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 Ca.s.sie 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 Ca.s.sie, 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 p.i.s.sed. 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.

'n.o.body 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 the SIM card is still intact. Might be quicker than trying to track down his account with the phone companies, especially if he had one of the pay-as-you-go deals.'

'I know a couple of climbers,' Perez said. 'I'll ask them to go down for us. I could scramble to the bottom of the gra.s.s slope myself, but I'd not be confident to go through the tunnel, and it could be wedged on a ledge in the rockface.' He knew he should have thought of the phone himself. His head was too full of personal stuff. He was losing concentration.

Before he could forget, he went through to his office and called a friend who volunteered with the Cliff Rescue. She couldn't make the climb that day, but said she'd sort something out for Monday if that would do. The tides were low now, so if the phone was down there it wouldn't be shifting anywhere.

Back in the incident room, Taylor was still at his desk, staring at the computer screen as if he could force it to provide answers just through the effort of his will.

'We need to find a link between Booth and someone at Biddista,' he said. 'That's all it'll take.' He swivelled round in his chair so he was facing Perez. 'Fancy a pint? I'm going crazy sitting here.'

Perez hesitated. In the previous case they'd worked on together, he'd enjoyed the informal contact, Taylor's relentless energy. But Fran would be waiting for him. 'I thought I'd take a run out to the Sunday teas in Middleton, see if I can find the la.s.s who sold the masks. Maybe it's not so important now, but it'd tie up a loose end.'

He waited for Taylor to ask if he could come too. He was like a hyperactive boy who needed constant stimulation. But the Sunday teas were too tame for him and he turned back to the computer screen.

The hall in Middleton had been the school before the new smart place was built. Perez parked in what had once been the playground, next to a row of trestle tables where a big woman was selling plants. Fran was with him. Ca.s.sie was spending the afternoon with Duncan.

He'd asked Fran the night before if she'd like to come with him to the teas. He hadn't thought she'd be interested. Usually she spent the days when Ca.s.sie was away working, and he'd thought she'd be used to more sophisticated entertainments. 'Are you joking? Of course I want to come. It's shopping, isn't it? I'm a shopaholic and I've been seriously deprived since moving here.'

And as soon as they got out of the car she pulled him over to look at the plants, although she had no garden in Ravenswick. Her house was surrounded on all sides by the hill.

Inside the hall there were more stalls. Junk and bric-a-brac and hand-knitted sweaters. At the other end of the room tables were laid out for tea with plates of home-bakes. Middleton women in ap.r.o.ns were wielding huge metal teapots. Urns hissed. It reminded him of the dances at home. Pooled baking and fl.u.s.tered women serving the men. What would Fran make of that?

Again she went immediately to the stalls, picking up pieces of china to look at the marks on the bottom, shaking out a jumper to see if it might fit Ca.s.sie, chatting to the women who were selling. Dawn Williamson came in with Alice holding her hand. She saw Fran and went up to her. By now the noise level in the hall was so high that Perez couldn't make out what they were saying. It was like watching a mime. Suddenly Fran threw her arms around Dawn. Dawn's told her about the baby, he thought. What is she feeling? Then the two women separated. Dawn sat Alice at one of the tea tables with a carton of juice and a biscuit and Fran came back to him.

'Dawn's pregnant,' she said.

'I know. She told me when I went to the school to talk to her.'

'Lucky thing,' she said. But there was no pa.s.sion behind the words so he didn't feel the pressure of expectation.

'The woman with the masks isn't here.' He was disappointed, but thought that since they'd found Booth's bag it didn't matter so much. Booth could have bought the mask anywhere. He'd have had it in the bag he'd left on the beach before the Herring House party. The murderer would have found it and put it over his face. Why anyone would want to do that was a different matter entirely.

'No,' Fran said. 'She just came that one week with all sorts of novelty goods. She doesn't live in Shetland. She was up visiting relatives for a few days. They let her have a stall because she was raising money for a children's hospice. Her mother-in-law is the lady who knits the sweaters and she'll give you the phone number if you ask. But she says she'd probably not be able to give you the names of the people who bought from her. Because she's not from here, she wouldn't be able to recognize them. One interesting thing though. The daughter-in-law lives in Yorkshire. So that might be where Booth bought it.'

'How did you find all that out?'

'I asked,' Fran said. 'Now I want a cup of tea. And home-made meringues.'

Chapter Thirty-three.

Kenny postponed the clipping of the sheep until Monday. He couldn't have done it on Sat.u.r.day, just after he'd found Roddy's body. He might not have thought much of the boy, but it was a matter of respect. Some things had to be done properly, whatever he made of the personalities involved. In the same way, it had been the right thing for Edith to spend Sat.u.r.day at the Manse with Bella. She was grieving and couldn't be left on her own the state she was in. Edith was the only person in Biddista to calm her. Aggie was frail and nervy herself and Dawn, though she was capable enough, came from outside and wouldn't really understand what was needed.

