'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Perhaps this is difficult for you. The way Andrew died . . . I should have realized.'

She gave him a long, hard stare. 'My husband's death was an accident. Not like this at all.'

'Of course.' He could feel his face become red, turned away quickly and walked out.

Back in the street he heard the distant sound of a foghorn. Here the sun was still shining and he thought at first they were testing it. Sometimes they did that and it always shocked him, hearing the great booming noise in full sunlight. Then out to sea he saw the thick bank of mist. It was just below the horizon but it was rolling closer. Further south it must already have hit the land.

Sandy had strung the tape around the hut. Blue and white. POLICE. DO NOT ENTER. There was a police car parked, blocking off any vehicular access to the jetty. Now Perez could send Sandy back to Lerwick. It was just a matter of saving the scene from any further contamination before the CSI arrived. He wondered if Sandy had thought to tell the doctors that the CSI would need their shoes, and maybe their clothes for comparison. It was his fault; he should have reminded him.

He was halfway along the road when his phone rang. Morag, one of his team. He'd set her to book places on the last plane for the Inverness team.

'What's it like there with you?'

'Sorry?' Was she being polite? Pa.s.sing the time of day? Did she have no sense of urgency?

'I've just had Sumburgh on the phone. They've got thick fog.'

'Any chance of it lifting this afternoon?'

'I've just been on to Dave Wheeler.' Dave was the met. man who lived in Fair Isle. He took all the weather readings for the shipping forecast. 'Highly unlikely, he says. And the airport say they're not expecting any more planes in or out today.'

Perez switched off his phone and stood for a moment. The sun was already covered in a milky haze. So the team from Inverness wouldn't be in today. If the fog stayed down and they had to get the ferry tomorrow evening they wouldn't arrive until seven o'clock the following morning. He was in charge. It was his investigation. He'd thought it was what he always wanted.

His phone rang again. 'Jimmy. It's Roy Taylor here. From Inverness.'

So, not his case at all.

'This is how I want you to play it until we arrive.'

Chapter Eleven.

Singling neeps was the sort of job you could only do if your mind was somewhere else. It hurt your back, and thinning out the tiny turnip plants took no concentration or thought. It was mindless. The worst thing was when you looked up, thinking that by now you must have nearly finished, done half the field at least, you'd see you'd hardly started and there were rows and rows still left ahead of you.

When they'd been boys, Kenny and Lawrence had played games to make it less boring. Had races, working down the rows next to each other. Lawrence always won. He was faster at most things than Kenny. But not so thorough. Kenny's rows were always tidier, the plants evenly s.p.a.ced, so he hadn't minded Lawrence winning. Though it would have been nice to be first once in a while.

Today, while he was working in the field, Kenny found himself thinking quite a lot about when they were children. The games they'd all played together. Perhaps that was to take his mind off the sight of the body swinging from the roof of his hut, the hut he'd built with Lawrence. He wondered if he'd think of the dead man every time he went in there to get his boat ready.

He'd begun with the neeps as soon as Perez had gone and now it was time to stop for lunch, but he had that compulsion to carry on, at least until he'd come to the end of the row. So he pushed the hoe backwards and forwards down the line and remembered what it had been like here nearly fifty years ago. When he'd been a peerie boy, all scabbed knees and snotty nose, blushing like a girl whenever anyone spoke to him.

Today there was only one child in Biddista, Aggie Williamson's granddaughter, Alice. When he'd been growing up there'd been five him and Lawrence, Bella and Alec Sinclair, and Aggie, who hadn't been a Williamson then. He struggled for a moment to remember her maiden name. Watt. She'd been Aggie Watt. A timid little thing. Looking at her now when he went into the post office, seeing her with her nose in a book, he thought she'd hardly changed in fifty years. She'd looked like an old woman when she was a child. Small and peaky and delicate.

Lawrence and Bella had been just like each other even then. Headstrong and determined to get their own way. And bright. Fighting to be top of the cla.s.s in Middleton School, laughing at jokes n.o.body else could understand, annoying the teachers with their cheek and their quick, slick answers. In compet.i.tion, but attracted to each other just the same. Kenny had only wanted not to be noticed.

