White Nights (30 page)

The implication of the masks seemed lost on Bella. She left the photo where it was and stared at it.

‘I remember that night,’ she said. ‘It was the evening before most of them went. We held a real dinner party to mark their leaving. I made everyone dress up, set the big table in the dining room. I wanted something special and came up with the idea of the masque. How pretentious I must have seemed! I thought we were so sophisticated. We’re none of us very young there, are we? I remember it as a time
when I was young, but that’s not true at all.’

‘Where did you get the masks from?’

‘I hired them from a theatre company. The one which still turns up in Lerwick every year on the boat. I made friends with one of the actors.’

‘How long ago was it?’

Bella stared into space. ‘Fifteen years? Roddy had his sixth birthday the next day. He came here to collect his present and those of us who were left had such hangovers.’

‘Do you know who everyone is?’

Bella lifted out the picture. It was larger than most of the others, which were just snaps, and almost covered the area of the shoebox.

‘This is me. Right in the front. Of course.’ She was wearing a red silk halterneck dress. Her hair was cut very short, almost exactly the same style as she wore today. Fran was reminded of the self-portrait that had caught the attention of Jeremy Booth at the Herring House party.

‘You look lovely.’

‘I made an effort,’ she said. ‘Oh how I made an effort! I’d got it into my head that Lawrence would propose that night.’

‘Is he in the photograph?’

‘No,’ Bella said briefly. ‘I’d invited him to the dinner, but he never appeared.’

‘Isn’t this Peter Wilding?’ Fran turned the photograph round so she was looking directly at it. ‘This man standing beside you.’ He was very dark, handsome in a sulky sort of way.

‘Do you think it is? He’s put on a little weight, if
it’s him. I suppose it could be. The shape of the nose is the same.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t recognize him when he turned up to rent the house from you? He hasn’t changed that much.’

‘Don’t you think so? I certainly didn’t know him. I’ve already explained, I had no reason to want to remember that summer. Besides, there was no need to go back to the past. I had a future through Roddy.’

Fran thought that Bella had put too much on to the boy – the responsibility for all her happiness. ‘Is Jeremy Booth there?’

Bella swung the picture back. ‘It’s difficult to tell, isn’t it? I only saw him briefly at the Herring House the other night. Where is it? I wondered if this could be him.’

‘Where?’

‘Here. I thought the long face, rather narrow nose. He has more hair here, of course. It’s unfashionably long, even for the time. And he has a beard. Very much the bohemian.’

‘And you really don’t remember anything about him? Not even the name?’

‘I don’t think he can have been here for very long. Perhaps not more than a few days. That happened. People came for a while and then moved on. I spent quite a lot of my time in Glasgow, visiting lecturer at the art school. I’d get pissed at parties and invite people to stay.’

She leaned back in her chair with her eyes half closed. Fran thought she was reliving that summer in her mind.

‘I think perhaps he was the magician,’ she said. ‘He
put on a magic show for Roddy, who was completely entranced. It seemed such a kind thing to do. I rather fancy he was my actor. He told me he was in love with me.’ As if this was of no consequence at all, a common occurrence. She paused. ‘He was given to practical jokes, I remember, and not always in good taste. The flyers cancelling the party would have been just his style. A way of getting his own back. But why wait all this time? Surely he didn’t come to Shetland just to upset me.’ There was a note of satisfaction in her voice. She liked the idea that she had haunted him for years.

‘Did anything happen that time they were all here at the Manse?’ Fran asked. ‘Something that could have triggered this violence so many years later?’

‘No,’ Bella said. ‘The night that photograph was taken was an anticlimax. We dressed up and ate dinner. The next morning I was left with a hangover and a pile of dirty dishes. No drama. Nothing.’

‘Can I have the photo to show Jimmy?’

‘Why not?’

She sounded very tired, as if nothing really mattered any more.

Taylor had been at his desk since eight and was finding it impossible to concentrate. He’d been restless even as a child, could see now that he must have driven his father to distraction with his fidgeting and his demands for attention. His father had been a foreman in the docks and used to a bit of respect. Taylor hadn’t been prepared to make the effort.

