Perez sipped at his coffee. He supposed Hattie had regretted the phone call to the police station as soon as she’d made it and was hiding from him, too embarrassed to face him. People often behaved irrationally in their relations with the police. The sensible thing would be for him to go back to Lerwick. But he could still hear the desperation in Hattie’s voice when she’d called him. Even if she’d changed her mind about confiding in the police, perhaps he could convince her that she needed to talk to someone. Fran would understand if he missed the call to Cassie tonight. He left the Pier House without discussing his plans with Berglund.

Perez walked to Setter along the edge of the loch. He stood for a moment looking out over the water, and a red-throated diver flew in. It was the first diver he had seen that spring. He supposed later it would breed there. It called. Fran had once said that the cry made her think of a lost child desperate for help. He’d laughed at her then, but now he knew what she meant. The old folk called the diver ‘the rain goose’, and the superstition was that its arrival predicted storm or disaster.

Setter looked just as unkempt as on his first visit. There was the same pile of rusting junk by the side of the house and the nettle patch and untidy hens were still there. The scabby cat was sunbathing on the roof of the byre. Perez wondered what his father would have made of Mima Wilson; he set great store by keeping his Fair Isle property tidy and would have disapproved of her wild ways and her drinking. He knocked at the door. He thought he heard a sound inside, but when he tried the door it was bolted from the inside. He looked through the window into the kitchen. Sandy’s father was sitting in the one easy chair. He had his head in his hands and he was weeping. Perez knew he couldn’t intrude on an old man’s grief. He looked quickly over the site of the dig to check that Hattie wasn’t there and then he walked away.

Chapter Twenty-two

Perez missed the last ferry home and ended up taking a room at the Pier House Hotel. He’d expected a quick trip into the island, to be home in time for supper, and now felt stranded there. Marooned. But he knew he wouldn’t sleep much if he did get back to Lerwick. He wanted to be here if Hattie turned up. He’d sat with Evelyn for most of the evening while she phoned all her neighbours. Nobody had seen Hattie since Paul Berglund had walked away from her on the shore. If she was still in Whalsay she wasn’t with anyone who’d known her in the past.