with me, Jimmy. I’ll drink alone if I have to but I don’t like it.’
Perez nodded. Had Maurice called him back to the North Light just because he was lonely? He sipped the whisky and waited.
‘The mail came in on the boat today,’ Maurice said. ‘You know what it’s like when the weather’s been bad. You get a heap of the stuff and most of it junk.’
Perez nodded again. ‘And some of it’s for Angela?’
‘Of course I should have realized it would be, but it threw me, seeing her name on the envelopes.’
‘I’d like to take the mail with me, if that’s OK,’ Perez said. He should have thought about it and asked Joanne at the post office to set Angela’s mail to one side. ‘I’ll bring it back. Have you opened it?’
‘Not the letters addressed to her!’ Maurice sounded shocked.
‘But there was something that worried you? That’s why you phoned.’
‘It was the bank statement.’ Maurice stood up and pulled a sheet from the pile of paper on the table. ‘Our joint current account. I don’t understand it.’
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘I don’t usually deal with our personal account. Of course, I manage the field centre budget, but most of our joint income came from Angela – from television and from her books. So really the joint account was always hers and she dealt with it.’ Perez wondered what that might be like – to have a partner who earned so much more than you. It might happen to him when Fran became really famous. He told himself that of course he’d be fine with it, but deep down he wasn’t sure. And it occurred to him for the first time that Angela might have been quite wealthy. The couple had no real expenses. They lived rent-free and the trust paid all their living expenses. Money was a powerful motive for murder.
Maurice was continuing: ‘Angela went off for the day just before the weather closed in. A dentist’s appointment. She had dreadful toothache one night and arranged it urgently. The statement says she took three thousand pounds in cash from our joint account. Why would she have done that? Why would she want so much money? All we use cash for here is for the occasional drink at the centre bar and maybe chocolate from the shop. Everything else is settled on account.’
‘Is the cash here? Has the search team been through the flat yet?’ Perez had asked it to start at the Pund and move on to the North Light.
‘No.’ Now Maurice just seemed confused. He still stood with his back to the window, looking in at Perez.
‘Where would Angela have kept money? Handbag? Wallet?’ There had been no handbag in the bird room when the body was found.
‘She used a small rucksack instead of a handbag,’ Maurice said. ‘Her purse would probably be in that.’ But he made no move to find it.
‘Should we look?’ Perez spoke gently. Again he thought that although Maurice was managing to hold himself together to keep the field centre running, he was struggling to cope when he was alone. ‘Where might the rucksack be?’
‘In this cupboard with the coats.’ Maurice was already on his feet, scrabbling through a pine cupboard that stood in the entrance to the flat. He threw out odd boots and shoes and emerged with the sack. By the time Perez got to him, it was too late to suggest that it should be bagged up and regarded as evidence. Maurice squatted where he was and tipped the contents on to the floor.
The burst of manic energy seemed to have left him drained and he just sat, looking at the pile of objects on the carpet. Perez knelt beside him.
There were scraps of paper, including a couple of till receipts, which Perez would look through later, a small diary, a packet of tissues and a large leather purse. Maurice saw the purse at the same time as Perez did and reached out for it before the detective could stop him. It was fat with a wad of rolled notes. Maurice counted them out.
‘Three hundred and fifty pounds,’ he said. ‘And a bit of loose change. What did she do with the rest of it?’
‘Maybe early Christmas shopping?’ Perez suggested. His mother always went into Lerwick in November to stock up. Most of the islanders bought presents online, but she said she enjoyed her trip out to the shops. As much as anything it was a time to catch up with old friends.
‘Angela? Are you joking? Angela didn’t do Christmas!’
Maurice looked up at him, his eyes bright and feverish. ‘I need to find out what was going on here. I know I said I didn’t care, but it’s making me crazy. The speculation. The possibilities. It just goes round and round in my head.’
Perez replaced all the items in the bag. ‘I’ll take this with me too. It’ll help me sort this out for you. It’s probably got nothing to do with Angela’s murder. All kinds of thing come to light during an investigation. As soon as I know anything I’ll be in touch.’ He stood up. Maurice remained on the floor. Perez bent down and carefully helped him to his feet.
Sandy was using the bird room as an office and Perez found him there on the phone. He must have been talking to one of his girlfriends because as soon as he saw Perez he ended the conversation quickly.
‘Did the search team come up with anything?’ Perez asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘I need you to get back on the phone. Apparently Angela Moore went out to Lerwick to the dentist just over a week ago. Find out if she did see her dentist in town. I’ve got a feeling the toothache was just an excuse to allow her off the island. She also withdrew three thousand pounds in cash from the Royal Bank of Scotland. She wouldn’t have been able to get that much from the hole in the wall. Talk to the cashier who served her. Did Angela mention why she needed that amount of cash? And see if you can track down what else she did that day. The cash doesn’t seem to be here. What did she do with it?’
Perez could have answered these questions himself, but he knew it would take him weeks to do it. He’d grown up in Shetland, but still he was considered something of an outsider in the town. People would be reluctant to talk to him about the trivial details that would help trace Angela’s movements while she was off the Isle. Perhaps it was because he’d worked in a city in the south for part of his career, perhaps because he came from Fair Isle. Sandy might be a Whalsay man, but he was completely at home in Lerwick now. He had contacts everywhere.
‘I’ll get on to it now.’ Sandy leaned back in his chair and looked up at Perez. ‘I might as well. There’s nothing else to do. Did you know there isn’t even a television for the guests here?’ It was as if Perez had brought him to the edge of the world.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The next day was Sunday and suddenly everything was still. All activity ceased. No planes filled with birdwatchers and media folk. No helicopters. No murder. Even the weather was quiet. The island woke to a clear, cold dawn. On the bank by the shop, the wind turbine was motionless.
Perez asked Sandy to spend the day at the field centre: his role to reassure the remaining residents and to continue taking statements about Jane Latimer.
When Perez was a boy Sundays on Fair Isle were sacred. Every week he was taken to church twice – once to the kirk and once to the Methodist chapel. Before he was born, the islanders had decided they couldn’t live with sectarianism and this was their way of dealing with it: whatever denomination they’d been born into, they’d all go to both services, kids scrubbed, men in suits or fancy hand-knitted sweaters, women in skirts and proper shoes. Sunday was a day of rest then. There was no work on the croft. No fishing. It had been different for the women, of course. There had to be lunch and the pans had to be cleaned, but they couldn’t hang washing on the line – even if it was a good drying day – or the neighbours would talk.
Perez took Fran to the morning service in the kirk. He knew it would make his mother happy to have them there and he needed time for reflection, away from the investigation. Let Sandy take the lead for a while. He felt