Now there were three of them left in Biddista. Bella had turned into a grand artist. She'd been away to college, studied in Barcelona and New York, but she'd been living in the Manse for more than twenty years. Aggie was back staying next door to the house where she'd grown up. And he was in exactly the same place, doing much the same things as he had as a child. It occurred to him that fifty years ago to the day he could have been in this field helping his father to single turnips. Only two of us escaped, he thought. Alec died while he was still young and handsome. And Lawrence ran away when Bella broke his heart.

He reached the end of the row and straightened his back, felt the muscles pull in his shoulders. If Edith was here she would rub them for me, he thought, pull the tension out of them. And he thought how much more skilled Edith was at touching him now than when they'd first got together. There was a lot to be said for getting older.

Edith's family hadn't come from Biddista. He hadn't met her until he started at the big school. She was a few years younger than him. They'd gone in on the bus together, but he'd hardly noticed her until he was fifteen. She'd had freckles then and curly hair. Mousy brown with a touch of red in it. He'd been too nervous to ask her out and the first approach had come from her. She'd always known what she wanted. Later he brought her to Biddista, and she'd met the others Lawrence and Bella, Alec and Aggie. She'd never quite fitted in. They'd been kind enough to her, even Bella, but Edith had always kept herself a little bit aloof.

As he straightened he saw that the sun had gone in, covered by a bank of mist which had slid in from the sea. Further inland it was still clear. Standing still after the work he felt the cold air dry the sweat on his forehead and his neck.

In the kitchen he put the kettle on and looked in the fridge for food. At one time Edith always made him lunch. When he was doing building work and it was too far from home she'd pack him up sandwiches, a thick piece of date slice or that chocolate biscuit cake they all called peat. If he was out on the croft, there'd be something hot on the table for him when he came in. Soup usually. Then she got the job in the care centre and even before she was made manager and started at college things had changed.

'We're both working now. You'll have to look after yourself. It's only fair,' she'd told him.

Kenny could see the justice in that. It was the sort of thing Bella might say. Bella had never married because she wanted to keep her independence. 'I like being a single woman. I celebrate being alone.' Kenny had read that in one of the Sunday papers. An interview with Bella after an exhibition in Edinburgh. Edith had brought back the paper one of the days she was at college and shown him.

There was some cold lamb in the fridge left over from the roast they'd had on Sunday. He sliced it up and made a sandwich with it. By the time he'd finished doing that the kettle had boiled and he made tea. Now the fog was so thick that he couldn't see anything out of the kitchen window. Not even the wall which marked the end of the garden or his truck standing outside the door. He was glad now he hadn't taken the boat out. He didn't have any of that fancy GPS equipment. He'd have been left to find his way back to the jetty using a compa.s.s and chart, and he was a bit rusty these days. He hoped Edith would take care driving back from the centre. It would be easy to leave the road in this weather, or to hit something coming in the other direction. Since seeing the man in black hanging in his hut, he'd had death at the back of his mind.

He sat in the easy chair with his plate on his knee and the mug of tea within reach on the Rayburn, listening to the news on Radio Shetland. There was nothing about the dead man. But Jimmy Perez wouldn't be able to keep it quiet for very much longer. Then he switched the radio to long wave for the shipping forecast. That was habit. When he finished eating he felt himself doze. Half asleep, he found himself remembering the summer he'd met Jimmy in Fair Isle, working in the South Lighthouse. It seemed even longer ago than when he'd been a boy, singling neeps.

Kenny came to with a start and realized that someone had opened the door. He knew where he was at once. It had been one of those afternoon naps that are more like daydreaming than sleep. His first thought was that it must be Edith, home early for some reason, and he decided they might go to bed. He liked s.e.x during the day more than anything. It seemed stolen time to him, illicit. But when he turned, his arms slightly open to hold her, he saw that it wasn't Edith at all. It was Aggie Williamson. The mist was caught in her hair. Millions of tiny drops of water trapped in the thin, wispy tangle. Silver on grey.

