A book in the Shetland series, 2016

1 The Call for Help

Jimmy Perez stood at the gate. There was a solid house at the end of the path, with a big garden and trees behind it. This would be a good place for kids to grow up, he thought. It was just getting dark and there was a light on in the kitchen. He could see the table was laid for supper with a pretty cloth and matching napkins. It all looked very perfect. His ex-wife Sarah had always liked things to be perfect. He felt a stab of envy. His ex-wife had a lovely house, money and a family. The love of his life had recently died, and the child he was raising wasn’t his.

But he had travelled all the way from Shetland to the Scottish Borders because Sarah had said that she needed his help. It was too late to turn back now. Perez opened the gate and walked up the path. Sarah must have been looking out for him because the door opened before he knocked. She looked older than he’d expected. Stressed. Not so perfect after all.

‘Come in. We can talk. Tom’s still at work.’ Tom was her husband now, a doctor.

Perez had only met him once and found him nice enough. A bit boring. Tom had a famous brother who was an MP, so perhaps the brother was the exciting one in the family. Then Perez remembered that he’d always found Sarah a bit boring too, so maybe his ex-wife and Tom were well matched.

‘What is this about?’ he said. ‘Why all the drama?’ They were standing in the hall. Close enough for him to smell Sarah’s hair; the shampoo was the same she had always used.

‘A woman in the village died. They’re blaming Tom.’

‘The police are blaming him? Or the medical authorities?’

‘No!’ She seemed cross that he hadn’t understood. ‘People in the village. There’s gossip. Everywhere we go people are talking about it. Even people we thought were our friends.’

Perez wasn’t sure what to say. It seemed he had been dragged away from his home just because Sarah’s friends were talking behind her back. He wanted to leave this perfect house and drive straight back to Aberdeen and the ferry to the Shetland Islands. To his job as a police inspector, to his stepdaughter Cassie and their untidy house by the water.

‘I don’t see how I can help,’ he said.

‘If you can find out what really happened we might be left in peace,’ Sarah said. He could see she was almost crying. ‘It’s not just me and Tom. It’s getting to the children too. One of the kids in their school asked if their dad was a killer.’

‘Are the police involved at all?’ he asked.

‘They were called but they decided it was suicide. Or a terrible accident. The case is closed.’

‘So just give it time,’ he said. ‘It’ll blow over. People will soon find something else to talk about.’ He was already planning his trip home.

‘I can’t stand it. Please, Jimmy.’

A door swung open and he saw that two children had cleared a space at the kitchen table. There was a girl who looked like Sarah and had her head stuck in a book. A boy was playing with a huge box of Lego.

‘Two days,’ he said. ‘I can’t give you more time than that.’ He paused. ‘Tell me about the woman who died.’ Jimmy Perez could never turn down a plea for help. It was almost an illness with him.

Sarah led him through to a living room at the back of the house, where two sofas sat close to the fire. Again, everything was tasteful and tidy. She drew the curtains. ‘The dead woman was called Anna Blackwell and she was a teacher at the village school. In her twenties. A single mum. In a place like this, that caused gossip enough.’

‘How did she die?’

‘An overdose. Antidepressants.’

‘And Tom was her doctor? He prescribed the medicine?’

Sarah nodded.

‘It’s a long jump from that to saying he was a killer. Was anything else going on?’

The room was quiet. Outside in the dark an owl hooted in the trees behind the house.

‘They’re saying he was having an affair with her.’ She spoke quickly, as if she couldn’t bear to have the words in her mouth. As if she wanted to spit them out.

‘And what does Tom say?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said. ‘He won’t talk about it.’

‘But you have asked him?’

‘How can I?’ Her voice was shrill. ‘It would be like accusing him of murder.’

There was another moment of silence. ‘Does Tom know that you’ve asked me to help?’

‘No! He’s a proud man. He’d hate to think I’d asked you to sort it out. He’d see it as meddling.’

‘I see it as meddling,’ Perez said. ‘And I’m not sure that I can sort it out.’