He would have been able to get more of the boys out on Sunday to help, but he had a kind of superst.i.tion about working on Sundays. When he'd been growing up, nothing was done on the Lord's day. The women wouldn't have considered hanging washing on the lines and most of the preparation of the dinner was done the day before. Certainly there was no work outside on the croft. Kenny wasn't religious himself, but he liked to keep the old traditions. If w.i.l.l.y had still lived in his house it would have upset him to see the line of men crossing the hill on a Sunday morning. He'd been a regular at the kirk in Middleton. One of the congregation would collect him each Sunday. w.i.l.l.y would be ready and waiting at the door, dressed in a suit which was quite shiny with wear. Kenny wondered if they still took him to the kirk from the sheltered housing. He hoped they did.

So there would be fewer men available to help on the hill on Monday; they all had their own work to go to. But if they missed a few sheep, he could go back later in the week and fetch them in. Edith had arranged to take the day's leave from the care centre so she would be there to help. He was grateful for that. He knew she'd been saving as much holiday as possible to go south when their grandchild arrived.

Martin Williamson came along. He'd opened the Herring House on Sat.u.r.day, because it was always so busy and he'd heard nothing from Bella to the contrary. But when she'd found out she'd been furious and had insisted on closing the gallery and the restaurant for the rest of the week. He said he didn't mind as long as she continued to pay him and he'd be glad to help with the sheep. Kenny was surprised by his flippancy. He'd thought Martin and Roddy had been friends of a kind. But perhaps that was just the way he was, always making light of things. And there was a group of retired men, all from Unst, who still worked a bit of croft land as a hobby. They turned out for events like this and stood now outside the house, identical in their caps and boiler suits, talking about the old times, their dogs panting at their feet. Kenny could tell the men were happy to be there. It was such fine weather and they were glad to be useful.

Although he knew exactly what he planned to do when he got on to the hill he had almost as much experience as them he asked their opinion, and nodded seriously when they told him the best line to take. Edith came out of the house to join them. She was wearing overalls and boots and had her hair tied away from her face. She'd caught the sun in the last few weeks of good weather and there was a pale mark where her hair usually hung. She carried the stick that his father had always used.

At the last minute Peter Wilding turned up. They'd just started up the track and he chased after them.

'I heard from Martin what you were up to. I wondered if you could use an extra pair of hands.'

'Of course,' Kenny said. 'The more the merrier.' It was true that the more people there were to cover the hill, the easier it was to round up all the sheep. There was less chance for the odd beast to escape. But he couldn't quite take to the man and he wished he wasn't there. He thought the writer was like some sort of parasite. He only wanted to be on the hill so he could write about it later. It was the first thing to spoil the day for him.

The second was seeing Perez and a young couple on the lip of the Pit o' Biddista. They weren't in the way to scare the sheep Kenny and the others would be walking the animals away from them but Kenny found them a distraction. He'd hoped today to forget about the man hanging in the shed on the jetty and Roddy Sinclair's twisted and broken body.

While the others lined up down the length of a gully to begin the walk, Kenny went up to talk to Perez. The young couple had climbing gear. He didn't understand that. If they wanted to get to the bottom, why not just go down the gra.s.s slope? They were young and fit.

'What are you doing?'

Perez turned very slowly to him. Kenny thought he was probably working out in his head how much to tell him. Instead he ignored the question.

'You're clipping today,' he said. 'If we get finished here in time I'll come and help you.'

'What's going on here?'

He thought Perez would refuse to answer again. But he said, 'I want a thorough search. Of the rockface and the tunnel at the bottom. There are some items that are still missing.'

'How long will this go on?' Kenny demanded. 'When will we be left in peace?'

'When I know what happened,' Perez said. 'When I know who killed two men.'

The young people had been ignoring the exchange and preparing for their climb. The woman was already at the edge of the cliff, leaning out, held by the nylon rope. Kenny turned away; if he had his back to them, perhaps he could pretend that none of this was happening.

He ran to catch up with the line of people walking slowly across the hill. The dogs chased between them, filling in the gaps. The men had their arms outstretched and whooped and called to move the sheep ahead of them. The ones at the end seemed a long way off, their voices lost in the thin air. Kenny stood beside Edith, who was waving the stick and yelling like the rest of them.

'What's going on up there?' She had to shout to be heard above the noise of the men, the dogs and the sheep.

'Some sort of search. I don't know. I hate it. I hate all this happening so close to home.'

She seemed to be shouting back some words of comfort, but he couldn't make them out because of the noise.

