Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

horrified. Perez realized the suggested piece of routine police work had made Mima’s death real again.
    Sandy pushed open the door and they arrived in the kitchen. Again Perez was taken back to his childhood. His grandparents, and a couple of elderly aunts, had lived in houses like this. It was the smell as much as the furniture that took him back: the smell of coal-dust and peatsmoke, a particular brand of soap, damp wool. At least in here it was warm. The solid-fuel Ray-burn must have been banked up the night before and still gave out plenty of heat. Perez stood in front of it and put his hands on the covered hotplate.
    ‘I don’t know what will happen to the cow,’ Sandy said suddenly. ‘My father milked her this morning, but I know damn well he’ll not want to do that twice every day.’
    Reluctantly Perez pushed himself away from the range.
    ‘Let’s go outside,’ he said. ‘You can show me where she died.’
    ‘I keep thinking that if I hadn’t stayed for that one last drink I might have been here in time to save her,’ Sandy said. ‘I might have stopped her going outside at all.’ He paused. ‘But I only came in to give me time to sober up before going back to my parents’ house. If I’d gone straight home, I’d have taken the first ferry out this morning and someone else would have found her.’ He paused. ‘She phoned me earlier in the week and asked when I’d next be home. “Call in and have a dram with me, Sandy. It’s a long time since we had a chat.” I should have spent the evening with her instead of going down to the Pier House with the boys.’
    ‘What was she doing outside at that time of night?’ Perez asked. He tried to imagine what would have taken an elderly woman from the warmth of her fire into a sodden, cold field long after darkness had fallen.
    ‘There was washing on the line. Maybe she’d gone to fetch it in.’
    Perez said nothing. Sandy led him round the house. The laundry was still there, so wet now that it dripped on to the grass beneath it. This was rough grazing rather than garden, though a strip of ground running parallel to the washing line had been dug over for planting. Sandy saw Perez looking at it. ‘My father did that. She’ll have one strip of tatties and another of neeps. He sows a planticrub with cabbage each year for feeding the cow.’
    ‘There’s no laundry basket,’ Perez said. ‘If she’d come outside to fetch in the washing, what would she put the clothes in?’
    Sandy shook his head, as if he couldn’t see how such detail could matter.
    ‘What’s going on down there?’ Perez nodded towards the trenches at the end of the field.
    ‘An archaeological dig. A postgraduate student is researching it for her PhD. She’ll be here for the next few months, working on it with her assistant. A couple of lasses. They were here for a few weeks last year and they’ve just arrived back. They’re camping out at the Bod just now. This time of year there aren’t too many people wanting to stay there. There’s a professor who visits every now and again to keep an eye on things. He’s here at the minute, staying at the Pier House Hotel. He came in with them.’
    ‘We need to speak to him,’ Perez said.
    ‘I thought you might do. I called in to the Pier House while I was waiting for your ferry. He said he’d meet us here.’
    Perez was surprised that Sandy had shown so much initiative, wondered if he should congratulate him or if that would just be patronizing. In the office Sandy was always considered a bit of a joke. Perez had shared the low opinion at times. He was still making up his mind how to respond when a big figure appeared out of the mist, as if Sandy had conjured him up by talking about him. He wore a full-length Barbour jacket and big boots. He was a big man, very blond, with cropped hair. He approached them, hand outstretched. ‘Hello. I’m Paul Berglund. You wanted to talk to me.’
    Despite the foreign name, the accent was northern English. It was a hard voice and suited the man. Perez wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting in an academic. Not this large male with his uncompromising speech and the shaved head.
    ‘Sandy will have explained that there was an accident here last night,’ Perez said. ‘We’d prefer it if your student stays off the site for the day.’
    ‘No problem. Hattie and Sophie will be here to start soon. I’ll hang on and tell them what happened. Is it OK if I wait in the house? It’s a bit