‘How did he take the news of her death?’
‘I went to see him as soon as I heard. It was about lunchtime, so at least he was almost sober. He lives in the same house where he’d brought up the girl. An ugly sort of bungalow on the edge of the village. It must have been built in the fifties – you’d never get planning permission for it now. Lily Llewellyn goes in every now and again to clean, but you’d never think it. Such a mess. He can’t throw anything away. Piles of newspapers all over the living room. And he still seems to be carrying out experiments. The kitchen bench is covered with jars and test tubes, with stuff growing inside. There’s a microscope. No telly. They never had a telly.’
Perez thought if Sandy Wilson were doing this interview he’d be hurrying Bryn along, urging him to come to the point. But Perez was grateful for the detail. He could see the house in his head, was with Bryn when he stepped into the room, cleared a seat so he could sit down, felt the stickiness underfoot.
‘I just told him straight,’ Bryn said. ‘“Angela’s dead. It seems as if she was murdered.” He sat there looking at me. He was a big man in his day and he’s still tall, though he’s lost a lot of weight. Then he started crying. “I thought one day she’d understand what I’d done for her,” he said. “I thought she’d be grateful. Now she won’t have the chance.” He’d always been a hard man. No compromise with him. Angela was his project, after he gave up the university. It made me a bit queasy watching the tears. But I had the feeling he was crying for himself and not for her.’
‘Didn’t he want any details?’ Perez would have expected a scientist to need to know the facts of his daughter’s death. He had brought his child up to be rational. Even in old age, wouldn’t he need the facts to hang on to?
Bryn hesitated for a moment. ‘He just said he wasn’t surprised. “She wasn’t the sort to live a quiet and easy life. She was her father’s daughter, after all.”’
Perez switched off his mobile. Was this what he’d expected? An eccentric upbringing for Angela. Loveless, driven. It was hardly surprising that she hadn’t turned into a woman who made friends easily. She’d had no practice as a child. He tried to imagine what it must have been like for a girl growing up in a small community, looking different, sounding different. No mother. No television. If there were other kids around, she’d be the subject of their jokes and their gossip, an easy target, a scapegoat. Hardly surprising that she’d developed other ways of getting attention and affection. But he wasn’t sure the conversation with Bryn Pritchard brought him any closer to explaining her violent death.
Through the window he saw a couple of mothers waiting in the schoolyard for the nursery children to come out. Angela’s mother would surely have been younger than Archie Moore. Where was she now? Had she followed her daughter’s career at a distance, seen the news reports of Angela’s death? Perez hit the number for the police station in Lerwick and got through to Sandy Wilson.
‘Are you all set for coming into the Isle tomorrow? Make sure you’re at Grutness early. I’ve asked the boys to take the
Sandy yawned. Perez knew this was the sort of task he hated. The folks on the other end of the phone could never understand his accent and anyone with a higher education intimidated him. He’d grown up a bit in the last couple of years but he still had a low boredom threshold.
Perez felt the need to explain why he couldn’t track down Angela’s mother himself. ‘I’m going back to see Maurice. I’ll ask if he knows where the woman might be, but you’ve got access to records I won’t have.’
‘Is it so important to track down the mother? I mean, she could hardly have committed the murder, could she? Not if she wasn’t there. You said yourself it had to be someone staying at the field centre.’
‘Surely she has a right to know her daughter’s dead!’
But in terms of the investigation, Perez thought Sandy was probably right. This was a waste of time, a distraction activity. He didn’t want to admit to himself that he had no idea who had killed Angela Moore. But Maurice had lived with Angela for five years. He’d put up with her affairs, and continued to adore her. He must understand her better than anyone and with Poppy away from the North Light at Springfield with Fran and Mary, Perez at last had the chance to talk to him on his own.
Chapter Twenty-one
Perez bumped into Maurice Parry in the field centre kitchen. The man showed no surprise at seeing him there. He looked grey and gaunt.
‘I was looking for Jane,’ Maurice said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen her. Perhaps she’s in her room. Dinner’s all ready but I can’t find her. There’s nobody here to ask. They all must be out.’ He seemed put out that Jane wasn’t available for him. He looked around like a petulant child, demanding attention or reassurance. Perez found it hard to remember the competent, affable man who had run the centre.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘No,’ Maurice said. ‘Not really. I was hoping she might help me pack for Poppy. I’m sending Poppy out on the boat tomorrow and I thought I should get her stuff together. She went out with your fiancee and she hasn’t come back yet.’ Again there was a faint tone of complaint as if he blamed Perez for his daughter’s absence.
‘You’re not planning to go south yourself?’
‘No,’ Maurice said. ‘I’m not sure where I’d go. This is the only home I have now.’ He looked around the room. ‘I suppose there are friends who’d put me up, but I’d be terrible company.’
‘Can I help?’ Perez was a decent packer, better than Fran at least. And it would give him the chance to talk to Angela’s husband in an informal way.
But Maurice seemed unable to make a decision. ‘Perhaps I should leave it to Poppy. It doesn’t really matter if something gets left behind and she should be back soon to do it herself.’ He looked vaguely at Perez. ‘Perhaps you’d like some tea?’
‘Yes,’ Perez said. ‘Tea would be great.’ He expected Maurice to take him through to the flat, but the man turned round and switched on the kettle there. Perhaps he saw the big lighthouse kitchen as neutral territory. Perez thought Maurice might have questions about the investigation; instead this was the sort of polite conversation you’d have with an acquaintance, about the weather forecast and the prospect of a quiet spell at last. The tears and depression that had formed his first response to the murder had given way to a mindless focus on small details. Another way, Perez supposed, of coming to terms with Angela’s death.
‘I was wondering if you could help me fill in some gaps in Angela’s background.’ Perez interrupted Maurice’s description of the high-pressure system that was due to settle over German Bight.
There was a moment of shocked silence. Maurice dropped teabags into mugs.
‘I don’t know much about her life before she took up with me,’ he said at last. ‘She didn’t get on with her family.’
‘She must have told you something about them.’
‘Her father was a scientist. An academic. He had strange ideas about education and taught her at home instead of letting her go to the local school.’
‘Do you know why her parents separated?’
‘Angela never discussed it,’ Maurice said. ‘She resented her mother leaving, said she grew up feeling abandoned.’
‘How did she get on with her father?’ Perez asked. He cupped his hands round the mug of tea.
Maurice shrugged. ‘They were very close when she was young, but later Angela found him controlling. I had the impression he was a bit of a bully or at least that he tried to live his life through her. When she left home to go to university they lost contact.’
‘That was her decision? Not to see him again? It seems extreme, especially if they got on together when she was young.’
‘I didn’t mind,’ Maurice said. ‘It was Angela I cared about. I hadn’t married her family.’
‘What about her mother? Did Angela keep in touch with her?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Maurice opened a tin of Jane’s ginger biscuits and handed one to Perez. ‘She never talked
