Текст книги "Red Bones"

Автор книги: Ann Cleeves

Соавторы: Ann Cleeves
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

‘Cool,’ Sophie said, then must have realized how that sounded. ‘I mean about the lift into town and the day off. Not Mima. We’ll really miss her. I mean, what a shit thing to happen.’

Hattie could tell the only thing Sophie would miss was the tea in the morning and the home baking, sitting in front of the Setter fire when it was raining outside. She didn’t care about a dead old lady.

‘What about you, Hattie?’ Paul said. ‘Do you want to come too?’

‘No, I’ll stay here.’ She must have spoken more sharply than she’d intended because they both stared at her. She’d been wondering about his sudden decision to go south. They’d been expecting him to stay for another week. The undergraduates were still on holiday for Easter. ‘I’ll go to see Evelyn and tell her how sorry we are, ask if there’s anything we can do.’

And before either of them could stop her she stooped to put the cat on the floor and was out of the house and on her way to Utra. Halfway there she realized her eyes were streaming with tears.

Chapter Ten

Perez wasn’t sure what to make of the hysterical girl who turned up at the door of Evelyn Wilson’s house. At first he mistook her for one of the island children; she might have been fifteen or sixteen, certainly not old enough to be a postgraduate student. Even after Evelyn had introduced her and she had calmed down sufficiently to talk more rationally, he still thought of her as a girl. Her voice was breathy, high-pitched. The voice of a well brought-up child.

She was small and thin. Big dark eyes and very black hair, cut short so the eyes looked even bigger. They were ringed by grey shadows, which made her look exhausted. He wished she wasn’t so sad, caught himself wondering how he could make her feel better, then stopped himself. ‘It’s not your responsibility. It’s a sort of arrogance, thinking you can change the world.’ Fran’s words, spoken with exasperation and affection, repeated often enough that they came into his head in situations like this.

Hattie leaned against the doorpost to take off her work boots and looked as if she didn’t have the strength to stand upright. Without the boots she seemed even more frail. Perez had the fancy that without them on her feet to anchor her to the floor she might float into the air.

Evelyn helped the girl to a chair, automatically moved the kettle on to the hotplate. Hattie reached across the table towards Sandy, not quite touching his hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you were close to your grandmother. She talked about you all the time.’ In her confusion she seemed not to notice Perez.

‘You shouldn’t have had to hear like that,’ Evelyn said. ‘One of us should have come to the Bod to tell you. What a shock it must have been! But we’ve all been so busy here and it never crossed my mind. How did you find out?’

‘From Paul. He was waiting for us when we got to Setter. He said it was an accident, but I don’t understand.’

‘Sandy’s cousin Ronald was out shooting rabbits. He won’t admit it but he must have fired across the Setter land. He couldn’t have thought Mima would be out on a night like that. What other explanation is there?’ Evelyn stood quite still for a moment, then turned to pour water into a brown earthenware teapot which she covered with a striped cosy and put at the back of the Rayburn. She sat at the table next to Hattie. ‘I’m very sorry, my dear, but she was wearing your waterproof. You won’t be able to use it again. We’ll replace it for you.’

‘No.’ It seemed to Perez that she hadn’t heard more than the first couple of sentences. She was frozen with shock and couldn’t take in the information. Not all at once. ‘There’s no need for that. Of course not.’ She turned to Evelyn. ‘Are you sure that’s the way it happened? How could Ronald not see the jacket? It’s bright yellow.’

‘It was very dark,’ Evelyn said. ‘The mist came down again last night.’

‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. She began to cry again.

Perez found a clean handkerchief in his pocket and handed it over to her. She seemed to see him for the first time and stared, startled. ‘My name’s Jimmy Perez,’ he said, though Evelyn had introduced him when she’d arrived. ‘I work for the police. We have to ask questions, to be satisfied about the accident.’

Hattie blinked quickly like a camera shutter clicking. Perez had the impression of thoughts and images fizzing in her head. ‘If I hadn’t given Mima the coat,’ she said, ‘perhaps she wouldn’t have gone out.’

‘That’s plain stupid,’ Evelyn said. ‘Don’t you dare think like that. We all wonder if there was anything we could have done to prevent it. It’s natural after a tragedy like this but does no good at all.’ She stood up. Perez watched her take an old biscuit tin from a cupboard. When she lifted the lid he smelled cheese scones, another memory of home. She split and buttered them and set them on a plate, poured the tea into mugs.

‘Why did you give Mima your coat?’ Perez asked.

