Blue Lightning

Chapter Eight

Perez stopped outside Maurice and Angela’s flat and listened. Nothing. He tapped on the door and went inside, walking straight into a large room, with an original fireplace facing the door and windows on two sides. One looked south, through the gap in the surrounding wall, towards the pool the islanders called Golden Water, the other out to sea. For a moment he was aware of the outside reality of sky, wind and water. Talking to the visitors in the dining room, he’d been so focused on the people that he could have been in any of the bare rooms he’d used to interview witnesses during his career. There could have been city roads outside. He thought again that this case was too close to home. In normal circumstances he would have stepped away, handed the investigation to a colleague who was less involved. This was all wrong; it felt twisted and unnatural.

Maurice Parry and his daughter sat on a low sofa, which was covered by a woven throw. They were lit by a small lamp on the table beside them. It was barely light outside. There was a plain brown carpet, with a scattering of sheepskin rugs on the floor. The curtains were the same as in the public rooms in the field centre. Even though this was Angela and Maurice’s personal space they’d done little to make it their own. Poppy was wearing a dressing gown, pink, too small for her. Perhaps it had been left here when she was a child. Last night’s make-up was streaked on her face. Her hair was still stiff with gel. She was crying and Maurice held her in his arms. He frowned when he saw Perez looking at them.

‘Couldn’t you give us a little more time?’

Perez shook his head. ‘Sorry.’ If Poppy was going to confess to killing her stepmother, best that it happen quickly. He could be on the phone to the Fiscal and explain that there was no mystery here, no need for drama. A disturbed adolescent with a knife. In big cities almost a commonplace. They could make arrangements for Poppy’s care on the island and decide what would happen to her once they were able to get her off. Then he could start worrying about what he should do with Angela’s body.

‘I’m so sorry.’ The girl looked up at him with smudged panda eyes. He said nothing. Let her tell it in her own words and her own time. He supposed he should caution her, but this was hardly a formal interview and her father was with her to protect her interests.

‘I spoiled your engagement party,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to. It was stupid. Childish.’

‘Angela’s dead,’ he said. ‘More important than a party.’

‘I’m sorry about that too.’ She looked up at her father. ‘I didn’t like her much but she didn’t deserve to be killed. I can’t apologize for that, though. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t responsible.’ Her voice was very quiet but it was reasonable. It was hard to believe that this was the overwrought young woman who’d caused such a scene the night before.

‘I know, sweetheart.’ Maurice stroked the hair away from his daughter’s face. ‘I know you couldn’t do anything like that.’

Perez watched. He imagined how tense and claustrophobic it must have been in this apartment in the days leading up to Angela’s murder. An enclosed space inside the enclosed space of the lighthouse. Sealed off from the rest of the island by two lots of walls. And inside, three people tied by family, but pulled apart by opposing desires and needs. The stress, he thought, must have been unbearable. There would have been little reason in the conversation then. His mind flicked again to the child who would soon be his stepchild. Fran’s daughter Cassie was six and having a holiday with her father now. Would Perez still be able to love her if she was a large, awkward teenager?

‘Did Angela want children?’ The question was directed at Maurice, over Poppy’s head, and was out before he’d had time to consider the tactlessness of asking it in the girl’s presence.

‘No. I explained earlier, she wasn’t the maternal type. Far too selfish.’ Maurice looked up at Perez and gave a little smile. ‘I still thought of her as a child herself. A brilliant, adorable, precocious child.’

‘I need to talk about Angela. About why someone might have wanted her dead.’

‘Of course you do, Jimmy.’ There was something patronizing in the tone. Of course. Play your little games if it makes you happy.

‘It must be important to you too.’

‘ To find out who killed her? No, not right now. I’m trying to work out how I can survive without her. Revenge might come later.’

I’m not talking about revenge, Perez thought. I’m talking about justice. But he couldn’t say that. It would sound impossibly pompous. He wanted to talk to Maurice and Poppy separately, but he could tell that individual interviews would have to wait. They were clinging to each other and he realized it would be impossible to prise them apart. It seemed to Perez that it wasn’t grief that had brought father and daughter together now; the sudden absence of Angela in their lives had made the closeness possible, had somehow made them come to their senses. It was as if a spell had been broken. When he left the room, he thought they’d hardly noticed he was gone.

The centre’s common room was furnished much as the living room in Maurice and Angela’s flat, but there was a library in the corner: floor-to-ceiling shelves containing natural history books, with a pile of paperback novels relegated to a low table. Perez checked that no one was sitting in the high-backed chairs, then he called a coastguard officer friend using his mobile phone. The reception was poor, but the field centre landline had a number of extensions and he didn’t want to risk being overheard. He stood by the window and looked out at the sea.

‘I know there’s no possibility of a plane or a boat today, but I wondered about the coastguard helicopter.’

‘No chance. I mean, it’s hardly a matter of life or death, is it? I’m not prepared to risk my crew for a body.’

The next call was to Inverness.

