Anna thought if Evelyn had lived somewhere else she could have been a great businesswoman. You could see her at the head of a board table, motivating her team.

Jimmy Perez had come back. He had brought a woman with him; she was chic in an arty, bohemian sort of way, small and lively. They made an unusual couple. He was very dark and impassive and she seemed to be moving all the time, interested in everything. After a while of thinking she looked familiar, Anna recognized the woman as Fran Hunter, the artist from Ravenswick. There’d been an article about her in the most recent Shetland Life, and in the arts section of a Sunday broadsheet. That could be me in a few years’ time, Anna thought, and her brain began fizzing with plans for the future. There’ll be features about my spinning and knitting; I’ll call it the Whalsay Collection and take my influences from the Setter Merchant’s House, the design of the coins. I’ll ask Ronald to help me research the costumes and jewellery of the time. Maybe we’ll make enough money that he’ll be able to give up the fishing. We ’ll run it as a family business. Suddenly anything seemed possible.

Perez stood at the back of the hall, furthest from the speakers. All the chairs had been taken but Anna thought that was where he had chosen to be. He wanted to see everything going on in the hall. Sandy Wilson sat with Hattie’s mother near the front. There was no sign of Joseph and that surprised Anna. She’d have thought Evelyn would have dragged him along. Sandy was wearing a suit, the one he’d worn to their wedding, his face was red and he looked uncomfortable. Anna knew Ronald would have hated all this. How grateful he’ll be to me that I’ve given him the excuse to stay at home! She looked forward to describing the evening to him. History was his passion, after all. She knew he’d be interested.

Jackie rushed in right at the last minute, just as Evelyn was about to start speaking. Although the weather was unusually calm, Jackie had a windswept, thrown together look that was quite unlike her. One of her nieces was a hairdresser and always came to do her hair before an evening out, but now it seemed she’d hardly had time to pull a brush through it.

Anna looked at Jackie across the hall and decided there must have been another crisis with Andrew. She reflected that she should be more considerate about her parents-in-law. She shouldn’t make such a fuss when Ronald went up to the big house to help out. She’d been rather a bitch about them.

All these thoughts were running at the back of her head while she was listening to the presentations. She sat with a fixed look of concentration on her face and nobody would have realized her mind was elsewhere. Though perhaps everyone is the same, she thought, and she sneaked a look at the audience and tried to picture the ideas and preoccupations of the individuals who sat in respectful silence. They clapped when each speaker sat down, but perhaps there were other images running like a film in their heads too. We think we know each other so well, but we all have our secrets.

Paul Berglund went first. Anna had never met him. She’d been out giving birth when the skull had been found and Evelyn had never introduced them. He gave a very short speech. Perhaps it was his accent but the words seemed ungracious, almost dismissive.

‘The university has always been delighted to support the Whalsay project, and of course it will continue to do so despite the tragic death of Hattie James.’

Anna had the impression that Evelyn had been expecting more, a promise of definite funding and more PhD students, an altogether grander project. She thought the most likely thing was that the dig would be forgotten, by the university at least.

Val Turner’s lecture was obviously more to Evelyn’s liking. There had been proper preparation, a PowerPoint presentation giving the background to the merchant’s house and an explanation of the importance of the Hanseatic League. The audience seemed to become more engaged when she described the discovery of the skull, the evidence of the shattered ribs, and when she showed off the small, dull coins in their plastic box, supported now by special polyurethane foam. ‘I have no doubt that this will be a major site in Shetland archaeology.’

Anna looked at her watch. She wondered if James had taken the bottle of expressed milk. She’d tried him with some a little earlier in the day and he’d seemed all right with it. More words running alongside all the others in her head: I shouldn’t have left him. He’s so small . . . Guilt, she thought. Mothers must live with it all the time. I should just get used to it.

Then Jimmy Perez walked to the front of the room. Val Turner introduced him. ‘Now Inspector Perez would like to speak to us about the tragic death of Hattie James.’

There was an excitement in the hall. Even the showing of the skull and the coins hadn’t generated this much interest. Looking at Gwen James’s sculpted, motionless face, Anna thought the woman had known this announcement was coming. She had been expecting it, waiting for it throughout the evening. The police must have warned her. Anna felt her pulse race. She too wanted to know what the police had to say.

