The killing stones, p.5
The Killing Stones, page 5
‘Vaila?’ Perez asked.
She nodded. ‘Vaila and others. But she was lovely and the person I felt most at ease with. We were both readers, and we talked about books and sometimes she’d come for an evening, and we’d drink wine and watch a film. Then Archie started calling. Always with some excuse in the beginning. Vaila had said I had a dripping tap that needed to be fixed. He’d seen that there was a piece of fence that had blown down in the gale.’
She paused for a moment. Perhaps she expected some response from her visitors. When none came, she started speaking again. ‘I could tell from the beginning that he wasn’t just being helpful, and soon he came along with no excuse at all. At first, I sent him on his way. A flea in his ear. But he was persistent, and I found myself looking forward to his visits. I was missing the company of a man – that physical male presence in the room – and he had such good stories to tell. He made me laugh. He could listen and I had stories of my own to tell. I discovered that I was falling for him, despite how close I was to Vaila.’ She looked across at Willow. ‘But nothing happened. A hug of welcome when he arrived and a chaste kiss when he left. We talked. I knew how he felt, but he was prepared to wait.’
‘Will you stay in Westray now he’s gone?’
She considered that for a while. ‘I think so. I’ve always been a maker and the place has inspired my craft. I turned the bedroom upstairs into a studio. I saw my future here. I can sell my jewellery and I’ve been planning workshops. Working with Bill and Annie at the hotel to run courses in the off-season. They could provide the accommodation and I’d give the tuition in my studio.’ She paused. ‘In one sense it’ll be easier to stay without Archie. Less complicated.’ She stared at him, challenging him to be shocked by her words.
‘Are you involved with the heritage centre?’
‘Sure. I volunteer there when they’re busy. It’s closed most of the week for the winter, but I still go in occasionally to make sketches of some of the artefacts. I like to incorporate the images in my own designs.’
‘You don’t have a key?’
‘No. I’m not on the committee.’
Perez didn’t answer and thought that really, she wasn’t that interested in the history of the island. She only cared about how the ancient objects could feed into her work. He thought again that there was something cold and hard about her. He wondered how Archie could have fallen for her. ‘You don’t seem upset that Archie’s dead.’
‘Don’t I?’ Rosalie sounded almost amused. Perhaps this was the response she’d been expecting from him. ‘You think I should be in floods of tears and run away back to the mainland, just as I ran away from home when Adam died? Listen, Inspector, I’d been with my husband since I was sixteen. He was a cameraman working on natural history films, and we travelled the world together. He was older than me and he taught me so much. I worshipped him. I was fond of Archie but not in the way that I loved my husband. This is my home now. I’m sad that Archie’s dead, of course I am, but not in the same way. Our relationship was complicated and shaded with guilt. Besides, perhaps I’ve run out of grief. I have no tears left to weep.’
‘Do you know who might have wanted to kill him?’
She shook her head. ‘I have no idea at all.’
Chapter Five
WILLOW AND PEREZ STOOD OUTSIDE FOR a moment. It was still clear and cold, with hardly a whisper of a breeze, the sky pink and grey, the sun gone. Rosalie hadn’t switched on a light in the house, and Willow imagined the woman looking at them through the window, waiting for them to move on and leave her to her own devices. Willow touched Perez’s arm.
‘Maybe you should show me the crime scene.’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Sure.’
Willow knew that Perez had been lonely after Fran had died. Had he felt the same kind of intense loneliness as Rosalie, the loneliness that had prompted her to run north? He’d had the support of his colleague Sandy Wilson and his parents in Fair Isle, but he’d been deeply troubled when Willow had first met him in Shetland. She wondered now if he’d ever been tempted to escape, to run away south.
They’d turned a bend in the road and were out of sight of Quoybrae.
‘What did you make of her?’ Perez asked. ‘Did you believe her?’
‘That she wasn’t having sex with Archie? Yes, I believed that. It’s hard to know why she never did though. If it was all about moral scruples, why encourage him to visit? That seems a bit cruel, letting him hope that there might be more to the relationship. A betrayal of her friendship with Vaila too. Or maybe she was enjoying the power over them both.’