But Sarah seemed not to hear. ‘Anna lived in one of the ex-council houses at the edge of the village. I expect her neighbours will tell you all about her. Perhaps there was another man. Or you can find out why she might have wanted to kill herself. Even if nobody else is charged with her murder, that might be enough to stop people thinking it was Tom. He won’t talk about it but it’s making him ill. He doesn’t sleep. And he’s grown so thin.’

There was another minute of silence, then Perez stood up. ‘I’d better make a start then.’

‘Yes, yes. You should go before Tom comes home.’ It was almost as if she was scared of her husband.

She opened the door to let Jimmy out. He stood for a moment on the path, looking in at the kitchen and the well-behaved children at the table. Sarah was stirring something in a pan on the stove. It all looked too good to be true.

2 The Landlady

Inspector Jimmy Perez booked into the Stonebridge Hotel on the main street of the village. It had a public bar and a dining room already serving high tea. In the lobby he could smell chips and smoked haddock. He’d thought that his ex-wife might have asked him to stay in her home. He hadn’t realised that his work was to be kept secret from her husband.

In his room he phoned Robert Anderson, a local cop. They’d worked together in Aberdeen before Jimmy had gone home to Shetland.

‘What brings you all the way down here, Jimmy?’

‘Well, we’re all Police Scotland now.’

Robert gave a little laugh. ‘So we are, but I wouldn’t come meddling in Shetland.’

‘The Anna Blackwell case?’ Jimmy said. ‘What did you make of it?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Sarah King is my ex-wife. She’s finding it tough. Apparently her family is being targeted by gossips.’

There was a pause. ‘Ah well,’ Robert said at last, ‘I’m guessing Anna’s little girl is finding it tough too. It seems there are no relatives to take her so she’s gone into care.’

Jimmy thought about this. Anna had been a teacher. She must have loved kids. Would she kill herself knowing there was nobody to look after her daughter? ‘Have you dropped the case?’ he asked.

‘Aye, there’s no sign of murder. No break-in at the house. And it wouldn’t be easy to force-feed a healthy woman a load of pills. Anna’s daughter was at a sleepover at a friend’s house, so there’s no witness to what happened. It seems that Anna had drunk the best part of a bottle of wine. She didn’t leave a suicide note but suicide’s the way the lawyer in charge of the case, the Fiscal, is thinking. We think there’ll be an open verdict to allow that it might have been an accident. It’ll be kinder for the kid when she’s older.’

‘Do you think Anna was having an affair with the doctor, Tom King?’

‘Is that what the gossips in Stonebridge are saying?’ Robert sounded surprised.

‘According to Sarah.’

‘I’d heard that Sarah and Anna had fallen out about something that happened at the school, but there was no mention of the husband.’ Robert made the row sound petty, as if the women were kids who’d fallen out in the playground.

‘So you don’t mind me poking around?’ Jimmy asked. ‘I’ve said I’ll stay for two days. I can’t give it longer than that.’

There was a long pause at the end of the phone. ‘You’ll do what you want anyway, won’t you, Jimmy? You’ve always been a stubborn bastard. Just let me know if you find anything.’

The next day Jimmy Perez woke early. The first snow of winter had fallen. A light coating of white that made the village, with its backdrop of trees, look like a Christmas card.

Breakfast was fried and tasty. He thought of Cassie, who was only six but had strong views on healthy eating. Cassie was his stepdaughter and the love of his life now that her mother was dead.

The landlady, who told him her name was Elspeth, was nosy. His food came with a string of questions. She was like a hound sniffing for information.

‘Are you here for the fishing?’ she asked. Then, without waiting for a reply, she went on. ‘Of course it’s not really the weather for fishing. So maybe you’re a walker? We get folk staying who have walked Hadrian’s Wall and then come north of the border to see what we have to offer.’

‘I used to know Anna Blackwell,’ Jimmy said. He still hated lying after years as a cop, but it stopped the woman asking her questions. ‘The woman who died. I wanted to see where she lived.’

‘Poor lassie. What a tragedy!’ Elspeth sat at the empty seat at his table and poured herself a cup of tea from his pot. Then she went on to tell him everything she knew about the dead teacher.

‘She looked so young when she turned up in Stonebridge,’ Elspeth said. ‘Hardly more than a child herself. Not old enough to have a child of her own. Of course there was talk. But Maggie the head teacher said she was good at her job, and Freda, who used to teach the little ones, had got so fat that she could hardly get out of her chair. So it was time for someone new!’