She had just picked up her tea and stared at him over the mug. ‘It was yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘It was pouring with rain. We came in drenched to dry out before going back to work. Mima admired my jacket when she took it out to dry. She’d been so kind that I said she could have it. I had a spare in my rucksack.’

‘Aye,’ Evelyn said. ‘That’s how it was. I was there. She was so pleased with it. “How fine I’ll look going out in that! The hens won’t know me.” You know how she carried on, Sandy?’

Sandy nodded. They sat for a moment in silence, then Evelyn became all efficient and businesslike:

‘You mustn’t think this will affect the project. Not at all. Everything will carry on just as before. Setter will come to Joseph when everything’s sorted out with the lawyers. We haven’t even thought what we’ll do with the croft just yet, but you can continue with the dig as soon as you like.’

Perez looked at Sandy. Was Evelyn speaking for the whole Wilson family? But Sandy said nothing.

‘I’d rather you didn’t work on the dig today,’ Perez said quietly. ‘Today the Fiscal might need to visit. It’s her decision whether any action needs to be taken and how we should proceed.’

‘Will Ronald be charged?’ Hattie asked.

‘That’s not a decision for me.’

‘The weather’s so bad,’ Sandy said, his first contribution to the discussion, ‘that you wouldn’t want to be working this morning anyway.’

‘Oh I would!’ Hattie said immediately. ‘I hate it when it’s too wet to work. It’s fascinating, addictive I suppose. You understand that, Evelyn.’

‘What exactly are you looking for?’ Perez thought she looked quite different when she spoke about her work. Her face lit up, and the grey shadows around her eyes seemed to disappear. Another young woman driven by her work, just like Anna Clouston.

‘Local archaeologists picked up signs of a dwelling on that site in the sixties, but nothing much happened with it. According to Mima, although most of the Setter land is fertile, nothing much would grow just there – she said her mother had called the mound there a trowie knowe. You know the myths about the trows, the little people. It was supposed to be a hole in the ground, a place where they kept their treasure. Mima explained them to me, told me some of the stories.’

Perez nodded. He’d been brought up on stories of trows too, small malevolent creatures who lived in the islands and ruled their kingdom with magic and decorated their houses with glittering jewels and gold.

Hattie continued: ‘Everyone assumed that it was a croft that had gone out of use before the first Ordnance Survey map. They thought perhaps the present house developed from it. Or that the remains composed some sort of outbuilding. Then I came to Shetland on a working holiday with Sally Walker, one of my lecturers. We took a closer look at the Setter site and thought the house looked more substantial than had been assumed. I was looking for a postgraduate project and it seemed perfect. Sophie’s taking a year out after graduating and agreed to come and help. Sally left on maternity leave and didn’t feel she could continue to supervise me.’

The words came out in a rush. Nerves? Perez wondered. Or is it just passion for her subject? ‘And now Paul Berglund’s in charge?’

‘He’s my supervisor. Yes.’

She doesn’t like the man, Perez thought. Then he saw her face freeze again. No, he thought with surprise. It’s more than that. She’s scared of him.

‘And what have you found?’

‘Well, we’ve still got a long way to go, of course, but we did a geophysical survey and there certainly seems quite a grand building on that site. The excavation we did last season bears that out. I think it could be a merchant’s house. We know that Whalsay was an important trading point within the Hanseatic League. That was a community of ports around the North Sea, a sort of medieval EU. The mystery is that there’s no record of the house, or of the man who lived there. It’s frustrating. It would be wonderful to put a name to the man who built it. We’ve just got a couple of months left here to see if there’s enough evidence to justify funding for a full-scale dig. I suppose the bones might tell us something. They’ve gone for carbon dating, but I’m assuming they’re fifteenth-century. There’s nothing in the context to suggest otherwise.’

‘Sandy told me about the skull.’

‘We found it in a trench outside the walls of the house. We ’ve found other bones there too, presumably from the same individual. It’s strange because you’d expect a body to be buried in a graveyard at that period. I’ve spoken to people at the university. They say it might be the body of a drowned man washed up on the shore. Strangers didn’t always get a proper burial: the superstition was that drowned men belonged to the sea. But Setter’s quite a distance from the shore, and that doesn’t really make sense to me. I’d like to think we’ve found my merchant.’ She looked up at him. ‘I hope we can go on with the work tomorrow. Time’s already running out.’

He didn’t answer directly. ‘Who’s testing the bones?’