They had the sheep gathered up in a circle of drystone with a rough wooden gate held across the gap and let them out one at a time for clipping. The old men sat with an animal each, turned on its back, the front legs held firm, and hand-clipped with sure firm bites until the fleece was free. Then the poor bald beast was let loose to run away. The men's hands were brown and soiled and calloused. Kenny looked at his own and saw that they were going much the same way. Edith's hands were soft and he thought she'd have a few blisters by the end of the day, but she was just as accurate as the men, and as strong as most of them too. She had a fine deft way with the clippers and she could keep her sheep calm. But she wasn't as quick as they were. Sometimes they looked over and teased her about how slow she was and she laughed back at them, not minding at all.

At midday she brought out flasks of tea and thick sandwiches made with cheese and a ham which she'd cooked herself. They ate, although their hands were still greasy with lanolin, just rubbing them on the cropped gra.s.s to get rid of the worst of the muck. Peter Wilding sat with them, but didn't join in much. He tried to clip one but held it away from him as if he was scared of it. Edith took it from him and finished it in the end. Kenny thought he was just listening to all the conversation. It was as if he was making notes in his head. Later he lay back in the gra.s.s with his eyes shut. He probably wasn't used to working in such a physical way.

Then the gate was opened and another animal released. When Edith had finished doing a dainty black ewe, she held the fleece up to show Kenny. 'I might have a go at spinning this,' she said, 'knit something for the baby, a soft toy. What do you think?' She was always thinking of what she could make for the children, things to remind them of home. In the shed at Skoles there was a skin she'd been preparing for the baby's bedroom. She'd rubbed it with alum to preserve it; later she'd comb out the wool until it was soft. On the floor of their living room they had three rugs she'd made in the same way.

They finished late in the afternoon. From where they'd been working there had been no view of the Pit o' Biddista and the climbers. Walking back to the house, Kenny expected Perez and the people to be gone. How long could it take? He hadn't taken seriously Perez's offer to help with the sheep. But when they rounded the curve in the land so they could see the cliff ahead of them Perez was still there, and there was a police Land-Rover, which had been driven as far as it could possibly go up the track. People standing in a huddle as if they were waiting for something to happen. Kenny recognized the English detective who had flown up from Inverness.

Again he decided to pretend that none of this was happening and continued on his way towards the house. The old men took his lead and though they shot glances at the group by the cliff and whispered among themselves they didn't talk about it to him.

Wilding, though, was too curious just to walk past. He stared at the group of police officers and finally sauntered up to them, all arrogant as if he had as much right to be there as they did.

The rest of them were halfway down the track, too far away to hear the exchange, but they stopped to watch what was happening. In the end Kenny turned to watch too. He would look foolish, striding on down towards the house on his own.

The English detective moved away from the rest of the group and stopped the writer before he could get anywhere close to the edge of the hole. There was a brief conversation, then Wilding was sent away. With a flea in his ear, Kenny thought with some satisfaction.

'Well?' Martin asked. 'What are they all doing up there? Is it the giant's la.s.sie they're after?'

Wilding obviously hadn't heard the story, because he just looked at Martin as if he were soft in the head. The old men chuckled.

'They won't tell me anything,' Wilding said. 'It's a crime scene and everyone should keep out. That's all the man would say. Actually, he was rather rude.'

Usually after a day on the hill Kenny slept suddenly and deeply, despite the light outside. But tonight he was unsettled. Edith had been restless as she always was, but at last had fallen asleep. Afraid of waking her again with his tossing and turning, in the end he got up. He pulled on his clothes and his boots and went outside. It was as near to dark as it would get, everything grey and shadowy. He walked out on to the hill a little way.

At night at this time of the year storm petrels and Manx shearwaters flew into the cliffs to the nests they made in the old rabbit burrows. When he was a boy, w.i.l.l.y had taken him to show him. Kenny tried to picture the tiny petrels, small and ghost-like like bats in the gloom, and thought he might walk up now to look at them again. But as he approached he was aware of a faint mechanical hum coming from the direction of the Pit. A generator. The police must still be up there. During the evening he'd heard vehicles coming up and down the track. He couldn't face seeing them and walked back towards his home. The noise of the generator was faint, but Kenny found it menacing. He wouldn't be able to clear his mind of it even inside the house. He knew it would keep him awake all night.

Chapter Thirty-four.

Perez had watched Kenny Thomson and his team of helpers cross the hill with envy. Bringing in the sheep for clipping reminded him of home. Fair Isle, the furthest south and the most remote island of the Shetland group. Famous for its knitting and for being an area on the shipping forecast. When he'd worked in the city, he'd lie awake at night and listen to the measured voice on the radio. Fair Isle, Faroes, south-east Iceland. Easterly five to six, light rain, good. And he'd picture Dave Wheeler, who farmed at Field. The man had come to the Isle after working in the South Atlantic and since Perez could remember had been the met. officer on the island. Before his retirement he'd looked after the airstrip and been one of the firefighters.