Elspeth paused for breath. ‘Some parents didn’t take to Anna. They thought she let the children get away with murder. But the kids in the first class were only wee and they shouldn’t be told to shut up all day. My granddaughter loved her to bits.’

‘Oh?’

That was all it took to set Elspeth off again. ‘Mrs High-and-Mighty Sarah King tried to get Anna sacked. Just because she’s the doctor’s wife she thinks she runs this place. She went to Maggie with a list of parents’ names and told her they all thought Anna wasn’t a fit person to look after the kids.’ The woman looked sad. ‘It was horrid. A kind of witch-hunt. No wonder the poor lassie got ill with stress. She came to this village full of joy and ended up like a hermit locked in her house all day. They had to get in a supply teacher to take her class for a while. Then Freda took the job on again and she’s back there now.’

Jimmy Perez could see why Sarah hadn’t told him about her campaign to get Anna sacked. It had been a nasty thing to do and Sarah must be feeling guilty. No wonder she was coming under fire from the gossips in the village. But he could understand too why everyone assumed Anna had committed suicide.

‘How old was Anna’s little girl?’ He took a last bite of toast.

‘Four. Anna must still have been a teenager when she fell pregnant. The lassie’s name is Lucy. She was in Anna’s class at the school. So she’s lost her mother and her teacher all at once.’

‘What’s happened to her now?’ Jimmy already knew the answer but he wanted to hear it from Elspeth.

‘They’ve taken her into care. They couldn’t trace her family, you see.’ Elspeth looked up at Perez. ‘If you were Anna’s friend you might know someone who could love her? Who could take her in?’

Jimmy shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know her that well.’

3 The Neighbour

Outside there was a nip of frost in the air. The school was in the middle of the village just off the main street. Jimmy could hear the children’s voices as soon as he left the hotel, and he saw the children when he crossed the road. They were wrapped in coats and scarves and had made a slide in the ice. Perez thought he could see Sarah’s son playing with the other boys.

An older woman waddled into the yard and rang a hand bell to mark the start of the school day. Perez thought this might be Freda, the woman who’d lost her job to Anna Blackwell and was now back. For a while, at least. He would talk to the head teacher later, when school was over. It would be good to hear what she’d made of Anna.

He walked round the village making a map of the place in his head. He found the doctors’ surgery in a modern building close to the school. Three names were on the door. Thomas King’s was one of them.

The small estate where Anna had lived was right at the edge of the village, not far from Tom and Sarah’s house. Ten semi-detached homes formed a horseshoe round a patch of frosty grass. There were some swings and a slide. Anna had lived in number four. It had a neat garden, but Perez couldn’t see inside because the curtains were closed. He was standing there, wondering if there was a way to get inside, when an elderly man appeared at the front door of the next house.

‘Can I help you?’ He was small and wiry, with teeth that were too big for his mouth.

‘I just came to see where Anna lived,’ Jimmy said.

‘Did you know her?’

‘Not exactly. I’ve been asked to find out why she died.’

‘Are you a cop?’

‘Yes,’ Jimmy said. Because after all, that was the truth.

‘Poor young thing. The women in this village are all bitches. They go to church on a Sunday, but that didn’t stop them making the lass’s life a misery with their gossip and their lies.’

‘You don’t happen to have a key?’ Perez nodded towards the small, tidy house.

‘Aye. I was the one who found her body.’

‘Maybe you could tell me how that happened,’ Perez said.

‘I told the other police.’ For the first time the old man seemed suspicious about Jimmy’s role in the case.

‘I know. I’m just checking that nothing’s been missed.’

They sat in the neighbour’s tiny living room in front of an open fire. The man offered tea but Perez shook his head.

‘Did she own the house?’ Perez asked.

The man shook his head. ‘She rented it. One of the doctors bought it when it came on the market a few years ago. A kind of investment, I guess. A young couple had it for a few years and then Anna moved in with her kid.’

‘What was the name of the doctor?’ Perez asked, but he thought he already knew.

‘Tom King.’ Another thing Sarah had failed to tell him: that her husband had been Anna Blackwell’s landlord.

