Blue Lightning

Perez was tempted to get up and walk out. You know already. Sandy will have done a report. Although the spelling and the grammar will be crap, he’ll have set out the details. But he stayed. This was his last case. Might as well see it through for one more time.

‘John Fowler was a writer and journalist. Respected. A freelancer, but he did OK at it and made a good living. It seemed unlikely that he didn’t know Angela Moore. They’re all obsessive, these birdwatchers, and the scientists even more so. Look at Ben Catchpole. They come across an area of research and dig away at it.’ Perez found himself feeling his way into the skin of the murderer despite himself. He’d spoken to Fowler’s former colleagues; sitting in the kitchen in Springfield there’d been long telephone conversations about the man’s state of mind. This was Fran’s killer, but Perez had never really believed in monsters. To dismiss Fowler as a monster would be to let him off the hook. It was better to understand him and force him to take responsibility.

‘After Angela published the work on the slender-billed curlew everything went wrong for him,’ Perez went on. ‘He lost his credibility. He tried to persuade a few people that the find was his, but who would believe him? Angela was young and attractive, a publisher’s dream. It would be much harder to promote a middle-aged man, with a reputation for claiming rare birds that had never existed. Everyone had a vested interest in dismissing his claims. He gave up work as a journalist and set up the bookshop. He told everyone he needed to de-stress.’

‘Did he see a psychiatrist?’ The Fiscal looked up sharply from the paper where she was making notes. ‘Is he fit to plead?’

Perez shrugged. It seemed to him that anyone who had killed three women could be considered insane. He blamed himself. I knew. I should have stopped it.

‘He came to Fair Isle with the intention of killing Angela Moore,’ Rhona Laing went on. ‘It was premeditated. Planned. He didn’t lash out in a jealous rage. Not manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. They can’t go for that.’

But jealousy had been at the heart of it, Perez thought. A slow-burning fury that had consumed Fowler, taking over his thoughts and his dreams, destroying him. Destroying the women who had stood in his way. Was that illness? Luckily it wasn’t for Perez to decide.

‘Go on, Jimmy,’ the Fiscal said, making some effort to control her impatience. ‘Let’s hear the rest of the story.’

He looked up and for a moment he wanted to hit out at the smooth, expensively made-up face. This was just work to her. Work and ambition. She’d take his words and use them to make herself seem clever. ‘Why? You know already. What am I? Your performing monkey?’

The outburst shocked her. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy. Is this too soon? Do you want to stop?’

He shook his head fiercely. He couldn’t bear her pity.

‘So, it was all about a bird,’ Perez continued as if the exchange between them had never occurred. ‘Slender- billed curlew. Some scientists thought it was extinct. You wouldn’t think it could generate so much passion. But I watched the birdwatchers come into Fair Isle for an American swan and I saw how mad they could be. Some of them almost in tears when they realized they could have missed it. And for Fowler it wasn’t just a hobby. It was his work. It was about respect, proving himself worthy of his job in journalism.’

‘So he found this curlew before Angela Moore did, but she claimed the credit.’ Rhona looked at her watch. Her sympathy hadn’t lasted for long. Perez thought the Fiscal just wanted the facts; she’d never been much interested in the background. That’s what social workers were invented for, Jimmy.

‘He worked out where he thought the birds might be breeding,’ said Perez. ‘Something to do with the insects they feed on. He looked at the maps, sought out likely search areas. They call it ground-truthing.’ Perez had liked the idea of ground-truthing when he’d heard about it, thought it was a useful concept in policing. It was about testing theories, keeping it real. Now he wondered how it could have excited him; it was an irrelevance.

‘It must have been galling for him to miss out on the credit,’ Laing said, showing some understanding at last. She would understand about professional jealousy. Perez had never met anyone quite so ambitious. ‘The woman became a real celebrity as a result of that book.’

‘Of course.’ Perez imagined Fowler trying to keep his business afloat, but everywhere he was hearing of Angela Moore’s success, while he scratched a living taking orders for books over the Internet, meeting up with the occasional eccentric in his shop. ‘Angela was on the television every five minutes, warden of Fair Isle, the most prestigious field centre in the UK. Of course it ate away at him. That should have been him. He woke up thinking about it and he dreamed about it at night.’