'Aggie,' he said. 'Is anything wrong?' They had known each other for all that time, but still she had never come into his house uninvited. Even as a child, when she'd wanted to play with them, she'd hung around outside waiting for them to join her. She'd never knocked on the door. Bella and Alec would just have burst in, sat at the table, a.s.sumed that the milk and biscuits were for them too.

'That policeman came by,' Aggie said. 'Perez. He told me there was a body in the hut.'

'I know. I found the man.' He preferred to think of him as a man rather than a body. Had she just come to gossip? It seemed unlike her. Usually in places like Biddista the shop was the place for gossip, but Aggie never encouraged it. She sat behind the counter. Her book would be face down, but you could tell she was waiting to get back to it. She still seemed preoccupied by the story, indifferent to the rumours being spread.

'Do you have no idea who he is?' she asked.

'I couldn't see his face,' Kenny said. 'It was covered with a mask. A clown's mask.'

'Jimmy Perez said that too.' She paused, fixed him with her eyes. 'It couldn't have been Lawrence?'

She waited for Kenny to consider the possibility, watched for a reaction, and when none came she went on. 'Martin described him to me. He saw him alive. Might have been the last person to see him alive. I just couldn't help thinking . . .'

'The dead man is English,' Kenny said. 'He spoke with an English accent. Perez told me.'

'Lawrence has been away for a long time. He might speak differently now.'

'You're talking as if you want it to be Lawrence,' he said.

'No!'

'I would have recognized him,' Kenny said stubbornly. 'Even without seeing his face.'

'Would you? Really? How long is it since he's been here? Years. Certainly he left before Alice was born and I can't mind any visits.'

Kenny tried to fix a picture of his brother in his mind. To see his height, the proportions of his body. He thought of the man he'd seen the night before loping down the track. Could that have been Lawrence?

'When's the last time you heard from him?' Aggie asked.

Kenny knew exactly, but he wasn't going to tell Aggie. He wasn't going to admit that Lawrence cared so little for him that there'd been nothing but a second-hand message left with Bella. 'Lawrence says he's going away again. He told me to tell you.' Kenny hadn't even been there to say goodbye when his brother left. Perhaps Lawrence had chosen the moment especially. He'd known that Kenny would persuade him to stay.

'The man in the hut isn't Lawrence,' he said.

He thought she would say more to convince him that it might be, but she suddenly gave up the fight.

'Of course,' she said. 'You're right. I'm being foolish. I don't know what's been wrong with me to day. My head's full of all kinds of fancies. You would know your own brother.' She paused. 'After the policeman left I even wondered for a moment if it might be Andrew. They didn't find his body until weeks after he fell. The tide was so strong, the coastguard said he must have been taken out to open water. I thought maybe he survived after all. For all those weeks I kept hoping. There was some chance he'd survived, swum ash.o.r.e somewhere, taken himself away to sober up. Even when the body was washed up, it could have been anyone.'

'Andrew's dead,' Kenny said.

'I know. It's my imagination. I think, What if . . . and then I'm carried along by the possibility. The story.' She gave a little smile. 'I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come.'

'Have some tea while you're here.' Now, he felt sorry for her, living all on her own. She had no one to take her to bed on stolen afternoons.

'No,' she said. 'I just shut up the post office and ran up here. I need to get back. I might have customers waiting.'

'It's the time of year,' he said. 'The light nights. It makes us all go a little bit mad.'

Chapter Twelve.

Roy Taylor was head of the Inverness team. He'd be the senior investigating officer once he arrived. Perez had worked with him before and they'd become friends of a sort. Not close friends. Perez knew nothing about his private life, didn't even know if he was married. But they'd come to an understanding about the case they were working on.