‘Val Turner, the Shetland archaeologist, came in when we realized what we’d found. She’s sorted them out, sent them to the lab in Glasgow to date them.’

He supposed it was a coincidence. Two deaths in one place, separated by hundreds of years. Corpses growing from the same garden. Places couldn’t be unlucky, could they? ‘How was Mima when you were with her yesterday?’

‘She seemed in fine form. Didn’t she, Evelyn?’

‘Oh aye. Just the same as usual.’ Evelyn reached across the table and poured more tea.

‘She didn’t object to you digging up her land?’ Perez asked. There wouldn’t be many Shetland landowners who’d be glad of that intrusion.

‘Not at all,’ Hattie said. ‘She was really interested. And interesting. She said when she was growing up in Whalsay there’d been a legend about a big house that had once been at Lindby, built by the son of a fisherman. It’s the sort of folk tale that might have its root in reality.’

‘Aye well.’ Evelyn stood up briskly. ‘You don’t want to believe everything Mima told you. She was a great one for stories. She might have remembered a few snatches from what her grandmother told her and made up the rest. I’d never heard anything about a big house at Setter. She was a bit of a romantic, was Mima.’

‘That’s what I liked about her, I think,’ Hattie said. She broke off a piece of the scone on her plate and crumbled it in her fingers. Perez thought she’d just taken the scone to be polite. None of it had got as far as her mouth. She looked up suddenly and frowned. ‘Mima seemed shocked when we found the skull. Didn’t you think so, Evelyn?’

‘Maybe she’d started to believe her own scary stories,’ Evelyn said. ‘Maybe she thought it was the work of the trows.’

Perez thought Hattie was going to say more about the skull, but she changed the subject. ‘I hope Ronald doesn’t get charged,’ she said. ‘Mima wouldn’t have wanted that.’

Perez wondered why it seemed to matter to her so much. She’d only been here for a couple of months. Whilst she’d obviously been fond of Mima, the other people in the drama could hardly be more than names to her. ‘How well do you know him?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve seen him a few times in the bar of the Pier House Hotel. He did history at university and knows a lot about the myths and legends of the islands. He seems quite interested in the project and last season he came out to visit the site a few times. We ’ve tried to involve local people. That’s a prerequisite of work in Shetland. Val Turner insists that we explain what we’re doing to the community and include them as much as possible. Anna seems keen too.’

‘Poor Anna,’ Evelyn said. She stood up and took the empty mugs to the sink for washing up. Perez expected her to elaborate, but suddenly she turned back to Hattie. ‘Where’s Sophie? You should have brought her in for some tea. Sandy would have been pleased to see her again.’

Perez watched Sandy turn pink. Even when you’d grown up mothers had the knack of embarrassing you. His own was just the same.

‘Sophie’s gone into Lerwick for the day.’ Hattie’s voice was bland but Perez thought he could hear a trace of disapproval. ‘Paul’s going south on the ferry tonight and he’s offered her a lift into town.’

‘He didn’t mention earlier that he was leaving Whalsay.’ Perez didn’t know why Berglund should, but it seemed a strange omission.

‘We weren’t expecting him to go yet either. He said something had turned up at home.’ Now that she wasn’t talking about her work Hattie had that closed-down look again and the shadows had come back.

‘Perhaps we should try to catch him before he leaves,’ Perez said. ‘Thanks for the tea and the breakfast, Evelyn.’ Sandy was already on his feet, anxious for an excuse to escape his mother.

Though the fog was still as dense as before, Perez was glad to be out of the croft kitchen too. As they walked to the car he could hear Evelyn urging more food into Hattie. ‘Look at you, child. You’re all skin and bone.’

The Pier House Hotel was a square stone building close to the ferry terminal. There was nobody behind the desk in reception and Perez wandered through to the bar, where a skinny middle-aged woman in a pink nylon overall was pushing a Hoover across the faded carpet. The room was panelled with brown, varnished wood and was shabby and depressing. In the evening, with a crowd in, a fire in the grate and artificial light, it might look welcoming. Now it was hard to imagine anyone wanting to spend time there.

Perez yelled at the woman but she had her back to him and she couldn’t hear. He tapped her on the shoulder, could feel the sharpness of her bone through the sticky nylon. She switched off the machine.

‘I’m looking for one of your guests. Paul Berglund.’

‘Don’t ask me, hen. I only do the cleaning. And keep the show on the road.’ An incomer from Glasgow. She grinned to show that she was happy enough with her role there. ‘I’ll fetch Cedric for you.’ She disappeared into a back room and returned with an elderly man with a stoop.

