Read Thin Air: (Shetland book 6) for Free Online Page B

shared a flat in the second year and a house in the third. One night at a party Eleanor named us the Three MsKeteers – she was going through a feminist phase – and that stuck. I was going out with Lowrie then, but I carried on living with the girls and he was a kind of permanent fixture. We were all very close.’
    ‘And you kept in touch even after you left university?’ Perez had never made those sorts of close friendships. He wasn’t the kind of policeman who used colleagues as a surrogate family.
    ‘When we graduated the three of us were based in London. Polly started her postgrad training – she’s a librarian – and I was doing my PhD. Eleanor found work as a runner with ITV. So we just went on living together, sharing a grotty flat. Lowrie got a job in Edinburgh, but he came down when he could. We were poor as church mice. It wasn’t very different from being students.’ She gave a little smile. ‘Though Nell was subsidized big-style by her mother and, when she got fed up with slumming it, she’d go home for a weekend of comfort. Lowrie was earning, so I got treated to nights out when he came to stay. I suppose it was really only Polly who found it tough going financially. Not that it stopped the rest of us moaning.’
    Perez listened and tried to picture these three young women in their flat in London at the beginning of their careers. He said nothing to hurry on the story. He was more use here than he would be out helping the search team.
    ‘We did well in our own fields,’ Caroline continued. ‘Moved out of the slummy flat. Lowrie got a promotion to London and he and I set up home together. Eleanor was a rising star in ITV. Polly qualified and got a job first in a local-authority library, then in the Sentiman, where she still works. That’s a weird place in Hampstead. It keeps the records of the UK Folklore Society, tales of morris men and legends of the Green Man. You know the sort of thing.’
    Perez thought he had no idea. ‘And ghosts?’
    Caroline looked at him sharply. ‘I don’t know anything about that. You’d have to ask Polly.’ She paused before continuing her story. ‘For a while she and Nell shared an apartment, but then Ian Longstaff swept Eleanor off her feet and into his house in South London and Polly found a nice little flat of her own not far away.’ She paused. ‘I suppose we grew up.’
    ‘But you were still friends?’
    ‘Yeah, when we moved out of our shared home we made a pact that we’d meet up at least once a month. We kept to it at first and then it became more difficult to find a time when we were all free. I have students to supervise and, since she set up in her own business, Eleanor is abroad a lot. Even when she’s home Ian seems to demand all her time. I suppose only Polly has the diligence and determination to make the commitment work. She’s the one to email the rest of us, negotiating times and places to meet. And since Marcus came on the scene even she’s been less organized.’ Caroline paused. ‘That’s why I was pleased that everyone agreed to make the trek north for the hamefarin’. It was a chance for the three of us to spend some time together away from London.’
    ‘Why do you think Eleanor would want to run away from her husband?’ It was where the conversation had started. Perez wasn’t frustrated by the time it had taken to get back to the question. He had a much better sense now of these women as successful, professional friends.
    For the first time Caroline seemed unsure of herself. ‘I have no evidence.’
    ‘Sometimes I have to pursue an investigation without evidence,’ Perez said. ‘The purpose of my work is to obtain it, but it’s not where we start from.’
    ‘It seems disloyal speculating like this.’ She frowned.
    Perez said nothing.
    ‘For the past six months Eleanor has been very low. More unhappy than I’ve ever known her.’
    ‘She’d lost a child,’ Perez said gently. This woman with her strong bones and