Perez considered that. ‘Rosalie didn’t seem the sort to crave power, though she struck me as cold as the water she was swimming in today. But I can’t see what motive she might have for killing him.’
Willow thought motive was always tricky. It didn’t take much for some people to be submerged by anger, overwhelmed by it. She knew one killer who’d strangled his wife because she laughed at the way he ate his food. That had been about power too, or the lack of it. ‘Rosalie had opportunity though. And no alibi. We only have her word that she was expecting him to turn up at Quoybrae last night. If she’d asked him to meet her at Grobust, he’d have done it, wouldn’t he? She was always the person pulling the strings.’
‘You didn’t like her?’
‘Not that exactly. I don’t quite trust her.’
‘What about means? How would she have got hold of that stone from the heritage centre?’
‘She said herself that she visited the place to sketch the artefacts. I doubt there’s much security or if they do an inventory after a regular’s been in.’ She looked across at Perez. ‘I’m not saying she’s our killer, but that we have to keep an open mind.’ She knew that sometimes Perez found it hard to maintain a distance. He often had too much compassion, too much empathy. Was he putting himself in Rosalie Greeman’s place, because he knew what it was to grieve? If so, wouldn’t he find it even more difficult to stay objective when it came to Vaila?
They walked on for a moment in silence, down the path towards the old dig site. It wasn’t a long walk from Quoybrae to Noltland. Willow thought that Rosalie was fit and strong. She’d get there in fifteen minutes, probably faster than that.
When they arrived, the pathologist was still working on the body. He preferred to do as much as he could at the locus. The body, he said, was a crime scene too and could be contaminated when it was moved. The CSIs must have arrived from Kirkwall on the mid-afternoon ferry. They’d set up a generator with fierce lights.
Perez recognized the crime scene manager and handed over the key to Archie’s car.
‘It’s parked in Pierowall. Can you check it out? See if anyone other than Archie has driven it?’
‘I’ve nearly done here,’ Grieve said. ‘The funeral director from Kirkwall will come in on this evening’s boat with a vehicle to take Mr Stout to Orkney mainland. I’ll not be able to get him to the mortuary in Aberdeen for the post-mortem until tomorrow evening’s NorthLink.’
‘His wife would like to see him before you take him south,’ Perez said. ‘Would that be possible?’
‘Sure, I’ll talk to Balfour Hospital in Kirkwall. We’ll arrange for her to see him there.’ He straightened and nodded across to Willow. Despite the mask, she could tell he was smiling.
‘Lovely to see you, Chief Inspector. Is all going well?’ His voice was almost soppy. He was thinking about her pregnancy. Once, after a few drams, he’d told her that if he hadn’t become a pathologist, he would have liked to be a midwife.
‘All’s going fine.’
‘Will you be with the victim’s wife when she says her goodbyes?’
‘No,’ Willow said. She came to a sudden decision. It was wrong for Perez to be here in Westray. He was too close. Too involved. ‘I’ll leave that to Jimmy. He’s more sympathetic than I am and besides, he’s not seen his son for a while. He can go out on the ferry to Kirkwall with you and have a night at home so they can catch up.’
She could tell that Perez was shocked and probably hurt that she’d not consulted him first. ‘Is that a good idea? Leaving you here on your own?’
‘I’ll not be on my own,’ she said. ‘I’ll hang on to Ellie. But Archie was your friend. A distant relative. If we had more available officers, you’d be off the case altogether. You’re too attached, and when we find our killer, the defence will have grounds to pull any of your evidence apart. You could do with some distance, and there’s work to be done in Kirkwall. You got in the night of the storm. We don’t know yet if a ferry earlier in the day brought in a stranger. Somehow, they might have slipped out this morning. It all needs to be checked.’
This wasn’t a conversation they should be having in front of another person, but Doc Grieve was discreet. Besides, it was true. James needed to see his father, and Perez needed to see his son.
