Blue Lightning

might be OK. And the day after should be fine. Everything should be back to normal by then.’

Except, Perez thought, that there’s a dead woman padlocked in our shed and I still have to find her killer. Not normal at all.

Chapter Fourteen

Dougie Barr listened to the late-night shipping forecast on the old transistor radio in the dormitory. At home, the precise voice listing the sea areas sent him to sleep.

When he was working, what did it matter which way the wind was blowing? Here, it mattered very much. In the next couple of days the weather would change. There’d be a still, cold period. A time of fieldfares and redwings and snow buntings. The birdwatchers gathered in Shetland waiting for the wind to drop, so they could charter boats and planes to get to Fair Isle, would have heard the forecast too. He almost wished he could be with them, sitting in the bars in Lerwick or in the Sumburgh Hotel, reminiscing over other crazy twitches, near misses and serendipitous finds. He would like to share the mounting excitement and tension. But then he wouldn’t have found the trumpeter swan. His name wouldn’t appear in the British Birds rarity report. He wouldn’t be the envy of every birder in Britain.

Sitting on his bed, he unbuttoned his shirt and caught snatches of conversation coming from the common room below him. Ben and Hugh were sitting up drinking; there was a sudden outburst of laughter. Dougie felt excluded, frozen out. The old paranoia: They’re laughing at me. Because I’m not as bright as them. Because I have to work for a living. It had been the same since he was a child, the chubby boy in the playground, teased and bullied. He stood up and looked out at the window, had an almost overwhelming impulse to force his fist through the glass. He imagined the noise, the pain as shards pierced his skin, almost to the bone, the sensation of wind rushing through the splintered gap. With a great effort, he took off his trousers and folded them on the back of a chair, climbed under the duvet, shut his eyes very tight and thought of Angela’s silky black hair and long, brown hands. He pictured her naked body. But the image failed to work its old magic. Instead he thought of her staring through her heavy polythene shroud – because of course details of her leaving the lighthouse had leaked out – with lifeless eyes.

Downstairs, the conversation continued. There was another explosion of laughter. On an impulse, Dougie got up and dressed. He stormed downstairs, just as his mother had done on occasion when he was still living at home and had been foolhardy enough to invite friends round. She’d appear at the living room door in her dressing gown and slippers, her face blotchy with indignation and embarrassment: ‘Do you mind keeping the noise down, our Dougie? Some of us have got work to go to in the morning.’ As if he hadn’t worked for a living.

The big generator had been turned off for the night and he used a torch to see himself down the stairs. In the common room a Tilley lamp stood on the table and someone had put candles on the mantelpiece. The fire had been banked up with peat but the central heating had gone off and there was a chill in the room.

He’d only expected to see Hugh and Ben, but John Fowler was there too and Dougie was thrown by that. The man was older than him and it didn’t seem right to make a fuss, to complain about the noise. He’d make himself look bad-tempered, stupid even. Instead Dougie poured himself a whisky and went to join them, as if he’d been up all the time. He didn’t drink much; he preferred the taste of the soft drink Jane got in specially when she knew he was staying. Perhaps it was the whisky that made the whole episode seem like a dream when he thought about it later.

He thought Hugh must have started the game. It was his style. There was an empty wine bottle on the table and Hugh turned it on its side and began to spin it. The light from the Tilley reflected in the moving green glass.

‘Have you ever played the truth game?’ Surely that must have been Hugh? There’d be the easy smile. They’d all been drinking though, and later Dougie thought it could have been any of them. Except Dougie himself. He’d never have suggested playing that sort of game. He remembered the taunts he’d endured when he was still at school, the questions he’d refused to answer: ‘Have you ever had a girl, Fat Dougie? Or are you still a virgin? Who’d want you, after all?’

None of them answered, but Hugh took no notice. He twisted the bottle again, more violently. When it stopped, the neck was pointed towards Ben.

‘You’re the first victim, Ben,’ Hugh said, grinning. ‘The rest of us get a question each.’

‘Surely there’s no guarantee that he’ll tell the truth.’ John Fowler was leaning back in his seat and his face was in shadow. ‘How would the rest of us know if he was lying?’

‘Oh, we’d know,’ Hugh said. ‘Most people are very bad liars.’

Perhaps it was the situation. The candlelight flickering in the inevitable draughts, the memory of Angela’s body lying for most of the day in the room next door. Perhaps they were afraid of provoking Hugh. But none of them refused to play. Nobody said: This is ridiculous, childish, let’s just go to bed.

We should be celebrating a new bird, Dougie thought. Instead we’re sitting round like mad old ladies at a seance. After his dad died, his mother had got into spiritualism for a while and she’d brought some seriously weird people back to the house. They’d sat with their fingers touching in the dark, crouched in the front room of their suburban council house, believing they were conjuring up spirits.

‘I’ll ask a question,’ John Fowler said. He leaned forward and the buttery candlelight slid down his forehead and over his chin. ‘Did you kill Angela Moore?’

Ben’s head shot up. For a moment Dougie thought he would hit the man. ‘No! I’d never have hurt her.’

‘Your question, Dougie.’ It sounded as if Hugh was laughing. Dougie didn’t look at him, but he knew the smile would be there, the white teeth gleaming out of the shadow.

Dougie didn’t know what to ask. He was just dreading his turn as victim. ‘Have you ever done anything you’re ashamed of?’ Where had that question come from?

Ben turned to face him. ‘Once,’ he said. Then: ‘I betrayed some friends.’

‘When was that?’ It was John Fowler. Dougie thought you could tell he’d been a journalist. You could imagine him sniffing out stories.

‘I’ve answered the question, haven’t I? No need to go into details.’ In the candlelight it looked as if Ben’s hair was on fire. ‘What about you, Hugh? What do you want to know?’

‘Did you love her?’

‘Who?’

‘Angela, of course. We’re all thinking about her.’

No hesitation. ‘Yes.’

Oh, Dougie thought. She’d have enjoyed that. Nothing Angela liked better than unquestioning devotion. And nothing she despised more.

John Fowler reached out and twisted the bottle, a deft movement that Dougie in this heightened mood thought looked like someone wringing the neck of a chicken. He watched the spinning glass, saw it stop. It was halfway between him and Hugh but he wanted this over. He couldn’t stand the waiting. ‘My turn then,’ he said. He felt he couldn’t breathe. The questions would be about sex. Or about Angela, which came to the same thing.

Hugh stared at him. ‘Did you kill Angela Moore?’

Dougie relaxed. ‘No.’ An easy question. And Hugh was the mischief-maker. If any of them was going to turn him into a figure of fun, it would be Hugh.

He turned to face the others. Now the worst was over he was almost enjoying being the centre of attention. John Fowler was watching him. It was out of character for the man to be here, playing a stupid adolescent game. Usually Fowler went to bed early with his wife. Straight after the cocoa and the biscuits and the calling of the log. Why was he here? Did he think they’d like him, accept him and believe his records again, just because he stopped up drinking with them? But Fowler didn’t speak and it was Ben who asked the next question.

‘Do you know who killed Angela?’

Dougie paused for a moment, but suspicion wasn’t knowledge. ‘No.’ He looked at John again, waiting for the last question.

‘Have you ever strung a bird?’ Fowler asked. ‘Have you claimed a record you weren’t sure about?’

It was the last thing Dougie had been expecting. Fowler was the stringer, not him.