‘Is Paul Berglund here?’ He couldn’t work out why he felt it so important to speak to Berglund again before he left Shetland. Perhaps it was the way Hattie had looked when she talked about him.

The landlord was going to ask who Perez was, then he saw Sandy who’d wandered in from the car and realized he must be police. ‘He checked out earlier. He’s been back since to pick up his stuff. You’ve just missed him. That lassie from the dig was with him.’

Outside they could see the ferry was already moored at the pier, a dark shape in the mist. From here Perez couldn’t tell if it was disembarking or being loaded with cars. He drove far too fast down to the jetty, but by the time they arrived the boat was sliding away towards the opposite shore.

‘What do you want to do?’ Sandy peered out into the mist.

‘Nothing.’ They’d be able to trace Berglund if they needed to speak to him. Besides, Perez was sure the death would go down as a terrible accident. Mima had been an old woman and there was nobody to make a fuss on her behalf. ‘I’m going back to the office and I’ll talk to the Fiscal. You’ll go and get some sleep. Take a couple of days’ compassionate leave. I’ll see you back at work after the weekend.’

Suddenly Perez was eager to leave the island. He wasn’t sure he could make sense of the place while he was still there. He’d been aware for so long of the Whalsay myths: its wealth, its friendliness and its traditions. Now, surrounded by fog, he knew it was quite different from anywhere else in Shetland, certainly from the bustling town of Lerwick and the self-contained remoteness of Fair Isle. But he couldn’t define it. Perhaps it didn’t matter. If Mima Wilson’s death turned out to be an accident, what did it matter what Perez thought of the place where she’d spent her life? But Perez thought it did matter and that he needed to be away from Whalsay so he could think about it more clearly.

Chapter Eleven

Perez had offered Sandy a lift back to Lerwick. ‘If you want to go back to town, that is. You’re too tired to drive. You can come back to Whalsay and collect your car another time.’ For a brief moment Sandy was tempted to leave Whalsay. Usually he did what Perez told him, not because he thought his boss was always right but because it was the easier course of action. And how good it would be to drive away and leave the mess surrounding his family behind. An afternoon’s sleep followed by a few pints with the boys in The Lounge in Lerwick and he’d feel fine again. What good was he doing on Whalsay anyway? His mother would deal with all the practical details of arranging a funeral for Mima and he was in no position to provide the reassurance Ronald needed.

But he told Perez he’d stay for another night on the island. It was an instinctive feeling that it was the right thing to do. His father wouldn’t have run away in this situation and ever since he was a boy, more than anything Sandy had wanted to be like his father. Now he saw Perez give a brief nod of approval too and that reinforced his sense that he’d made the right decision. He watched Perez drive into the ferry and waited until it had moved out of the harbour. He felt suddenly bereft.

His car was still on the jetty where he’d left it after driving down to meet his boss. He switched on the engine and the clock on the dashboard lit up. It wasn’t midday yet. It always amazed Sandy how much Perez could pack into a small space of time. If you met him you’d think the inspector was kind of slow. It was his way of thinking before he spoke so you knew that when the words came out they were just the ones he’d intended. But Perez wasn’t slow at all. There was a sort of magic in his asking the right questions the first time, picking up the clues in a situation, knowing when it was time to move on.

As he drove past the Pier House Hotel on his way back to Utra he saw that Ronald’s car was parked outside. Sandy jammed on the brakes, felt the car slide on the greasy road then pulled in too. Getting pissed at lunchtime wasn’t going to help the man. Sandy thought he might not have Perez’s brains but he knew that much.

The woman in the pink overall had finished cleaning the bar but the place still had that smell of last night’s beer mixed with furniture polish, the smell of bars everywhere before customers arrive and start drinking. Cedric Irvine stood polishing glasses. He’d owned the Pier House for all the time Sandy could remember. He’d served the boy his first under-age pint, winking as he slid it over to him. There’d never been a Mrs Irvine, just a series of live-in barmaids and housekeepers who, it was rumoured, satisfied all his needs. The skinny Glaswegian was the most recent. Nobody was ever quite sure what the relationship was between Cedric and these women. When one of the regulars got sufficiently drunk to ask, Cedric would only shake his head and say that gentlemen never spoke of these things. ‘And neither will you if you hope to set foot in this establishment again.’ That was how he spoke. Sandy thought there was something of the preacher about him.