Now, listening to Taylor's impatience, Perez was irritated. He didn't need telling that the priority was to get an ID on the victim. He'd only officially been a victim for half an hour, for Christ's sake. Sandy should have arrived in Lerwick now. He'd be on the phone, chatting to the la.s.ses in the NorthLink office at Holmsgarth, checking with Loganair on the BA bookings. It was the sort of work Sandy liked and was good at, routine and not too demanding. Perez was confident they'd have a name by the end of the day. At this point there was little else they could do. He knew that Taylor's impatience had little to do with his handling of the case. He'd be frustrated because he was still in Inverness, because he hadn't set out for Aberdeen the minute he got the call. If the weather had changed just a little earlier, if they hadn't banked on getting the last plane into Sumburgh, they'd have been able to reach the ferry before it sailed and at least they'd be in Lerwick at seven the next morning. Taylor was a man who liked to be in control. Perez could imagine him, angry with himself and taking it out on the rest of the team.

Perez was hungry now too. Fran had woken when he got up, made mumbled offers of toast and fruit, but he was already late for work by then. He was tempted to head back for town, thought of bacon sandwiches, fish and chips. Something warm and greasy and filling. But for completeness' sake he thought he should talk to Peter Wilding, the Englishman who had taken on w.i.l.l.y Jamieson's house. He could tell Taylor that he'd spoken to everyone who lived in Biddista then. Taylor wouldn't be able to pull him up on that.

Wilding was sitting in the upstairs window, looking out, just as Martin had described. The fog had made the day so gloomy that he'd switched on a light in the room. Perez could only see him when he reached the end of the terrace and even then the view wasn't so good. He thought the man had been watching him all along, from the moment he'd pulled up in his car. He'd have watched Perez go to Skoles and to the Manse, seen him in the shop and in Aggie's house. It seemed odd to him that a man should take so much interest in the trivia of everyday life. In Perez's experience, women were the nosy ones. Why would this Englishman care what the people of Biddista got up to? But Wilding's curiosity might be useful. There was a real possibility that he'd seen the stranger.

The writer must just have seen Perez as a silhouette coming out of the mist. Why is he still sitting there, Perez thought, when there's nothing to see? As soon as he knocked on the door, Wilding left his place at the window. Perez heard footsteps on wooden floorboards, a key turning in the lock. The door must have warped because it stuck against the frame. Did the locked door mean the man hadn't been out yet that day? Or that security was a habit brought up from the south?

He recognized Wilding as soon as he came to the door as the dark man who'd been talking to Fran at the gallery. He was tall, rather good-looking, Perez saw now. He was wearing a striped collarless cotton shirt and jeans, canvas shoes. The writer smiled. He didn't speak but waited for his visitor to explain himself. Perez found the silence disconcerting.

Perez supposed he should show his warrant card, but couldn't quite remember what he'd done with it and introduced himself instead. 'I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.'

'Oh, please do. Any excuse to stop staring at a blank laptop screen.' It was a rich voice, as if he was constantly amused by a private joke. Perez had imagined a writer with a deadline to meet as brooding, self-absorbed, but now there was no hint of that. The man stood aside. 'I noticed that there's been some activity on the jetty. Is it about that, I wonder?' Perez remained silent. 'Oh well,' Wilding went on. 'No doubt you'll tell me when you're ready.' His eyes were so blue that Perez wondered if he was wearing coloured contact lenses. It pleased him to think of Wilding as vain.

w.i.l.l.y Jamieson had been born in this house and lived in it until he'd moved into sheltered housing. He'd scratched a living from fishing and, when he was younger, from odd bits of work for the council. Perez could remember seeing him by the side of the road sometimes, helping the contractors lay new tarmac. He'd never married, and when he'd moved out the house was in much the same state as the day his parents had moved in. Perez supposed that he'd bought it from the council. Wilding must be the owner now, or be renting it privately. He was hardly a normal council tenant.

Inside the house, Perez could see across a pa.s.sageway into a small kitchen which held a deep sink with one tap and a Calor gas stove. The table, folded against one wall, looked as if it had been left behind by w.i.l.l.y. There were no fitted cupboards, no washing machine. The only additions were a small fridge, balanced on the workbench, and a coffee grinder. The place had an air of impermanence. A squat. It was as if Wilding were camping out here.

