Blue Lightning

Chapter Seven

Dougie Barr came to Fair Isle for the birds, not the culture. The party on the previous evening had left him cold. He’d had a couple of drinks, then taken himself off to bed. He liked music, couldn’t imagine a long drive without it blasting from the CD, but he was into techno, something with a strong beat. He’d never understood the attraction of folk music, of wailing fiddles and howling singers. He needed noise and rhythm to keep him awake on a long twitch and to get the adrenalin pumping before he arrived at the bird. When it came to his list of species seen in Britain, he was up there with the best of them. Respected. Whenever he turned up at a twitch people knew who he was. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

He’d been coming to Fair Isle since he was a boy, staying in the old place down at the North Haven. He’d found the UK’s first brown flycatcher here in 1992 when he was fifteen and had sneaked away early from school at the end of the summer term with a group of like-minded older friends, leaving his mother bewildered by his behaviour. On the estate where they lived kids got into drugs and car theft, not natural history. The memory of that glorious day in July, the sudden realization that he was looking at something truly mega, still lit up the gloomy hours in the call centre where he worked. Since then he’d had a kind of superstition about the place and had come back nearly every year. Waiting for another rarity to match the first. For him, the real thrill came in finding his own tick. There wasn’t the same excitement chasing after other people’s birds.

His mates mocked him. Why spend all that money? If you had to go birdwatching in Shetland it made much more sense to stay on the mainland and just get a plane into Fair Isle if you needed to, if the big one turned up. That way you kept your options open. But each season Dougie went back to the field centre, convinced that eventually his loyalty would be rewarded. He kept a blog and dreamed of the photos he’d post there, the description, very factual and precise, of the rarity he’d found on the Isle. It would be a first for Britain, maybe even a first for the Western Palearctic. Then his friends would read his blog and weep.

Dougie had never married. Some of his mates had gone to Thailand to find a bride, and at one time Dougie had been tempted to go down that route. He imagined a small pretty woman, mild-mannered and grateful to be in the UK. He would be her hero: after all, he would have rescued her from poverty, perhaps from a life on the streets. She would provide companionship, laugh at his jokes, come birding with him. There would be sex. Regular sex. But his acquaintances’ Thai brides turned out to be strong and forceful women. They laughed at their men and made their lives a misery. Dougie had decided it would be better to continue alone. At least he had nobody else to consider when the pager beeped and there was a rare bird, a tick at the other end of the country. He could just put his binoculars round his neck, load the telescope into the car, and go.

Occasionally he had fantasies about a woman in the call centre where he worked. He was a supervisor now and most of the team he managed were women. He listened in to their calls, heard the soft persuasive voices talking to the anonymous customers on the end of the phone and imagined that they were trying to please him.

Once or twice he’d plucked up courage to ask one out, but that always seemed to end in disaster. Even if she agreed to go with him to dinner or a film, the fumbling advances at the close of the evening ended in humiliation. Then he would imagine her talking to the other women he supervised. During training sessions he sensed they were all secretly laughing at him. He’d decided it wasn’t worth putting himself through that cycle again: the anxiety leading up to the invitation, the rejection, the resulting paranoia. Better stick to the soft-porn DVDs he brought back from trips to the continent. And birding. In that world at least he had achieved.

The wind had been westerly since he’d first landed on the island. Most rarities came in to Fair Isle on easterly winds, swept away from their usual migration routes through Scandinavia, Russia or Siberia. For the first few days he’d remained optimistic. Some of Fair Isle’s rarities had arrived in westerlies after all. He’d got up at first light, walked miles, taken out a packed lunch so he could spend the whole day in the south of the island where most of the migrants appeared. He’d accompanied Angela and Ben on the trap rounds in case a rarity appeared out of nowhere in the catching box. Sometimes miracles like that happened. But now the westerly gales had taken their toll on his mood. He heard the shipping forecast each evening with increasing depression. He would return to work at the end of the fortnight with nothing to show for his dedication. If he could get off the island at all. This late in the season most of his friends were on the Isles of Scilly. There’d already been a smattering of rare birds from the States and they were sending him jubilant texts.

