White Nights - Ann Cleeves [83]
Perez led her into the house and into the kitchen. There was little light now. Sitting on the dark wood bench, she seemed small and very frail, like a child in Sunday school.
‘What’s been going on here, Bella? The hoax around the gallery opening was one thing, but now Roddy’s dead. Who hates you enough to do this to you?’
She took her hands from her face, so he could see her big eyes, red and wet with tears.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Really, I don’t know.’
He stayed with Bella until Morag arrived from Lerwick to sit with her. During that time she refused to answer questions. ‘I’ve told you, Jimmy. I don’t know anything.’ He asked if she’d like him to drive her to Fran’s house, but she said she wanted to stay in her own home. ‘I need to be here.’ He was disappointed. He hoped she might take Fran into her confidence.
By the time he reached the hill, the greyest part of the night had already gone and the sun was starting to slide up from the horizon again. A different sort of dawn. A wren had been singing in Bella’s garden when he left the house. The team had managed to get a Land-Rover right up to the cliff-edge and from a distance he saw a number of people at the lip of the Pit. He hoped he wouldn’t have to climb down there. It was a crime scene, wasn’t it? So it should be preserved. He didn’t find the idea as horrifying as being on the edge of the cliff, with space and air all around him, but if he could avoid the climb, he would do.
Sandy was talking to the young doctor who’d called Booth’s death as murder. He waved to Perez when he saw him approaching.
‘I’ve called in the coastguard to help bring up the body,’ he said. ‘That is OK?’
Perez tried not to be surprised at Sandy’s initiative. ‘Sure, if they’ve finished down there.’
‘I went down with the doctor,’ Sandy said. ‘I found this. I wrapped it in polythene, didn’t get my fingerprints on it, but it was lying near the gully out to the sea, and I thought it might get washed out.’ He looked at Perez anxiously, not sure if he’d get yelled at for moving evidence.
‘I’d have done just the same myself.’ It was a black leather holdall, just like the one Stuart Leask had described as belonging to Jeremy Booth.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think someone killed Booth, made it look like suicide, then chucked the bag down here in the hope that we wouldn’t identify him.’
‘What about Sinclair?’
‘He could have been the murderer. Maybe he was climbing down to move the bag, or check it was well out of sight, and he tripped.’
‘But you don’t think so?’
‘No. I think the murderer arranged to meet him here. Roddy liked being on the edge. It wouldn’t have taken much to push him in. I’m not sure why he had to be killed. Maybe he knew something about Booth’s murder. But I’m sure that’s what happened.’
Perez stood silently for a moment, imagining what that must feel like. The shove in the back, the panic as he’d realized he couldn’t get a grip, then waiting to hit the ground. He saw that Sandy was staring at him. ‘Now all I have to do is prove it.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
Roy Taylor went with Stella Jebson to visit Jeremy Booth’s wife. The woman lived on the Wirral, way out of Jebson’s patch, but for some reason the DC had seemed keen to go with him. Perhaps like the rest of them she’d become intrigued by the man who’d died, without explanation, so far from home. She wanted to see how the mystery worked out.
‘I heard back from the Inland Revenue,’ Jebson said. ‘Booth’s business was on the verge of going under, if his tax returns were anything like accurate.’
Taylor thought that would need looking into. There’d be nothing new in someone self-employed declaring a fraction of what he earned, but if Booth had been short of cash, why disappear to Shetland, leaving the business in the care of some sort of student? Had he thought he had a chance of making money there?
Taylor had visited the Wirral when he was a kid. A very young kid, when his mother was still at home, before she’d run away with her fancy man to north Wales. There’d been