White Nights - Ann Cleeves [95]
The subject must have been on her mind throughout the evening, because at the end of the meal she returned to it. She reached across the table and took his hand.
‘It was because of Cassie I didn’t rush into this. We come as a package. You understand that, don’t you? If you want me, you take her on too.’
He said that of course he understood. He wanted to tell her that he wanted above all things to make a family with her and Cassie, but he thought that would have sounded sentimental. She hated it when he was soppy.
He left early the next morning to go into Lerwick, to his narrow house on the waterfront. Despite the weather, he could smell the damp as soon as he unlocked the door. It was as if he’d been away for weeks. He loved the house, which was just as well, because no one else would be foolish enough to pay good money for it. He opened all the windows to let in the salt air, and checked his answer machine. There was a message from his mother, easy and chatty with news of Fair Isle. He wondered when he should take Fran home to meet his folks and what they would make of her. They didn’t have much experience of people who’d grown up in the city. He made a jug of coffee and sat by the open window, watching the terns diving into the shallow water.
Later he went into the station to check if they’d had any report back on the bag belonging to Jeremy Booth, which had been recovered with Roddy Sinclair’s body from the Pit o’ Biddista. Sandy was on his way out, scrubbed and smart. Every week he went home to Whalsay to take Sunday lunch with his parents.
‘Have you seen the TV news?’ he said. ‘Roddy Sinclair was all over it.’
‘No.’ Perez didn’t keep him. He knew Sandy would be on his way to Vidlin for the ferry, and anyway he wasn’t the best person to ask about the bag. He was never brilliant at detail.
The incident room was quiet, flooded with midday sunshine. Taylor was at his desk in a corner, drinking coffee, looking as if he’d been there all night.
‘Good night?’
Perez couldn’t quite tell if he was really interested or if that was a sneer. ‘Sorry, to leave you in Biddista. Like I said, it was something I couldn’t get out of. How did you get on with Bella?’
‘She was pissed. Talking about old times. Lost loves.’
‘Oh?’
‘Kenny’s brother, Lawrence.’
‘The way I heard it, he loved her, not the other way round.’
‘Not according to Bella Sinclair.’ Taylor crushed the polystyrene cup in his fist and hurled it across the room into a waste basket. It hit with such force that it bounced out. ‘According to her, she’d have married him like a shot if he’d asked. But he never did.’ He got up and retrieved the cup. ‘I finally met Kenny’s wife. Edith. She seemed surprised by the new twist on the old story too. Hardly bosom pals, those two, are they?’
‘Those sorts of communities, people come together if there’s a tragedy.’ Perez spoke without really thinking about it.
‘Nobody seemed much concerned about Booth.’
‘He was an outsider. A bit different.’
‘That stuff about the past doesn’t help much anyway,’ Taylor said. ‘If any of them met Jeremy Booth when he was here on The Motley Crew all those years ago, they’re not saying.’
‘Maybe they don’t remember. People change in fifteen years.’ Perez still thought there was a history to this case.
‘Perhaps.’ But Taylor sounded sceptical.
‘Anything on the contents of Booth’s bag?’
‘I’ve just had the report. It gives us a definite confirmation that he was the person handing out the flyers cancelling the art exhibition. The found the costume and the sequinned bag some of the witnesses described. Nothing else of much use. Just a few clothes and toilet things. No letters, no address book. No mobile.’
‘Booth didn’t have a mobile with him when he staged that scene at the Herring House,’ Perez said. ‘I checked his pockets for ID.’
‘Could it have been thrown separately down the hole?’ Taylor asked.
‘Maybe. Then sucked into the tunnel. Or washed out to sea.’
‘Worth getting a search team down to take a look? Even if the phone’s damaged, there’s a chance