Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

talking and it was almost as if he was telling a story.
    ‘She was a pretty little thing. I suppose she was still attractive when she was working in Whalsay, but here she could be so earnest. Back then she seemed happier, funny, full of life. Yes, I invited her out to dinner. A couple of times, actually. A spur-of-the-moment decision that I went on to regret. I was married and I had a small child. But after a long day in the field I wanted someone to share a beautiful evening with. I like female company and my wife was two hundred miles away. That was all.’
    ‘Did she know you were married?’
    ‘I didn’t tell her but it certainly wasn’t a secret. The other volunteers would have known.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘The first time, nothing. We shared a meal and I dropped her back at the site. The next time was more intimate. We had a meal in the pub where I was staying. The windows were open and there was honeysuckle in the garden. I remember the smell of it. We shared a bottle of white wine. Then we went to bed together, inspector. Not a crime. I wasn’t even her teacher and she was a consenting adult.’
    ‘She was young and very naïve.’ Not a judgement, a comment. Perez wished now he’d asked for a drink. His hands were on the table in front of him and he didn’t know what to do with them.
    ‘As you say she was young and naïve. She read more into the encounter than I’d expected. Most students are more sexually experienced than I am. She was an exception.’ He paused. ‘She was nineteen, I was thirty-five. She fancied herself in love with me.’
    ‘Did she make life difficult for you?’
    ‘Not particularly. There was one embarrassing encounter, then she left the dig. I never expected to see her again. Then I changed jobs and found myself supervising a colleague’s postgrad student while she was on maternity leave. Hattie.’
    ‘Did you recognize her?’
    ‘Of course, inspector. I don’t make a habit of sleeping with my volunteers. But she made no sign that she knew me, so I assumed that was how she wanted to play it.’
    ‘She never mentioned the previous relationship?’
    ‘It wasn’t a relationship, inspector. It was a one-night stand.’
    ‘Did you know she’d suffered with depression?’
    ‘No, but I’m not surprised. In our previous encounter and in her work there was a lack of proportion. She took herself too seriously. I can see that might have been a symptom of her illness.’
    ‘She had a spell in hospital after her encounter with you.’
    There was another, longer pause. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
    ‘You and Hattie spent some time together on the afternoon before she disappeared. Was any of this mentioned then?’
    ‘Absolutely not, inspector. It was a professional conversation between colleagues. Just as I explained earlier.’
    ‘Is it significant, do you think, that she used your knife to kill herself?’ If that is what she did.
    ‘You think she still felt rejected by me? That the suicide was some sort of romantic gesture?’
    Perez sat for a moment looking at the man on the other side of the table. Berglund seemed almost flattered by the notion and that made Perez feel ill. He thought Berglund had deceived him. He was missing something and he hadn’t been told the full story, but he wasn’t sure which questions to ask. He couldn’t face reading any more of Hattie’s letters just now. He went back to his room and phoned Fran. She asked about the inquiry but he refused to talk about it. He wanted her to tell him about Cassie and about everything they’d been doing. He wanted her to make him laugh.

 
Chapter Thirty
     
    It seemed to Sandy that the funeral service in the kirk passed in no time, like a kind of dream. The place was full of people. The tradition was that it was mostly men who came to a Shetland funeral and when a woman had passed away there were fewer people in the congregation, but today the kirk was packed and there were as many women as men. He wasn’t sure why that was – more because they didn’t want to miss out on the drama, he thought, than that they’d miss her. She’d always had more male friends than women. Sandy remembered sitting there in the front row and thinking that Mima would have liked the singing. She’d always been one for a great tune. Joseph hadn’t said anything throughout the service, but Sandy could hear his mother’s voice speaking the Lord’s Prayer and in the hymns. She had a high, piping voice that