Текст книги "Blue Lightning"

Автор книги: Ann Cleeves

Соавторы: Ann Cleeves
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Chapter Thirty

Driving north with the Fowlers after the church service, Fran found herself intrigued by the middle-aged couple. John was full of questions, about her family and Perez and why she’d decided to make her life on Shetland. And about her art. She was flattered that he’d seen her work and could talk about it with such knowledge and enthusiasm, but found it odd to be the object of his attention.

‘Why all the questions?’ she asked at last, laughing. ‘Are you planning to write a book?’

‘You never know. Perhaps one day I will. I’m interested in the nature of celebrity.’

Despite herself she felt a thrill that he considered her famous.

It was only when she was on her way home after dropping them off at the lighthouse that Fran realized Fowler’s wife had hardly spoken at all. Fran had female friends who were much the same age as Sarah, but she could have belonged to a different generation. Fran’s middle-aged London friends dressed flamboyantly, held strong opinions, laughed a lot. There was something almost Victorian about Sarah Fowler’s dependence on her husband, in her anxiety and her timidity.

After lunch Fran and Perez went out for a walk. An island Sunday ritual, it seemed, because on their way north they met other families promenading in the sunshine. A middle-aged couple, arm in arm. Then a child with a bicycle, wobbling, the stabilizers off for the first time, and a girl pushing a doll’s pram, followed by their parents, all still dressed for church.

Fran could tell that something had happened between Perez and James, but Perez wouldn’t talk about it. Fran’s parents were liberal, generous, easygoing. There’d been times as a teenager when she’d wished there’d been more rules – boundaries to batter against when she wanted to rebel and to hold her up when she was floundering. She thought Perez’s childhood had all been about rules – James’s rules – and wondered what had happened now to shift the balance of power. Over lunch James had seemed subdued, almost penitent.

Earlier she’d had a long telephone conversation with Cassie: ‘Not long now, sweetie. Only two more days till I’m back.’ Fran had decided she’d go out on Tuesday’s boat as planned whether the investigation was over or not. ‘I do miss you.’ She worried occasionally about whether she’d got the balance right in bringing up Cassie. Too many rules or too few? Duncan let her get away with murder.

The walk ended up back at the North Light, as Fran had known it would. Perez would want to talk to Sandy; he couldn’t take a whole day away from the investigation. The place was quiet, the common room empty. In the kitchen they found Sarah Fowler, scrubbing away at a roasting tin too grubby and too big for the dishwasher. She stood at the big sink, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, again wearing one of Jane’s aprons. There were soapsuds on one cheek. When she heard them behind her she turned round, anxious for a moment.

What is it with that woman? Fran thought. Does she enjoy playing the martyr? The pathetic little wifey? Then she thought: Of course they’ll all be jumpy. If I were staying here, I’d be just the same.

Sarah gave a little smile. ‘Your colleague’s in the bird room.’

Perez nodded but stayed where he was. ‘How’s everything going?’

‘Fine.’ Satisfied at last that the roasting tin was clean, she set it upside down on the draining board. ‘Actually, it’s a dreadful thing to say, but it seems more relaxed here without Angela and Poppy.’ She frowned. ‘I miss Jane though.’

‘Did you get a chance to talk to her much?’ Perez leaned against the workbench. Inviting confidence. If I were a murderer I’d confess to him, Fran thought. I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I’d want so much to please him.

‘A bit,’ Sarah said. ‘She was a great listener. She didn’t give away a lot about herself.’

‘You had no impression that Jane felt scared, threatened?’

Sarah gave herself time to think, squeezed out the dishcloth and hung it over the long tap.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that.’

In the bird room Sandy was talking on his mobile. Fran could tell it wasn’t work. Some woman, she thought, confirmed when he began to blush. There was always some woman.

‘Rushed off your feet, Sandy?’ Perez said. ‘What have you got for me?’

Sandy kicked his legs off the desk and gulped the tea remaining in the mug in his left hand. ‘Not much. I’ve talked to all the field centre residents now. Nobody admits to seeing Jane Latimer once she left the lighthouse on the day she died.’

‘Someone’s lying then. Because one of them slashed her with a knife and left her bleeding.’

‘Could it not be one of the islanders? I mean this bunch, they all seem kind of civilized.’

Watching Perez, Fran saw him jump in to reject the idea immediately, then reconsider.