‘I’ve got a problem.’ He’d asked to be put through to his line manager, a cheerful Englishman, who’d moved to the Highlands for the fishing and was even more cheerful now that retirement was approaching. Perez explained the position. ‘I feel that I’m too close to the case, but none of my family members is involved and there’s no chance of anyone else getting in to take it over at least for the next twenty-four hours.’

‘It’s yours then, laddie.’ Frank had taken to using strange words that he thought sounded Scottish. ‘And I’m assuming you’ll have it all wrapped up by the time the weather improves. How many suspects can there be? You’d better let the Iron Maiden know.’

The Iron Maiden. Rhona Laing the Fiscal, based in Lerwick on Shetland mainland. A woman with political ambitions and the knack of covering her back in every situation.

‘Put me through to Vicki Hewitt first.’ Perez wasn’t sure he could face Rhona Laing just yet. He needed to know exactly what he was doing before then. And that meant sorting out how he should manage the crime scene. Vicki was the Highland and Islands scene coordinator. She was a no-nonsense Yorkshirewoman with a sense of humour and experience of working with a big English force before taking up her present role. He thought she’d enjoy his dilemma: it would amuse her to think of him working without back-up.

‘What have you got for me this time, Jimmy? Should I be packing my bags and taking my seasick pills?’

‘Not yet. This one I have to deal with on my own. I have a dead woman with a knife in her back and no way of getting any forensic support.’ He talked Vicki through the situation, imagined her sitting with her elbows on the desk taking notes, grinning at his dilemma, the inevitable can of Diet Coke beside her. ‘So what should I do? I can’t leave her there indefinitely. The chopper should get in tomorrow but there’s no guarantee.’

‘Remember your latest crime scene management training, Jimmy.’ She’d led the refresher course, one of the few he’d felt it worth travelling south for. ‘What do you think you should do first?’

‘Take photographs,’ he said. ‘Lots of photographs.’

‘Even more important if we can’t get the experts in straight away.’ He knew she was teasing but didn’t care.

‘What about the body?’

‘Bag it up carefully and put it somewhere cold. Has anyone on the island got a walk-in chiller or a big fridge?’

‘There’ll be folk with freezers.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘A freezer won’t do. We don’t want ice crystals in the body. If you don’t have a full-size fridge, put her in an outhouse. Somewhere watertight, where you can keep her cool.’

As he pressed the button on his mobile at the end of the conversation, he wondered where he’d find a bag big enough to take the body of a fit young woman.

Rhona Laing’s secretary put him through to her immediately. Rhona demanded efficiency and usually got it.

‘Yes?’ The Fiscal was in her fifties, immaculate, dressed like the Edinburgh lawyer she had once been. He could picture her sitting at her desk. ‘I thought you were on leave, Inspector. Visiting your parents.’ That was the other thing about Rhona. She seemed to have spies everywhere.

‘There’s been a murder.’

‘Where?’ Her voice was measured. He’d never heard her express shock.

‘Here on the Isle.’

‘You’re like the Angel of Death, Inspector. Violence seems to follow you around. First Whalsay, now Fair Isle.’

Perez thought that was unfair. His colleague Sandy Wilson had found the body in Whalsay.

‘The victim’s a young woman,’ he said. ‘The warden of the Fair Isle field centre. I’d met her but I didn’t know her well. As I’m here and there’s no chance of the Inverness team getting in, I think I can run the investigation without a conflict of interest.’

‘Your victim is Angela Moore?’ Her voice was sharp. ‘She’s a television celebrity. They seem to wheel her out to talk about everything from Shetland wind farms to the decline of the tiger. There’ll be press interest.’

‘If they get to hear about it-’

‘Don’t be naive, Inspector! Someone will already have tried to sell the story to the national press. One of the islanders or one of the guests. This has to be sorted out quickly. By the time the weather clears and the reporters can fly in, we need to have made an arrest.’

His last call was to Fran. In Springfield, Radio 4 was playing in the background. He recognized Kate Adie and From Our Own Correspondent. That would be something else she and Mary would have in common. Both women had it on all day, a background to their work.

‘I’m so sorry.’ He realized he’d repeated almost exactly the words and the inflexion of Poppy’s words to him. ‘I didn’t bring you all the way to Fair Isle just to abandon you.’

‘It’s work. Nothing you could do.’

‘What have you been up to?’ At home she could occupy herself for hours on her own with her drawing and her painting. She had a concentration that he found enviable. He was too easily distracted. But he didn’t think she’d be able to work with his parents around; Mary would want to chat and be full of questions. Perhaps that’s where my curiosity comes from, he thought. I’m nosy, just like my mother.

‘I asked Mary to teach me to use the knitting machine. I’ve always wanted to learn. It’s not nearly as easy as it looks.’ She laughed.

Suddenly he felt as if he was as far away from her as when she was visiting her parents in London and he was left behind in Lerwick. It was hard to believe they were only separated by a couple of miles.

‘I’ll make sure I’m home for supper,’ he said.

‘Will it all be over by then?’

‘I don’t know. It seemed very simple. Now I’m not sure.’