Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

said. ‘You’d never guess how much.’
    She looked down towards her son’s bungalow. Perez thought her head was full of fiddle music, memories of parties and laughter. Had she expected Anna to take on her role as hostess and party giver? Was she disappointed in the daughter-in-law who seemed more interested in building a business than having a good time?
    ‘Hattie and her boss went for a walk along the shore here yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘You have a great view from the house. Maybe you saw them?’
    ‘Andrew wasn’t so good yesterday. Sometimes he gets an idea in his head and he can’t let it go. He worries away at it and it drives him crazy. I had to call Ronald in to calm him down.’
    ‘What was it that troubled him?’
    ‘It was the accident with Mima. Something about the shooting took him back to when he was young. He’s a good few years older than me and he can remember Mima’s husband. Andrew’s father worked with Jerry Wilson building little inshore boats to go out to Norway on the Shetland Bus. The boats they made were used by the Norwegian resistance and agents in the field. It was a long time ago. Mima’s man died years ago, not so long after the war ended, when I was a very young bairn, so what could he have to do with the accident? But sometimes that’s the way Andrew’s mind works. Things that happened when he was a peerie boy seem more real than what went on yesterday.’
    ‘So you didn’t get the chance to look at the view of the shore? You won’t have noticed Hattie and Paul Berglund out here?’
    She flashed him a smile. ‘Yesterday I didn’t get the chance to go to the toilet without Andrew standing at the bottom of the stairs and asking where I was. Ronald managed to calm him down a bit when he got here. He’s good with his father, more patient than I am.’
    ‘Perhaps you saw her later, when she was on her own.’
    ‘No,’ Jackie said. ‘I didn’t see her at all.’
    ‘But you saw the Fiscal come in this morning? I noticed you with the others.’
    ‘I saw the crowd gathering when I was upstairs making the bed. I went down to Setter to see what was going on. Pure nosiness. That was the first I heard the girl was dead. I couldn’t stay long. Andrew was in the house on his own.’ She looked up at him. ‘How did the lassie die?’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not something I can discuss.’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’ She paused. ‘They’re saying it was suicide.’
    ‘Really, at this point we don’t know.’
    ‘What must her parents be going through?’ Jackie said. ‘We ’d do anything to protect our children but we can’t save them from themselves.’ She smiled at him. ‘Do you have children, inspector?’
    He shook his head automatically. But surely I do . Cassie feels like my daughter. How would I feel if she was so desperate that she jumped into a hole in the ground and slit her wrists?

 
Chapter Twenty-seven
     
    Sandy was surprised when Perez was at Sumburgh Airport to meet him. He’d left his car there and he could have driven north fine by himself. After a few beers and a meal in the hotel in London he’d slept like a baby until his alarm clock had woken him and in the morning the city hadn’t seemed quite so daunting or closed in.
    It helped that he had something physical to bring back to Perez in the form of Hattie’s letters and the SIM card from her mother’s phone. He’d made some notes about the conversation too, but he didn’t trust himself much with words. At least he wasn’t coming back empty-handed.
    In the plane he’d looked out for the first sight of Sumburgh Head and landing there he felt relief at being back safely without having messed up in any dramatic way. Then he saw Perez waiting for him in the terminal, leaning against the wall by the car rental desk, and he felt nervous all over again.
    ‘What’s happened?’ His first thought was that Gwen James had been on the phone to complain about him. Sandy wasn’t sure what he might have done wrong, but that had never stopped him getting into bother. Then he worried about his family.
    ‘Nothing.’ Perez grinned. ‘I was just curious to hear how you’d got on. I got a lift down from Val Turner. We had a meeting in Lerwick. She’s flying south for a day for a conference.’
    ‘What did you have to talk to her about?’
    ‘I wanted to ask her about these bones the girls have been digging up at Setter. Everyone’s