Thin Air: (Shetland book 6) by Ann Cleeves Read Free Book Online

her clear thinking might not understand how that would feel. He didn’t see Caroline as the most imaginative of women. Or the most maternal.
    ‘Yes, and Ian hasn’t been any support to her. He stuck her in a private psychiatric place so that she wouldn’t be a nuisance and then he started lecturing her to sort herself out. He lost patience with her.’ She paused again. ‘I think Eleanor might have found comfort elsewhere.’ The words sounded oddly prim, and Perez again had a sense of the schoolgirl she had once been.
    ‘Another man?’
    ‘I think so.’ Now Caroline sounded wretched, as if she regretted having started this conversation. ‘But, as I said, I have no real evidence. And Nell didn’t discuss it.’ She paused again. Through the window they saw a very elderly man walk down the road outside. He was dressed in his Sunday best – black trousers, polished shoes and all-over knitted jersey – and was bent over a walking stick. Caroline waited until he’d disappeared from sight before she started talking. ‘I saw her one evening with a guy in a restaurant. I was walking past and although they weren’t sitting in the window I saw her quite clearly. She stood to pick up the scarf that had fallen from her chair. The man had his back to me, so I saw nothing of him except the back of his head. Eleanor reached out and touched his hand on the table. There was a look on her face . . . I don’t know how to describe it. Mixed up. Guilty perhaps.’
    ‘Did she see you?’ Perez tried to picture the scene in the restaurant and thought that Caroline was making too much of it. Eleanor could have been reassuring a young colleague about a problem at work. A touch of the hand could be a gesture of friendship. It didn’t have to be intimate.
    ‘No,’ Caroline said. ‘It was a few months ago. She had her second miscarriage just before Christmas, and this was March or April. Late enough for it to be dark outside. One of those drizzly days that feel more like midwinter. She hadn’t long sprung herself from the hospital. She wouldn’t have seen me.’
    ‘Did you discuss it with her?’
    ‘Yes.’ Caroline paused. ‘She lied. You must have been mistaken, Caro. I was in Brussels that week. I wasn’t even in London. Her voice all brittle and tense. I let it go. But I wasn’t mistaken. It was definitely her.’ She looked up at Perez. ‘That was when I knew this new man must be important, you see. If the dinner was just a work meeting, or even if she was having a fling or a one-night stand, she’d tell me and swear me to secrecy. But she lied and she’d never done that to me before.’ There was another pause. ‘Since then Eleanor seems to have been trying to avoid me. I think she’s met up on her own with Polly a couple of times, but I’ve only seen her when other people have been around.’
    ‘If Eleanor were planning to leave her husband,’ Perez said, ‘I don’t quite understand why she would wait until she was in Shetland to do it. It’s so much more inconvenient here.’
    Caroline gave a tight smile. ‘Eleanor’s never planned to do anything in her life. It would have come to her in the middle of a dance; or maybe when she saw Lowrie and me together she realized that her life with Ian was impossible. That she couldn’t stand it any longer. Then she would have walked away. Without thinking through the consequences. Have you tried the guest houses in Unst? If she hasn’t left on the ferry, she might be fast asleep on a comfortable bed. Eleanor has always liked her comfort.’
    ‘Without taking her toothbrush or her moisturizer?’
    For the first time Caroline looked a little shaken. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t sound so much like the Nell I know.’ She reached for the pot in the middle of the table and poured out more tea.
    Outside there was a noise. The bark of a dog and running footsteps. A man crashed through the door into the kitchen. He was wheezing from running and his face was red.