Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

to a decent meal out in a restaurant in Lerwick if he was in a good mood, signed off their expenses. She couldn’t know that Hattie was counting the days until he left.
    Hattie didn’t think Paul would have allowed her to set up the project if he’d been supervising from the start. But he’d only joined the department the year before. She remembered the meeting at which he’d been introduced to her and Sophie. ‘You’ll have heard of Paul Berglund,’ the head of department said. ‘You couldn’t wish for a better supervisor.’ Paul had shaken Hattie’s hand, said how pleased he was to be working with her and given no sign that they’d met before. His hand had been cold and dry; hers was sweaty. She’d muttered something about feeling unwell, fled the office and thrown up in the nearest ladies’ toilet. Perhaps he expected her to dump the project, find another subject for her PhD.
    But she hadn’t left – the dig on Whalsay had been her idea from the start – and she had made sure that he had no excuse for excluding her. Now the merchant’s house mattered more to her than escaping from him. Her record-keeping was impressive and though she wasn’t as physically strong as Sophie, her fieldwork was deft and thorough. Whenever she was in Paul’s presence she felt tense. She watched him, always aware of the space he took up, of his position in the room.
    ‘Paul Berglund was in the bar after you left,’ Sophie said. They’d left the Bod and were on their way to Lindby. They couldn’t see much beyond the field on each side of the track. Sheep were darker shades in the mist.
    ‘Oh.’ Hattie tried to sound unbothered. She didn’t want to hear about him.
    ‘Yeah, he was drinking whisky. I’ve never seen him pissed before. Not that pissed.’
    I have , Hattie thought, and shivered inside her fleece. ‘Anything else happen after I’d gone?’ She wanted to move the discussion away from Berglund.
    ‘Not really. I was chatting to Sandy, but he left before I did. He had to get home to his mammy. I mean, what is he like? He still acts like a fourteen-year-old.’ She shifted the straps of the rucksack on her shoulders. ‘I do see him as a bit of a challenge, though. I’m sure he gets up to all sorts of mischief in Lerwick. It would be fun to see if I can get him to misbehave here, on his mother’s doorstep.’
    Hattie didn’t know what to say about that. She supposed Sophie could look after herself, but in her opinion all games around sex were dangerous. She would be quite pleased though if Sophie and Sandy hooked up with each other for a while.
    They’d reached the dip in the land that led to Setter, the most sheltered spot on the island. The merchant had chosen the land for his grand house well. Hattie wondered if it had the same name then, something similar perhaps which had become corrupted over the years. They always called in on Mima before they started work, both as a courtesy and because she’d put on the kettle and bring them out tea if she knew they were there. The house seemed unusually quiet. Mima liked Radio Two, the chat of Wogan and singing along to the ballads she recognized. Sophie opened the door and called in but there was no answer.
    ‘She’s not there.’ Paul Berglund appeared from the back of the house, squat, short-necked, looking more like a soldier than a professor of archaeology. Hattie couldn’t work out what he could be doing there. He didn’t usually arrive on site so early. And if he’d been drinking the night before, shouldn’t he still be in the hotel nursing a hangover? ‘Come into the house,’ he said as if he owned the place. ‘Sit in the kitchen in the warm.’
    Something awful’s happened , Hattie thought. What’s he done now?
    She held back so Sophie walked into the house first. Usually they would have taken off their boots, but Paul was beckoning them in and they were used to following his instructions. He’d been cutting up an apple with the knife he always carried on site. It lay on the table and Hattie thought again what a cheek it was that he should make himself so at home. In the kitchen the cat wound itself round her legs and almost tripped her up. She picked it up and it hissed.
    ‘Mima’s dead,’ Paul said. His voice was quiet but matter-of-fact. ‘The police were here earlier. They called me at the Pier House Hotel first thing this morning and asked me to meet them. There was a dreadful accident late last night. Some guy out after