‘I ken that fine. But something’s made you change your mind. What’s happened?’ Then came the same question and this time he hoped his father would give him the truth: ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

As he spoke, Sandy was still further up the hill than his father and looking down at him. Joseph wasn’t an old man; he was wiry and strong. But from this perspective suddenly he seemed small.

‘No,’ Joseph said at last. ‘There’s nothing you can do to help.’

Chapter Thirty-seven

Perez spent most of the day in the office, glad of the routine, the familiar paperwork. He spoke to a local historian who’d written a book on the Shetland Bus, and put in a call to the Norwegian Embassy. Later he had a meeting with the Fiscal. They drank tea in her office, discussed depression and date rape as they sipped Earl Grey and nibbled shortbread biscuits. The horrors of her work never seemed to affect her.

‘Well, I think we can put the girl’s death down to suicide now,’ the Fiscal said. ‘She must have been under considerable stress, working with a man who had once assaulted her. She even used his knife to kill herself. That works for me as a final communication, to him and to us. She held him responsible for her misery. And now you say she discussed the rape with her colleague just before she disappeared; that confirms our original decision.’

Perez could see it would make life easier for Rhona Laing if they could tidy away Hattie’s death like that. Two tragedies on Whalsay, one accident, one suicide, only connected in that Mima’s death had made Hattie feel lonelier and even more depressed.

He sat for a moment in silence. The Fiscal waited. She hadn’t been in Shetland long, but she was used to his ways and she was a patient woman when she had to be. Eventually though she’d had enough.

‘Well? Don’t you agree?’

‘I think there was more to it than that. I don’t understand why she should phone me if she intended to kill herself. There was something she wanted to tell me, something about Mima’s killing.’

‘You believe she was murdered?’ There was something close to ridicule in the Fiscal’s question.

‘Almost certainly.’

‘Are you sure emotion isn’t getting in the way here, Jimmy? Guilt, perhaps, because you didn’t do a proper search of Setter when you had the chance?’

‘I believe both women were killed,’ he said. ‘I just can’t prove it yet.’

‘I can’t dither over a decision for much longer,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘How long do you need?’ Dithering was bad for a politician’s reputation, but so was making the wrong call on a suspicious death. She set her cup carefully on its saucer. ‘How long do you need, Jimmy? I can’t keep the case open indefinitely.’