White Nights

‘Was Lawrence there that night?’ he asked in the end. He wanted to get home in case Jimmy called at Skoles.

‘Of course he was. He wanted fish too.’

Willy closed his eyes again, then opened them slowly. ‘That Englishman came to see me,’ he said. ‘Full of questions. But I told him nothing.’

Ke

‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you.’

‘I heard about the bones you’d found.’

‘I should have come to tell you, Ke

‘Is it Lawrence?’

‘We won’t know for a while.’

There was a pause. Ke

‘We’d need bone marrow to do a standard DNA test, and because of where the bones were found we don’t have that. There is a tooth and it’s possible that we could get some dentine. But there’s another test. Mitochondrial DNA. It’s passed down the maternal line. It means you and Lawrence would share it.’ Ke

‘Could we take a DNA sample from you? Do you understand, Ke

‘Of course you can. Of course.’ Ke

‘I’ll come in this evening to take a swab. But it might be very late. Or I could send someone else . . .’

‘Don’t worry, Jimmy. I’d rather you came. I’ll just stay up until you arrive. It doesn’t matter how late you are.’

‘And Ke

Ke

Chapter Forty-one

When he came back from seeing Wilding in Buness, Perez returned to the station. He phoned the pathologist in Aberdeen to check the situation on identifying the fragment of bone, then called the Thomson house. Nobody was at home. He knew what Ke

‘I’m sorry, man. I wish I could make it happen more quickly.’ Perez felt helpless because the test was completely out of his control. But all the time he was thinking that really it didn’t matter. He had a sense of events moving quickly, racing away from him. He thought the case would reach a climax before the results of the mitochondrial DNA test were returned.

He found Taylor at the desk he’d taken over in the incident room. He’d just finished a phone call and an A4 pad covered with scribbled notes lay in front of him. Taylor was hunched over them.

‘I’ve been on to Jebson in West Yorkshire to see if they’ve had anything back yet on emails to and from Jeremy Booth. Post too. They had a search team going through the house. The bin hadn’t been put out since he left and they thought they might find a letter.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘No mail. Jebson did come up with an interesting email contact though. A woman called Rita Murphy who runs a theatrical agency. I’ve just been talking to her. Booth was on her books, had been for years. She comes from Liverpool, like me. We hit it off and she’s been dead helpful.’

Taylor took a swig from a can of Coke. Perez thought he must be exhausted, ru

‘Was she representing him when he took on the work with The Motley Crew fifteen years ago?’

‘Yeah, she was just starting up then. She’d seen him in an amateur play and thought he was good, offered to take him on.’

Perez remembered the performance in the Herring House, the tears. Oh, he was good, he thought.

‘How did the work on the boat come about?’

‘She’d been in college with the guy who dreamed up the idea of the theatre in the boat and he asked her to find him a couple of actors. It was Booth’s first professional work. That’s why she remembers it.’

‘I don’t suppose he talked to her about it afterwards? Or that she remembers what he said?’

‘No detail. He called in to see her when he got back. She said he’d enjoyed the acting, travelling round the coast, but he seemed a bit low. She’d expected a blow-by-blow account of the season but he didn’t want to talk about it much. She put that down to the recent separation from his wife and daughter. But if Bella sent him away with a flea in his ear, perhaps that explains it.’

‘Did he tell her that he was pla

‘He went over to Liverpool a few weeks ago. It was about the time that his daughter got in touch with him. Perhaps he was curious to see the girl before he made a commitment to meet her. I can imagine him hanging around the school, waiting to see what she was like.’

What would he have done if he hadn’t liked the look of her? Perez wondered. Made some excuse? Run away again?

Taylor was still sketching out the possible scenario. ‘He went to see Ms Murphy while he was in Merseyside. We’ll probably never know if that’s why he was there, but anyway, they met for lunch in a bar. Rita said Booth was really elated. It sounds as if they had a lot to drink. He told her then that he was taking on a bit of work in Shetland. “Don’t worry, darling. You’ll get your ten per cent. But this is a bit of private enterprise.”’

‘Did he say what sort of work it was?’

‘“Promotional street theatre”.’ Perez could hear the quotation marks in Taylor’s voice, thought that might describe the pantomime at the cruise ship and in Lerwick. He wasn’t sure it covered the drama at the Herring House though.

‘Rita thought it was weird that he’d consider doing work like that. She said usually he was a bit picky. He liked real theatre, not the arty stuff. She thought it would be some sort of conceptual theatre – whatever that is – because he said it was linked to an art gallery. When I told her what was actually involved she said she was surprised he hadn’t just left and come home. It wasn’t acting at all. A kid straight out of school could put on a costume and hand out a few flyers. And Booth could be very arsy when it came to work.’

‘So she thought he’d been hired to do the work by the gallery?’

‘That was the impression he gave at first. Later he said what a great opportunity it was – a chance to get close to a real celebrity. “This could be my big chance, darling. The time to hit the jackpot. My little bit of luck. And if I hadn’t been watching the telly the other night, I’d never have known.”’ He went all mysterious on her after that. She didn’t really take any notice. He was always talking about hitting the big time. All actors do.’