Now Cedric looked up from his work and gave Sandy a smile of welcome that was more than professional. He nodded to the corner of the room, where Ronald sat in front of a pock-marked copper table. The man had finished his pint and was halfway through his whisky chaser.

‘He needs a friend,’ Cedric said. ‘It’s never a good thing drinking on your own. Not like that. Just drinking to get drunk.’

‘He feels dreadful.’

‘So he should. Mima was a good woman.’

‘It could have happened to any of the boys.’ Sandy had seen it before. The young men would get fired up on beer, then jump into cars and vans and roar across the island with their shotguns to try for rabbits or geese or anything else that took their fancy, as likely sometimes to hit each other as what they were aiming for. They were lucky there’d been no other accidents. On a number of occasions Sandy had been with them, whooping and cheering them on, behaving like a moron. It didn’t only happen in Whalsay. Whenever men got together and drank too much they made fools of themselves. Never again, he thought. How would he feel if he’d been the one to kill Mima? But he knew that if he were with a gang of his friends he’d get dragged along on other foolish escapades. He’d never been able to stand up to them.

Cedric had pulled Sandy a pint of Bellhaven. Ronald still hadn’t noticed that his cousin had come in. The whisky glass was empty now and he was staring out of the window into space.

‘Give me another pint for him,’ Sandy said. ‘Then I’ll take him away for you, before anyone else comes in and there’s a scene.’

He carried the pints across to the table. At last Ronald looked up. Sandy thought he’d never seen the man look so ill.

‘I thought we’d already done the wetting of the baby’s head.’

Ronald glared. ‘Leave the baby out of this.’

‘I take it Anna doesn’t know you’re here,’ Sandy said. ‘She’d kill you.’ He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken, but Ronald didn’t seem to have heard them.

‘I can’t see how it could have been me.’ It came out as a cry. He’d changed into a shirt and a tie. Perhaps it was his way of paying respect, but it made Sandy see him as a different person. The sort of person Ronald might have become if he’d stayed on at the university for that last year and got his degree. Someone who worked in a museum or a library. When they’d talked about careers at primary school Ronald, to the astonishment of the rest of the class, had announced that he wanted to be an archivist. Where had that come from? Not from Jackie and Andrew.

Ronald continued: ‘There were times when I was reckless with a gun, but not last night. Last night I knew where I was and what I was doing. But it must have been me. No one else was out there last night. Am I going mad, Sandy? Help me here. What can I do?’

‘We can get you away from the Pier House for a start,’ Sandy said. ‘It’ll do no good for people to see you in here so soon after what happened. Finish your pint and I’ll take you back.’

Ronald looked at the full glass, pushed it away from him so the beer slopped on to the table. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be drinking at all. I’ll give it up. It won’t bring Mima back but I’ll not do that to anyone else. I’ve got the bairn to think about now. And it’ll make Anna happy. Maybe. You have it Sandy.’

But suddenly Sandy couldn’t face the beer either. They walked out of the bar leaving the glasses untouched on the table.

They stood together at the cars. The mist was still so low that they couldn’t see much beyond the harbour wall. The fishing boats with their huge winches and aerials turned into the silhouettes of sea monsters with spiny backs and serrated jaws.

‘What’s Anna up to?’ Sandy asked.

‘She’s at home. The midwife was going to visit. I’d only be in the way.’ Sandy was surprised by the bitterness in Ronald’s voice and wondered what it must be like to live with a woman who made you feel that way. His mother was desperate for him to marry someone with brains and an education but that was the last thing Sandy wanted.

Ronald continued. ‘I wish I could be at work myself. Usually I hate it, but just now it would be good to have a few weeks in the Atlantic after the white fish.’

Sandy couldn’t understand that either – working at something you hated, even if the money was so good. He supposed there’d been pressure from Ronald’s family for him to take his place in the boat. And how would they be able to afford that huge house without the money it brought in?

‘You don’t mean that, not with the baby just home.’ Though Sandy thought babies brought out the worst in women. All the female relatives would be crowding into the bungalow, cooing and gurgling, sharing stories of labour and the cowardice of men. He could understand why Ronald had taken himself off on his own with a gun the night before.

‘Will you be OK on your own?’ Something about the way Ronald was talking made Sandy picture him holding a shotgun under his chin and blowing his head off. It couldn’t happen that way, of course – Ronald’s shotgun was in Perez’s boot on the way to Lerwick – but in Shetland suicide wasn’t hard to arrange if you wanted it badly enough. There were cliffs to jump from, water to drown in.

