Too Good to Be True Read Free Page A

was tempted to wash it up. In the cupboard there was one clean glass. It still had a white thread of cotton inside from the tea towel,
so it had been dried quite recently.
    He stood looking at it and pictured again the evening of Anna’s death. Perhaps there had been a visitor, someone who’d had a glass of wine with Anna? Someone who had taken the
trouble to wash up the glass and put it away before leaving the house. And that definitely suggested not suicide – but murder.

5
The Village
    Anna’s elderly neighbour must have been looking out for Jimmy Perez leaving her house, because he came to his door and shouted across.
    ‘Everything all right?’
    Perhaps everyone in this village was nosy.
    ‘Yes,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’m surprised the landlord’s not been in to clear the place for the next tenant.’
    ‘Maybe the doctor and his wife thought it wouldn’t look good if they were too hasty. Perhaps they’re showing the lass a bit of respect at last, even if it’s too
late.’
    ‘Maybe.’ Perez paused. ‘The local police must have asked if you were at home the evening that Anna died?’
    ‘I’m always at home,’ the man said. ‘Once it gets dark, at least.’
    ‘You didn’t happen to notice if Anna had a visitor?’ Perez leaned on the little wall that separated the man’s garden from the pavement.
    ‘The police asked me that too.’
    ‘And what did you tell them?’ Perez tried to keep his patience.
    ‘That I didn’t see anyone.’
    Perez sensed that the man had more to say. ‘But perhaps you heard a car?’
    ‘Not a car. I didn’t tell the other policemen because I wasn’t sure and they were in such a rush, but I thought I heard voices through the joining wall. It could have been the
television, though Anna didn’t watch much TV. Music was more her thing.’
    ‘The voices must have been loud for you to have heard them through the wall,’ Perez said.
    ‘Nah, these houses were put up in a rush just after the war. No sound-proofing at all.’
    ‘So you could hear what was said?’ Perez found that he was holding his breath, waiting for an answer.
    ‘Nah, nothing like that. Just a murmur of voices. Nobody was shouting, and like I said, it could just have been the telly.’ The old man stamped his feet to show that he was feeling
the cold and disappeared inside.
    It was still only mid-morning. It must be playtime at the school, Perez thought, because he could hear the children’s voices again. He didn’t want to go back to the
hotel and to Elspeth’s questions, but he felt a need for strong coffee and a chance to think in peace.
    On the main street there was a cafe. It must be warm inside because the windows were steamed up and from the pavement he couldn’t see anything at all. He pushed open the door and walked
into a small room almost full of women. They had taken over two of the tables and baby buggies were crammed into any spare space. Perez took the one remaining table by the window. The women seemed
not to notice him and carried on with their gossip.
    A young waitress came to take his order. Perez wiped a patch in the mist on the window so he could see into the street, but it soon steamed up again. He tried to order his thoughts about the
Anna Blackwell case but the young mothers’ voices intruded.
    ‘I feel dreadful,’ one of the women said. ‘I didn’t want to sign that petition to get rid of Miss Blackwell in the first place, but Sarah
is
chair of governors and
she’s always in the school. I thought her reasons for thinking Anna was no good must be real.’
    There was a moment of silence. ‘Well, we didn’t know then that Tom and Anna were such . . .’ There was another pause . . . ‘friends.’
    ‘You can see why Sarah would have wanted her out of the village.’
    Perez had always thought there was a lot of gossip in Shetland, but he had rarely heard anything there that was quite as toxic as this. He could understand for the first time why Sarah was so
upset