Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

How lovely to hear you.’
    ‘Is it convenient?’ Why did he always sound so formal when he spoke to her on the phone? He might have been talking to one of his colleagues.
    ‘Brilliant timing. We’ve come to an exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Mum and Dad have taken Cassie off to look at dinosaurs and I’ve sneaked off to grab a decent cup of coffee.’ He could imagine her face lit up with enthusiasm, wondered what she was wearing. He’d like to picture that too. Would she think it weird if he asked her?
    ‘I’m at home,’ he said. ‘I’ve sneaked off for a quick coffee too. And I wanted to talk to you in peace.’
    ‘I wish I was there.’
    Come home then. Get on the first flight from Heathrow to Aberdeen and I’ll book you on to the last Loganair. You could be back this evening.
    Because that was racing through his mind and he was thinking about the practicalities of the plan – he supposed she would need to pack her bags, so after all there wouldn’t be time – he realized suddenly that there was a silence between them. She was waiting for a reply. ‘You don’t know,’ he said, ‘how much I miss you.’
    In his head the haunting, ludicrous chant. Marry me. Marry me. Marry me. She would despise him and think him sentimental all over again.
    ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘It won’t be long. Less than a week now.’
    ‘I was worried that you might be enjoying yourself so much in the city that you wouldn’t want to come home.’
    ‘Oh God no, Jimmy. Never think that. I can’t wait to get home.’
    Then his stomach tipped like it did in a storm on the Good Shepherd and he felt sixteen again and in love for the first time. But that had to be enough for him, because Cassie and her grandparents arrived and Cassie demanded to speak to him, to tell him everything she’d learned about Tyrannosaurus Rex.
    In the office the talk was all about the death of Sandy’s grandmother and speculation about how the accident might have happened.
    ‘I was at school with Ronald Clouston,’ one said. ‘He was always sort of absent-minded, but you’d have thought he’d be more careful around guns. He never was one of the really wild boys.’
    ‘According to Sandy he liked a drink.’
    Perez listened to the conversation and wondered how long it would be before people forgot that Ronald Clouston had shot Mima Wilson on a foggy night in Whalsay. The rumours would follow the man round for years, wherever he went; even if no criminal charge were brought the story would stay with him until he died.
    To avoid getting drawn into the gossip, he picked up the phone and set up a meeting with the Procurator Fiscal. Before going over to her office he jotted down some notes on a scrap of paper. He still wasn’t sure what angle she would take. He didn’t want to make light of the accident, of Ronald’s folly in going out with a gun in the fog after having taken a few drinks. But he hoped he’d be able to persuade her it was reckless, not criminal.
    He found it hard to explain the role of the Fiscal to English colleagues. Even Fran couldn’t grasp it: ‘But what does she do?’ Perez always said she was a cross between a magistrate and a prosecuting lawyer, but Fran didn’t even get that. All she understood was that the Fiscal was his boss.
    Rhona Laing, the new fiscal, was a cool fiftysomething with a cutting tongue and a designer wardrobe, which seemed completely out of place in Shetland. Rumour had it that she flew south to Edinburgh every month to visit her hairdresser. Perez never believed Shetland stories, but he could almost believe the blonde hair was natural and the way it was cut took ten years off her age. Her passion was sailing. She’d come to Shetland on a yacht from Orkney and fallen in love with the islands. In an unguarded moment at the opening of the new museum, she’d told him that from the sea Shetland looked like paradise. He’d wanted to ask what she thought it seemed like from the land, but by then she’d been swept away to meet more distinguished guests. She lived alone in an old schoolhouse near the marina in Aith, and managed to keep her past and her present entirely private. All that anyone knew about her was that she owned a catamaran, the biggest and most expensive sailing vessel in the islands.
    Perez didn’t know quite what to make of her. She was efficient and organized, but rather ruthless, he always thought. There were rumours in the islands that she had political