Thin Air: (Shetland book 6) (18 page)

He was walking away from Cilla’s grand apartment, thinking that he might wander along the Thames and take some time to explore the city, when his phone rang.

‘Inspector?’ A young voice, female. He tried to remember where he’d heard it before. ‘This is Alice from Bright Star. We met yesterday evening. I worked with Eleanor.’

‘Of course.’ To his left there was a large Victorian church with a black smoke-stained steeple and an overgrown graveyard. He slipped through the gate to get away from the traffic noise and landed on a wooden bench in the shade. A bunch of dead flowers lay next to a tilted headstone by the path. They were brown and shrivelled and must have been there for weeks. The young woman was still speaking.

‘I’ve been going through Nell’s records. I should have thought of that yesterday. She kept notebooks, hard copies. She’d been researching the history of the Unst ghost and had been in touch with other people on the island. I thought you’d like to know.’

‘Can I come and collect the books from you?’ The idea of action made him feel brighter. He hadn’t realized that the conversation with Cilla had left him so low. It was as if the lethargy of his depression had descended while he was in the Pimlico flat. A black magic, bringing with it the old guilt and the memories of Fran.

‘Sure. You know where to find us now.’

He picked up the dead, brown flowers and threw them into a bin as he walked through the church gate.

In the Bright Star office Leo and Alice were waiting for him. Now that the immediate shock of Eleanor’s death was over, the staff were excited to be involved in the investigation, eager at the thought that they might be helping. Murder sometimes took young people that way. They had no sense of their own mortality. Alice had set out the notebooks on Eleanor’s desk and had one open at the relevant page. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Nell obviously phoned these people to ask about the history of the girl who died in 1930. She’d tracked down the present owners of the house where Lizzie was supposed to have lived. There’s a phone number and some scribbled notes, which I can’t quite make out. Her handwriting was always indecipherable. But it certainly looks as if she contacted them.’

Perez would have liked to look at the notes on his own, but the young woman had been so helpful that he didn’t have the heart to ask her to leave. Outside in the main office people were pretending to work, but were obviously fascinated too. He sat at Eleanor’s desk and pulled the books towards him.

There was, as Alice had said, a phone number. Then an address:
Springfield House, Unst.
And two names:
Charles Hillier and David Gordon
. Then some squiggles that might have been the record of a telephone conversation. It seemed that Eleanor had devised her own form of shorthand and Perez thought it would take time and patience to decipher the code.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That’s very useful.’ He’d never owned a briefcase, but used instead a canvas bag that he’d collected from a stall when the Tall Ships Race had ended in Lerwick one year. He put the notebooks into that. As the young people let him out into the street he paused again. ‘Did Eleanor have a favourite restaurant? Somewhere she might take clients or colleagues for dinner?’

‘There’s a French place in Bloomsbury that was her regular haunt for everyday,’ Leo said. ‘They knew her there and said she was like their daughter. It wasn’t smart enough for clients she wanted to impress, though. Then she’d go flamboyantly upmarket and choose somewhere like the Savoy. Even when she knew the company couldn’t really afford it.’

Perez jotted down the name and address of the French restaurant. Outside on the pavement outside the production-company office it felt sweltering. The sun was bouncing off the concrete again and onto his face, making his eyes water. He was never prepared for how warm it was in the south and how little breeze there was. He always dressed in the wrong sort of clothes. From the Bright Star office it was an easy walk to the restaurant. On the way he dialled Willow’s phone number, but there was no answer. He hesitated for a moment and then tried Sandy instead. The Shetlander answered just as Perez had given up hope. He sounded flustered.

‘We’re just at Sletts talking to the English folk. Seems Vaila Arthur met up with Eleanor the afternoon before the murder. Eleanor recorded the interview for her TV programme, but we can’t find the machine.’

‘Are you getting anywhere with the people at Sletts?’

Sandy hesitated as if it was a trick question. ‘They claim not to have known about the meeting with Vaila. I’m not sure how it’s going. The boss is still in there with them.’

Perez wondered if he should wait until Willow was free, to pass on the information about Charles and David, but Sandy was more reliable these days. ‘There seems to be evidence that Eleanor made more contacts in Unst than we’d realized. She’d been in touch with Charles and David about the history of Peerie Lizzie Geldard’s time at Springfield House, for example.’

