‘Paul Berglund didn’t go out on the early ferry, did he?’ Perez asked. He supposed he’d finished with the academic, for the moment at least, but he didn’t want the man slinking away without his knowing.

‘No, he’ll be down later, I’m sure. He doesn’t usually get up so early.’

‘Did Mima have a good send-off?’

‘I suppose she did. I didn’t stay long at Utra. All those people sitting round saying fine things about her. They had little enough good to say about her when she was alive. I came back here to have a few drams to her memory in peace. I’ll miss her.’ Cedric looked up at Perez. The flesh around his eyes was soft and creased like folded suede. ‘It seems a strange thing, two bodies on an island this size. What are you doing here, Jimmy? What’s going on?’

Three bodies, Perez thought. There are the bones they found on Setter too.

‘I’m working for the Fiscal, enquiring on her behalf into the sudden death of Hattie James.’

‘Aye, right.’

‘Is there anything you can tell me, Cedric? Anything I need to know about Mima Wilson and Setter? Anything strange been happening there?’

‘Not these days, Jimmy. Not for sixty years at least.’

‘What happened sixty years ago?’

‘These are old men’s tales. You don’t have time for these.’

‘Try me.’

Cedric paused, then he seemed to make up his mind to speak.

‘Three men from Whalsay were involved in the Shetland Bus.’ He looked at Perez to check the inspector knew what he was talking about. ‘You know it was mostly the Scalloway men that kept the boats repaired and in good order to put to sea. But when Howarth, the naval officer in charge, decided the Norwegians needed small boats to be dropped off with the agents, so they could make their own way up the fjords, he came to Whalsay to get them made. It was skilled work; the inshore boats had to pass for Norwegian. Men’s lives depended on it. There was young Jerry Wilson, who was just a schoolboy, too young to get called up into the services but the best sailor of his generation. My father, who was called Cedric Irvine like me. And old Andy Clouston, the father of Andrew.’

‘So Mima’s husband, your father and Ronald’s grandfather?’

‘Exactly that. Though Jerry hadn’t married Mima then. They were walking out together but too young to wed.’

Perez said nothing. Cedric would want to tell the story in his own way and Perez had told him he’d have time to listen. He tried not to think of the nurse’s phone number scribbled on the pad in his room or to speculate about what he might have to say.