Willow continued: ‘Take Phil back with you to do some of the legwork. And he can take a formal statement from Vaila in the station after she’s said her goodbyes to Archie. You shouldn’t be the person to do that either. Give James a big cuddle from me.’ She looked across at him and smiled. ‘We might have this sorted by the end of tomorrow.’
There was no returning smile, but Perez nodded to show that, though he might not like it, he could see the sense in his going back to Kirkwall. He turned to the pathologist. ‘How much time have we got before they come for the body?’
‘A couple of hours. Shall I see you at the pier then?’
‘Sure, I’ll let Vaila know. She can decide whether she wants to come out with him, or whether she prefers to wait and get the boat tomorrow.’
‘Phil’s on the beach,’ Grieve said. ‘Trying to work out which way our victim and killer might have come to get here, if they walked across the sand. It was a high tide though. I think any footwear marks will have been washed away.’
‘We’ll get some people in first thing tomorrow to do a proper search of the area.’ But Willow wasn’t sure how much evidence might be left after the wind and the rain of the night before. Traces of fibre would have been blown across the smooth black plastic covering the archaeological site and into the North Sea. The killer might have dropped something heavier, but it seemed unlikely.
Phil Bain was still in his scene suit. When he saw them, he took off his mask. If he was surprised to see Willow, he didn’t show it.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Archie Stout could have landed there from outer space, with his skull already split open by the stone.’
‘No sign of a boat having landed here?’ Perez asked. ‘I know it’s a long shot, the way the weather was last night, but someone might have come ashore from the water. Maybe in a RIB?’
‘No way of telling after a high tide and all that wind and rain.’
Perez explained that Phil would be going with him out on the Kirkwall ferry with the pathologist. ‘The boss thinks there’s important stuff we should be doing back at the station. She’ll stay here with Ellie.’
The boss. Willow wondered if he was being sarky, but maybe not. It wasn’t his style.
Perez continued: ‘We’re just going to Nistaben to chat with Vaila. She wanted to see her man before he goes south for the post-mortem. I’ll check whether she wants to come with us or out on the morning’s boat.’
Phil nodded. He seemed relieved to be leaving Westray. He was a town man, born and brought up in Kirkwall. ‘It’s too dark now to do any more on the shore. I’ll see you at the pier.’
Willow had been to Nistaben a few times with Perez. They’d been social, often boozy nights, neighbours turning up with fiddles to make music. James, their son, had been very taken with Lawrie and Iain, and they’d been kind to him, allowing him into their rooms, playing simple board games with him, finding cartoons for him to watch on their computers. Willow thought that was the sign of a good mother – to bring up kind sons in the islands, where the macho was often celebrated.
Ellie was still in the kitchen with Vaila, but this time the boys and Vaila’s mother, Evelyn, were there too. Willow let Perez go in on his own. The room was already crowded, and she didn’t know Vaila well enough to give her more than token support. She stood at the porch door, unnoticed, and gestured for Ellie to join her.
The light had almost gone now, and the temperature had dropped. They stood outside, shutting the door behind them.
‘You okay to stay on for a couple of nights?’ Willow explained the plan. ‘I’ve been in touch with Bill and Annie, and they’ve got rooms for us both.’ She nodded back towards the house. ‘How are they all getting on?’
‘Still in shock, I think. Evelyn, the grandmother, is trying to hold it all together.’
‘There are no direct relatives of Archie’s still living on the island?’
Ellie shook her head. ‘He had one brother who lives in Canada. They’ve been in touch with him, and he’ll come back for the funeral when they’ve got a date. Archie’s parents have both died.’
Willow remembered what Rosalie had said about the father having been a community leader and Archie feeling he had to take over the mantle. She’d remind Perez to chat to Vaila about that when they were together in Kirkwall.
Ellie broke into her thoughts. ‘I asked Vaila if Archie had met any visitors to Westray recently, but she couldn’t think of anyone.’
Looking through the window at the brightly lit kitchen, Willow could tell that some decision had been made. There was movement. The room emptied apart from Vaila’s mother and Perez who remained, talking. Willow told Ellie to go back to the hotel. ‘You had an early start and it’s been quite a day. I’ll catch up with you there. We need to talk to the other guests.’