‘Someone staying in the field centre killed Angela Moore,’ he said. ‘But you’re right. It’s important to keep an open mind. Anyone on the Isle could have murdered Jane. Is there anything from the search team yet? They haven’t found the knife?’

Sandy shook his head. ‘But then they wouldn’t, would they? You’d just walk a hundred yards and throw it over the nearest cliff.’

‘Who knew Angela kept the Pund as a love nest?’

‘Ben Catchpole and Dougie Barr.’

‘Not Hugh Shaw?’

‘He claims not. He admits he had sex with Angela Moore, but says it was either in the Land Rover or here in the centre.’

Fran tried to think herself inside the head of the dead warden. It had been Angela’s dream to run this place and she’d achieved her lifetime ambition before she was thirty. What was left for her? A marriage of convenience and the adoration of young men flattered by her attention and attracted by her celebrity. She must have been bored witless. Had she decided it was time to move on? She was sufficiently ruthless to walk away, leaving Maurice and the other centre staff to make the best of it. It would have been different if she’d had a child, Fran thought. Everything would have been much more complicated then.

Perez was still speaking. Fran thought both detectives had forgotten she was there. Usually Perez was careful about what he said in front of her: he knew she would never betray a confidence but it was about sticking to the rules. Doing the right thing.

‘I wonder if I’ve been looking too hard for a motive. Maybe after all this is just a man who likes to kill women.’

‘Strong, competent women.’ It wasn’t Fran’s business, but she’d never been much good at being seen but not heard. ‘Women who subvert the stereotype of femininity. Jane was a lesbian and Angela a sexual predator.’

‘So they were both women who could appear threatening to men.’ At least Perez was taking her seriously.

Sandy just looked confused. ‘Come off it! You can’t have any of the guys here as a psychopath.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ve read the case histories and the profiles; psychopaths are loners. They’re all poorly educated weirdos. These people have degrees, wives, proper jobs.’

Perez gave a tight little grin. ‘Not all of them and maybe only the stupid ones get caught. We don’t get to know about the bright ones. They get away with it.’ He looked down at Sandy. ‘Have you found out what Angela was doing in Lerwick on her day off the Isle?’

‘Well, she didn’t go to see her dentist. Nor any of the others in town.’

‘Have you checked the banks?’

Sandy grinned. ‘You do know it’s the weekend and they’re all closed?’

‘But I know you have contacts, Sandy. Like that red-headed lass that serves behind the counter of Maurice Parry and Angela Moore’s bank. The one you brought to the staff party in the summer.’

‘Angela went into the Royal Bank of Scotland in the street and withdrew three thousand pounds in cash from the joint account.’

‘We know that! Give me something useful.’

Sandy shook his head. ‘It was lunchtime. The place was busy and there was a queue. There was no time to chat. She took most of the money in fifty-pound notes – almost cleared the bank of big denominations. She folded them in half and put them into a pocket in her rucksack.’ He looked up at Perez. ‘You did check all the pockets?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Then she walked out.’

‘She came home on the afternoon plane,’ Perez said. ‘Where did she spend more than two thousand five hundred pounds in a couple of hours?’

‘Maybe she didn’t spend it,’ Fran said. ‘Maybe she had her own account with another bank and she put it into that. Cheques can take ages to clear. If she wanted the money to cover a cheque she’d already written, cash would have been more efficient.’

Perez turned back to Sandy. ‘Can you check that out in the morning?’

‘Angela was seen again that day,’ Sandy said. ‘About two in the afternoon, in the street. Coming out of Boots.’

‘Who saw her?’

‘Just an old school friend of mine. That was her I was talking to on the phone when you came in.’ He grinned again.

Fran wanted to put off their return to the south of the island and Perez’s parents. She couldn’t face Sunday tea, Sunday television, bland and boring conversation. She and Perez stood outside the centre, preparing for the walk back down the island, when she found a possible distraction.

‘Have you ever been up the lighthouse tower?’

‘Once,’ Perez said, ‘when I was a bairn. They had an open day and showed everyone round.’

‘Any chance we could have a look, do you think? There’d be an amazing view from the top.’

She saw he was considering the matter. There were times when she wanted to scream at him. Don’t you ever do anything on impulse, Jimmy? What is it with the caution? If I hadn’t proposed to you I’d still be waiting. But it seemed that he too was in no hurry to rush home.

‘Sure, if it’s open. I know Bill Murray from the Koolin has a key. He holds it for the Northern Lighthouse Board. They come once a year to paint it and service the light.’

‘Won’t Maurice have access to it? In case of emergencies?’