‘I’ve lived here for years,’ the man said. ‘I love the place. But the way they treated Anna made me feel sick. I’m not sure I can stay.’

‘How did you find her body?’

‘Anna’s daughter Lucy had been at a friend’s for the night, at a farm just up the hill. When the friend’s mother, Gail Kerr, dropped her home they couldn’t get Anna to open the door. I told them to wait here and I let myself in. Anna had given me a key when she first moved in. For emergencies, she said. Well, that was an emergency.’ He stared into the fire.

‘Where was Anna?’

‘Where the police found her, of course. I called them from the house. There should be a record of that.’ He looked at Perez. ‘You are a cop?’

‘Yes.’ Perez took out his ID card and the man nodded.

‘She was sitting in the living room,’ he said. ‘Slumped over the table next to an empty wine bottle and a glass.’

‘Just one glass?’

‘Aye.’

‘What about the pills? Was there a medicine bottle?’

‘Not that I saw. But I just wanted to call 999 and see if we could save her.’

‘Of course.’ Perez got to his feet. ‘Can you let me have that key?’

The man remained where he was for a moment. ‘I had to come back here and make up a story for the lassie, Anna’s little girl. I told her that her mother was ill. I didn’t have the heart to say that she was already dead.’

Then he went to get the key.

4 The House

Anna’s house was sad. Perez could see the story of her growing depression in it. She must have painted the kitchen when she first arrived, he thought – it was bright yellow. Tom might be the landlord, but he was boring and he wouldn’t have chosen anything so colourful.

As Jimmy walked around, he noticed the floors were sticky and there was dust on the bookshelves. It looked as if Anna had given up on the place. Only a bunch of flowers on the living-room windowsill showed any sign of hope. They were drooping and brown, but they would have been alive on the night that she’d died.

Nobody had been in to clean up since her death. The wine bottle had gone and the glass was on the kitchen counter. The police must have put it with the other mucky pots that stood there waiting to be washed up. Perez could imagine the woman sitting here, alone. He could believe that she’d killed herself. He decided he’d tell Sarah to take no notice of the gossips. This was not a murder after all.

In the living room there was a file on the table where Anna had been sitting when she died. Perez pulled on gloves and looked inside. There were lesson plans and notes about each of the children in her class written in neat, round handwriting. Even if she’d been ill, Anna had cared a lot about her job.

He walked upstairs. The child’s bedroom had been emptied of most of her clothes. A doll lay on the bed. Perez hoped that a loved soft toy had been taken into care with her.

He looked into Anna’s room, then went inside and opened the curtains and the window to let in some clean, cold air. The room was untidy. There was a pile of clothes on a chair and make-up on the pine dressing table. Along with the lipstick and perfume, Perez spotted an empty plastic bottle which had once contained Anna’s pills.

He tried to picture what might have happened on the night of her death. She’d been drinking. Had she roused herself to walk upstairs? Had it been a sudden impulse to take the pills in the bedroom? Why would she then go back to her chair downstairs? It seemed a little odd.

If Anna had planned to die, wouldn’t she lie on the bed? A final sleep. When Fran, the love of his life, had died he’d thought of killing himself, and had imagined how good it would be to go to sleep and never wake up. But he’d had their daughter Cassie to look after.

And Anna had had Lucy, he thought, so perhaps it wasn’t suicide after all. He kept changing his mind about what might have happened here. By the bed there was a photo of a woman and a girl. Anna and Lucy. They both had dark curly hair and dark eyes. Both of them were laughing.

Perez looked at the dressing table again. Along with the clutter of make-up there was a scrap of paper. He’d missed it before because his attention had been caught by the pill bottle. The police must have been so certain Anna had killed herself that they hadn’t done a proper search of the house. Or perhaps the paper had meant nothing to them.

It was a note written in pencil. It looked as if it had been written in a hurry.

Got your message. Friday 10th will be fine. Wine will be in the fridge! See you then. A x

It was in the same handwriting as he’d seen in the file downstairs. The 10th was the day before Anna’s body had been found. The day she was supposed to have killed herself. Perez read the note again. These didn’t sound like the words of a depressed woman. They were almost hopeful, looking forward. Like the flowers in the pretty vase in the living room.