Perez stood in front of the table, leaning against it. He pushed himself forward so he was standing upright, almost to attention, and started speaking: ‘I’m in a position now to inform you that we are treating Hattie James’s death as suspicious. She didn’t commit suicide. We believe there was a witness to the murder and we’re close to making an arrest. In the meantime we’d be grateful for continuing support and information from everyone in Whalsay.’ There was a moment of complete silence, then a muted hum of conversation. Anna couldn’t think what Perez’s words might mean. She thought the islanders were wishing Gwen James had stayed away despite her celebrity status. They would have preferred the freedom to gossip.

The evening was coming to an end. When the speeches were over the island women had moved behind the tables to pour tea from large metal pots. The clingfilm had been removed from the plates and now they were almost empty. Perez circulated around the room, talking to the locals. Or rather he was listening to the locals, Anna thought. Whenever she caught a glimpse of him he was silent, his gaze fixed on the speaker’s face.

Now Anna just wanted to get home. Gwen James looked suddenly lost and Sandy, more attentive than Anna had realized he could be, offered to drive her back to the Pier House. Just as he was finding her coat, a couple of men who’d been outside for a smoke came back in.

‘Just take care out there. The fog’s so thick you can hardly see your hand in front of your face. We don’t want you coming off the road.’ And when Sandy opened the door to show Gwen James out, Anna saw they were right. She could see nothing. No lights in the other houses, never mind Shetland mainland in the distance.

Chapter Forty-two

Sandy drove at walking pace down the island towards the Pier House Hotel. He was pleased that the evening in the hall had passed without mishap; everyone had said how well Evelyn had done to arrange it and she’d seemed calmer than he could remember for ages. He hoped she’d be able to stay that way. Now he just had to deliver Gwen James back to her room and perhaps he could relax. He sat bent forward, just concentrating on keeping the grass verge on each side of him and the car on the road. Gwen James was smoking. He’d been watching her throughout the evening, admiring her style, the way she held things together. He supposed she’d had the practice. A politician had to be some sort of actor. Even his mother, who was only a politician in a small way, could put on the act when it was needed. Over the years he’d seen Evelyn put on the smile, use those easy phrases that had no meaning, when she was talking about her Whalsay projects to the important folk from Lerwick. Even when she was tired or depressed, she didn’t lose the smile.

As soon as they’d left the hall, he saw how hard it had been for Gwen. She pulled a cigarette out of the packet with trembling hands and she’d been chain smoking ever since. They hit Symbister suddenly, almost before he realized. An orange streetlight above him and a wall on one side of the road and a pavement on the other. Then they were at the Pier House Hotel and he found himself shaking too. A release of tension after the drive.

He had expected Gwen James to go straight to her room. She’d already eaten and he thought she’d want to be on her own. But it seemed not: ‘God, I need a drink. You will join me, won’t you, Sandy?’

The weather had kept folk in their houses and the lounge was empty of customers. Cedric Irvine sat on a bar stool on the public side of the bar and Jean was standing behind it. Cedric winked at Sandy.

‘Well?’ Sandy asked.

‘All done,’ Cedric said.

Sandy wanted to ask for more details but Gwen James was standing right beside him and Jean had already come up to serve them.

‘A large vodka and tonic,’ the politician said. ‘Sandy?’

He asked for a beer, began to get his wallet out of his pocket.

‘Put it on my room bill, please.’ She took a seat and waited for him to bring the drinks. He wondered if she’d treated Hattie in this bossy kind of way: generous but used to getting what she wanted.

They were on to their second drink when Berglund arrived. He must have walked at least part of the way back from the hall, because there were fine drops of moisture in his hair and on his coat. Sandy thought Berglund would have preferred not to join them, but Gwen was on her feet as soon as she saw the professor walk into the hotel, shouting across to him, offering him a drink. He couldn’t refuse without appearing churlish.

There was an awkward silence after Jean had brought over his whisky. Three people with nothing in common, Sandy thought, except a dead girl. One gave birth to her, one had sex with her and I just thought she was weird.

