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Back Dead Water Save as PDF
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

Turning away from the desk he stopped for a moment. On the top of the in-tray was the familiar postcard. He flipped it over with a pencil. Nothing written there, not even an address. There were two possibilities: that the Fiscal had taken the card from Jerry Markham’s briefcase when she’d found his body, or that the killer had delivered it to her. A message, just as the card left at the roadside shrine for John Henderson had been a message.

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Two

When Willow returned to the police station Perez was back in position in the incident room, sitting at his place at the corner of the conference table. It was as if he’d never left. He was wading through a pile of newspaper cuttings.

‘Did you track down the elusive Ms Laing?’

He shook his head.

‘Anything wrong, do you think?’ There were times, she thought, when she wanted to shake Inspector Jimmy Perez. She didn’t care that the woman he’d loved had been murdered. She wanted him to communicate with her as if she were another human being.

‘I’m not sure.’ Now he looked up from the cuttings and frowned. ‘And I’m not sure what I should do next. The door to her house was unlocked.’

Willow thought of her childhood in Uist. ‘That’s not unusual, is it? In a place like this.’

‘Maybe not.’ A pause. ‘I think she might be out on the water. If she was troubled, that would be what she’d do. And I can’t see her fancy boat in the marina.’

‘So that’s OK then, isn’t it? She’ll just come home when she’s hungry or it gets dark. She’s playing hookie from work, but we’ve all done that at one time or another.’

‘Aye, perhaps. I’d be happier if I could speak to her, though.’

‘You’ve tried her mobile?’ Willow wondered how she’d come to be involved in this conversation. She needed the team to be checking out the consortium of investors in the water-power project. She felt as if Perez was sucking out all her energy.

‘I got her personal number from Heather in the Fiscal’s office. No reply.’ Perez paused again. ‘There was one of those postcards on her desk. Nothing written on the back.’

That caught her off-guard. ‘What do you want to do, Jimmy?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Like you say, we’ll wait until it gets dark. She should be home by then.’

Willow was struck by another thought. ‘This boat of hers, could it travel long distances?’

He looked up at her. ‘Aye. A Contessa 26 was sailed round the world in the Eighties. Single-handed, by a teenage lass.’

‘Has she done a runner then, Jimmy? Should we be alerting the coastguard?’

‘No need for that yet.’

But she thought he didn’t sound very sure.