Red Bones - Ann Cleeves [82]
She flashed him a smile. ‘Yesterday I didn’t get the chance to go to the toilet without Andrew standing at the bottom of the stairs and asking where I was. Ronald managed to calm him down a bit when he got here. He’s good with his father, more patient than I am.’
‘Perhaps you saw her later, when she was on her own.’
‘No,’ Jackie said. ‘I didn’t see her at all.’
‘But you saw the Fiscal come in this morning? I noticed you with the others.’
‘I saw the crowd gathering when I was upstairs making the bed. I went down to Setter to see what was going on. Pure nosiness. That was the first I heard the girl was dead. I couldn’t stay long. Andrew was in the house on his own.’ She looked up at him. ‘How did the lassie die?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not something I can discuss.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’ She paused. ‘They’re saying it was suicide.’
‘Really, at this point we don’t know.’
‘What must her parents be going through?’ Jackie said. ‘We ’d do anything to protect our children but we can’t save them from themselves.’ She smiled at him. ‘Do you have children, inspector?’
He shook his head automatically. But surely I do. Cassie feels like my daughter. How would I feel if she was so desperate that she jumped into a hole in the ground and slit her wrists?
Chapter Twenty-seven
Sandy was surprised when Perez was at Sumburgh Airport to meet him. He’d left his car there and he could have driven north fine by himself. After a few beers and a meal in the hotel in London he’d slept like a baby until his alarm clock had woken him and in the morning the city hadn’t seemed quite so daunting or closed in.
It helped that he had something physical to bring back to Perez in the form of Hattie’s letters and the SIM card from her mother’s phone. He’d made some notes about the conversation too, but he didn’t trust himself much with words. At least he wasn’t coming back empty-handed.
In the plane he’d looked out for the first sight of Sumburgh Head and landing there he felt relief at being back safely without having messed up in any dramatic way. Then he saw Perez waiting for him in the terminal, leaning against the wall by the car rental desk, and he felt nervous all over again.
‘What’s happened?’ His first thought was that Gwen James had been on the phone to complain about him. Sandy wasn’t sure what he might have done wrong, but that had never stopped him getting into bother. Then he worried about his family.
‘Nothing.’ Perez grinned. ‘I was just curious to hear how you’d got on. I got a lift down from Val Turner. We had a meeting in Lerwick. She’s flying south for a day for a conference.’
‘What did you have to talk to her about?’
‘I wanted to ask her about these bones the girls have been digging up at Setter. Everyone’s assumed that they were hundreds of years old, but we don’t really know that’s the case. If they were more modern we’d look at the recent deaths in quite a different way. Three bodies in the same bit of land. Even the Fiscal would have to accept that was more than a coincidence.’
‘What did Val say? If the body was recent, surely there’d be more than a few bones left.’
‘I suppose so. It doesn’t make sense. It’s probably coincidence. It just seems odd. Both women had a connection with Setter and there’s evidence of another burial there too . . .’ His voice tailed off and he shrugged. ‘Take no notice. I’m probably making too much of it.’
Sandy thought Perez would never have talked to him like that a few months ago, never have taken him into his confidence. There was a moment of the same sort of panic he’d felt before setting off to London. How could he live up to these new expectations? ‘There were always strange stories about Setter,’ he said tentatively.
‘What sort of stories?’ Perez looked up sharply.
Now Sandy wished he’d kept his mouth shut because he didn’t really know, not the details. He half remembered tales of ghosts and the dead walking at night.
‘Some folk didn’t like to go out there after dark. Old folk. It’s all forgotten now.’
‘Would your mother know the stories?