‘I hoped Sophie might be here,’ Gwen said suddenly. ‘I’d have liked to talk to her. They were friends, weren’t they? I thought she’d come as a mark of respect. I thought she’d want to be here.’

‘We couldn’t trace her,’ Berglund said. ‘Not in time. I’m sorry.’

Gwen got to her feet and said she was desperate for a smoke. She stumbled slightly as she made her way outside. Sandy thought if she carried on like this she’d have a hangover in the morning. They saw her standing in the doorway of the hotel, struggling to light her cigarette.

At the table, another silence, broken by Berglund. Sandy guessed he’d been drinking earlier in the day. Perhaps that was why he’d kept his speech so short in the hall.

‘I did care for her, you know. Hattie. But it’s different for men, isn’t it?’

Sandy thought at one time he’d have agreed with that. But he’d seen how screwed up Hattie had become. He’d read her letters. Now he wasn’t sure it was much of an excuse. He dipped into his beer and tried to come up with a reply.

Berglund continued. ‘I was married and I love my wife and kids, but she was there and so eager. Any man would have done the same, wouldn’t they? It was an ego thing, I guess. She made me feel free again. Attractive.’

Is that why you had to force yourself on her?

But the question remained unspoken because Gwen James was back in the room, standing at the bar, ordering more drinks although their glasses were still full. Sandy knew he’d never have had the courage to ask it anyway. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t sit and watch while two educated English people made fools of themselves and each other. Gwen would thank Berglund for looking after her daughter and supervising the project and Berglund would say what a bright student Hattie was, what a future she’d had ahead of her. How much everyone had liked her. Sandy thought listening to that would make him want to vomit.

Perez had told him to stay in the Pier House with Berglund and Gwen James until they went to bed. ‘I don’t want them wandering around on the island tonight. You can understand that.’ And when Sandy had started to object: ‘This is important, Sandy. You know Mrs James and she trusts you. There’s no one else I can ask.’

But now Sandy had to get away. He had something closer to home to sort out and then he wanted to be in on the action. Besides, if he sat here any longer he’d have more to drink because he couldn’t face Berglund sober. Then he’d end up hitting Berglund or saying something rude to him. These people wouldn’t go out again. Not on a night like this. They wouldn’t find their way to the road. He made his excuses and left. On his way out he bumped into Fran Hunter. Jimmy must have booked a room for her. She gave him a little wave and made her way upstairs.

He found his mother alone in the Utra kitchen. She’d changed out of her smart clothes and was wearing the tatty dressing gown she’d had for as long as he could remember. She was drinking a mug of warm milk. She looked up at him and smiled.

‘Where’s my father?’ he asked.

‘I’ve sent him to bed. He’s not been sleeping well.’

‘I’ve been worried about him.’

‘You shouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘Not any more. We’ve been through a lot in the last few weeks. We ’ll survive this too.’

‘How did it start?’ She didn’t answer immediately. ‘The stealing, Mother. That’s what I’m talking about.’ For the first time in his life Sandy felt he was talking to her as one adult to another.

‘Stealing?’ She seemed shocked. ‘I never saw it as that.’

‘It’s how my boss sees it,’ he said simply. ‘It’s how the courts would see it.’

‘Oh, Sandy,’ she said, and he could tell she was glad of the chance to talk about it at last. ‘It was all too easy.’

‘Tell me about it.’ He’d come to the house angry, prepared to demand answers from her. Now he just wanted to hear what she had to say.

‘Money was always tight,’ she said. ‘You can’t understand what it was like here. The fishing families with their cars and their fancy clothes and their holidays in the sun. And only seeming to work a couple of months a year. And us, struggling to manage on what Joseph could bring in from Duncan Hunter. Jackie Clouston looking at me as if I was a piece of muck on her shoe. I believed I deserved the little bit extra I could make. That was how it started. I was working for this community and earning nothing. They kept everything they made for themselves. It just didn’t seem fair .’