‘Let’s check if it’s locked before we trouble him.’ She felt he was indulging her as he might have done Cassie. There was a small arched door at the foot of the tower. The handle was stiff but eventually it turned. Inside, a stone staircase spiralled around the outer wall. There was no light, except from the door that Perez had propped open – and that grew fainter as they climbed – and then from a small window further up. Fran felt the muscles in the backs of her legs strain and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. Ahead of her Perez seemed not to feel the exertion. He continued and must have reached the top and opened a door into the lens room because suddenly the shaft of the tower was flooded with light. She followed him.

She’d been right. The view was astounding and the island was spread out beneath them like a three-dimensional map. The jagged forks of cliff made sense, the road twisted past the northernmost crofts, which she could now recognize by name. Even if we never come to live here, she thought, this is always going to be a special place for me. I kind of belong. She saw the Land Rover being used by the search team making its way back to the field centre. Then, turning to the west, she saw Sheep Rock again, from a different and arresting perspective. She took a sketchpad from her bag and began to draw, very quickly, her forehead pressed against the glass.

‘You don’t mind the height then?’ Perez said. ‘After the plane I thought you might have a problem with vertigo.’

She turned briefly to smile. ‘In the plane I thought I was going to die. A reasonable fear in the circumstances.’

Perez looked briefly over the island but soon turned his attention to the north and west. ‘You can see the lighthouse at Sumburgh Head and the Foula cliffs.’ Fran was so focused on her sketch that she hardly heard him.

When she saw him again, conscious of a silence, a lack of movement, he was peering under the wooden bench that ran round the room, under the windows. He must have sensed her looking at him. ‘What do you think that is?’

‘Don’t know. A bit of rag.’ Her head was still full of the painting she was planning. She thought it might be her best work ever. Would it be possible to exhibit it before she gave it to James and Mary?

‘White cotton certainly. A pillowcase, do you think?’

‘You’re thinking it might have held the feathers scattered over Jane’s body?’

‘It’s possible. Even the automatic lights are kept immaculate. The guys who come to check the working wouldn’t have left that here. The search team haven’t found the pillowcase yet and I asked them to look. I’ll get them up here to check the place out. Don’t touch more than you have to now. There might be fingerprints.’

Fran expected Perez to climb immediately down the stairs to fetch Sandy and the other officers but he didn’t move. ‘I think the murderer has been up here spying,’ he said. ‘I wondered how he tracked down Jane to the Pund. From here you can see everyone’s movements at least in the north half of the island. He knows exactly what we’re all doing and where we are.’

She reached out and took his hand.

As they walked south again, the late afternoon sun was almost warm. Almost. They were still holding hands, like seven-year-olds pretending to be grown up, exchanging a few words. All about themselves, how lucky they were to have found each other, plans for the future. Sentimental stuff that had nothing to do with the investigation. Fran had assumed Perez would want to stay in the tower to supervise the search, but he’d decided to leave them to it. Fran was grateful for that, and for the knowledge that the murderer could no longer be up there, looking down at them. She felt ill whenever she thought that their intimate moments together could have been observed.

Perez’s phone hadn’t rung all day. Too good to be true, Fran thought suddenly.

‘Is your mobile actually switched on?’ His phone was a standing joke. An alternative form of contraception, she said. Always ringing at the most awkward time.

‘Shit! I turned it off for the kirk and forgot to switch it back on.’ He pulled a face, pressed a button. ‘Five missed calls.’ And the romantic walk through the warm autumn light was over. He was a cop all over again.

‘So tell me . . .’ His phone pressed against his ear with his left hand, scrabbling for a pen and paper with the other. They’d stopped and he leaned the paper on a piece of dry-stone wall. She squatted on a flat rock, looked back towards Sheep Craig, remembering the perspective of it from the tower, thinking again about the painting she’d make. His words were like background music in a bar. She heard them but didn’t take in the meaning. Perez scribbled on the paper, filled one side with his crabby, repressed writing and turned it over. His questions weren’t much more than promptings to persuade the caller to continue talking.

‘How long? So she would have known?’

Fran was thinking about the shadows formed by the different planes of the cliffs. In this light the rock was almost pink. Perez ended the call and pressed the buttons again, listened to a message on his voicemail. The sun had disappeared behind Ward Hill, on Sheep Rock the shadows had deepened.

Another phone call. As the sun had set the air grew colder. Fran stood up, stamped her feet, pulled her coat around her. Perez mouthed at her that he wouldn’t be long. This time there was a more even conversation. Perez asked questions and listened to answers.

