Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

her and pecked his cheek. Sandy was still taking his shoes off. ‘Are you ready for some lunch too, son? Has that nice inspector of yours gone?’
    ‘He’s away back to Lerwick to see the Fiscal. I’ll take a small bowl of soup.’
    ‘He thinks a lot of you, I can tell. I’m proud of both my boys.’
    ‘Have you told Michael about Mother?’ Joseph sat himself at the table, laid his hands flat on the oilskin cloth. The fingers were fat and red. Sandy remembered again the day they’d struggled to kill the pig, the noise that seemed to drill into his skull before the poleaxe silenced the animal, the blood.
    ‘I rang him at home this morning but he’d already left for work. Some early meeting. I caught Amelia as she was on her way out and left a message with her for him to call me. He was on the phone a few minutes ago. She’d only just managed to get through to him.’
    Or she couldn’t be bothered trying. Sandy thought his sister-in-law was a stuck-up cow. Nice arse, but when it came to a wife he wanted more than that. He thought Michael could have done better for himself.
    His mother was still talking. ‘He wanted to know when the funeral was. I said we couldn’t make plans until we know when your Inspector Perez will release the body. Michael will definitely come. He’s not sure about Amelia and Olivia.’
    Sandy knew fine well Amelia and the baby would stay in Edinburgh. She had her work for one thing, and that mattered more to her than the family. She’d brought Olivia to Whalsay once when she’d been just a couple of months old and she was still on maternity leave, and then there’d been nothing but complaints and anxieties. She’d gone home earlier than expected. ‘Oh, I couldn’t dream of missing baby massage. It’s the best way there is to bond.’ Sandy couldn’t understand how his mother, usually so clever and on top of things, could be taken in by it all. But he made no comment. This wasn’t the time for a row.
    He watched his mother ladle out three bowls of soup and his father stand to cut the bread. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of Setter without his grandmother. He wasn’t optimistic like his father. Despite what he’d said to Perez, he couldn’t believe it was for the best.
    His mother wouldn’t stop talking. She got that way at times of stress. Now she was rattling on about Setter and pushing Joseph to make plans for the land and the house. Sandy wasn’t really listening to her and he wasn’t sure his father was either. He was eating the soup, lifting his spoon with mechanical regularity, chewing and swallowing as if his life depended on tipping the steaming liquid into his mouth.
    ‘I’ve told the lasses from the Bod that they can carry on with their work once the police say it’s OK. That’s all right, isn’t it, Josie?’ No answer. None needed or expected. ‘I wondered if the Amenity Trust might be interested in buying the house, in renting it at least. The boys won’t want to live there.’ Her voice continued, but Joseph’s spoon was still. ‘Michael won’t leave Edinburgh now and Sandy has his flat in Lerwick. It would make a fine visitor centre once the excavation’s finished.’
    Now Sandy was listening too. He was about to protest when he caught his father’s eye across the table. Joseph gave a brief shake of the head unnoticed by his wife. A look that said, Don’t worry, son. It’ll never happen. Don’t argue over it now. Just leave it to me.

 
Chapter Twelve
     
    After the midwife went, Anna Clouston sat in the window of the living room and looked out over the water. She carried James with her and sat with him lying lengthways along her knee. It was unusual for her to be alone with him and she felt that he was a stranger; she couldn’t believe it was the same child she’d been carrying in her body for nine months. Perhaps that was because they’d had so little time on their own since they’d come back to Whalsay from the hospital. The house had been full of well-wishers, people bringing presents and cakes and casseroles. And then, this morning, the police had come.
    Anna had struggled to adapt to living on Whalsay. It wasn’t the isolation that was the problem; that she relished. She liked the drama of living on the island. It was the feeling that she had no privacy, that her life was no longer her own and she was crowded with people telling her how to run it. What was most difficult was finding that she’d become attached to a