Is that how corruption begins everywhere? Sandy thought. Politicians and businessmen persuade themselves that the extra, the kickbacks, are owed to them for the risks they take and the contribution they make. And he was no better than the rest of them. He’d once let Duncan Hunter off for drink-driving because he thought the man could make trouble for his father.

‘How did you work it?’

‘I just boosted my expenses a little. I applied for Amenity Trust grants for a couple of projects – the community theatre was the first. I set up a bank account in the name of the Island Forum, submitted receipts for expenses and had the cheques made out to the new account. Maybe some of the expenses weren’t entirely project-related, but nobody checked. Nobody realized. It grew from there. I took more chances.’

‘You took more money.’ Sandy felt a pit open in his stomach. His mother had brought him up to be honest. He’d once stolen sweeties from the shop in Symbister and she’d sent him back to own up and apologize.

‘I was working for nothing,’ she cried. Her face was red with the effort of trying to convince herself. ‘I saw it as a wage.’

‘The Trust gave you a small grant to pass on to Anna Clouston to develop her workshops,’ Sandy said. ‘She never saw it.’

‘A loan,’ she said. ‘I planned to pay it back. Besides, she owed me. She took my ideas and my patterns and she wouldn’t even have me as a partner.’

‘How were you going to pay it back, Mother? Why did you never ask me for help? Or Michael? We would have sorted it out for you. You know we’d have worked together to do that.’

She put her face in her hands and didn’t reply.

‘Is that why Dad changed his mind about selling Setter? He saw it as a way for you to clear what you owed?’

‘I had to tell him,’ she said. ‘He knew something was wrong the evening of Mima’s funeral.’

‘But then he couldn’t face it, could he? He couldn’t face anyone else living in Mima’s house. Do you know he tried to set fire to it to claim the insurance? It wasn’t me being thoughtless again.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘There are no secrets between us now.’

‘Mima was a countersignatory to the bank account,’ Sandy said. ‘I saw the chequebook in the drawer. She knew you’d been taking the money. You thought she wasn’t interested enough to check.’

‘She had no proof.’

‘But she guessed,’ Sandy said. He thought this was the most difficult interview he’d ever taken part in, but also the easiest. He knew all the people involved so well and he knew how they thought. ‘Did she ask you about it? Is that what you were discussing the afternoon before she died?’

‘She was worried for herself,’ Evelyn said. ‘What folks would say if it came out. “I know what it is to be the subject of gossip. Trust me, Evelyn, you’d not want that. I’d not wish that on anyone.”’

‘And she’d be worried about Dad,’ Sandy said sharply. ‘About what effect this would have on him.’

‘Aye,’ Evelyn said. ‘You’re right, of course. Mima always doted on your father.’

‘Did you go back later and kill her?’ The question that had been tormenting him since he’d first realized things weren’t right between his parents.

She stared at him, horrified. He saw it hadn’t crossed her mind that he might suspect her of the murder. She still thought of herself as a good woman.

‘Did you see Ronald out with his gun and think that would be a good way to stop her talking? An accident in poor weather. If he shot her by mistake, nobody would ever know you’d been stealing. And then did you think you could make it happen like that?’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘No! Sandy, do you really think me capable of that?’

He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought her capable of cheating and theft.

Now, it seemed, she felt the need to explain. ‘I could have married into one of the fishing families,’ she said. ‘Even then they had more money than the crofters. They hadn’t invested in the huge trawlers, but they were well off by island standards.’ She looked up and smiled. ‘You’d not think it now but I was quite a catch in those days. Everyone said what a bonny little thing I was. Andrew Clouston fancied me rotten, but Joseph was always the one for me. From when we were bairns at school, he was the one for me. I didn’t care about his mad witch of a mother or his lack of money.’

‘Should I go up and see my father?’ Sandy asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t disturb him. I’ve given him a pill and he’s already asleep.’

Suddenly Sandy felt very tired. He got to his feet. He would go to find Perez. It would be a very long night.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Work,’ he said.

Usually she would have been full of questions. Or she would have tried to persuade him that he shouldn’t go out on such a bad night. But she just got up to see him out. They stood for a moment at the door. Awkwardly she reached up and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I should have asked you boys for help.’

It was the first time in his life she’d ever admitted she was wrong.