‘What’s she doing now?’

Fran heard the indistinct reply, a woman.

‘Did she say when she last spoke to Angela?’

Eventually the call was over. Complete silence. He took her hand again. Don’t ask, she told herself. It’s not your business. But Perez was talking anyway.

‘The first call was the pathologist from Aberdeen with initial post-mortem results on Angela Moore.’ He focused on a hooded crow, flapping over a fence post. ‘She was pregnant. About eight weeks. She must have realized.’

‘Maybe that’s what she was doing in Boots,’ Fran said. ‘Buying a pregnancy test. A confirmation.’

For more than a year now Fran had been broody. There were times when she was so desperate to feel a baby kicking in her belly that she thought any child would do, but the longing was also about Perez. She imagined a baby with black hair, strong limbs, a tight grip. Looking like its father. She had brought up the subject with Perez. Elliptically, not wanting to put him under pressure. Of course, a child, he’d said. He wanted nothing more than that. But let’s wait until after the wedding. The wedding night if you like. And she’d agreed, because she understood his need for rules and order, and besides, how romantic would that be, to conceive on their wedding night! But the longing had become a quiet and aching frustration, always with her.

Now, she thought of the body she’d seen in the bird room, cold, the colour of putty. Inside it, a dead baby.

Had Angela been feeling broody too? She’d been of an age when the most unlikely women can become obsessed with the notion of motherhood.

‘Maurice had no idea,’ Perez said. ‘I’m sure of that.’

‘Are you? I don’t feel I know him at all. And it might not be his child.’

‘I suppose it’s a motive,’ Perez said uncertainly. ‘Though we don’t know she was planning to keep it. Perhaps the trip south was something to do with that.’

‘She wasn’t drinking at the party,’ Fran said. ‘I noticed, wondered if she had some rule about drinking on duty. If she was planning a termination, why would it matter?’

The colour had seeped out of the landscape. They walked together down the middle of the road.

‘Another piece of news,’ Perez said. ‘Morag has tracked down Angela’s mother.’

Chapter Thirty-one

Back in Springfield, Perez spoke on the telephone to Angela’s mother. He wished he could go to visit her, but she was still living in the south-west of England, a small village in Somerset. She was called Stella Monkton. Perez didn’t know if she’d remarried after her divorce from Archie or gone back to using her maiden name. She had the same sort of accent as Ben Catchpole, the assistant warden in the field centre. Soft, round vowels. But educated, Perez could tell that. There was precision in her words. She made every one count.

‘You didn’t see about your daughter’s death in the media?’ He was still surprised that it had taken Morag to find her, that the woman hadn’t approached them for details.

‘I belong to a choir,’ she said. ‘There was a week’s music school in Brittany. It was rather a wonderful experience and in the evening the last thing one wanted was to look at the television news.’

He was curious about her work, how she’d earned her living after running away from her husband, abandoning her child, and she told him without his having to put the question.

‘I work in a school for children with special needs. I was fortunate that the trip with the choir happened in half term.’

‘I understand that Angela has made contact again with you recently.’

There was a moment of silence. ‘Look, Inspector, I find this extraordinarily difficult to discuss over the telephone. Would it be possible to come and see you there? I’d very much like to see where Angela lived and died. I’ve looked at the possibility of travelling up. I could get to Shetland tomorrow lunchtime if I leave Bristol on the first plane to Aberdeen. Perhaps you could meet me there?’

‘There’s a small plane into Fair Isle tomorrow afternoon if you’d like to come to the field centre.’ Perez wondered briefly what the woman would make of the ride, hoped the weather stayed fine. ‘I can book you on to that.’

Another silence. ‘Thank you, Inspector. That would be very kind.’

Then, although it was Sunday he called Vicki Hewitt, using the private number she’d given him in her message on his mobile.

‘What have you got for me, Vicki?’

‘It’s about those feathers, the ones on the first body. Not the stuff emptied from the pillow over Jane Latimer.’

‘What about them?’

‘I’ve got them to an expert. Some he’s pretty sure he can identify. There are kittiwake feathers, herring gull, a couple from waders – he’s fairly certain they’re curlew but he’d like to do a DNA test to be completely sure. Another from a swan.’

‘All those you’d find on the island,’ Perez said. But he didn’t think there’d been whooper swans yet that autumn. The only swan he’d heard about was the rare one that had caused all that fuss. And Angela had been dead when that was discovered.

