Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

was. Besides, he’d been made a good offer for the house already and he’d turned it down. Evelyn then? Sandy had known all along that this was where the thinking would end up. Evelyn had never particularly got on with Mima. She could shoot well enough and there was a shotgun in Utra. But if the couple had no money problems, then there would be no real motive. That was why Sandy was lurking in Utra like a thief or a spy.
    He knew where his mother kept the bank statements: in the drawer in the sideboard in the living room, where the lasses had put the silver coins before the man from the university had taken them away. It was locked, but the spare key was hanging from a hook in the larder along with all the others. Evelyn had always been the one to look after the family finances. Even when his father had worked for Hunter she’d sorted out the bills and the invoices and filled in Joseph’s tax returns. Sandy could remember her sitting at the table every month, going through the bank statements, frowning when she saw how little they had to live on until the next paycheque.
    He found the key and unlocked the drawer. The statements were neatly clipped together in the blue file he remembered. He looked immediately at the balance and felt a wild relief when he saw it was in credit. He scanned back over the past twelve months. No problems. Little excess in the pot, but no debt. He wondered if Evelyn could have taken out a loan, but there was no sign of that and the paperwork would be in the drawer too. How could I have doubted her? he thought. How could I have even considered for a minute that she would be capable of murder?
    He looked at his watch. It was almost six o’clock and he felt suddenly ravenous. He hadn’t had any lunch. He felt like celebrating. He thought he’d go down to the Pier House for his supper, maybe have a couple of pints. Some of the boys might be in and they could play cards, talk about the old times. Davy Henderson should be around. Maybe Anna had relented and let Ronald out for the evening. Then he remembered that Perez had asked him to talk to Sophie. He locked the drawer and hung up the key again, making sure everything was as it had been before. He hated the idea that his parents might know he’d been snooping.
    On the way to Symbister he stopped by the Bod. The Pier House would be quiet this early and they’d have the chance to talk. It wasn’t such a chore; Sophie was good company. She had a knack of making every man she was with feel special, attractive. He wondered whether he could persuade her to open up. If he’d made more effort to get to know Hattie, perhaps she’d have felt able to confide in him too. But when he knocked on the door there was no answer. He looked inside. All the archaeological equipment was still there in a heap at one end of the living room, but Sophie’s personal belongings seemed to have gone.
    In the Pier House, Cedric was behind the bar, staring into space. He’d looked the same age since Sandy had been a boy, but recently he seemed to have got older. His responses were slower.
    ‘Have you seen the lassie from the Bod?’
    Cedric turned his head to look at Sandy.
    ‘Aye she was in earlier. She took the ferry out. I was down at the pier to meet Jean. Sophie was all loaded up like a packhorse with that huge rucksack. She seemed pleased to be away.’
    Sandy phoned Perez and told him what had happened. Perez went very quiet, but he didn’t seem to think Sandy was to blame for allowing the girl to leave. It occurred to Sandy that Hattie might be travelling to Aberdeen on the same ferry as Sophie, but she’d be in the anonymous Transit van that the undertaker used to carry bodies for post-mortem, and Sophie would be in the bar.

 
Chapter Thirty-five
     
    When Perez arrived back in Lerwick, he called in to his office. It had a sleepy feel: most of his team were taking Easter leave. He phoned the Fiscal’s secretary and learned she’d be in a meeting for most of the afternoon. He made an appointment to see her first thing the following morning. He was looking forward to getting home early, sticking some clothes in the washing machine, cooking a meal for himself. In the meantime he began to wonder about the best way to track down the nationality of Berglund’s family.
    Although he’d planned a quiet evening at home, when he got there he couldn’t relax. He found it impossible to stop thinking about Sophie, rerunning in his head the conversation on