White Nights - Ann Cleeves [110]
‘I need to talk to you,’ she’d said. ‘It doesn’t matter how late it is. I’ve been to see Bella. It’s important.’
She would have told him over the phone what was troubling her, but Perez didn’t want that. He was focused now on the climbers sifting through debris and he didn’t want to prolong the conversation. Taylor was critical enough as it was. He was right: Perez should have organized a more thorough search of the cliff and the cave when Roddy’s body was found. This wasn’t the time for a personal conversation.
When he got to her place, she was sitting at the table reading. The house was quiet. No music. He watched her through the window, one side of her face caught in the glow of a table lamp. She must have heard his car as a background noise in her head, but she continued to read, frowning with concentration, her attention held by the words on the page. She only turned when he tapped at the door and walked in. Then she stood up and put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.
‘You’re cold,’ she said. ‘The water’s hot if you want a bath.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.’ On the way back he’d wondered what she could want to talk about. It sounded ominous. ‘We need to talk.’ Sarah had said that when she’d told him she was leaving him. It had come as a complete shock. Perhaps he should have seen it coming, but it had never occurred to him. He’d known she was sad, but had thought it was the miscarriage. She would need time to get over that. He needed time himself to come to terms with it. He hadn’t realized he was the problem.
‘It’s about the case,’ Fran said now. ‘I think it could be important.’
He felt relief, followed by irritation. He’d hoped he could forget the case for the night.
‘I went to see Bella. She thinks she knew Jeremy Booth after all.’
‘She recognized the name?’
‘Perhaps that was partly it. I think it’s more that she’s been hiding in the past. Escaping from Roddy’s death by living in her memories. She remembered seeing him. Her memory will be very visual, and although he’d changed a lot something about his face came back to her.’
‘Where did she know him from?’
‘Shetland. Biddista. One summer she seems to have run a sort of artists’ commune in the Manse. He turned up and stayed. I don’t think she can remember how she came to invite him, only that he was there. And that he was an actor with a fondness for practical jokes.’
‘When was that?’
‘About fifteen years ago. That was what she said, but she was very vague about the details.’
‘Why would he have wanted to spoil the opening of her exhibition after all this time? Does she know?’
‘He’d told her he was in love with her, apparently! But she hadn’t heard from him since then. She said she didn’t recognize him on the night of the exhibition.’
‘Are you sure? It seems a bit odd, memories of that summer only coming back to her now.’
‘Bella is a bit odd, don’t you think? Especially now, with Roddy gone. She told me she’d put that summer out of her mind – I suppose because it was when Lawrence left. I’m not sure. I think she’s reliving happier times now – when Roddy was a child – and former glories. All those men besotted with her. It’s an escape from the grief.’
‘But nobody else in Biddista remembers Booth.’
‘It was fifteen years ago. That summer strange people were coming and going to the Manse all the time. I’d have been astonished if anyone had recognized him.’
He was surprised that he didn’t feel more tired. Driving to her house, his mind had been clear, as if the evening was just beginning, as if he’d just finished a normal day’s work. ‘Would you mind if I had a drink?’ he asked.
‘Of course. What would you like? Wine, beer whisky?’
‘White wine please.’ The drink of summer afternoons. He imagined the house party at the Manse all those years ago. Bella’s guests would have been sitting in the garden drinking chilled white wine, talking painting and politics.
‘That wasn’t all Bella said.’ Fran must already have had a bottle of wine open in the fridge. She poured a glass for them both. ‘She thinks Peter Wilding was there that summer