else Gothic and overblown.
‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ Perez said.
‘You’re not intruding. Come and have coffee with us.’
He followed her into the dining room. They were all sitting just as she had left them. Another squall had blown up and the rain was hitting the window. Nobody was speaking. Jane felt a responsibility to put people at their ease. It had been the same at the parties in Richmond: Dee had invited strangely mismatched people to her home and then ignored them and it had been Jane’s role to make the introductions and bring the guests together.
‘Everybody’s rather excited,’ she said. ‘There’s a very rare bird on Golden Water. A trumpeter swan. It’s never been seen in the UK before.’
Still Perez said nothing. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat between Dougie and Hugh.
‘This is an unusual situation.’ Perez seemed to be weighing his words. Jane wondered if he already knew who’d killed Angela. Perhaps there was some magic test of technology that had made it clear during the hours he’d spent in the bird room. Was he here to make an arrest? She realized she’d be disappointed as well as relieved if that were the purpose of his visit. She was still intrigued by the puzzle. She felt as she did when she was attempting to complete a crossword and someone leaned over her shoulder and gave her the answer to a cryptic clue.
But it seemed Perez was no further forward in the investigation than she was. ‘Usually, in a case like this a big team would be working it, taking statements, checking the background of the witnesses. Here, there’s only me. I’d be grateful for your cooperation. I do need a statement from each of you and I’d like to speak to you individually.’ He looked round the table. ‘As soon as possible while your memories are still fresh.’
‘What about Maurice and Poppy?’ Hugh said. ‘I assume you’ll be talking to them.’ He shrugged and gave the diffident little smile to signal he intended no offence.
‘I’ll be talking to everyone,’ Perez said sharply. ‘And I’ll run the investigation in my own way. I’ll begin the interviews this evening.’ He handed sheets of paper around the table. ‘In the meantime, I’d be grateful if you could write down everything you can remember about yesterday evening. I’ll need a timetable of your own movements after the party, but anything else that might be relevant. Perhaps there was an overheard conversation that has become more significant in the light of Angela’s death. Or perhaps you noticed someone moving around the lighthouse late last night. Please don’t discuss the matter with fellow guests. It shouldn’t be the subject of speculation. And be honest. As I said this is an unusual situation, but it isn’t a game.’
He turned to Jane and for the first time since arriving he smiled. ‘Would it be possible to have more coffee? It’s going to be a long night.’
Chapter Thirteen
Perez thought this was the most difficult case he’d ever worked. Here, stranded in the North Light, it was as if he was working in a strange country; it even seemed that the witnesses spoke a foreign language and he was groping to make sense of the words. He understood for the first time how difficult it must have been for Roy Taylor, his colleague from Inverness, to come into Shetland and take charge of an investigation there. The place would have seemed quite alien to him. Perez knew how Shetlanders thought. He could see the world through their eyes. The field centre staff and guests were English and had different ambitions and preoccupations. In a sudden fancy, he thought that the building was like an outpost of Empire during the time of the Raj; he felt like a native official bridging the gap between both cultures.
He moved everyone from the dining room to the common room. They would be more comfortable there and he could use the dining room to interview his witnesses. He preferred to sit on an upright chair with the table between him and his interviewee, rather than slouched on a sofa, his knees touching those of his suspect. Because of course they were all suspects. That was the only way he could consider them at the moment. He knew it was unlikely that the field centre residents would sit in silence in the common room; they would discuss what was going on as soon as he left the room. Their written statements would be compromised. But it was the best he could do.
Fran had offered to come back to the field centre with him: ‘I could help. I’m observant. I could watch them and listen to what was said. Make notes without their realizing.’ But he wasn’t sure information gathered in that way would be considered admissible evidence. And one woman had been murdered already. He wasn’t going to place Fran in danger again.
He asked John Fowler to join him first in the dining room. Why had he made that choice? It was a random decision made partly because quiet people always interested him, and Fowler had hardly spoken over coffee. Also, he seemed amiable and Perez could do without a hostile conversation to kick off the evening.
They talked with the churning of the dishwasher in the kitchen as a background to the conversation. Perez set a small tape recorder on the table between them. He’d borrowed it from Stella, the schoolteacher, when he’d gone down the island to store Angela’s body.
He nodded towards the machine. ‘You don’t mind? This isn’t a formal interview, but I don’t have anyone to take notes.’
Listening to the recorded conversation later, the background sound of the kitchen appliance, kicking in before the speech, would immediately make him feel uneasy and remind him of his struggle to ask the important questions.
He began with the factual details he already knew: he’d found guests’ names and addresses on the bird room computer and colleagues in Lerwick had already done a check for criminal records. Fowler’s was clean. The couple lived in Bristol. John was forty-nine and Sarah was forty-one. Now the man sat in front of him, quite unmoved, it seemed, by the situation. His hair was slightly long for a man of his age and he wore denims and a knitted jersey. There was nothing unusual or impressive about him. He was the sort of character always passed over in an identity parade.
‘What brought you to Fair Isle in the autumn?’ Perez asked.
‘Birds.’ Fowler smiled. ‘We’re just like the other mad people who come all this way. I’ve spent a couple of autumns in Shetland, but I’ve never been to Fair Isle. It’s been a dream, you know. For birdwatchers the place has an almost mythical status. It’s a place where almost anything can happen. And today it did, of course, with the trumpeter swan. Besides, Sarah needed a holiday.’
‘Why did your wife need a holiday?’
‘Does it matter?’ The smile vanished, replaced by a small frown, as if Perez had committed some unfortunate breach of manners.
‘Probably not.’ Perez wasn’t sure what had led him to ask the question, but now Fowler’s response intrigued him. ‘But I’m interested.’
Fowler shrugged. ‘She’d lost a baby. We’d given up hope of conceiving. Tried everything – had all the tests, IVF. Then there was that wonderful moment when she realized she was pregnant. But there was a miscarriage. Nobody can tell us why. Her baby would have been due this week. It’s been a strain for both of us. I had to get her away.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Perez’s first wife had been called Sarah too and she’d had a miscarriage. He’d thought it had been at the root of the breakdown of his marriage. Certainly he had never been more unhappy than when they lost the baby. Now he felt like an insensitive oaf for prying into private grief.
‘You won’t say anything to her.’ Fowler looked earnestly at Perez. He had the air, Perez thought, of an academic, gentle, a little unworldly.
‘Of course not.’ The dishwasher beeped to show it was at the end of its cycle. ‘Had you met Angela Moore before you came to the field centre?’
‘Once, I think, at a publisher’s party. I used to write features for specialist journals.’
‘You’re a journalist?’ Perez looked up sharply. ‘These interviews are confidential. I wouldn’t want what’s said here to appear in a newspaper.’
‘I wouldn’t do that to her family.’ Fowler was staring out of the window. ‘Besides, I’m never asked to write
