vertigo.’
She turned briefly to smile. ‘In the plane I thought I was going to die. A reasonable fear in the circumstances.’
Perez looked briefly over the island but soon turned his attention to the north and west. ‘You can see the lighthouse at Sumburgh Head and the Foula cliffs.’ Fran was so focused on her sketch that she hardly heard him.
When she saw him again, conscious of a silence, a lack of movement, he was peering under the wooden bench that ran round the room, under the windows. He must have sensed her looking at him. ‘What do you think that is?’
‘Don’t know. A bit of rag.’ Her head was still full of the painting she was planning. She thought it might be her best work ever. Would it be possible to exhibit it before she gave it to James and Mary?
‘White cotton certainly. A pillowcase, do you think?’
‘You’re thinking it might have held the feathers scattered over Jane’s body?’
‘It’s possible. Even the automatic lights are kept immaculate. The guys who come to check the working wouldn’t have left that here. The search team haven’t found the pillowcase yet and I asked them to look. I’ll get them up here to check the place out. Don’t touch more than you have to now. There might be fingerprints.’
Fran expected Perez to climb immediately down the stairs to fetch Sandy and the other officers but he didn’t move. ‘I think the murderer has been up here spying,’ he said. ‘I wondered how he tracked down Jane to the Pund. From here you can see everyone’s movements at least in the north half of the island. He knows exactly what we’re all doing and where we are.’
She reached out and took his hand.
As they walked south again, the late afternoon sun was almost warm. Almost. They were still holding hands, like seven-year-olds pretending to be grown up, exchanging a few words. All about themselves, how lucky they were to have found each other, plans for the future. Sentimental stuff that had nothing to do with the investigation. Fran had assumed Perez would want to stay in the tower to supervise the search, but he’d decided to leave them to it. Fran was grateful for that, and for the knowledge that the murderer could no longer be up there, looking down at them. She felt ill whenever she thought that their intimate moments together could have been observed.
Perez’s phone hadn’t rung all day. Too good to be true, Fran thought suddenly.
‘Is your mobile actually switched on?’ His phone was a standing joke. An alternative form of contraception, she said. Always ringing at the most awkward time.
‘Shit! I turned it off for the kirk and forgot to switch it back on.’ He pulled a face, pressed a button. ‘Five missed calls.’ And the romantic walk through the warm autumn light was over. He was a cop all over again.
‘So tell me…’ His phone pressed against his ear with his left hand, scrabbling for a pen and paper with the other. They’d stopped and he leaned the paper on a piece of dry-stone wall. She squatted on a flat rock, looked back towards Sheep Craig, remembering the perspective of it from the tower, thinking again about the painting she’d make. His words were like background music in a bar. She heard them but didn’t take in the meaning. Perez scribbled on the paper, filled one side with his crabby, repressed writing and turned it over. His questions weren’t much more than promptings to persuade the caller to continue talking.
‘How long? So she would have known?’
Fran was thinking about the shadows formed by the different planes of the cliffs. In this light the rock was almost pink. Perez ended the call and pressed the buttons again, listened to a message on his voicemail. The sun had disappeared behind Ward Hill, on Sheep Rock the shadows had deepened.
Another phone call. As the sun had set the air grew colder. Fran stood up, stamped her feet, pulled her coat around her. Perez mouthed at her that he wouldn’t be long. This time there was a more even conversation. Perez asked questions and listened to answers.
‘What’s she doing now?’
Fran heard the indistinct reply, a woman.
‘Did she say when she last spoke to Angela?’
Eventually the call was over. Complete silence. He took her hand again.
‘The first call was the pathologist from Aberdeen with initial post-mortem results on Angela Moore.’ He focused on a hooded crow, flapping over a fence post. ‘She was pregnant. About eight weeks. She must have realized.’
‘Maybe that’s what she was doing in Boots,’ Fran said. ‘Buying a pregnancy test. A confirmation.’
For more than a year now Fran had been broody. There were times when she was so desperate to feel a baby kicking in her belly that she thought any child would do, but the longing was also about Perez. She imagined a baby with black hair, strong limbs, a tight grip. Looking like its father. She had brought up the subject with Perez. Elliptically, not wanting to put him under pressure.
Now, she thought of the body she’d seen in the bird room, cold, the colour of putty. Inside it, a dead baby.
Had Angela been feeling broody too? She’d been of an age when the most unlikely women can become obsessed with the notion of motherhood.
‘Maurice had no idea,’ Perez said. ‘I’m sure of that.’
‘Are you? I don’t feel I know him at all. And it might not be his child.’
‘I suppose it’s a motive,’ Perez said uncertainly. ‘Though we don’t know she was planning to keep it. Perhaps the trip south was something to do with that.’
‘She wasn’t drinking at the party,’ Fran said. ‘I noticed, wondered if she had some rule about drinking on duty. If she was planning a termination, why would it matter?’
The colour had seeped out of the landscape. They walked together down the middle of the road.
‘Another piece of news,’ Perez said. ‘Morag has tracked down Angela’s mother.’
Chapter Thirty-one
Back in Springfield, Perez spoke on the telephone to Angela’s mother. He wished he could go to visit her, but she was still living in the south-west of England, a small village in Somerset. She was called Stella Monkton. Perez didn’t know if she’d remarried after her divorce from Archie or gone back to using her maiden name. She had the same sort of accent as Ben Catchpole, the assistant warden in the field centre. Soft, round vowels. But educated, Perez could tell that. There was precision in her words. She made every one count.
‘You didn’t see about your daughter’s death in the media?’ He was still surprised that it had taken Morag to find her, that the woman hadn’t approached
‘I belong to a choir,’ she said. ‘There was a week’s music school in Brittany. It was rather a wonderful experience and in the evening the last thing one wanted was to look at the television news.’
He was curious about her work, how she’d earned her living after running away from her husband, abandoning her child, and she told him without his having to put the question.
‘I work in a school for children with special needs. I was fortunate that the trip with the choir happened in half term.’
‘I understand that Angela has made contact again with you recently.’
There was a moment of silence. ‘Look, Inspector, I find this extraordinarily difficult to discuss over the telephone. Would it be possible to come and see you there? I’d very much like to see where Angela lived and died. I’ve looked at the possibility of travelling up. I could get to Shetland tomorrow lunchtime if I leave Bristol on the first plane to Aberdeen. Perhaps you could meet me there?’
‘There’s a small plane into Fair Isle tomorrow afternoon if you’d like to come to the field centre.’ Perez
