Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

She’d never leave the light and the telly on, and the cat shared her bed as well as her chair. Mima’s husband had died in an accident at sea when she was still a young woman. There were rumours of her being a wild young widow, but since he’d known her she’d lived on her own.
    There was no answer. He felt suddenly very sober and walked through to the rest of the house. There was a corridor which ran along the back of the three rooms and led into each one. He couldn’t remember ever going into her bedroom before. She’d never been ill. It was a square room taken up with a heavy dark-wood wardrobe and a bed so high that he couldn’t see how Mima could scramble on to it without a step. There was the same thick brown lino on the floor as in the kitchen, a sheepskin rug, white once, now grey and rather matted. The curtains, faded and tatty, cream with a design of small roses, weren’t drawn. On the windowsill stood a photo of her husband. He had a thick red beard, very blue eyes, was dressed in an oilskin and boots and reminded Sandy of his father. The bed had been made and covered with a quilt of crocheted squares. There was no sign of Mima.
    The bathroom was a more recent addition, built on to the back of the house, though it had been there as long as Sandy could remember. The bath and the basin were an improbable blue, though there was still brown lino on the floor, partly covered by a bright blue shaggy rug. A smell of damp and wet towels. An enormous spider crawled around the plughole. Otherwise the room was empty.
    Sandy tried to think rationally. He’d dealt with missing-person inquiries and knew that families always panicked unnecessarily. He’d made fun of the anxious parent or partner once he’d put down the phone. ‘There was a party at the Haa last night. That’s where they’ll be.’ But now he felt the shock of the unexpected, the unknown. Mima never strayed from her house at night these days, unless there was a family do at his parents’ house or a big island event like a wedding, and then someone would have given her a lift and he’d know about it. She had no real friends. Most Whalsay folk were slightly afraid of her. He felt his thoughts spinning out of control, tried to keep calm. What would Jimmy Perez do in this situation?
    Mima always shut her hens up at night. Maybe she’d gone out to do that and tripped and fallen. The archaeologists had dug their trenches on some land right away from the house, but she was getting on now and it was possible that the drink was at last clouding her judgement. If she’d wandered down that way it would be easy enough to lose her footing.
    Sandy went back to the kitchen and collected a torch from the drawer in the table. It had been there from the time when every house had its own generator, which only ran for a couple of hours in the evening. Outside, he felt the chill of the mist and drizzle, biting after the heat of the Rayburn. It must be nearly midnight. His mother would be wondering where he was. He walked round the house. Here was the shed where Mima brought in the cow for milking. Once his eyes adjusted to the dark there was enough light spilling from the house for him to see quite clearly where he was going. He’d left on the bathroom light and the window faced this way. No need yet for the torch. The hens were already shut up. He checked the catch on the wooden henhouse and could hear the rustle of movement inside.
    Earlier the day had been fine and Mima must have done her washing. The line stretched away from the house down towards where the archaeologists had set up the dig. There were still towels and a sheet pegged to the nylon rope. They hung lifeless and heavy, like the sails on a becalmed boat. Other island women would have taken down the washing as soon as the weather closed in, but Mima would probably not have bothered if she’d been eating her tea or reading a book. It was this fecklessness that so irritated some of her neighbours. How could she not care what people were thinking of her? How could she keep such an untidy house?
    Sandy walked past the washing to where the students had been working. A couple of poles with string stretched between to mark out the search area, or maybe for measuring. A windbreak made of blue plastic strung on to metal stakes. A pile of turfs, neatly stacked, and another of soil. Two trenches cut at right-angles. He flashed the torch into them, but they were empty apart from a couple of puddles of