Dougie found it easier to think about birds than the other parts of his life. He hadn’t slept well. These days, he didn’t sleep much. Turning on his side he heard Hugh’s breathing. Since the departure of the plane two days before, Hugh Shaw was the only other unmarried visiting birdwatcher left on the island and they shared the dormitory. Dougie lay awake, listening to the young man’s breathing, and his thoughts wandered again.

Hugh was ambitious, sharp, a brilliant birder for someone so young. Ornithology was all they had in common. Dougie had done the local comprehensive and worked in a factory before he got into sales. Hugh had been expelled from some smart boarding school, then gone travelling. Despite the disgrace of the expulsion, his parents had funded the worldwide trip. Talking about it, Hugh had given a wide, slow grin. ‘They hoped it would make me grow up. It just gave me a gigantic bird list.’ On the long dark evenings while they waited for the wind to change, Hugh had told stories of his journey: being mugged in Vientiane, being chased by an elephant in India. He spoke with a laconic, old-fashioned, public-school accent that made the tales seem unreal. His hair was long and floppy and he had a self-deprecating smile, so it was impossible to tell how much was true.

‘What will you do now?’ Dougie had been fascinated by the young man’s lifestyle. Dougie had always had to earn a living. He might throw the occasional sickie when a rare bird turned up, but he couldn’t afford to lose his job.

‘I was thinking I might get a job leading birding tours. How difficult can that be?’

There’d been the same grin. Dougie had thought of the responsibility of that work, the demanding customers in alien places, and had decided he was better off in the call centre. It would be weird to mix work and his passion for birds. Besides, he’d always been good at selling. He knew the gentle approach usually worked best, but he had a sense about when it was time to move in for the kill.

In the dormitory Dougie turned on to his back. Somewhere in the lighthouse below a door shut and there were muttered voices. Usually in these sleepless hours before dawn, he passed the time with sexy daydreams about Angela. She’d always terrified and fascinated him at the same time, with her brown legs, her full breasts and the long black hair that made him think of a witch or a vampire. Perhaps she was one of the reasons he’d kept returning to Fair Isle. She’d said once he was the best field observer she knew and he still remembered the remark, treasured it.

Today he found no comfort in thoughts of Angela and he was glad when his alarm clock went off. Although it rattled and jumped on the bedside cupboard, Hugh slept through the noise and stayed asleep even when Dougie switched on the light. Dougie thought the man looked younger lying asleep in the bunk. He had long, dark eyelashes. Dougie watched him surreptitiously for a moment, as if he were doing something shameful, and then he got up.

The dining room was empty though the table had been laid and through the serving hatch he could see Jane in the kitchen. There was the smell of bacon. The islander whose engagement they’d been marking the night before was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a big mug of coffee. It crossed Dougie’s mind that he could have been in the centre all night. Now the lighthouse was almost empty there’d be plenty of room if some of the partygoers had overdone the celebrations and decided to stay over. The man looked at Dougie, stared at him, then gave a small nod. No smile. Dougie thought the islanders were all strange bastards. He helped himself to a bowl of cereal. Jane walked through to the dining room and rang the bell to let people know the meal was ready.

John and Sarah Fowler came in almost immediately. Dougie didn’t really understand what they were doing in the centre. Everyone had heard of John Fowler: he’d been a big twitcher in his day. He wasn’t much older than Dougie, but Dougie thought of him as part of an earlier generation, the gang that had hung around the north Norfolk coast in the early seventies. Now Fowler was more famous as a bookshop owner and collector of natural history books. You never saw him in the field much these days and if you did people just took the piss. Over the years he’d made a couple of really bad identification mistakes; on one occasion he had all the Shetland birders turning out to Virkie just for a dark meadow pipit! Of course everyone made mistakes but Fowler had gained the reputation as a stringer, as someone who regularly claimed to see impossibly rare birds. Dougie thought if people talked about him the way they spoke of Fowler he’d never go birdwatching again. He’d probably kill himself. In the field centre Dougie found it awkward to talk to Fowler – it wouldn’t do his reputation any good to be too friendly. He was polite enough, passing the marmalade and the butter when required, but he showed no interest in the couple’s lives away from the island.

