Free White Nights by Ann Cleeves Page A

There were other people here to talk to and he thought he’d get more out of them than would the incomers.
    ‘Hey, I’m starving. Let me just go over to the shop to get some chocolate, huh?’ Sandy could whine like a two-year-old. Perez thought sometimes he had the brains of a two-year-old; then he’d surprise them all with his technical competence – he was better at ITthan anyone else in the office. Perez couldn’t help liking him.
    ‘You stay here. I’ll get you something.’ Before Sandy could object he was halfway across the road. He could hear the Whalsay man shouting after him. ‘A Mars Bar then. And crisps. Salt and vinegar. And a can of Coke. Not the bloody Diet shite.’
    The shop had been built on to the last house in the terrace and was hardly bigger than an English suburban garage. There were shelves all round the walls for self-service and a refrigerated counter with a lump of Orkney cheddar and a couple of pounds of vacuum-packed streaky bacon. In one corner, the post office: a rack of official forms and some scales for weighing parcels. A young man stood behind the food counter. Perez recognized Martin Williamson, the chef who’d prepared the food for the exhibition the night before. Williamson’s father had run a hotel in Scalloway until he’d drunk all the profits and the family had sold up and moved into Lerwick. The father had died soon after. He’d fallen into the water at the ferry terminal, full of drink. Rumour had it that he’d jumped, but nobody had seen him fall, so how could they know?
    Yet Martin had a reputation for good humour. Even at the old man’s funeral, he’d been heard cracking a joke with one of his friends. There were people who’d disapproved of that; others thought he was putting on a brave face. The story would be linked to him for ever. It defined him: Martin Williamson, the man who laughed at his father’s funeral. ‘He’s always been a bit of a clown,’ his mother was quoted as saying when the complaints got back to her. Apparently, the comment had been made quite without judgement.
    Aggie Williamson had her name over the shop door and lived in the house attached. The same rumour-mongers who gossiped about old man Williamson’s drowning explained her sudden affluence, the ability to buy the business, as the result of the payout from the insurance company after her husband’s death. She’d grown up in Biddista and had always wanted to return there. She’d never settled in Scalloway or in the hotel. She was a quiet and withdrawn woman and the noise of the hotel’s public bar, the stress of facing strangers who came to holiday there, had unsettled her. She could scarcely make much of a living from the Biddista business, but the Royal Mail paid her a little, and anyway she preferred it when the shop was empty. Then she sat on the high stool next to the post office and read romantic novels set in the past.
    Martin lived in the house set in the middle of the terrace with his wife Dawn and his young daughter. He helped his mother out when he wasn’t working in the Herring House. He had ambitions to open his own restaurant.
    All this Perez knew, although his dealings with the family had been limited. He wondered occasionally how it must be to live in a community where the back stories to people’s lives remained untold. Exhilarating, he thought. It could be possible to reinvent yourself with every encounter. But it might be flat and a little cold too. Biddista had even fewer people than Fair Isle, where he grew up. He thought the folk here would make sure they had some secrets to keep to themselves. Nobody liked to think their neighbours knew everything about them.
    He realized that he must look very odd, just standingthere, deep in thought, and roused himself. The shop was gloomy. The only light came from the open door. In the shadow he saw a small child playing on the floor, a box of toys beside her. In her arms she held a knitted toy, a strange animal with