‘Why didn’t they say anything about that to us? They’d surely have recognized the name.’

This time it was Perez who paused. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? That’s the question that’s been bothering me too.’

The restaurant was small and unpretentious. Perez stood outside for a moment pretending to look at the menu and imagining Caroline walking past on a gloomy day and catching sight of her friend inside with a strange man. He thought that he’d check the restaurant’s name with Caroline when he returned to Unst, but he suspected this was the right place. There were tables close to the window and it wasn’t far from the university, so it was feasible that the academic could be wandering past after work. Caroline could easily have caught a glimpse here of Eleanor with her mystery man. Now it was two o’clock. The lunchtime rush was over and the elderly waiter found him a table looking out into the street. ‘So that you can watch the world go by, huh?’

Perez realized he was hungry and ordered onion soup and steak. He propped Eleanor’s notebook in front of him and tried to read as he ate. In a clearer hand there was the history of Lizzie Geldard and her death. Then the first sighting of the ghost. That had come during the war, when Peerie Lizzie had appeared to a Yell woman visiting her sweetheart who was stationed at the RAF station in Unst. The next day he was killed in a raid over Germany, and a week later the woman discovered that she was pregnant. So it seemed that a sighting of Lizzie didn’t only foretell a new birth, but death as well.

By now the restaurant was empty apart from him. The waiter cleared his plate and offered dessert or coffee.

‘Coffee would be wonderful. Unless you’re wanting to close.’

‘We’re open all afternoon. In this climate we need all the business we can get.’ He was French certainly, but the accent was less pronounced now. Now that Perez was the only customer this was more of a conversation than a performance.

‘I was recommended your restaurant place by a friend,’ Perez said.

‘Oh?’

‘Eleanor Longstaff.’

A pause. ‘Poor Eleanor.’ The man’s grief seemed genuine. ‘She’s dead, you know. Murdered. It was in the newspaper.’ He hurried behind the bar and returned with a page from a tabloid from two days earlier. The headline ran:
TV boss killed in the land of the midnight sun.
Which wasn’t quite true, Perez thought. The simmer dim wasn’t quite the same as full sunlight. The piece was heavy on sensationalism and light on facts. Perez suspected that the journalist hadn’t made the trek north. Few editors would have the budget for last-minute air fares to the islands.

‘Did Eleanor eat with you often?’

The man had made Perez coffee. Now he disappeared again and poured one for himself. He sat at the next table, not presuming to join Perez, but willing to gossip at a distance. ‘She was a regular. She came for coffee and pastries sometimes on her way to her office. She worked here on her laptop. Or with her writing.’ He nodded to the notebooks on the table. ‘Just like those.’

‘I’m a police officer from Shetland,’ Perez said. ‘I’m investigating her death.’

‘So not her friend then?’

Perez paused. ‘I didn’t meet her while she was alive. But I feel as if she’s almost a friend. That I’m responsible for finding out who killed her.’ He wondered where that had come from. The waiter would think he was mad. And he’d only had a small glass of sharp red wine with his lunch.

The man nodded again to the books. ‘Do you think they’ll help you?’

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps.’ Perez drank the coffee. He thought Fran would have loved it here. She’d have charmed the waiter, as Eleanor obviously had. ‘Did she come here with her husband?’

‘A couple of times. Mostly for lunch, not dinner, and then they were always in a hurry. No time to drink coffee and chat.’ The waiter smiled.

‘And you’re sure that it
was
her husband?’

The man nodded. ‘Strong man, square face. Very short hair. Besides, Eleanor introduced him.’

‘Did she come here with any other men?’

This time there was no immediate reply.

‘It’s important,’ Perez said. ‘I’m trying to find out who killed her. If it’s not relevant nobody else need know.’

‘She came one evening with a man,’ the waiter said. ‘Could have been anyone. A colleague from work.’

‘But she often came with colleagues.’ Perez drained the coffee. ‘This must have been different or you wouldn’t have remembered.’

‘
She
was different. Like a little girl. Nervous.’ He smiled again.

‘And the man? What can you tell me about him?’