‘Can you get your chap to get a DNA test on the swan too?’ he said. ‘Pin down the exact species.’

‘It’ll come out of your budget.’

He thought he really didn’t care.

Back in the small bedroom in the roof he went through the letters that had been addressed to Angela. He’d looked at them quickly the evening before, after Maurice had handed them over. Most of the mail was junk, circulars and advertising. There was a letter from her publisher, but it seemed designed to give away as little information as possible: ‘I agree we should meet to discuss the matter. Perhaps you could let me know when you’re planning to come south.’ Perez made a mental note to talk to the editor the following day. Then there was a thick white envelope containing a set of train tickets. First class advance National Express from Aberdeen to London dated the beginning of November. Had Angela already made an appointment to meet the publisher? The letter was so delayed that it was possible. Or maybe there was another reason altogether. Perhaps Maurice would know.

Later, he drove back to the North Light. There’d been a proper Sunday high tea. Cold meat and salad followed by one of his mother’s fruit cakes; although the lettuce had come in on the recent boat it was still limp and unappetizing. Fran seemed content enough to stay in Springfield, though she’d given him a wistful look when he said he had to go back to work. She’d brought out her sketchbook and made notes in charcoal, now she was roughing out a drawing, oblivious to Songs of Praise in the background.

He went straight to Maurice’s flat, using the staff door through the kitchen. He didn’t want to get caught up in a conversation with the guests until he’d talked to Angela’s husband. In the flat the television was on too. This time football. Maurice got up and switched it off when Perez came in. His response to the knock had been a shout to come in.

There was the inevitable bottle of whisky and a glass on the table. ‘You will join me, Jimmy?’ Maurice nodded towards it. Then: ‘Don’t look at me like that, man. I’m not a drunk, but I find it helps dull the edges a bit. Now Poppy’s gone, what does it matter?’

‘Maybe a small dram,’ Perez said and Maurice went off to find another glass.

‘What about Angela?’ Perez asked. ‘Did she like to take a drink?’

‘Red wine. That was her tipple. And lots of it if the mood took her.’

‘But not recently,’ Perez said. ‘At our engagement party, for example. She didn’t have a lot to drink then.’

‘What are you saying, Jimmy? Where is all this leading?’ Maurice wasn’t drunk, but as he’d said the hard edges were blurred, his thoughts a little slow and fuzzy.

‘I spoke to the pathologist today,’ Perez said. He paused to make sure he had the man’s attention. ‘Angela was pregnant.’ Maurice blinked at him. ‘You didn’t know?’

Slowly Maurice shook his head.

‘She’d arranged to go south,’ Perez persisted. ‘I was wondering maybe for an abortion. But if she’d stopped drinking, was looking after herself, that doesn’t quite make sense.’

Maurice looked up. ‘The baby wasn’t mine. I had a vasectomy years ago. Maybe you should talk to the father.’ The first hint of bitterness since Angela had died.

‘Who would that be?’ Perez asked. ‘Who should I talk to?’

‘Maybe you should look close to home, Jimmy. Big James followed my wife around like a love-sick puppy.’ Then he shrugged, a sort of apology for loading his pain on to the other man. ‘No, it couldn’t be him. If anything happened there it was nearly a year ago.’

‘A more recent admirer then.’

‘Oh, they all admired her,’ Maurice said. ‘And who could blame them? The more difficult question is which of them might she have fallen for. Enough to carry his child. I didn’t think she cared for any of them that much.’

‘It could have been a mistake, an accident.’

‘Angela didn’t make those sort of mistakes, Jimmy. I found the morning-after pill in her bag once.’

‘Not a maternal bone in her body,’ Perez said. ‘That’s how you described her to me.’

‘So I did. But perhaps biology overtook her in the end. Perhaps she’d decided she wanted a child even if she couldn’t have one with me. Angela was used to getting what she wanted.’

Perez looked at the man. He didn’t seem as astonished by the news of Angela’s pregnancy as Perez had expected. Had there been signs? Sickness? After all, he’d had three children of his own. Had he guessed she was carrying a child, but not asked, not really wanting his suspicions to be confirmed? Or was the information just too much for him to take in?

‘I wonder if Jane guessed that Angela was having a baby,’ Perez said. Jane had been observant. Nothing much happened in the field centre without her knowing about it. If Jane had worked this out, could it be a reason for her death? ‘Did Jane drop any hint about it to you? Maybe after Angela died?’