At one time Perez had thought Fair Isle was where his future lay. He'd take a croft there and when his father retired he'd become skipper of the mail boat, The Good Shepherd. His children would grow up on the isle and know it as well as he had done. Then earlier in the year the opportunity had arisen for him to move back. A croft had become available and he'd have had a good chance of getting it. His mother had been desperate to get him back, but he hadn't put in the application. Lethargy perhaps. A reluctance to leave his little house by the water. But more than that. He wasn't ready yet to give up his work. Policing was a challenge, even in Shetland, he'd realized. And although he'd only just met her, he'd dreamed even then he might get together with Fran. He didn't have any regrets.

The offer to help Kenny with the clipping had been an impulse, but he'd meant it. He'd enjoy the physical exertion after the stress of the inquiry. It might free his mind, pull out the tightness in his muscles. He turned back to the climbers, hoping that they wouldn't be long. If Booth's phone was there, surely they'd find it soon enough. The search area wasn't huge.

The climbers were a married couple called Sophie and Roger Moore. They'd come to Shetland first as students, liked it and stayed. Sophie was an accountant with Shetland Islands Council; Perez wasn't sure how Roger made a living. He watched them slide over the edge in turn. They moved slowly, stopping to pa.s.s a hand across the ledges where thrift or the mess of a bird's nest could be hiding the phone they were looking for. When they'd first arrived at the site they'd said it was easy enough, good practice, though Perez had convinced himself that it would be a waste of time for them. He was going through the motions to satisfy Taylor. He couldn't see that anything would be found. It was a sort of superst.i.tion for him, not to be too hopeful at times like this. He was glad Taylor had decided to have a day at his desk, pulling together all the information that had already come in. The wait would drive the Englishman frantic. Perez imagined him standing at the top, shouting ridiculous, meaningless instructions to the climbers below.

When they were out of his view, Perez moved around to the landward side of the Pit, where the gra.s.s slope was, so he could see them better across the s.p.a.ce. He couldn't hear what the climbers were saying to each other. They were well down the cliff and although there was only a scattering of kittiwakes there, the birds were making a lot of noise. He thought now that there was probably some law about disturbing the birds in the breeding season. Should he have got permission? The thought distracted him for a moment the numbers of breeding seabirds had declined, he didn't want to add to their problems and when he looked again the couple had reached the floor of the cavern. He moved carefully to the edge of the gra.s.s slope and sat, looking down at them. Even here he felt slightly dizzy. The beginning of panic. He had regular nightmares about falling into s.p.a.ce, about being sucked to the edge of a cliff.

Roger and Sophie were moving into the tunnel between the hole and the beach. It was dead low water, so there was no danger of being swept out to sea. The channel was narrow, but quite high, certainly tall enough for a man to walk along without stooping. It bulged slightly in the middle and from this view was shaped, Perez thought, like a giant eye of a needle. The bridge of rock that separated the Pit from the sh.o.r.e was about twenty feet thick, so that was how long the channel ran for. In the middle it would be dark, and the climbers had torches. Claustrophobia didn't hold the same terror for Perez as vertigo, but he was glad he wasn't with them. They waved to show they were on their way in.

While he waited for them, Perez worried at the case. The sun was warm. In the far distance occasionally he could hear Kenny's party calling at the sheep. He needed to find a motive for Booth's death before he could move forward. Roddy's could be explained because he'd been a witness to the first murder, or to something leading up to it. But why would a Shetlander want to kill an Englishman who hadn't set foot on the place for years? It made no sense. He thought it must have been a Shetlander. They'd traced all the outsiders who had been in Biddista that night. That had been the focus for much of the work. The team sitting in the incident room in Lerwick, on the phone for hours at a time. 'I understand you visited the Herring House on midsummer's evening. Could you tell me who was with you? What time did you leave? Did you see anything unusual?' Then the alibis had to be checked and cross-referenced. And they all checked out. Every one.

He must have started to doze, because the shout from below startled him. He realized suddenly how close to the edge he was and could feel his pulse racing. He put his palms flat on the gra.s.s at his side, to make sure he was safely anch.o.r.ed to the ground.

'Jimmy! I think you'd better come down.' It was Sophie. From this angle she looked all head and no body. Her mouth was open very wide as she yelled to him. A monster from the deep. The giant's mistress, he thought, remembering the legend.

'Why?' He'd given them gloves and plastic evidence bags in case they found the phone.