The man shrugged in a return to the Gallic performance. ‘It was very busy. Bad weather, and everyone wanting to get out of the rain. I didn’t notice.’

‘You were fond of her. You would have noticed.’

They were both looking out of the window rather than at each other, but the tension increased.

‘I think he was younger than her. A good-looking man. And she was nervous to be with him. Or anxious, perhaps that’s a better word. That’s all I can tell you.’

Perez wasn’t sure that was true, but he knew it was all he was going to get today. He stood up and paid his bill. ‘Who paid that night?’ If the man had paid there might be a record of his credit card.

‘Eleanor.’ The waiter paused. ‘When they were leaving they argued about it and Eleanor said. “Just think about it, will you?” It seemed to matter very much to her, whatever she was asking him. Then they went out into the night. He held an umbrella over her head, but she walked ahead of him into the rain.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’

The man shook his head. ‘Eleanor came in after that. The last time was a week ago and she had her breakfast as usual. But I never saw him again.’

Perez spent the rest of the evening in his hotel, reading through the notes. He went out and bought another notebook, hard-backed just like Eleanor’s, and transcribed her words into that, leaving dashes for each letter he couldn’t quite read. At eight o’clock he phoned Fran’s parents’ house to make arrangements to collect Cassie the following morning. He explained that he’d be coming in a taxi, which would go on to take them to Heathrow. ‘I won’t be able to come in, I’m afraid. It’s such an early flight to Aberdeen.’ An elaborate arrangement to avoid too much contact with them. Hating himself for the duplicity because they were good people.

‘Of course, Jimmy. We understand. She’ll be ready.’ Fran’s mother was excited because they’d had such a fine day and she was willing to be kind to him. He asked to speak to Cassie.

‘I bet you’ve had a wonderful time.’

There was a rush of words as the child described the trip down the river, seeing the Tower of London and eating out. ‘Real pizza in a real Italian restaurant.’ A pause and then she added in a whisper so that her grandparents couldn’t hear her, ‘I’ll be glad to go home, though.’

‘So will I, Cass.’ He whispered too and then clicked off the phone and went back to his notes.

Chapter Twenty-Two

On Thursday morning Sandy left Springfield House without talking to Willow. He could see her in the yellow lounge that had become her office and she seemed engrossed in a phone call. He didn’t want to disturb her. He’d already said that he’d finish the interviews of the party guests and would call again on the people who’d been out when they’d done their first round of canvassing. Caroline had given them a list of everyone invited. Her family had left for home in Kent the day after the party, and before Eleanor’s body was found. Willow was talking to them on the phone. Sandy was pleased to leave that to her. He didn’t understand the southern accents.

He found that he’d become obsessed by the child on the beach, the little girl seen by both Eleanor and Polly. He didn’t believe in ghosts, so she must either be real or a figment of the women’s imaginations. And he couldn’t see that both women would have conjured up the same vision from nowhere. Yet the girl wasn’t on the guest list and nobody else had noticed her. Willow said that people often wandered into island events – friends of friends, who hadn’t been formally invited, but who would be made welcome just the same. That was probably true, but Sandy was stubborn and needed to pin this down. And though he would never have admitted it to himself, he wanted something concrete to hand to Jimmy Perez when he returned. He wanted Jimmy to tell him that he’d done well.

Outside he looked anxiously up at the sky. It was grey and there was drizzle, but it was surely clear enough for the planes to get in. Sandy drove carefully out of the courtyard and towards Meoness. The school was tiny, one of those scheduled for closure, and only saved after the community made a fuss. Perhaps because there’d been doubt about its survival it was still in the original stone building that looked more like a kirk than a school. There was a view of the voe and the open sea. When he arrived it was playtime and the children were yelling and chasing in the yard. Less than a dozen of them, and most of them boys. Sandy hesitated outside. It wasn’t just that schools – even peerie schools like this – made him uncomfortable. He knew the teacher. They’d been friends once. She’d been his first teenage crush. She’d gone away south to university and had worked in Edinburgh for a while and he’d heard that she was back. There’d been a piece in
The Shetland Times
about it, about her giving up her post as deputy head in a big school in the city to take on Meoness primary. Head teacher. Sole teacher.