Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

for his father.
    ‘How did you work it?’
    ‘I just boosted my expenses a little. I applied for Amenity Trust grants for a couple of projects – the community theatre was the first. I set up a bank account in the name of the Island Forum, submitted receipts for expenses and had the cheques made out to the new account. Maybe some of the expenses weren’t entirely project-related, but nobody checked. Nobody realized. It grew from there. I took more chances.’
    ‘You took more money.’ Sandy felt a pit open in his stomach. His mother had brought him up to be honest. He’d once stolen sweeties from the shop in Symbister and she’d sent him back to own up and apologize.
    ‘I was working for nothing,’ she cried. Her face was red with the effort of trying to convince herself. ‘I saw it as a wage.’
    ‘The Trust gave you a small grant to pass on to Anna Clouston to develop her workshops,’ Sandy said. ‘She never saw it.’
    ‘A loan,’ she said. ‘I planned to pay it back. Besides, she owed me. She took my ideas and my patterns and she wouldn’t even have me as a partner.’
    ‘How were you going to pay it back, Mother? Why did you never ask me for help? Or Michael? We would have sorted it out for you. You know we’d have worked together to do that.’
    She put her face in her hands and didn’t reply.
    ‘Is that why Dad changed his mind about selling Setter? He saw it as a way for you to clear what you owed?’
    ‘I had to tell him,’ she said. ‘He knew something was wrong the evening of Mima’s funeral.’
    ‘But then he couldn’t face it, could he? He couldn’t face anyone else living in Mima’s house. Do you know he tried to set fire to it to claim the insurance? It wasn’t me being thoughtless again.’
    ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘There are no secrets between us now.’
    ‘Mima was a countersignatory to the bank account,’ Sandy said. ‘I saw the chequebook in the drawer. She knew you’d been taking the money. You thought she wasn’t interested enough to check.’
    ‘She had no proof.’
    ‘But she guessed,’ Sandy said. He thought this was the most difficult interview he’d ever taken part in, but also the easiest. He knew all the people involved so well and he knew how they thought. ‘Did she ask you about it? Is that what you were discussing the afternoon before she died?’
    ‘She was worried for herself,’ Evelyn said. ‘What folks would say if it came out. “I know what it is to be the subject of gossip. Trust me, Evelyn, you’d not want that. I’d not wish that on anyone.”’
    ‘And she’d be worried about Dad,’ Sandy said sharply. ‘About what effect this would have on him.’
    ‘Aye,’ Evelyn said. ‘You’re right, of course. Mima always doted on your father.’
    ‘Did you go back later and kill her?’ The question that had been tormenting him since he’d first realized things weren’t right between his parents.
    She stared at him, horrified. He saw it hadn’t crossed her mind that he might suspect her of the murder. She still thought of herself as a good woman.
    ‘Did you see Ronald out with his gun and think that would be a good way to stop her talking? An accident in poor weather. If he shot her by mistake, nobody would ever know you’d been stealing. And then did you think you could make it happen like that?’
    ‘No!’ she cried. ‘No! Sandy, do you really think me capable of that?’
    He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought her capable of cheating and theft.
    Now, it seemed, she felt the need to explain. ‘I could have married into one of the fishing families,’ she said. ‘Even then they had more money than the crofters. They hadn’t invested in the huge trawlers, but they were well off by island standards.’ She looked up and smiled. ‘You’d not think it now but I was quite a catch in those days. Everyone said what a bonny little thing I was. Andrew Clouston fancied me rotten, but Joseph was always the one for me. From when we were bairns at school, he was the one for me. I didn’t care about his mad witch of a mother or his lack of money.’
    ‘Should I go up and see my father?’ Sandy asked.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t disturb him. I’ve given him a pill and he’s already asleep.’
    Suddenly Sandy felt very tired. He got to his feet. He would go to find Perez. It would be a very long night.
    ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘Work,’ he said.
    Usually she would have been full of questions.