‘Sure.’

‘Do you want to come back to Utra for a meal? You could ask Anna to come too. Mother would be delighted to see the bairn.’

‘And have Auntie Evelyn reliving what happened last night and enjoying every minute of it? No thanks.’

‘We could take a drive up to the golf course. Just for a laugh. Catch up on the old times.’

For a moment Sandy thought Ronald was tempted, but the man shook his head and got into his car. He was probably close to the limit for driving, but this wasn’t the time for a lecture. He followed his cousin as far as the turning to the Clouston bungalow and then continued on his way home.

In the yard outside his house he met his father on his way in for the midday meal. All the time Sandy was growing up Joseph Wilson had worked as a joiner for Duncan Hunter, a Shetland businessman. Joseph had put up with being treated like shite and ordered around as if he was an apprentice and not a craftsman, just for the sake of a pay packet at the end of the week. There’d been times when he had to stay out in Lerwick to get the work finished. The croft had been a kind of hobby, fitted in after the regular work was done. There’d been little time left over to spend with his sons.

A couple of years before, Joseph had given up working for Hunter and taken on the croft full-time. Sandy wasn’t sure now how he managed for money – Evelyn had never worked – but that wasn’t the sort of thing he could discuss with his parents. The new arrangement seemed to be working out fine. Evelyn liked the idea of having a husband who was his own boss and Joseph had always been happier as a farmer than a builder. Maybe they’d managed to save some money when Joseph was working for Hunter.

Recently Perez had taken up with Hunter’s ex-wife and Sandy didn’t know what to make of that. He teased Perez about having a woman in his life again and Fran seemed a fine woman, but in his opinion anyone who’d been involved with Hunter was trouble.

It was lambing time and Joseph had been up on the hill to check his ewes. Many of the islanders didn’t bother so much. Mostly the hill ewes could manage on their own, and now there was no subsidy for headage it didn’t even matter if they lost a few lambs. But Joseph was conscientious and this time of year he walked miles.

His father had heard the car on the track and waited for him outside the house. ‘Aye, aye.’ This was Joseph’s form of greeting to the whole world. Sandy thought if the Prime Minister arrived on his land he’d say the same thing. He stood at the kitchen door watching as Sandy crossed the yard. He was wearing a blue boiler suit splashed with creosote.

Sandy couldn’t think what to say. He wished he had Perez’s gift with words. Now phrases floated around in his head and all he could come up with was ‘We’ll miss her. I’m sorry.’ He touched his father’s shoulder, which was as close as they got to physical contact. He knew Joseph had adored Mima. Once Sandy had heard his mother say to his big brother Michael, exasperated because of something Mima had done, ‘She’s a poisonous old witch. I’m sure she’s put a spell on your father.’ And sometimes that was how it seemed. Joseph would drop everything to fix a slate on her roof or hoe her vegetable patch.

A brief moment of pain crossed his father’s face, then he made an attempt at a smile. ‘Aye well, maybe that’s the way she would have chosen to go. She never minded a bit of drama. It would have been quick. She’d never have been able to stand illness, hospital.’ He paused. ‘I thought she had a good few years yet in her though.’

That was his father’s way. Things he couldn’t change he made the best of. He said there was no point in taking on the world. He’d never win. Besides, he had Evelyn to do that for him. All Joseph needed to keep him happy was football on the television and a few beers in the evening. He’d worked all over Shetland for Duncan Hunter. Now he’d be quite content if he never left Whalsay again. Evelyn had always been ambitious on his behalf, with her plans for the house, the croft and her sons. Sometimes Sandy thought she might be happier if she moved away, to Edinburgh maybe, to be close to Michael and his family, that Whalsay was just too small for her.

Inside the house she seemed content enough now. Perhaps like Mima she enjoyed a bit of drama, needed it to make her feel useful. She was sitting in the old chair, feeding the lamb from a bottle. Before she realized they were there, she was talking to it in nonsense language as if it was a baby. When she saw them she put it back in the box, ran her hands under the tap and stood at the Rayburn to stir a pan of soup. ‘Reestit mutton,’ she said. ‘I had some in the freezer and I know you like it. I was thinking of Mima while I was heating it through. It was her favourite too.’ Joseph went to wash at the sink. She came up behind him, turned him to face her and pecked his cheek. Sandy was still taking his shoes off. ‘Are you ready for some lunch too, son? Has that nice inspector of yours gone?’