Since the trip to the Wirral, he’d been thinking more about his family. He should have been in touch with them, at least let them know he was safe and well. Everyone thought Jeremy Booth had been a selfish bastard, walking out on his wife and baby. Maybe they were saying the same things about Roy Taylor.
You’d have thought he could pick up the phone and let his mother know he wasn’t dead
. This case had too many resonances with his own life. It seemed Lawrence Thomson had just walked out too. Because he was bored, or being pressured to take on the commitment of a wife and family. Perhaps he just needed the space to make his own decisions and live his own life.

Taylor left the building and went out into the street. He needed exercise and fresh air and a decent cup of coffee. Another huge cruise ship was sliding
into the mouth of the harbour, blocking out the view of Bressay, dominating the town. Taylor thought cruising was like his idea of hell. Being shut up on a boat with a load of people whose company you hadn’t chosen, having to be pleasant to them, never being able to escape. Like a family, he thought. And he thought that though he hadn’t spoken to his relatives for years he had never really escaped them either. Resentment against his father bubbled inside him, fuelling his ambition, pushing people away.

He walked down the lane into the Peerie Café. He’d come here with Perez when he was last in Shetland. They’d drunk coffee and discussed the case, united against a general assumption that the murderer had already been found. He missed the easy relationship they’d had then. He seemed to remember laughter. They’d been more like friends than rivals. Why did Perez irritate more now than he had on the earlier visit? Was it because he’d taken up with Fran Hunter? Was Taylor jealous because he had a woman? An attractive woman.

There were two middle-aged women in the queue ahead of him – English tourists in walking gear. He tried to curb his impatience as they dithered about whether it would be
terribly
wicked to have cream with their scones. He was tempted to turn round and walk out, but the smell of the coffee held him.

He’d just put in his order when the phone call came from Perez.

‘I’m in Biddista. You might want to get over here.’ There was never any urgency when the Shetlander spoke, but Taylor could sense in his voice that this was important. ‘The climbers came across something
. . .
’
The Englishwomen were back at the counter, hovering at his elbow, fussing with napkins. They were chatting and Taylor found it hard to hear what Perez was saying.

‘I’ll be on my way. You can tell me when I get there.’

He asked for the coffee to be tipped into a cardboard cup so he could take it away and felt as close to joy as he ever did now that he was grown-up. He had a function, an excuse for activity. For a few hours at least he wouldn’t be bored. In the car he played Led Zeppelin so loud that it pushed thought out of his head, and drove one-handed as he drank the coffee, which was still too hot. He reflected that the fear of boredom had driven him the whole of his life.

He went as far as he could up the track then pulled on to the grass and walked the rest of the way. Perez and the climbers were sitting at the top of the Pit o’ Biddista waiting for him. The sight of them, lying back with their faces to the sun, irritated him all over again. Did they have nothing better to do? Did Perez think a murder investigation was just a holiday from the routine and the mundane business of policing this wind-blown, godforsaken place?

‘What is it?’ He felt at a disadvantage, breathless and sweaty after the walk on to the hill. ‘Have you got Booth’s mobile?’

‘No,’ Perez said. ‘We didn’t find that.’

‘What then?’

‘A human bone.’ Perez frowned. ‘Old. Not fresh, at least. I’d need an expert opinion. I wanted to know what you thought we should do next. I didn’t feel we could continue without clearing it with you first.’

Taylor tried to keep his temper. It would be a wonderful indulgence just to let rip, to blast away at Perez for his incompetence. The Shetlander had managed the original crime scene after the body of Roddy Sinclair had been found. Why had no proper search been done immediately? Why had it taken a suggestion by Taylor to get things moving? He felt the warm glow of the self-righteous. The day was turning out well after all.

‘What are you saying has happened here?’ Keeping his voice even, reasonable. Holding the moral high ground. He was competitive even in this.

‘I think another murder,’ Perez said. ‘The cause or trigger maybe for the recent incidents. At first we thought the bone was washed in from the sea. There have been men lost here over the years. It wouldn’t be so unusual. Then we found another. Part of the shin, we think. There will probably be more.’

