Red Bones - Ann Cleeves [95]
‘Inspector Perez, I’m sorry to call you so early.’
He struggled to sit upright in the bed and to clear the nightmare pictures from his mind.
‘This is Gwen James, inspector. You asked me to contact you if Hattie had been in touch with the psychiatric nurse who looked after her when she was ill at university.’
At last he felt he had a grip on the conversation. ‘And had she?’
‘Not recently, I’m afraid, but the nurse thought you’d find it interesting to talk to him. He didn’t feel he could discuss Hattie’s case with me.’ Her voice was tight, clipped. Perez thought she’d had a battle over that. She’d demanded information and the nurse had stood up to her. A brave man.
She waited impatiently while he found paper and pencil to write down the man’s number. The bedroom was cold. He’d found it stuffy and airless after his discussion with Berglund the night before and had switched the heating off. Shivering, he got back into bed to complete the call. Despite her apparent impatience, in the end Gwen was reluctant to end the conversation.
‘Did you find Hattie’s letters useful, inspector?’
‘Thank you. Very. We will get them back to you as soon as we can.’
‘When you have news about the circumstances of Hattie’s death, you will tell me?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He switched off the phone before she could ask any more questions.
It was too early to contact the nurse. He’d wait at least until nine o’clock. In the dining room Jean was just laying the tables for breakfast. ‘Could you not sleep?’ she said as she snipped the top from a carton of juice and poured it into a jug. He wondered when she had the chance to rest. She was still behind the bar when the last customer left at night and the place always looked clean in the morning. ‘Cedric is still in his bed. He stayed up last night drinking to Mima. He was always very fond of her.’
‘Did he ever go to visit her at Setter?’
‘Aye, every Thursday afternoon. To talk over old times, he said. To flirt, more like. Mima was a dreadful old flirt.’ She hurried away to make his coffee.
Cedric appeared just as Perez was finishing the meal. He looked bleary-eyed and grey.
‘Paul Berglund didn’t go out on the early ferry, did he?’ Perez asked. He supposed he’d finished with the academic, for the moment at least, but he didn’t want the man slinking away without his knowing.
‘No, he’ll be down later, I’m sure. He doesn’t usually get up so early.’
‘Did Mima have a good send-off?’
‘I suppose she did. I didn’t stay long at Utra. All those people sitting round saying fine things about her. They had little enough good to say about her when she was alive. I came back here to have a few drams to her memory in peace. I’ll miss her.’ Cedric looked up at Perez. The flesh around his eyes was soft and creased like folded suede. ‘It seems a strange thing, two bodies on an island this size. What are you doing here, Jimmy? What’s going on?’
Three bodies, Perez thought. There are the bones they found on Setter too.
‘I’m working for the Fiscal, enquiring on her behalf into the sudden death of Hattie James.’
‘Aye, right.’
‘Is there anything you can tell me, Cedric? Anything I need to know about Mima Wilson and Setter? Anything strange been happening there?’
‘Not these days, Jimmy. Not for sixty years at least.’
‘What happened sixty years ago?’
‘These are old men’s tales. You don’t have time for these.’
‘Try me.’
Cedric paused, then he seemed to make up his mind to speak.
‘Three men from Whalsay were involved in the Shetland Bus.’ He looked at Perez to check the inspector knew what he was talking about. ‘You know it was mostly the Scalloway men that kept the boats repaired and in good order to put to sea. But when Howarth, the naval officer in charge, decided the Norwegians needed small boats to be dropped off with the agents, so they could make their own way up the fjords, he came to Whalsay to get them made. It was skilled work; the inshore boats had to pass for Norwegian. Men’s lives depended on it. There was young Jerry Wilson, who was just a schoolboy, too young to get called