Blue Lightning

If I were a murderer I’d confess to him, Fran thought. I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I’d want so much to please him.

‘A bit,’ Sarah said. ‘She was a great listener. She didn’t give away a lot about herself.’

‘You had no impression that Jane felt scared, threatened?’

Sarah gave herself time to think, squeezed out the dishcloth and hung it over the long tap.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that.’

In the bird room Sandy was talking on his mobile. Fran could tell it wasn’t work. Some woman, she thought, confirmed when he began to blush. There was always some woman.

‘Rushed off your feet, Sandy?’ Perez said. ‘What have you got for me?’

Sandy kicked his legs off the desk and gulped the tea remaining in the mug in his left hand. ‘Not much. I’ve talked to all the field centre residents now. Nobody admits to seeing Jane Latimer once she left the lighthouse on the day she died.’

‘Someone’s lying then. Because one of them slashed her with a knife and left her bleeding.’

‘Could it not be one of the islanders? I mean this bunch, they all seem kind of civilized.’

Watching Perez, Fran saw him jump in to reject the idea immediately, then reconsider.

‘Someone staying in the field centre killed Angela Moore,’ he said. ‘But you’re right. It’s important to keep an open mind. Anyone on the Isle could have murdered Jane. Is there anything from the search team yet? They haven’t found the knife?’

Sandy shook his head. ‘But then they wouldn’t, would they? You’d just walk a hundred yards and throw it over the nearest cliff.’

‘Who knew Angela kept the Pund as a love nest?’

‘Ben Catchpole and Dougie Barr.’

‘Not Hugh Shaw?’

‘He claims not. He admits he had sex with Angela Moore, but says it was either in the Land Rover or here in the centre.’

Fran tried to think herself inside the head of the dead warden. It had been Angela’s dream to run this place and she’d achieved her lifetime ambition before she was thirty. What was left for her? A marriage of convenience and the adoration of young men flattered by her attention and attracted by her celebrity. She must have been bored witless. Had she decided it was time to move on? She was sufficiently ruthless to walk away, leaving Maurice and the other centre staff to make the best of it. It would have been different if she’d had a child, Fran thought. Everything would have been much more complicated then.

Perez was still speaking. Fran thought both detectives had forgotten she was there. Usually Perez was careful about what he said in front of her: he knew she would never betray a confidence but it was about sticking to the rules. Doing the right thing.

‘I wonder if I’ve been looking too hard for a motive. Maybe after all this is just a man who likes to kill women.’

‘Strong, competent women.’ It wasn’t Fran’s business, but she’d never been much good at being seen but not heard. ‘Women who subvert the stereotype of femininity. Jane was a lesbian and Angela a sexual predator.’

‘So they were both women who could appear threatening to men.’ At least Perez was taking her seriously.

Sandy just looked confused. ‘Come off it! You can’t have any of the guys here as a psychopath.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ve read the case histories and the profiles; psychopaths are loners. They’re all poorly educated weirdos. These people have degrees, wives, proper jobs.’

Perez gave a tight little grin. ‘Not all of them and maybe only the stupid ones get caught. We don’t get to know about the bright ones. They get away with it.’ He looked down at Sandy. ‘Have you found out what Angela was doing in Lerwick on her day off the Isle?’

‘Well, she didn’t go to see her dentist. Nor any of the others in town.’

‘Have you checked the banks?’

Sandy grinned. ‘You do know it’s the weekend and they’re all closed?’

‘But I know you have contacts, Sandy. Like that red-headed lass that serves behind the counter of Maurice Parry and Angela Moore’s bank. The one you brought to the staff party in the summer.’

‘Angela went into the Royal Bank of Scotland in the street and withdrew three thousand pounds in cash from the joint account.’

‘We know that! Give me something useful.’

Sandy shook his head. ‘It was lunchtime. The place was busy and there was a queue. There was no time to chat. She took most of the money in fifty-pound notes – almost cleared the bank of big denominations. She folded them in half and put them into a pocket in her rucksack.’ He looked up at Perez. ‘You did check all the pockets?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Then she walked out.’

‘She came home on the afternoon plane,’ Perez said. ‘Where did she spend more than two thousand five hundred pounds in a couple of hours?’

‘Maybe she didn’t spend it,’ Fran said. ‘Maybe she had her own account with another bank and she put it into that. Cheques can take ages to clear. If she wanted the money to cover a cheque she’d already written, cash would have been more efficient.’

Perez turned back to Sandy. ‘Can you check that out in the morning?’

‘Angela was seen again that day,’ Sandy said. ‘About two in the afternoon, in the street. Coming out of Boots.’

‘Who saw her?’

‘Just an old school friend of mine. That was her I was talking to on the phone when you came in.’ He grinned again.

Fran wanted to put off their return to the south of the island and Perez’s parents. She couldn’t face Sunday tea, Sunday television, bland and boring conversation. She and Perez stood outside the centre, preparing for the walk back down the island, when she found a possible distraction.

‘Have you ever been up the lighthouse tower?’

‘Once,’ Perez said, ‘when I was a bairn. They had an open day and showed everyone round.’

‘Any chance we could have a look, do you think? There’d be an amazing view from the top.’

She saw he was considering the matter. There were times when she wanted to scream at him. Don’t you ever do anything on impulse, Jimmy? What is it with the caution? If I hadn’t proposed to you I’d still be waiting. But it seemed that he too was in no hurry to rush home.

‘Sure, if it’s open. I know Bill Murray from the Koolin has a key. He holds it for the Northern Lighthouse Board. They come once a year to paint it and service the light.’

‘Won’t Maurice have access to it? In case of emergencies?’

‘Let’s check if it’s locked before we trouble him.’ She felt he was indulging her as he might have done Cassie. There was a small arched door at the foot of the tower. The handle was stiff but eventually it turned. Inside, a stone staircase spiralled around the outer wall. There was no light, except from the door that Perez had propped open – and that grew fainter as they climbed – and then from a small window further up. Fran felt the muscles in the backs of her legs strain and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. Ahead of her Perez seemed not to feel the exertion. He continued and must have reached the top and opened a door into the lens room because suddenly the shaft of the tower was flooded with light. She followed him.

She’d been right. The view was astounding and the island was spread out beneath them like a three- dimensional map. The jagged forks of cliff made sense, the road twisted past the northernmost crofts, which she could now recognize by name. Even if we never come to live here, she thought, this is always going to be a special place for me. I kind of belong. She saw the Land Rover being used by the search team making its way back to the field centre. Then, turning to the west, she saw Sheep Rock again, from a different and arresting perspective. She took a sketchpad from her bag and began to draw, very quickly, her forehead pressed against the glass.

‘You don’t mind the height then?’ Perez said. ‘After the plane I thought you might have a problem with