Wilding seemed untroubled that Perez could see the primitive nature of his domestic arrangements and gave another of his smiles. 'Let's go upstairs. It's more civilized there. Can I make you tea? I'm sure Aggie will have offered you tea earlier, but I expect you could use another by now. Or coffee perhaps? Coffee is one of my few luxuries here. I grind the beans every time.' He spoke slowly and Perez had the sense that he was considering the effect of every word. But perhaps it was just that he'd spent too long on his own in his upstairs room and conversation no longer came easily.

Perez was tempted by the coffee. It would be a long day and he would need something to keep awake and alert.

'Coffee would be fine.' He paused. 'One of my luxuries too.'

'Ah! Another addict! I can recognize the signs. Splendid. Go in and make yourself at home. The room at the front. I'll not keep you waiting long.'

He had followed Perez halfway up the stairs, but now he turned and went back to the kitchen, moving very lightly for such a tall man. All his movements were easy and unhurried. It was as if he'd expected a visitor and had planned in advance the words he would use and the way he would move.

As Wilding had said, the workroom was more civilized. The bare, unvarnished floorboards were hidden by a woven rug in the middle of the room. The desk was old, leather-topped and obviously his own. He'd made some makeshift shelves from bricks and planks and they were crammed with books. There was a CD player and a rack of discs. A large unframed canvas hung on one wall. It was of a field of hay, which had been cut and piled into untidy heaps, under a fierce yellow light. Perez thought it might be by Bella Sinclair and felt ridiculously pleased with himself when he approached and saw the signature. He would tell Fran later. He was still staring at it when Wilding came in, pushing the door open with his foot. He was carrying a cafetiere and two mugs on a tray, a box of shop-bought cakes. He had learned the convention of island entertaining. It was considered impossibly rude not to offer a guest something sweet to eat.

'I don't have any milk,' he said, in no way apologetic. 'But I could run to the shop if you're desperate.'

'I drink it black.'

'Splendid.' A favourite word. 'You have the chair, inspector. I'm quite happy on the floor.' And he lounged, legs outstretched, still managing to dominate the room.

Perez would have liked a cake, but it seemed they were just there for show. He couldn't ask for one without seeming greedy. 'Martin says you're a writer.' Perez was interested in the man, his profession. Every witness statement and confession was part fiction, but he couldn't imagine conjuring a whole story from thin air, couldn't see where you would start. 'Do you write under your own name?'

Wilding laughed. 'Oh yes, inspector, but don't worry if you've never heard of me. Few people have. I write fantasy, an acquired taste.' He seemed rather pleased that he was unknown. 'Fortunately I do quite well in the States and j.a.pan.'

Perez thought some comment of congratulation was expected, but wasn't sure what to say. Instead he sipped his coffee, took a moment to enjoy it.

'Have you had any visitors recently, Mr Wilding? Friends from the south, perhaps?'

'No, inspector. I moved here to escape distractions. The last thing I need is people under my feet.'

'There was an Englishman in Biddista yesterday. You might have seen him.'

'n.o.body came to the house and I was in all day.'

'But not in the evening. Then you were at the exhibition at the Herring House. As was the Englishman.'

'And so were you! Of course, I recognize you now. You were there with the attractive young artist. Ms Hunter. A great new talent. Art, I must confess, is another of my luxuries. I love Bella's work. It was she who inspired my first visit to Shetland. And so I was delighted to receive an invitation to the opening. There were fewer people than I was expecting. I suppose I'd thought it was going to be more of a local event.'

'People are very busy in the summer.' Perez wondered why he felt so defensive. It wasn't the time to explain that the event had been the subject of a practical joke, but he didn't want the man thinking there was no interest in Shetland in Fran's work. 'Do you remember the man who became a little emotional?'

'The guy in black? Of course.' Wilding paused, for the first time dropped the light, affected tone. 'I felt sorry for him. I've suffered from mental-health problems too. I understood his desperation.'

'You thought his distress was genuine?'

'Oh I think so, don't you? It seemed real enough to me.'

Perez didn't answer.

'What happened to the man?' Perez thought Wilding seemed unnaturally concerned about a stranger. 'Has he been admitted to hospital? Sometimes, for a short while, it's the only solution with depression.'

'I'm afraid he's dead,' Perez said.