Blue Lightning

next year. Perhaps he’d have a woman to bring with him; he pictured someone big and soft, in a hand-knitted sweater and a woolly hat, a huge smile. He’d show her the common birds, start a list for her. Or perhaps she’d prefer somewhere gentler for a holiday. It had been years since he’d been to Scilly and he still needed on his list some of the American migrants that turned up there in strong westerlies. They could rent a little cottage. She’d cook for him.

John Fowler was in the common room, a laptop on his knee, tapping away. Fowler had made a fuss when the police team from Inverness had insisted on looking at it. ‘This is my livelihood.’ All pompous as if none of the rest of them had to earn a living.

‘And this is a murder investigation,’ the leader had said. ‘If you prefer I can get a warrant and we’ll take it south with us.’ Fowler had handed over the machine quickly enough then. Dougie couldn’t see the point of paying to go away on holiday if you were just going to work.

Fowler looked up when Dougie walked into the room, logged off and shut down the computer.

‘Don’t mind me,’ Dougie said. As usual, Fowler looked very clean. As if he’d just stepped out of the shower and put on clothes fresh from the washing line and the iron. Hugh had looked very dapper recently too. Who was he trying to impress? Dougie didn’t really do ironing and he’d been here so long that all his clothes were dirty anyway. He’d need a trip to the launderette first thing when he got back. He didn’t mind the launderette. A couple of back copies of British Birds or Birding World and he was sweet.

‘No problem.’ Fowler shut the computer, put it away in the case. ‘I probably won’t sell it anyway.’

‘What are you writing then? A book?’

‘No, just an article. A travel piece on the field centre. It seems in poor taste now Angela’s dead.’

‘I don’t see why.’ Dougie thought the place would need all the visitors it could get after two unsolved murders. Because it seemed to him that the police were no closer to finding out what had happened to the women. Or were people such ghouls that they’d want to come just to see where Angela had died? He’d done his bit for the island anyway. There’d be birders who’d be attracted to Fair Isle because he’d seen the trumpeter swan there.

Lunch was pizza. Dougie liked pizza and positioned himself on the seat nearest to the serving hatch so he could be first in the line for seconds. Perez’s fiancee was there. She’d laid the tables and now she was standing beside Sarah Fowler and dishing out. Because his attention was on the food, it took him a while to realize that there was an argument. Ben, the assistant warden, and Hugh, bickering away like kiddies. Something about mud on the bird room floor. Though it seemed to Dougie that wasn’t really what it was about at all. The tension of the situation had finally got to them.

‘Didn’t it occur to you to clear up your own mess?’ Ben, flushed and indignant, half-stood and leaned across the table.

‘Hey! You’re paid to be here. It’s cost me good money,’ Hugh said, with the usual bloody smile that seemed to imply that the words were a joke. The smile that made Dougie feel like slapping him in the face, that was calculated to provoke violence. ‘In fact, I’m paying your wages.’ He looked around the table, in the hope of gathering support and an audience.

‘What were you doing in the bird room anyway?’ Ben demanded. ‘It’s not as if you’re a ringer. It’s not as if you do anything useful.’

‘I was using the computer. There was something I wanted to check out.’ For a moment the smile slipped. ‘If the police can’t find Angela’s murderer, I thought I’d do something. We can’t stay here for ever. I need to be moving on.’ The last words sounded like something from a bad Country and Western song and Dougie couldn’t help grinning.

Then Sandy Wilson, the second cop, the one who had been staying in the centre, stood up. He moved quite slowly, but still somehow he captured their attention.

‘Just sit down, boys.’ He spoke with an easy kind of voice. Like he knew what it was to lose his temper and it had never done him any good, so they’d do well to take notice of him. ‘It’s a tough time for everyone, trapped in here. But it won’t be for long now. It’ll soon be over.’

Dougie wondered if he had any reason for saying that, or if they were just words to calm the young men down. He thought Sandy was playing a dangerous game if he had no evidence to charge the murderer, because he was raising expectations and people would be even more frustrated if nobody was arrested. As it was, he supposed they were all under suspicion. It wouldn’t be easy, Dougie thought then, to find a kind and respectable girlfriend if she believed he might have stabbed two women.

After lunch, people scattered. Dougie had eaten far too much and after the exercise of the morning all he really wanted to do was rest. He liked to sit in the common room with a field guide and a cup of tea; soon he knew he’d be snoozing. But John Fowler was back there with his laptop and the sound of it, the staccato and irregular tap-tap of the keys, really got on Dougie’s nerves. Anyway, if this was going to be his last day maybe he should make the most of it and get out into the field.

He found Ben in the bird room. He was still angry, Dougie could tell. Still kind of smouldering.

‘Want some company on the trap round?’

‘Sure.’ Not exactly welcoming, but that was because of the mood he was in, not because he resented Dougie asking. Ben gave Dougie a pile of bird bags and they went out to the Land Rover. Just driving away from the North Light, they had to pull in to the side of the road to let Perez past. He was in Big James’s car and there was a strange woman in the passenger seat.

‘What was all that about at lunchtime?’ Dougie asked.

‘Nothing. Hugh’s really starting to piss me off. That’s all.’

Fine, Dougie thought. Bugger you then if you don’t want to talk. He’d always thought the tabloid papers were right when they said prisoners had it easy. A warm cell with a telly and someone to bring you food. What punishment was there in that? Now he thought the hard bit would be keeping sane, surrounded by all those strangers. No privacy. No wonder living in the centre had driven Angela crazy. Dougie had only been stuck here for a few weeks and he was already going mad.

They parked by the double dyke and did the rest of the trap round on foot.

In the gully trap, Dougie walked through the vegetation, pishing and knocking against the stunted sycamores, to push any birds resting there towards the catching box. There was always a chance of something unusual, but today they only caught two meadow pipits that had already been ringed two days earlier. Ben held them for Dougie to see, then let them go.

‘Would it have hurt some eternal plan if one had been an olive-backed?’ Dougie said. ‘I mean, I know we’ve all seen olive-backed before, but it would have been something, wouldn’t it? Something to cheer everyone up.’

They scrambled back on to the road and moved on to the plantation trap. When Dougie had first come to Fair Isle the plantation had been a joke, the name ironic. A few straggly pines planted in a fold in the land, with the trap built over them. Now the trees had grown up, some of them through the wire mesh. Inside it smelled and felt like a real wood. There were pine needles on the floor. Dougie walked through it rustling the lower branches, felt the same expectation, hope and excitement as he always did. The plantation was where he’d seen the brown flycatcher. There was a small bird somewhere ahead of him. He heard it fluttering, just caught a glimpse of movement. Then he tripped on a root that had grown out of the thin soil, fell hard and couldn’t stop his cheek from hitting the ground. There’d be a cracking bruise later. He swore under his breath. On the other side of the wood, Ben yelled to ask if he was OK.

Dougie pushed himself to his feet. There’d been a sharp sting on his palm and when he looked, he saw that there was blood on his hand, trickling through his fingers. For a moment he felt a bit faint, then he looked down to find what had caused it. A knife, half hidden by the pine needles. The search team had been on the island for two days, looking for the knife that had killed Jane Latimer. But they’d been on the hill, taking the direct route from the Pund to the field centre, and after that they’d looked along the road. They couldn’t have searched the whole island even in two years. It had taken Dougie to stumble on it by chance.

Chapter Thirty-five

‘Just an ordinary kitchen knife,’ Perez said.