Taylor looked at the Shetlander. It seemed a mighty big leap in logic to deduce a murder from a couple of fragments of bone. Perez had a theory, believed he knew what had happened here. That didn’t mean he was right.

‘The body couldn’t have been washed in whole and disintegrated in the Pit, without anyone seeing it?’

‘No one would see.’ Perez nodded his agreement. ‘Folk don’t go down there very often, that’s for sure. When there were more children living here and running around the hill, that was a different matter, but not now.’

‘So that’s a possible scenario?’

‘No. The crack into the tunnel is too narrow. A
body wouldn’t be washed in there. Not even the body of a child, and this is an adult.’

‘What are you saying, Jimmy? I don’t have all day. Help me out here!’

‘I think this is the body of a victim who was killed and then thrown down the Pit. The same means of death and disposal of the body as with Roddy Sinclair.’ He squinted against the sunlight. ‘It suggests, wouldn’t you say, the same murderer?’

‘But Jeremy Booth was killed in quite a different way. Are you saying someone else strangled him? Two separate murderers?’

‘I’m not sure. I’m feeling my way.’

You think you know what happened here, Taylor thought. But you won’t commit yourself.

‘We should have done a thorough search of the crime scene when Sinclair’s body was first found.’ Taylor thought he could allow himself that. The comment was measured and moderate, but Perez would pick up on the criticism.

‘You’re right. We should.’ Perez paused. ‘What should we do now? Wait for a specialist search team from the mainland? There are no high tides forecast. We’re unlikely to lose more than has been lost already.’

Taylor tried to imagine how long that would take. Tracking down the right people and getting them here.

‘What’s the alternative?’

‘Us!’ It was the young woman. The climbers had been sitting slightly apart, obviously listening in but pretending not to. ‘We’re free for the rest of the day. Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. You can get one of your experts to talk us through it if you want.’ She had frizzy fair hair and she’d tipped back her head to
appeal to him. She wore a sleeveless vest with a fleece thrown over it, and he found it hard to keep his eyes away from her breasts. ‘You wouldn’t even know that there was anything down there if it hadn’t been for us.’

And he agreed, because he couldn’t stand the thought of more hanging about. And because if there was a team brought in from outside, they’d have their own leader and he wouldn’t be in control any more. To this couple he was the expert. They’d do what he said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

The young woman grinned at him, excited, like a little girl.

When Taylor turned back to Perez, he smiled too, complicit. It was like the time in the winter, when it had been them against the system.

Later he thought the Shetland climbers were as careful and meticulous as any professionals would have been. He and Perez stayed at the top and watched them quarter the base of the cavern in lines, sifting through the shingle and the seaweed with their fingers. They found one new bone very quickly. It was only a fragment. Perez wondered if it could be animal, but Roger seemed to think it was human. Then nothing happened for a long time. Taylor called down to them:

‘Are you OK?’

‘Apart from being starving.’

Taylor was torn. He didn’t want to miss anything but boredom had set in a long time before. ‘I’ll go and see if I can rustle up some coffee and food for them,’ he said to Perez. ‘And for us.’

‘I’ll go.’

‘No. You’re the local. You stay here.’

The Herring House was closed to visitors, but he could hear movement inside and banged on the door. There was no reply but he persisted.

‘For Christ’s sake, man. Can you not read? The gallery’s closed.’ He’d been expecting Martin Williamson, but it was Aggie, his mother. Because he’d never seen her in the Herring House before it took Taylor a moment to place her.

‘I know,’ he said.

She blushed when she saw who it was, seemed to feel some explanation for her presence there was required.

‘I don’t open the post office on a Monday afternoon,’ she said. ‘I’m helping out with a bit of spring cleaning here while the place is closed.’

‘I’m surprised Miss Sinclair is thinking about the business at a time like this.’

‘Bella didn’t ask me,’ she said. ‘Martin did. She leaves the restaurant to him. He’s out today helping Kenny Thomson with the hill sheep. It seemed a good time to get in.’ She seemed to Taylor to be very flustered. Perhaps his banging on the door had scared her. He supposed everyone in Biddista would be scared by loud noises and unexpected visitors until they found the killer.