White Nights - Ann Cleeves [122]
‘And Kenny, it’s going to take longer than we’d like to get an answer. About two weeks, because it’s not a standard sort of test. I’m sorry.’
Kenny stood for a moment. He was tempted to go back to Willy, to find out what he knew. Then he realized there were other people in Biddista who should be able to tell him.
Chapter Forty-one
When he came back from seeing Wilding in Buness, Perez returned to the station. He phoned the pathologist in Aberdeen to check the situation on identifying the fragment of bone, then called the Thomson house. Nobody was at home. He knew what Kenny would be thinking and when finally he spoke to him on his mobile he could sense how much he needed an answer.
‘I’m sorry, man. I wish I could make it happen more quickly.’ Perez felt helpless because the test was completely out of his control. But all the time he was thinking that really it didn’t matter. He had a sense of events moving quickly, racing away from him. He thought the case would reach a climax before the results of the mitochondrial DNA test were returned.
He found Taylor at the desk he’d taken over in the incident room. He’d just finished a phone call and an A4 pad covered with scribbled notes lay in front of him. Taylor was hunched over them.
‘I’ve been on to Jebson in West Yorkshire to see if they’ve had anything back yet on emails to and from Jeremy Booth. Post too. They had a search team going through the house. The bin hadn’t been put out since he left and they thought they might find a letter.’
‘Anything useful?’
‘No mail. Jebson did come up with an interesting email contact though. A woman called Rita Murphy who runs a theatrical agency. I’ve just been talking to her. Booth was on her books, had been for years. She comes from Liverpool, like me. We hit it off and she’s been dead helpful.’
Taylor took a swig from a can of Coke. Perez thought he must be exhausted, running on caffeine and will power. ‘It seems Booth hadn’t done much through her in the last few years – most of his time was spent running his own business – but Rita said he liked to keep his hand in by doing bits of theatre if it was offered. They kept in touch, anyway. It sounds as if they’d become good mates.’
‘Was she representing him when he took on the work with The Motley Crew fifteen years ago?’
‘Yeah, she was just starting up then. She’d seen him in an amateur play and thought he was good, offered to take him on.’
Perez remembered the performance in the Herring House, the tears. Oh, he was good, he thought.
‘How did the work on the boat come about?’
‘She’d been in college with the guy who dreamed up the idea of the theatre in the boat and he asked her to find him a couple of actors. It was Booth’s first professional work. That’s why she remembers it.’
‘I don’t suppose he talked to her about it afterwards? Or that she remembers what he said?’
‘No detail. He called in to see her when he got back. She said he’d enjoyed the acting, travelling round the coast, but he seemed a bit low. She’d expected a blow-by-blow account of the season but he didn’t want to talk about it much. She put that down to the recent separation from his wife and daughter. But if Bella sent him away with a flea in his ear, perhaps that explains it.’
‘Did he tell her that he was planning to come back to Shetland?’
‘He went over to Liverpool a few weeks ago. It was about the time that his daughter got in touch with him. Perhaps he was curious to see the girl before he made a commitment to meet her. I can imagine him hanging around the school, waiting to see what she was like.’
What would he have done if he hadn’t liked the look of her? Perez wondered. Made some excuse? Run away again?
Taylor was still sketching out the possible scenario. ‘He went to see Ms Murphy while he was in Merseyside. We’ll probably never know if that’s why he was there, but anyway, they met for lunch in a bar. Rita said Booth was really elated. It sounds as if they had a lot to drink. He told her then that he was taking