Ellie nodded and slipped away to her car, a shadowy figure in the dusk. Willow watched the headlights sweep across the frosty field and then she went inside.
‘Vaila is coming with me,’ Perez said. ‘She has friends in Kirkwall she can spend the night with. She’s just packing a bag.’
‘And the boys will stay with us,’ Evelyn said. ‘They’re doing the same.’ A pause. ‘I think it’ll be good for them all to get out of this house for a while. It holds such memories. It’ll be hard for any of us to make sense of it all.’ She looked across the table at them both. ‘Archie Stout was a very complicated man.’
Willow wanted to ask what the woman meant by that, but the boys came back into the room, carrying a rucksack each, and a smaller bag, trailing wires from chargers and headphones. Willow supposed games would provide some form of escape, and Internet contact with their friends some support. Vaila arrived at the bottom of the stairs with a holdall. Evelyn hugged her and led the boys out to her car.
‘We’d best be on our way too,’ Perez said to Vaila.
‘I’ll give you both a lift to the ferry.’ Evelyn had turned back and shouted to them across the yard. ‘Then Willow can use Vaila’s car.’
‘That would be great,’ Willow said, but the woman hardly seemed to notice she was there. She followed Perez through the door.
‘I’ll switch everything off and lock up,’ Willow said.
‘Thanks.’ Now Vaila did see her and gave a little smile of recognition. ‘Thanks.’
‘Is it okay if we have a look round while you’re not here? Just in case there’s something to tell us who Archie might have been meeting?’
‘Yeah. Anything you need.’
When they’d gone, Willow had a quick exploration of the house, motivated more by curiosity than by any real idea that she might find anything useful. She’d come in the following morning with Ellie for a real search.
The home had started off as a classic single-storey farmhouse, but it had been extended and they’d turned the loft into rooms for the boys, with dormer windows looking out over the shore and a little shared shower room. Iain’s still felt like that of a child. There were Lego models on a shelf. Lawrie had made an effort to make the space his own, to show that he’d grown up. The walls had been painted purple. There were posters of bands Willow had never heard of, bands who had almost certainly never performed in Orkney. And a photo of Archie, filthy and battered, lifting the ba’ after the annual community game, part rugby match, part riot, that took place in Kirkwall on Christmas Day. This felt like hero worship. No wonder Lawrie was grieving.
The Ba’ was an Orkney institution, named after the heavy ball at the centre of the game. It was a competition between the uppies – men and boys born or living at the top of Kirkwall – and the doonies who came from the other end of the town. The object was to get the ba’ either into the harbour, which meant that the doonies had won, or for the uppies to reach a spot in one of the higher streets. It had always seemed a crazy, lawless sport to Willow. She looked at the photograph a little longer, then moved on to the rest of the house.
Downstairs there was a large kitchen, a comfortable living room with a wood-burner, the parents’ bedroom and a bathroom. A corner of the living room had been turned into an office, with a desk and a laptop.
The place was warm and welcoming, not too tidy to be off-putting, but with a sense of design; Willow could see how Vaila and Rosalie had become friends so quickly. There were reminders everywhere that this had been a happy family: a picture of them all pulling silly faces, paintings the boys had done when they were younger, a couple of medals Iain had won for athletics and Lawrie in a photo of a group of young farmers, looking as if they were celebrating at a barbecue. It was hard to believe that this had housed a marriage in crisis.
Willow wondered where the money to extend the house had come from. Small farmers hadn’t had it easy in recent years and as far as she knew, Vaila hadn’t worked away from the farm. Maybe Archie had inherited land or money or a house when his parents had died. That was something else to ask Jimmy. She locked the door and went outside. It had been warm in the house and the sudden cold shocked her. Instantly, she felt more alive. Perhaps this was how Rosalie felt during her icy dips in the sea. But Willow thought that she was exhilarated too at the prospect of working in the field again. And working almost alone.