Rhona raised her eyebrows. Perhaps she was thinking that Perez knew something about obsession. He must wake up thinking about Fran dying in the dark on Fair Isle and no doubt he dreamed about it too.

‘Did the wife know what was going on? I still haven’t decided how we should charge her.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ And it was true. Of all the aspects of the case, this was the one that haunted him most. Sometimes he saw Sarah as a figure like Lady Macbeth, the malign influence behind Fowler, feeding him poison, persuading him with her words and her unhappiness that Angela deserved to die. Had she lured Fran out of the lighthouse, so Fowler could kill her? At other times, he saw Sarah as a victim. ‘I don’t think she was unhappy when Angela died. She was desperate for a child. They’d been through the stress of IVF and then lost a baby late in pregnancy. Angela was pregnant. Sarah was jealous too.’ What a couple the Fowlers must have been, Perez thought. Both of them wrapped up in their disappointment and envy. How did they live their lives? By making small efforts at conversation and normality? Bizarrely, he found himself wondering if John and Sarah ever had sex at the end. There was something almost sensual in the way the women’s bodies had been displayed. Another example of John Fowler’s odd repression?

‘Sarah Fowler knew about Angela’s pregnancy?’ Rhona’s question startled Perez, brought him back to the tasteful room, with the high ceiling and the photographs of old sailing ships on the walls, the immediacy of the investigation.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Hugh Shaw claims he heard the Fowlers discussing it. She’d trained as a nurse. And she’d be hypersensitive, wouldn’t she, when she longed so much for a baby for herself?’ He found himself wondering if Rhona Laing had ever wanted a child.

‘Do you know who the father was?’

‘Ben Catchpole,’ Perez said. ‘The timing doesn’t work for anyone else.’

‘I can understand why Fowler killed Moore.’ Rhona reached out and took a piece of shortbread from the white china plate. She seemed disappointed in herself as if she’d given in to a terrible temptation. It seemed to Perez that she had a strange attitude to food. Did she maintain her figure because she was on a perpetual diet or was it all about self-control?

She went on: ‘At least, I can just about understand it as an elaborate act of revenge, conceived by a twisted mind. But he had nothing against Jane Latimer.’

‘That was to do with survival,’ Perez said. ‘It was clear from the beginning that Jane was killed because she’d decided Fowler was the killer. I think she was playing detectives. She liked puzzles.’

‘A dangerous game.’ The Fiscal licked her index finger and scooped up a biscuit crumb from the plate.

‘The keys to the lighthouse tower were kept in the kitchen,’ Perez said. ‘That’s where Fowler went to watch people moving around the island. Jane might have seen him take them or replace them. She searched his room. There was the draft of his original article about the possible search areas for the curlew. He’d brought it with him to confront Angela. She’d been reading it in the bird room and was frantic when Fowler took it back. Of course, she didn’t want anyone else to read it. It meant nothing to us, but Jane had spent a season in the field centre and understood the implication of it.’ He paused. He tried to imagine Jane’s exhilaration when she’d thought she’d put together the pieces. When was she planning to tell him?

‘She wasn’t foolish enough to confront Fowler with her suspicions?’ Rhona looked at her watch again. How much time had she allowed him? When was her next meeting due to begin?

‘No, Fowler went back to the North Light when Jane wasn’t expecting him. I think he saw her searching his things. It was partly my fault. It was the morning Angela’s body went out on the helicopter. I sent Sarah and Fowler away from the hall where I was conducting the interviews and told them to come back later. You can see into all the bedrooms as you come into the centre. The ground’s a bit higher there and there’s a perfect view into the rooms of the first floor. Jane wouldn’t have expected them back so soon.’

‘He killed her?’ Rhona said. ‘Just for that?’

‘By then,’ Perez said, ‘he’d lost all reason and all perspective. Perhaps she gave something of her suspicion away. The bookshop name would have intrigued her too and I’m sure she would have looked it up. Perhaps in his