‘First plane out of Aberdeen,’ Martin said. ‘They’ll be in any time.’

Kenny asked for a cappuccino for Edith and a latte for himself. They always had the same when they came here. Because it seemed like a holiday he added a couple of pieces of cake to the order and Martin danced away.

They’d almost finished when Roddy Sinclair made an entrance. He stood at the door and heads turned. Everyone recognized him and there was a brief moment of silence before the conversation continued. He looked as if he’d just got out of his bed. His hair was tousled and he still seemed half asleep. Or maybe, Kenny thought, he’d been up all night. He didn’t find a table and wait for Martin to take his order, but walked towards the kitchen, leaned on the doorframe and shouted in.

‘Double espresso. Strong as you like.’ There were other people at the tables waiting to order, but nobody seemed to mind him jumping the queue. Typical Sinclair, Kenny thought. They’re arrogant, the lot of them. Across the tables, one of the Middleton old ladies smiled at the boy and gave him a little wave. Kenny thought that was typical too. Women would let the Sinclair boy get away with anything.

Roddy tilted his body away from the doorframe so he was standing upright.

‘Fantastic view from here,’ he said. ‘It always surprises me.’ He sauntered towards them. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

‘We’ll be going soon,’ Kenny said, but the boy seemed not to hear and sat down anyway. Outside now there was strong sunshine. A sailing boat was on the water halfway to the horizon. Kenny tried to work out who might own it and decided it didn’t belong to anyone local.

Roddy leaned forward across the table. ‘I understand you were the one to find the body.’ His accent was just as strong as when he’d been a boy. Kenny wondered if he practised at night in his Glasgow flat, in the hotel rooms in exotic cities. It was his trademark. He nodded.

Martin carried across the coffee. Roddy nodded his thanks, but continued to look at Kenny, and waited till Martin had moved away before continuing the conversation.

‘You’re sure he was a stranger?’ he asked. ‘You’d never seen him before?’

Kenny allowed himself to be distracted a moment by the smell of the espresso. If it tasted as good as it smelled he could be converted too. He didn’t want to make a scene here in front of Edith, but he wanted to tell Roddy Sinclair to mind his own business. What right did he have to interrupt them here? Spoil the time he had with his wife?

‘I didn’t recognize the man,’ Kenny said.

‘He was here at Bella’s launch,’ Roddy said. ‘But I didn’t take much notice of him then.’

‘You saw him alive?’

Kenny almost asked Roddy if the man could have been Lawrence, but what would Roddy know? Lawrence had left when Roddy was still a small boy. He was living in Lerwick with his parents and only came to Biddista to visit Bella. He had been an annoying boy even then, spoiled, running wild about the place.

‘Yes. I wish I’d talked to him. If we knew who he was and where he’d come from, we could just get back to normal.’

What would you know about normal? Kenny thought. It seemed a strange thing for the boy to say. Normal was the last thing Roddy had ever wanted. He wanted drama, a different woman every night. Surely he’d be enjoying this small excitement.

Roddy turned to Edith. ‘What do you make of all this?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It sounds very callous, but I can’t get excited by the death of a man I didn’t know.’

Roddy was about to answer, but he was interrupted by the sound of a car driving down the road outside. Two cars. Everyone’s attention was turned to the window. The old ladies from Middleton stood up so they could get a better view. Quite shameless. Despite himself, Kenny swivelled round in his chair so he could see too.

Jimmy Perez got out of one of the cars. With him was a tall, heavily built man with a bald dome of a head. You could tell even from this distance that he was the boss. There were two other men and a woman, and a couple of police officers Kenny recognized: Sandy from Whalsay and young Morag. Suddenly he didn’t want to be here any more, staring down at the spectacle like children at the circus. He stood up and waited for Edith to follow him home.

Chapter Sixteen

Roy Taylor wasn’t sure what he felt about being back in Shetland. Certainly he was pleased to have finally arrived; all that waiting in Aberdeen had made him feel he was about to explode. And at least they’d got in on the plane. He hadn’t liked to tell the rest of the team – he didn’t believe leaders should admit to weakness, all that sharing, caring stuff wasn’t for him – but he felt queasy on the Mersey ferry. An overnight crossing on the boat and he knew he’d have thrown up.

Now, standing at the front of the queue waiting to get off the plane, that memory of the Mersey ferry suddenly made him homesick. A series of images played in sentimental succession in his head. The view of the Liverpool skyline from the river, Scouse voices in busy pubs, singing his heart and soul out in the Kop on a Saturday afternoon. It made him wonder if it wasn’t finally time to go back. His father was dead and couldn’t hurt him now. He dwelled briefly on the possibility of returning, then pushed it from his mind. He had other things to think about.

He’d headed for Inverness because it was the farthest place from home he could find. There’d been a masochistic pleasure in landing in a town so alien, so unlike anywhere he would otherwise have chosen to live. As if he’d wanted to punish himself as well as the family he’d left behind. And now he was back in Shetland, which was even more remote and more strange.

The plane door opened. He took the steps at a trot and strode across the tarmac to the little door in the terminal building. He’d given instructions that his team should only bring carry-on luggage. They’d wasted enough time and he didn’t want them hanging around again for the stuff from the hold to appear.

Jimmy Perez was waiting for them. They’d worked well together on a previous investigation and had got on, perhaps because they had such different styles. If Perez had been a full-time member of his team, Taylor would have found the unconventional attitude, the long hair and the lack of urgency irritating. Here in Shetland, the quiet approach seemed to work. Perhaps too well. Taylor had always been competitive, and mixed with the affection was a residual resentment because Perez had been credited with solving the Catherine Ross case.

All the same he greeted Perez with warmth, taking his hand and clapping him on the back.

‘How’re things, Jimmy?’

The rest of the group should know that there would be no territorial rivalry on the case. Besides, it couldn’t be easy for Perez to have a senior officer fly in to take over the most interesting cases. Taylor himself wouldn’t be able to bear it.

They drove north and west, missing Lerwick, the only place in the islands where Taylor had felt anything like at home. At least in Lerwick there were shops and bars, chip shops and curry houses. If he thought of the space all around him, he felt giddy and nauseous. It was the sleepless night in the Holiday Inn in Aberdeen, he thought. Once he got stuck into the investigation he’d feel on top of his game once more.

To pull himself back he began to fire questions at Perez, who was driving.

‘Are you telling me that in a place as small as this no one can put a name to him?’ He knew Perez would resent the tone, but couldn’t help himself.