“Is it?” Perez stood in the doorway, blocking the exit. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like a liquidation. Connor Cairns was your mechanic. He prepped the boats for your oil siphoning operation. When he got cold feet, you put him in a car and lit a match.”
The room went quiet. Oil theft. Not a few barrels siphoned from a depot, but industrial-scale siphoning from the Brent system. A crime that required local knowledge, a mechanic to prep the boat, and a reason to kill the mechanic when he had second thoughts.
Prologue: The Hollow
“Circumstantial,” Slater said, shouldering his bag. “I was in Lerwick for a conference. I have twenty witnesses.”
Duncan poured two glasses. “And Solus Marine?” shetland s07e02 msv
“Your son is dead, Mr. Cairns. And you waited two days to tell us. Why?”
Slater’s bag hit the floor. “That’s impossible. I searched the body.” “Is it
The wind over Lerwick hadn’t changed. It was the same salt-laced knife that had cut through Jimmy Perez for fifty years. But standing in the lee of the police station, looking at the photograph of Connor Cairns—twenty-two, eyes already ancient—Perez felt a new kind of cold. The boy had been found in the boot of a burned-out car near the Kergord Valley. A post-mortem would confirm what everyone already knew: ligature marks on his wrists, blunt force trauma to the skull. This wasn’t a drug deal gone wrong. This was a message.