Part 7 (2/2)

The small bedroom was at the back of the cottage. It had a view of the yard and the dustbin, then to the river and the bigger houses beyond, their trees and gardens. It was set up like an office with a desk and PC, a filing cabinet and bookcase. On the wall was a cork pin-board. It had notes about rehearsals, things-to-do lists, sc.r.a.ps of reviews cut from small regional newspapers, a few faded photos which looked as if they'd travelled with him.

One was of a youngish man. She thought it must be of Jeremy, though it was hard to tell. The man in the photograph had hair and a beard. He was wearing a jersey and jeans. She couldn't imagine Jeremy looking so casual. But the features were the same, the long straight nose, the fine cheekbones. He was sitting on an upturned boat on a beach. The second photograph was of an older man, wearing navy overalls. He had crinkly grey hair and he was beaming into the camera. He stood between a small boy and a pretty young woman with a serious face. Then the same woman with a man a little older, who stood with his arm around her shoulder.

On the way downstairs, Martha was shocked by the sound of the phone ringing. She found it on the living-room wall, picked it up before the answerphone cut in.

'h.e.l.lo. Jeremy Booth's phone.'

There was a silence.

'h.e.l.lo?'

'Is Jeremy there?' A young woman's voice.

'No, I'm sorry, he's away at the moment.'

The phone went dead.

Chapter Fourteen.

When Jimmy Perez woke the next morning it was still to thick fog. His house was in Lerwick, close to the pier. It backed on to the sea and the outside walls were green to the high-tide mark. The fog made the light different. There was no reflection from the water; it was like waking in winter. His first thought was of Fran and the second was of the investigation.

He'd wanted to visit Fran the night before, but it had been late by the time he'd finished work. He'd phoned to explain, had been too eager in his apologies, he realized now, had a.s.sumed too much. Perhaps she'd had no expectations of a visit. She was from the south, sophisticated. There, they would do things differently. He looked at the clock by the bed. Seven: she would be awake now. Her daughter was an early riser. Fran had laughed about that, said she had fond memories of life before motherhood, long lie-ins with the Sunday papers, coffee and croissants which left crumbs in the bed. The memories of his youth had been very different. His parents had always found work for him on the Fair Isle croft. He thought it would be good to lie in with Fran on the Sunday mornings when Ca.s.sie was with her father. He would like to take her breakfast in bed.

He put the kettle on for coffee and went into the shower. Back in the kitchen, which was as narrow as a s.h.i.+p's galley, he switched on the radio. A blast of music from SIBC, then a five-minute news slot and the first report of the stranger's death.

'A tourist was found dead in suspicious circ.u.mstances yesterday in Biddista. The police are anxious to identify him.' Then a brief description and a request that anyone who might recognize the dead man should phone the incident room.

It struck him that the tone would be very different if the dead man were a Shetlander. The fact that he was described immediately as a tourist took any sense of panic from the news. It was as if the reporter was describing an incident that had occurred elsewhere. A visitor's death was almost a source of entertainment.

While he made coffee and stuck two slices of bread into the toaster he listened for the weather forecast. The fog should clear around midday. Perhaps Taylor and his team from Inverness would get in after all today on the plane. Taylor would be pleased. Thirteen hours on the ferry would be purgatory to him. He would be like a tiger caged for transport. Perez imagined him, lying straight and stiff on the bunk in the dark cabin, trying to relax and to sleep. When they'd worked together previously he'd thought Taylor the most restless man he'd ever met.

As he left home, he saw that the cruise s.h.i.+p was still moored at the dock. Usually the huge liners spent very little time in Lerwick. The pa.s.sengers disembarked, caught the complimentary bus to the town centre, had a trip round the tourist and information centre, the Shetland Times bookshop and the gift shops, then went back to the luxury of the s.h.i.+p. Sometimes he would b.u.mp into a group of them in Commercial Street. Most were from the United States. They stared around them at the tiny shops, the pa.s.sing people. He felt like an animal in a zoo.

In his office he phoned the harbourmaster. When was the Island Belle due to sail? Could Patrick arrange a visit for him before she left?

'You'll have to be quick. She's scheduled to leave on the midday tide.'

'I'll go now,' Perez said. 'As soon as you can fix it.'

He drove down to Morrison's Dock, parked facing the water and was distracted for a moment by a seal lifting its soft face out of the water. When he was a boy he'd used the Fair Isle seals for target practice with his father's shotgun until his mother had found out.

'What harm did they ever do to you?'

'William says they take fish and that's why the catch is so poor now.' William was an older lad, at that time the fount of all wisdom and knowledge.

'Nonsense. The catch is so poor because we've been over-fis.h.i.+ng the North Sea for years.' His mother, who had been a member of Greenpeace when she was a student, still had theories about the environment that his father found dangerous and extreme.

To be honest, Jimmy had been glad of an excuse not to shoot the seals any more. He'd hated the slick of blood which floated on the water when he'd hit the target. Sometimes he'd tried to miss, but William's ridicule had been hard to face too.

Patrick must have warned the cruise s.h.i.+p that he was coming because it seemed they were expecting him. He was shown at once into the purser's office. After The Good Shepherd, the mail boat which ran from Grutness to Fair Isle, the NorthLink ferries had seemed enormous. But this was monstrous, a towering white skysc.r.a.per of a s.h.i.+p, taller than any of the buildings in Lerwick. The purser was a lowland Scot. It seemed Shetland wasn't his favourite stop on the tour.

'You'll have heard that a tourist was killed yesterday in Biddista?' Perez asked him.

'No.' Implying, Why would I care?

'Have any of your pa.s.sengers explored the island that far west?'

'Look, inspector, we don't usually spend this long in Lerwick. It's a bit of a dead loss. They come expecting something scenic and it's not exactly pretty, is it? Grey little houses. We do the seabird tour and the silverworks then everyone heaves a sigh of relief and we're off to Orkney. St Magnus' Cathedral now that is a building worth taking a photo of. And the Highland Park distillery.' The thought of malt whisky seemed to cheer him immediately.

Perez had an urge to defend Shetland, to say it had a beauty of its own, that there were visitors who loved the low horizons and big skies, the huge bare hills, but he could tell that the purser would never be a convert. 'Why are you here so long this trip?'

'A problem with one of the engines. It's fixed now, thank the Lord, and we can be on our way.'

'You're not missing any of your pa.s.sengers then?'

'No one's reported one missing. Have you any evidence to suggest your dead man is one of ours?'

'There was nothing to identify him at all.'

The purser seemed relieved. He stood up.

'They could leave the s.h.i.+p if they wanted to?' Perez said. 'I mean you don't lock them in?'

'Of course not. But most of our pa.s.sengers are elderly. They prefer to stick to the organized trips.' He sat down again. 'Look, if they wanted adventure they wouldn't choose a cruise with a bunch of geriatrics.'

'Where did you take your pa.s.sengers the day before yesterday?'

'They had a free morning to look round the town and in the afternoon we took them on a bus trip, down to the RSPB reserve at Sumburgh Head for puffins. Tea in Scalloway.'

'I'm surprised the exhibition at the Herring House wasn't on the schedule. Bella Sinclair's a big name. I'd have thought some of your customers would have enjoyed meeting the artist.'

'A couple of them mentioned it. When we had to stay the extra night I considered fixing up transport for them to go, but in the end it was cancelled, wasn't it?' He gave the impression he was pleased he'd avoided the bother.

'Who told you it was cancelled?'

'n.o.body told me. Not the people organizing the exhibition, at least. But there was a guy handing out flyers at the gangplank when they went down for the trip into town.'

'Did you see him?' Perez demanded.

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