Offshore
Contents
The Secrets of Soil
(featuring DI Willow Reeves)
The Writer-in-Residence
(featuring DI Jimmy Perez)
The Spinster
(featuring DI Jimmy Perez)
Stranded
The Soothmoothers
(featuring DI Jimmy Perez)
Hector’s Other Woman
(featuring DI Vera Stanhope)
The Pirate
Postcard from Skokholm by Lynne Chitty
(featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones)
Thin Air
Chapter One
About the Author
By Ann Cleeves
The Secrets of Soil
The phone call from my father woke me from a deep sleep. It was past midnight and my first thought was that my mother was dead. She’d been ill for a while.
‘Willow, you need to come.’ A pause. ‘Please.’ He’d lived in North Uist for thirty years, but hadn’t lost the posh voice. He’d never asked for my help before.
‘Is it Lottie?’ We Balranald kids had been taught to call our parents by their first names. One of the many things that set us apart.
‘No, not Lottie.’ Another hesitation. ‘Just come. Get the first plane to Benbecula. I’ll meet you there.’
Peter was waiting in the airport building, thin as a scarecrow with long, grey hair. Looking at his face, I saw how similar we were. In thirty years I’d have the same bony face, and my hair was already as dry as hay. We drove across the causeway to North Uist. The week before had been unseasonably stormy, but now it was sunny, so the landscape looked drenched in melted butter. Light reflected from the water that’s everywhere in the islands, and from the iris beds and the flat machair, yellow with rattle, bird’s-foot trefoil and little wild pansies. I waited for my father to speak. He’d dragged me here; let him make the first move. The van bounced across a cattle grid and towards the house where I’d spent my childhood.
I remember the place as being full of life. People always came and went in the commune. Students arrived in the summer, attracted by my father’s writing about peace, love and self-sufficiency. Damaged, screwed-up and idealistic people drifted in, looking for salvation or a free bed. But it was hard work feeding so many people, keeping the place warm and watertight, and most packed their rucksacks and hitched to the ferry at Lochmaddy after a week or two. Now the place seemed lifeless. The tyre-swing, hanging from a rafter in the barn, was still there, but no kids played on it. Only my parents remained, held to the land by memories of its glory days, by my father’s stubbornness and their failure to make any financial plans for retirement.
Peter switched off the engine and jumped out. ‘Follow me.’ He could be charming to strangers and journalists, but never to me. My decision to join the police service – the ultimate rebellion for a commune kid – had fractured our relationship beyond repair. We walked down the track towards the dunes, past the strip-fields where barley and oats grew. Everywhere, noise: corn buntings, snipe and lapwings protecting their young. Despite myself, I loved being there again.