‘No!’ It came out as a shout. Maurice held up his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy, but I didn’t know Angela was pregnant.’

He hadn’t drawn the curtains and Perez looked out into the darkness. There were the lights of a ship, a big tanker from the shape of it, moving steadily south. Maurice had turned his body away, as if to make clear that the discussion was over. It was time for Perez to leave.

‘We’ve traced Angela’s mother.’

No reaction.

‘She’s coming into Fair Isle tomorrow. I’ve booked her on to the afternoon plane.’ He paused, but still Maurice gave no sign that he’d even heard. ‘I think she’d like to meet you, but that’s your decision.’

At last Maurice turned his head. ‘Of course I’ll meet her. You’ll make the arrangements, will you, Jimmy? You’ll bring her here.’

‘Why had Angela booked train tickets to go from Aberdeen to London at the beginning of November? It seems she had a meeting with her publisher, but do you know what that was about?’

‘No! It seems to me now that I didn’t know anything about her. She was my wife, but she could have been a stranger.’

He looked up at Perez, now obviously expecting him to leave, but still Perez sat where he was.

‘Is the lighthouse tower always kept unlocked?’

‘Of course not, Jimmy. It’d be a health and safety nightmare. We have kiddies staying here in the summer. You couldn’t have them running up and down the stairs, tampering with the light.’

‘But I found it unlocked this afternoon.’

Maurice shrugged. ‘Is it important?’

‘It could be. Did you have a key here?’

There was a pause. Maurice looked up from his whisky. ‘It was kept with the big bunch on the hook in the larder.’

‘The same one as the key to the bird room?’

‘Yes, but we never used most of them.’

‘But anyone staying in the centre would know where they were kept?’

‘Only if they’d asked Jane. She was the keeper of the keys.’ Then Perez thought at last he’d found a motive for the cook’s murder. She’d known the killer had been in the tower. Had he hidden something else there?

They sat for a moment in silence. ‘Were you never tempted to go up there?’ Perez asked at last. ‘To see where Angela was going, to see who she was with? You’d get a view from there of everything that was going on.’

Maurice set down the glass so violently that some of the liquid spilt on to the polished table. ‘You don’t get it, do you, Jimmy? I didn’t want to know where she was going or who she was meeting. As long as she came home to me every evening I didn’t care.’

Sandy was in the common room, drinking beer, talking to the three single men. Perez hoped Sandy realized he was in the North Light to work; this wasn’t a few days’ unofficial leave from the routine of the office. Immediately he decided that the thought was unfair; these days the Whalsay man took his job seriously. No one would be better than Sandy at getting these men to discuss Angela Moore and her relationships.

Perez helped himself to a coke at the bar and slipped some money into the honesty box. He took a seat just outside the circle of chairs. There was a pyramid of empty beer cans built on the coffee table in the middle. Hugh Shaw was at the end of a story – something about a birdwatcher in a brothel in Tashkent. He nodded to acknowledge Perez’s presence and continued to the tagline. Sandy almost choked, he was laughing so much. The others were more restrained; Perez guessed they’d heard it before.

Sandy saw Perez look at the empty cans. ‘These aren’t all ours,’ he said. ‘The boys from the search team were here earlier. They’ve only just gone to bed.’

‘Could I have a few words, Sandy?’ No point his sitting there drinking with them. They’d never accept him as one of the boys.

They returned to the bird room, the closest thing they had to an office here, the memory of a woman’s body still lying over the desk between them.

‘Did the team find anything in the tower?’

‘You were right. That was a pillowcase and the lining of the pillow itself. There are small fragments of feather still left inside. Nothing else. No fingerprints. The handrail going up the steps and round the lens had been wiped clean.’

‘The screwed-up pillowcase would have gone in a pocket. The killer must have gone straight up to the tower after murdering Jane.’ Perez pictured the killer, looking down the island. Had he seen Perez walking towards the Pund? Had he been already aware that the body had been found before Rhona Laing and the rest of the team arrived in on the plane?

Perez nodded vaguely in the direction of the common room. ‘Do any of them admit to having been up the tower?’

‘No, they all claim to have assumed it would be locked.’

So all it would take, Perez thought, would be one piece of forensic evidence linking a field centre resident to the lens room and we’d have our murderer.

‘What do your drinking pals say about Angela Moore?’ Perez wondered if the three men had considered themselves rivals. They’d all been bewitched by the woman. Had the spell been broken now she was dead?