Now, as the Fowlers took their places at the table, Dougie thought how similar they looked, more like brother and sister than husband and wife. They had the same faded brown hair, wispy and rather untidy, the same thin lips. And it seemed to him now that they didn’t behave like any of the married couples he knew. They were too careful with each other, too polite. There was none of the banter and bickering he saw in his married friends. No laughter. Had they always been that way or had something happened to make them so tense? Sarah seemed to depend on her husband, without enjoying his company. With an unusual insight, Dougie thought perhaps they’d come to Fair Isle to mend their marriage.

Jane stuck her head round the door into the dining room and broke into his thoughts. ‘Would you mind giving Hugh a shout, Dougie? Jimmy wants to talk to everyone.’

Dougie hesitated. He didn’t think Hugh would be pleased to be dragged downstairs to hear what an islander might want to say. He was usually polite enough, but he did just what he wanted.

‘Please, Dougie.’ Jane had a way of speaking that made you respond immediately.

Jimmy Perez sat with them, but he didn’t start talking until they’d finished eating. He didn’t do anything. He just sat, watching and listening. Although Dougie had seen him the evening before at the party, he only recognized him now. He remembered meeting Perez when the man had worked occasionally on the boat. He’d always been quiet, dark-haired and dark-skinned like the skipper. Dougie usually came into the island on the mail boat. He didn’t like small planes and anyway the Shepherd trip from Grutness was part of the ritual. It was how he’d come into the island that first time, the summer he’d found the flycatcher.

Just one table had been laid up so they all sat together. Jane was the only member of field centre staff present and Dougie thought that was odd. Where were Maurice and Ben? Perhaps because Perez was there, a silent observer, the conversation was stilted. Nobody asked why the man was with them or what he wanted. Even Hugh, who usually managed to keep the conversation going, didn’t have much to say. It was a relief to them all when Perez stood up to speak.

He was strangely formal. ‘I’m here in my capacity as Inspector with Highland and Islands Police.’ He spoke slowly as if he was worried they might not understand his accent. Dougie remembered then that the man had gone south to become a cop. He’d heard old man Perez talking about it once in the Shepherd, grumbling because his son wasn’t there to help on the croft or the boat. That was the day they’d seen the killer whales, just as they left Shetland mainland.

‘Angela Moore is dead.’

The words cut into Dougie’s memory of the huge mammals swimming beside the vessel. He looked at Hugh, who only blinked once. Then there was absolute silence in the room.

‘I’m sure you’ll cooperate with our efforts to find out what happened to her.’ Perez leaned back against a table and seemed to be waiting for them to respond.

‘How did she die?’ Dougie was surprised that it was John Fowler who asked the question. Usually he contributed little to the general conversation.

‘She was murdered. I’m sure you’ll appreciate why I can’t give any details at this point.’

‘Who killed her?’ Fowler again.

‘That’s what I need to establish.’

‘It’s obvious, surely.’ Hugh looked around the room and they all waited for him to speak. He had that way of getting people to listen to him. A storyteller, Angela had called him. Or ‘my storyteller’ when she wanted him to entertain her, to sit beside her in the common room and relive one of his adventures. Though Dougie had never been quite sure what Angela had made of Hugh. It was as if the pair of them had been playing a dangerous game. They were both chancers, adventurers. Now the young man’s voice was relaxed and easy, as if he was about to start one of his traveller’s tales. He was wearing denims and a grey rugby shirt. It was odd how the details of his fellow guests were fixed suddenly in Dougie’s head. It was as if he was in the field looking at a new bird, branding the way it looked in his memory. Hugh continued: ‘Poppy and Angela were arguing last night. We all saw that. Poppy lost her temper once and must have done it again.’ He paused, repeated again, almost apologetically: ‘Obvious.’

Perez hesitated and chose his words carefully. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that’s true at all. Not obvious. In a murder investigation, nothing’s ever quite that simple.’