But if Anna had written the note to confirm a meeting, what was it still doing in her bedroom? Had she never sent it? And if someone had been in this house drinking wine with Anna on that evening, why had they never come forward to the police?

He went back to the kitchen and looked in the cupboards. Anna had only brought the basics with her. This could be a student house. There were a few mismatched bowls and plates, some cutlery in a tray. Most of her stuff was still dirty on the counter. Perez was tempted to wash it up. In the cupboard there was one clean glass. It still had a white thread of cotton inside from the tea towel, so it had been dried quite recently.

He stood looking at it and pictured again the evening of Anna’s death. Perhaps there had been a visitor, someone who’d had a glass of wine with Anna? Someone who had taken the trouble to wash up the glass and put it away before leaving the house. And that definitely suggested not suicide – but murder.

5 The Village

Anna’s elderly neighbour must have been looking out for Jimmy Perez leaving her house, because he came to his door and shouted across.

‘Everything all right?’

Perhaps everyone in this village was nosy.

‘Yes,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’m surprised the landlord’s not been in to clear the place for the next tenant.’

‘Maybe the doctor and his wife thought it wouldn’t look good if they were too hasty. Perhaps they’re showing the lass a bit of respect at last, even if it’s too late.’

‘Maybe.’ Perez paused. ‘The local police must have asked if you were at home the evening that Anna died?’

‘I’m always at home,’ the man said. ‘Once it gets dark, at least.’

‘You didn’t happen to notice if Anna had a visitor?’ Perez leaned on the little wall that separated the man’s garden from the pavement.

‘The police asked me that too.’

‘And what did you tell them?’ Perez tried to keep his patience.

‘That I didn’t see anyone.’

Perez sensed that the man had more to say. ‘But perhaps you heard a car?’

‘Not a car. I didn’t tell the other policemen because I wasn’t sure and they were in such a rush, but I thought I heard voices through the joining wall. It could have been the television, though Anna didn’t watch much TV. Music was more her thing.’

‘The voices must have been loud for you to have heard them through the wall,’ Perez said.

‘Nah, these houses were put up in a rush just after the war. No sound-proofing at all.’

‘So you could hear what was said?’ Perez found that he was holding his breath, waiting for an answer.

‘Nah, nothing like that. Just a murmur of voices. Nobody was shouting, and like I said, it could just have been the telly.’ The old man stamped his feet to show that he was feeling the cold and disappeared inside.

It was still only mid-morning. It must be playtime at the school, Perez thought, because he could hear the children’s voices again. He didn’t want to go back to the hotel and to Elspeth’s questions, but he felt a need for strong coffee and a chance to think in peace.

On the main street there was a cafe. It must be warm inside because the windows were steamed up and from the pavement he couldn’t see anything at all. He pushed open the door and walked into a small room almost full of women. They had taken over two of the tables and baby buggies were crammed into any spare space. Perez took the one remaining table by the window. The women seemed not to notice him and carried on with their gossip.

A young waitress came to take his order. Perez wiped a patch in the mist on the window so he could see into the street, but it soon steamed up again. He tried to order his thoughts about the Anna Blackwell case but the young mothers’ voices intruded.

‘I feel dreadful,’ one of the women said. ‘I didn’t want to sign that petition to get rid of Miss Blackwell in the first place, but Sarah is chair of governors and she’s always in the school. I thought her reasons for thinking Anna was no good must be real.’

There was a moment of silence. ‘Well, we didn’t know then that Tom and Anna were such…’ There was another pause… ‘friends.’

‘You can see why Sarah would have wanted her out of the village.’

Perez had always thought there was a lot of gossip in Shetland, but he had rarely heard anything there that was quite as toxic as this. He could understand for the first time why Sarah was so upset that she had called for his help. It must be a nightmare to face this malice wherever she went.

The talking continued. ‘Do we know for certain that Tom and Anna were lovers? Gail, you knew Anna better than anyone. Lucy stayed at your house the night it all happened.’

