White Nights

When they were out of his view, Perez moved around to the landward side of the Pit, where the grass slope was, so he could see them better across the space. He couldn’t hear what the climbers were saying to each other. They were well down the cliff and although there was only a scattering of kittiwakes there, the birds were making a lot of noise. He thought now that there was probably some law about disturbing the birds in the breeding season. Should he have got permission? The thought distracted him for a moment – the numbers of breeding seabirds had declined, he didn’t want to add to their problems – and when he looked again the couple had reached the floor of the cavern. He moved carefully to the edge of the grass slope and sat, looking down at them. Even here he felt slightly dizzy. The begi

Roger and Sophie were moving into the tu

While he waited for them, Perez worried at the case. The sun was warm. In the far distance occasionally he could hear Ke

He must have started to doze, because the shout from below startled him. He realized suddenly how close to the edge he was and could feel his pulse racing. He put his palms flat on the grass at his side, to make sure he was safely anchored to the ground.

‘Jimmy! I think you’d better come down.’ It was Sophie. From this angle she looked all head and no body. Her mouth was open very wide as she yelled to him. A monster from the deep. The giant’s mistress, he thought, remembering the legend.

‘Why?’ He’d given them gloves and plastic evidence bags in case they found the phone.

‘Really, Jimmy, you have to come down. You can manage down the grass, can’t you? You don’t need a rope if you come that way.’

Perez had avoided the climb when Roddy Sinclair was found. Sandy had taken care of the crime scene then. Now he saw he had no choice. Sophie was still looking at him.

He took off his jacket, folded it carefully and placed it on the grass, feeling a little like a man who decides to commit suicide by drowning. Then he slid over the lip of the Pit on to the first of a series of rabbit tracks that crossed the slope. He kept his centre of gravity low and tilted his body into the slope, so one hand was always on the grass. There was no danger of his falling – Sophie would bound down it. He could imagine her confident and upright, jumping from one path to the next, facing forwards all the way down, only needing her heels to grip. He knew he was being painfully slow. Occasionally he stopped and glanced up so he could see how far he’d climbed. He didn’t think it was sensible to look down.

He knew he was approaching the bottom because he could hear Sophie, shouting through into the tu

‘What have you found?’

‘We didn’t like to touch it. This way.’ She led him into the mouth of the tu

The floor was uneven – shingle, solid rock which formed crevasses and pools, and small smooth boulders which must have been washed in from the beach. Too late he remembered a directive he’d received a couple of months ago about risk assessment. He wondered what Health and Safety would make of this. Roger and Sophie weren’t even employees.

At this point the tu

‘Sorry,’ Sophie said. ‘Jimmy was a tad slow.’

‘Have you found Booth’s phone then?’ Perez thought they were playing a sort of practical joke on him. They knew he was uncomfortable with heights and had dragged him down here under false pretences. They’d pull out some ridiculous object that had been washed in – a pair of false teeth, an old boot – and expect him to find it amusing.

‘No,’ Roger said. ‘But we found this.’

He shone his torch into a pile of debris which had been lifted on to a shelf in the rock. There were scraps of fishing net, shell and seaweed, two of the plastic rings which hold four-packs of beer and, creamy and smooth, a piece of bone.

‘Very fu

‘What do you think it is?’

‘Sheep? Dog maybe?’

‘Look closer,’ Roger said. ‘I think you’re wrong. If I’m not mistaken it’s a human thigh bone.’

‘Roger works as a physio,’ Sophie said. ‘He knows about human anatomy.’

Perez could tell she was enjoying herself. It was that excitement around unexplained death again.

‘It must have been pushed up to the ledge on a really big tide.’ Roger played the torch along the tu

‘So it could have been flushed in from the open sea?’ Perez said. He wondered how many men had been lost in the seas around here over the years. The currents were so fierce that it wasn’t unusual for the bodies from wrecks never to be recovered. The bone was worn shiny and smooth. It had been here for ages.

‘It wouldn’t take very long for it to get like that,’ Roger said, seeming to read his thoughts. ‘I mean not decades. Not necessarily. Not down here. Think of the action of the sand and the shingle.’

‘When was the last really high tide? I mean, when do you think it was lifted on to the ledge?’ Perez found his thoughts moving very fast. It was as if he’d had a shot of caffeine.

‘This year,’ Sophie said quickly. ‘Spring equinox. Don’t you remember, those wonderful photos in the Shetland Times of the waves at Scalloway? It could have been here in the tu