Perez drove to the Cairns farmhouse. The sheep stood motionless in the field, as if they too were mourning. John Cairns met him at the door, fists clenched, eyes red. “I have nothing to say to you.”
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. shetland s07e02 msv
“No,” Perez admitted. “But I had a desperate father, a dead son, and a mother in Bergen who never wanted to be found. Sometimes the truth is just a story you tell until the real one catches up.” Perez drove to the Cairns farmhouse
Perez left the farmhouse with a name: Helen Vik, née Cairns, now living in Bergen. And a single photo Connor had kept in his wallet—a Polaroid of his mother standing next to a man in a Solus Marine jacket. “I have nothing to say to you
“Your son is dead, Mr. Cairns. And you waited two days to tell us. Why?”
Slater’s smile didn’t waver. “That’s a very serious accusation. You have evidence? A witness? A single phone call tying me to that boy after 9 PM?”