So this was Gail Kerr, the woman from the farm who’d had Anna’s daughter for the sleepover. She was stocky, a bit older than the others, and she didn’t seem to have a baby with her. She was wearing an anorak over a scruffy sweater. The others seemed to have made more of an effort with their appearances. Some were rather glamorous, shiny and made-up. They could have been in a fancy restaurant instead of a scruffy cafe.

‘Well, my brother Sandy saw them walking together through the woods,’ said Gail, resting her elbows on the table. ‘He said they were so wrapped up in each other that a bomb could have dropped and they wouldn’t have noticed.’

The waitress brought Jimmy’s coffee. It was hardly warm and didn’t taste of anything.

‘But you don’t really think he killed her?’ the first woman said. ‘Not Tom! He’s a doctor. A kind man. He looked after my mother when she had cancer and he couldn’t have been more caring.’

‘It’s just too much of a coincidence.’ It was Gail again. ‘Something weird was going on there. If the Kings didn’t kill her, they drove her to suicide.’

Jimmy Perez couldn’t stand any more of their unkindness. He drank his coffee in one go, paid the bill and went outside.

Next to the cafe an estate agents’ office was advertising houses to let. On impulse Perez went inside. A middle-aged woman in a suit looked up from her computer screen.

He showed his ID. ‘Do you manage a property owned by Doctor King?’

‘The house in Woodburn Close? Yes, that’s one of ours.’

‘I’m making inquiries about the most recent tenant,’ he said. ‘Anna Blackwell.’

The estate agent turned round in her chair to give him her full attention. ‘She was the woman who died.’

‘That’s right,’ Perez said. ‘I assume she had to provide a deposit before she moved in? Someone had to vouch for her?’

‘No…’ The woman paused. ‘It was a more informal arrangement.’

‘In what way informal?’

‘I understood that she was a friend of Doctor King’s. He said there was no need for her to pay in advance. He could vouch for her.’

Perez considered this. How had Tom King met the young teacher before she moved to Stonebridge? A thought leapt into his head. Was it possible, even, that he was the father of her child?

‘Do you have a previous address for Miss Blackwell?’

The woman turned back to the keyboard. ‘Yes, we do have that, I think, because we had to send out a contract before she moved in.’ She hit a button and a printer began to whir. She handed a sheet of paper to Perez.

The address was in Berwick, just south of the border, in England.

‘I believe that was her parents’ address,’ the estate agent said. ‘Miss Blackwell had been at university in Edinburgh and had just finished her degree. She suggested the Berwick address would be the best one to use.’

Perez wondered why Anna’s parents hadn’t come forward to take care of their granddaughter, Lucy, after her mother’s death. He’d assumed that there was no close family. It seemed very sad that the grandparents had allowed the little girl to be sent off to be cared for by strangers. Perhaps Anna’s parents were old-fashioned and didn’t approve of a child born out of marriage.

Outside in the street, the village was very quiet – there were no children’s voices. Soon it would be lunchtime and they would be out to play again, Perez thought. Stonebridge seemed sad without them.

6 The Farm

Jimmy Perez was thinking that he’d go back to the Stonebridge Hotel for lunch when he saw a woman leaving the cafe where he’d had coffee earlier.

The woman was alone. The other yummy mummies must still be inside talking, he thought. It was Gail, the mother from the farm, and she made her way towards a battered Land Rover parked in the wide main street. He caught up with her just before she opened the Land Rover’s door.

‘Could I have a word?’

She turned round and stared at him. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m a detective. My name’s Jimmy Perez. I’m just checking some details concerning Anna Blackwell’s death.’

‘But she killed herself.’ Gail was still staring. ‘According to the local police the case has been closed.’

Something in her eyes made him ask, ‘Do you think it shouldn’t have been?’

She looked at him carefully. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I can’t stay here and chat. I’ve got to get home for a delivery of feed for my hens. Why don’t you come too and we can talk? I might even find some soup for your lunch. I’ve got to come back to Stonebridge to collect my little girl from school at three o’clock and I can give you a lift back then.’

So Perez climbed in beside her and Gail drove out of the village. It seemed like a sort of escape. He realised how trapped he’d been feeling in the village with its bitchy women and the dark woods all around it.

They took a lane that rose sharply away from the river, and as they rounded a corner there was a view of a whitewashed house at the end of a rough t...