Red Bones - Ann Cleeves [133]
‘But Per was a brave and honest man. Mima was a wild woman even then, and she’d been flirting with the good-looking stranger, who was kind to her, kinder than her husband would ever be. Jerry Wilson found them in bed together, lost his temper and killed the man. And disposed of the body with the help of his friend, who just happened to be a Clouston. Old Andy Clouston, your grandfather. News of the man’s disappearance got out, as it always will in a place like Whalsay, so they put around stories of their own: one of the tales, passed down to Cedric, was that Per had been a traitor.’ Perez paused. He wished he’d thought to bring a bottle of water into the interview room. His throat was dry and he felt light-headed through lack of sleep. He looked up at Ronald, who must have been exhausted too. He could have had no real rest since he started killing.
Perez continued. ‘They’d buried the Norwegian at Setter, in that bit of land where nothing much grew and had only ever been seen as rough grazing. Mima never knew that. She wasn’t even sure the Norwegian was dead. Neither did she know about the money, though I think Jerry held out the promise of wealth in the future. ‘One day we’ll all be rich. Then you’ll have a fine house and fine clothes and you’ll travel the world.’ The plan must have been that when the war was over and the Norwegian was forgotten they’d begin to spend it. But Jerry never got to see his share. He was drowned.’ Perez looked up, forced Ronald to meet his eye. ‘Did Andrew describe how that happened? He was only ten but he was there and he saw it all.’
At last Ronald spoke. ‘They were out in a small boat. There was a freak storm and Jerry was washed overboard. My grandfather had to choose between saving his friend or his son.’ The words came out like a lesson learned at school.
Perez leaned across the table, so his face was close to Ronald’s. ‘But really,’ he said. ‘What really happened?’
Ronald could no longer pretend not to care. ‘They were fighting over the money. Jerry Wilson started it. My grandfather pushed out at him and he fell. My father saw Jerry drown. He was ten years old. He watched him sinking under the waves. But when he started to cry, my grandfather told him not to be a baby. “It was him or us, Andrew. Do you understand that? You’re not to tell a soul. Do you want to see me locked up for murder?”’
‘And suddenly the Cloustons were wealthy,’ Perez said. ‘What was it? A trip to Bergen to buy a new boat? Then another that was a bit bigger. But your grandfather was clever. Everything invested, nothing too sudden or too showy. There were rumours about where the money had come from, but the island put it down to luck and thrift. And the great work he’d done during the war for the navy with the Bus. Then Andrew inherited and perhaps he managed to persuade himself that the family good fortune all came about through hard work. He was better than Joseph Wilson, who went off labouring for Duncan Hunter and spent his weekends scratching a living on the croft. He bought Cassandra and you were set up for life. Until two young women started digging in the ground . . .’
‘Mima thought it was her Norwegian lover that they’d dug up,’ Ronald said. ‘She thought it was his skull that they’d found.’
And perhaps one of the bones did belong to him, Perez thought. The fourth fragment that didn’t match the others. He rested his head on his hand. ‘Then she remembered the stories Jerry had told her about his hoard of foreign cash and perhaps she went back over the years and thought of the big new boat, one of Cassandra’s predecessors, that the Cloustons had bought in the fifties. Norwegian built. Perhaps she just had questions. And she wanted money too, not for herself, but for Joseph.