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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

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty

Willow slept deeply, without dreams, and woke to the sound of gulls and a foghorn – childhood noises, comforting. Outside the light was grey and she could see nothing from her window, not even the blurred outline of the island of Bressay. The mist hid everything.

When she got to the police station Perez was already there. She saw his black hair through the opaque glass pane in the incident-room door and recognized him from that. She opened the door and went in. He was using a corner of the long table as a desk. He’d never mentioned the fact that she’d taken over his office.

‘Could you not sleep, Jimmy?’

He looked up, his face a series of planes and shadows. It could have been carved roughly from some hard wood.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not very well. And Cassie always wakes early, so I dropped her at her friend’s house and came along here. She’s staying at her father’s tonight.’

Willow saw that Cassie was always at the front of his mind, his most important preoccupation.

‘Anything come of your chat with Brian?’

He hesitated and she felt the return of the anger. Why was he so determined to go it alone? If he’d obtained information from Brian in the Bonhoga, he should have been on the phone to her immediately. What right did he have to keep it to himself? Was he trying to protect someone here? One of his old cronies? The Fiscal? But then the thought of Perez as a corrupt officer was so ludicrous that she smiled.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said. ‘You can tell me then.’

She set the coffee in front of him and felt suddenly like some sort of therapist or counsellor. Go on, Jimmy, tell me all about it. And when he did speak, it was as if he’d bought into that fantasy too.

‘Ah, the ideas I’m carrying around in my head, you’d think I was mad,’ he said. ‘You’d think I was stark staring bonkers. You’d lock me up and throw away the key.’

She thought that was just another way of shutting her out, and she had too much pride to grovel to him.

‘We’ll stick to the facts then, shall we, Jimmy?’ Her voice was frosty. ‘The theories can come later.’

As soon as she’d spoken she realized her mistake. If she’d gone in gently and played the therapist, he’d have confided in her, but now she was just his boss again. He’d be worried about making a fool of himself.