White Nights - Ann Cleeves [46]
Jimmy Perez was waiting for them. They’d worked well together on a previous investigation and had got on, perhaps because they had such different styles. If Perez had been a full-time member of his team, Taylor would have found the unconventional attitude, the long hair and the lack of urgency irritating. Here in Shetland, the quiet approach seemed to work. Perhaps too well. Taylor had always been competitive, and mixed with the affection was a residual resentment because Perez had been credited with solving the Catherine Ross case.
All the same he greeted Perez with warmth, taking his hand and clapping him on the back.
‘How’re things, Jimmy?’
The rest of the group should know that there would be no territorial rivalry on the case. Besides, it couldn’t be easy for Perez to have a senior officer fly in to take over the most interesting cases. Taylor himself wouldn’t be able to bear it.
They drove north and west, missing Lerwick, the only place in the islands where Taylor had felt anything like at home. At least in Lerwick there were shops and bars, chip shops and curry houses. If he thought of the space all around him, he felt giddy and nauseous. It was the sleepless night in the Holiday Inn in Aberdeen, he thought. Once he got stuck into the investigation he’d feel on top of his game once more.
To pull himself back he began to fire questions at Perez, who was driving.
‘Are you telling me that in a place as small as this no one can put a name to him?’ He knew Perez would resent the tone, but couldn’t help himself.
Perez paused for a moment before answering. ‘We get fifty thousand visitors a year. Many of them have little contact with local people. It’s not that surprising it’s taking a while to trace him.’
‘All the same, someone must have missed him by now. A guesthouse. Hotel.’
Perez didn’t answer. He had this knack of keeping quiet if he had nothing to say. Taylor had never been able to master it.
The cars slowed down and they pulled up next to a small jetty. It looked to Taylor that they were in the middle of nowhere. You couldn’t call it a village. A couple of houses built along the road and that was it. On the way they’d passed the gallery, which was built almost on the beach. It seemed an odd set-up to Taylor. Who would come all this way to look at a few pictures? Perez had roused himself from his silence to explain that that was the last place the victim had been seen alive.
‘I was there,’ he said. ‘At a party to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.’ Taylor thought he had more to say but was waiting for another time, when there was nobody else listening. He reminded himself to ask him about it when they were alone.
He got out of the car to the shrieking seabirds and the smell of seaweed and bird shit. Behind the row of low houses the hill rose steeply. He thought, Why would anyone want to live here? He recognized it from a documentary there’d been about the folk musician Roddy Sinclair. Quite a long sequence had been taken in Biddista; the camera followed him round the place, showed him talking to the crofters, visiting the shop, drinking with his mates. Then it had been back to London and Glasgow, the music and the groupies.
Taylor didn’t go into the hut. From what Perez had said there’d been enough contamination of the scene already. Now they could let the CSI get on with her work. He’d just wanted to get a feel of the place before they started. And he was glad he’d come. He had this sense that everyone in Biddista was staring at him. He could feel the eyes. He didn’t look at the houses to check if there were people staring from the windows; he didn’t have to. He wouldn’t have understood what that was like just from chatting to Perez. This was a place where it was impossible to keep secrets. He couldn’t believe that nobody knew who had killed the man. Perhaps they all knew. Perhaps it was all one huge conspiracy.
He turned back to Perez. ‘Why don’t we leave them to it? Let’s get into Lerwick, just the two of us, and you can fill me in on the details.