Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

remembered Evelyn telling her that he had become quite religious after his marriage. Amelia’s influence. Perhaps he felt it was his duty to forgive. Then Sandy had his arm around Ronald. Both men seemed to be close to tears. Joseph kept his distance, but didn’t seem hostile.
    ‘It’ll be all right.’ She realized that she’d actually spoken the words under her breath. There was nobody close enough to hear and she repeated them a little louder. This had been a terrible week but they’d got through it. With Mima’s burial out of the way, they’d be able to put the awful events behind them.
    As she waited for Ronald to finish talking to Michael and Sandy, Sophie and Paul Berglund came up to speak to her. It seemed they’d walked to the kirk. Sophie looked so pale and drawn that Anna thought she must be sick. Then she remembered that the girl’s friend had died too. Sitting through the service must have made Hattie’s suicide seem very real. Anna was convinced that the police would decide the death was suicide. What else could they think it would be?
    ‘We wondered if we might have a lift back?’ Berglund said. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
    ‘Look, it’s OK.’ Sophie’s hair was blowing about her face. ‘We can walk. We don’t want to put you out. Perhaps you’re going back to Utra.’
    ‘No. We have to get back for the baby. He’ll need feeding.’ Anna thought again how poorly the girl looked. She couldn’t believe Sophie was capable of walking all that way in such a state. Sophie had always been so fit. Anna had recruited her into the Lindby women’s rowing team and the student loved the exercise and got out of the boat after a race beaming, hardly sweating. But Sophie was young. Perhaps she thought it was OK for an old woman to die violently, but not a person of her own age. ‘If you don’t mind waiting till Ronald’s finished talking to the boys we’ll take you back. Where do you want to go? The Bod or the Pier House?’
    ‘The Pier House,’ Berglund said before Sophie could speak. ‘We both feel like a stiff drink.’ He put his arm around Sophie’s shoulder. Anna supposed he could just be comforting her because she’d had such an upsetting few days, but it didn’t seem like that. It seemed more intimate and proprietorial.
    Ronald waved to her and started walking to the car. She would have liked to ask him how he was feeling, what the Wilson men had said, but it was awkward with the strangers there. They drove to Symbister in silence.
    On impulse at the hotel, Anna got out of the car to say goodbye to the visitors. She reached out and put her hand on Sophie’s shoulder.
    ‘Hattie must have been ill,’ she said. ‘Why else would she do something like that? Come in to the bungalow whenever you want to. It would be good to have the company.’
    Sophie nodded. There were tears in her eyes again and she seemed unable to speak. Berglund held her close to him again and led her into the hotel.

 
Chapter Twenty-nine
     
    Perez wasn’t there for Mima’s funeral. He’d explained his decision to Sandy the day before. ‘It’s not a lack of respect. Please tell Evelyn that. I’ll be thinking about you all. But it’ll be a distraction to have the police there.’
    And Sandy had nodded, understanding how it would be. There’d be gossip enough over the means of Mima’s dying. Perez’s presence would just give the congregation something else to talk about.
    Instead Perez sat in his room in the Pier House and read Hattie’s letters to her mother. Without any real decision having been made, it seemed he’d taken up residence in the hotel. He’d come back there the evening before after his meeting with the Fiscal. In the morning when he came down to breakfast Jean, the skinny Glaswegian, grinned at him. ‘Still here then?’ Now she knew what he liked: a big pot of very strong coffee, scrambled eggs, brown toast. She’d say, ‘Do you no’ fancy something more substantial this morning?’ But teasing him, not expecting a different order.
    Before starting to read the letters, Perez went into the kitchen to find her and asked if she’d be kind enough to make him some coffee to take into his room. She was on her own; Cedric Irvine would be at the funeral. He could tell the woman would have liked him to stay and chat to her, but he was eager to get back to the letters. She had only been on the island a short time and he didn’t think she could have much to tell him. It