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Chapters (47)
  1. Chapter One
  2. Chapter Two
  3. Chapter Three
  4. Chapter Four
  5. Chapter Five
  6. Chapter Six
  7. Chapter Seven
  8. Chapter Eight
  9. Chapter Nine
  10. Chapter Ten
  11. Chapter Eleven
  12. Chapter Twelve
  13. Chapter Thirteen
  14. Chapter Fourteen
  15. Chapter Fifteen
  16. Chapter Sixteen
  17. Chapter Seventeen
  18. Chapter Eighteen
  19. Chapter Nineteen
  20. Chapter Twenty
  21. Chapter Twenty-One
  22. Chapter Twenty-Two
  23. Chapter Twenty-Three
  24. Chapter Twenty-Four
  25. Chapter Twenty-Five
  26. Chapter Twenty-Six
  27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  30. Chapter Thirty
  31. Chapter Thirty-One
  32. Chapter Thirty-Two
  33. Chapter Thirty-Three
  34. Chapter Thirty-Four
  35. Chapter Thirty-Five
  36. Chapter Thirty-Six
  37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  38. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  39. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  40. Chapter Forty
  41. Chapter Forty-One
  42. Chapter Forty-Two
  43. Chapter Forty-Three
  44. Chapter Forty-Four
  45. Chapter Forty-Five
  46. Chapter Forty-Six
  47. Chapter Forty-Seven

‘No! He loved me and he wanted to spend his life with me. But his faith had made him question his past and his work. He needed time to get things straight in his head. I asked if I should come to Shetland with him, but he said this was something he had to do on his own.’

‘And where did you go when he was away?’ Perez asked.

‘On retreat,’ she said. ‘In the Easter holidays the University Chaplaincy organizes time out for anyone who wants to explore their faith more deeply. There’s a house in Sussex, run by nuns. A place of silence and contemplation. No contact with the outside world. That was why I didn’t find out about his death immediately.’ She looked up at Perez, and Willow saw that her eyes glittered with tears. ‘I had the sense that he needed my prayers.’

‘You told my sergeant that Jerry had sent you a postcard,’ Willow said. ‘Do you have it with you?’

Annabel opened her bag and set the card on the table. The same picture. A painting of three men playing violins. Willow held it by the edges and turned it over. On the back, Annabel’s home address in Hampstead. And two short sentences. Nearly done. Home soon.

‘This is definitely Jerry’s handwriting?’

‘Oh yes,’ Annabel said.

So Jerry had written the card and posted it before his death. But the message, Willow thought, was hardly any help at all.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Later their colleague Morag took Annabel out for a short guided walk of Lerwick. Perez had suggested that she might like to see where Jerry had been at school, the office where he’d first worked as a journalist. While she was away, they interviewed her father. Willow had the sense that Grey was as keen as the detectives to have a discussion in Annabel’s absence, and she felt throughout that he was in charge of the meeting. He set the agenda and told them what he wanted them to know. At one point, describing his work as a human-rights lawyer, he said, ‘Ah sometimes, Inspector, I lose sight of the truth. I’m a weaver of stories. A persuader.’

She thought that was what he was doing here – conjuring a story of the Greys’ perfect lives: the house on the edge of Hampstead Heath, the country retreat in Dorset, Annabel’s academic brilliance. Not necessarily to deceive his audience in any way, but to convince them to treat his daughter gently. And because he wanted Willow and Perez to like him, to be swept along by the energy of his narrative. He was seductive. In her parents’ world of the commune, he would be welcomed as a guru.

‘So you’d met Jerry Markham on many occasions,’ Perez said to start them off. ‘You knew him well?’