Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

damp out here.’
    For a moment Perez hesitated, then he recalled this was an accident, nothing more. It wouldn’t be sensible to get dramatic about it. ‘Is that OK, Sandy?’
    Sandy didn’t hesitate. The Whalsay hospitality again. ‘Sure. Why not?’
    Berglund turned round and left them alone. Perez felt a little ridiculous because the encounter had been so brief, but just now he had nothing specific to ask the man. If he’d asked about the archaeology he’d have shown his ignorance. Besides, what relevance could the archaeological work have to Mima Wilson’s death? Instead, he directed his questions to Sandy.
    ‘Have the students found anything?’ Perez was intrigued by the idea of digging for a living. He thought he’d enjoy it. Detailed, meticulous, picking his way through other people’s lives. With the right sort of case it was what he liked most about his work.
    Sandy shrugged. ‘I haven’t taken much interest,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there was much. A few bits of pot. Nothing exciting. Though they did find an old skull a couple of weeks ago. Val Turner, the archaeologist from the Amenity Trust, came into the station to report it. She said it wasn’t likely to be suspicious and the Fiscal wasn’t interested.’
    Perez thought he remembered talk of that in the canteen.
    ‘My mother was here when they turned that up.’ Sandy’s voice had brightened at the mention of the skull, but Perez thought it would take treasure to excite Sandy. Gold bars. Jewels. He was still like a boy.
    They stood for a moment looking into the hole in the ground, their shoulders hunched against the damp. Like mourners, Perez thought, at an open grave.

 
Chapter Seven
     
    Ronald Clouston lived in a new house close to the shore. It seemed even bigger than the places Perez had seen from the ferry, a dormer bungalow with a long single-storey extension on one end. They sat outside it for a while in the car while Sandy filled in some of the background to the family.
    ‘His mother and mine are second cousins,’ he said. He frowned in concentration. ‘Second cousins. Yes, I think that’s right. His father sold him that bit of land. Ronald wanted somewhere to set up house with his new wife. He had the place built a couple of years ago.’ He paused. ‘They’ve just had a baby. That’s one of the reasons I’m in Whalsay. I wanted to bring them a present, my best wishes. You know.’
    ‘His dad didn’t mind losing the land?’
    ‘It was only a bit of rough grazing and he was never a farmer.’
    ‘What does Ronald do for a living?’
    ‘He’s got a place on his father’s pelagic trawler. The Cassandra . She’s a beauty. Four years old now, but still state-of-the-art.’ It was what Perez had been expecting and fitted in with the image of the hard drinker who went out in the middle of the night shooting. Most of the Whalsay boats were family-owned. Fishing was a tough life and the men let off steam when they came ashore.
    ‘He was the brainy one at school,’ Sandy went on. ‘Not much good at anything practical, but OK at passing exams. Kind of dreamy, you know. He went off to university, but his father was taken ill and the place came up on the boat. He had to take it. You understand how it works. Maybe he was glad of the excuse to leave and he wouldn’t have got his degree anyway. That’s what my mother says.’
    A bit of jealousy there, Perez thought. Or competition between the two cousins, Sandy’s mother and Ronald’s mother, comparing their sons. No one would ever have called Sandy brainy.
    ‘Is the wife a Shetlander?’
    ‘No, Anna’s English. They had their wedding here, though, a couple of years ago. All her folks came up for it. It was a grand do.’ Sandy’s eyelids drooped for a minute and he shook himself awake, stared out at the drizzle. Condensation ran down the inside of the windscreen.
    Perez thought this was still a huge house for two people and one baby. He wondered where Ronald had met his Anna. There was a history of Shetland men going out to find their wives. During his brief spell at university perhaps. Perez had married an Englishwoman. Sarah, soft and gentle, pretty and fair. But he hadn’t had it in him to be the sort of husband she’d wanted. He’d always been too easily caught up in other folks’ problems. ‘I always come at the bottom of the pile,’ she’d said. ‘After work and your parents, sorting out the neighbour’s delinquent son and the plumber’s