Blue Lightning

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘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. Don’t ask, she told herself. It’s not your business. But Perez was talking anyway.

  ‘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. Of course, a child, he’d said. He wanted nothing more than that. But let’s wait until after the wedding. The wedding night if you like. And she’d agreed, because she understood his need for rules and order, and besides, how romantic would that be, to conceive on their wedding night! But the longing had become a quiet and aching frustration, always with her.

  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 them for details.

  ‘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 wondered briefly what the woman would make of the ride, hoped the weather stayed fine. ‘I can book you on to that.’

  Another silence. ‘Thank you, Inspector. That would be very kind.’

  Then, although it was Sunday he called Vicki Hewitt, using the private number she’d given him in her message on his mobile.

  ‘What have you got for me, Vicki?’

  ‘It’s about those feathers, the ones on the first body. Not the stuff emptied from the pillow over Jane Latimer.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I’ve got them to an expert. Some he’s pretty sure he can identify. There are kittiwake feathers, herring gull, a couple from waders – he’s fairly certain they’re curlew but he’d like to do a DNA test to be completely sure. Another from a swan.�
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  ‘All those you’d find on the island,’ Perez said. But he didn’t think there’d been whooper swans yet that autumn. The only swan he’d heard about was the rare one that had caused all that fuss. And Angela had been dead when that was discovered.

  ‘Can you get your chap to get a DNA test on the swan too?’ he said. ‘Pin down the exact species.’

  ‘It’ll come out of your budget.’

  He thought he really didn’t care.

  Back in the small bedroom in the roof he went through the letters that had been addressed to Angela. He’d looked at them quickly the evening before, after Maurice had handed them over. Most of the mail was junk, circulars and advertising. There was a letter from her publisher, but it seemed designed to give away as little information as possible: ‘I agree we should meet to discuss the matter. Perhaps you could let me know when you’re planning to come south.’ Perez made a mental note to talk to the editor the following day. Then there was a thick white envelope containing a set of train tickets. First class advance National Express from Aberdeen to London dated the beginning of November. Had Angela already made an appointment to meet the publisher? The letter was so delayed that it was possible. Or maybe there was another reason altogether. Perhaps Maurice would know.

  Later, he drove back to the North Light. There’d been a proper Sunday high tea. Cold meat and salad followed by one of his mother’s fruit cakes; although the lettuce had come in on the recent boat it was still limp and unappetizing. Fran seemed content enough to stay in Springfield, though she’d given him a wistful look when he said he had to go back to work. She’d brought out her sketchbook and made notes in charcoal, now she was roughing out a drawing, oblivious to Songs of Praise in the background.

  He went straight to Maurice’s flat, using the staff door through the kitchen. He didn’t want to get caught up in a conversation with the guests until he’d talked to Angela’s husband. In the flat the television was on too. This time football. Maurice got up and switched it off when Perez came in. His response to the knock had been a shout to come in.

  There was the inevitable bottle of whisky and a glass on the table. ‘You will join me, Jimmy?’ Maurice nodded towards it. Then: ‘Don’t look at me like that, man. I’m not a drunk, but I find it helps dull the edges a bit. Now Poppy’s gone, what does it matter?’

  ‘Maybe a small dram,’ Perez said and Maurice went off to find another glass.

  ‘What about Angela?’ Perez asked. ‘Did she like to take a drink?’

  ‘Red wine. That was her tipple. And lots of it if the mood took her.’

  ‘But not recently,’ Perez said. ‘At our engagement party, for example. She didn’t have a lot to drink then.’

  ‘What are you saying, Jimmy? Where is all this leading?’ Maurice wasn’t drunk, but as he’d said the hard edges were blurred, his thoughts a little slow and fuzzy.

  ‘I spoke to the pathologist today,’ Perez said. He paused to make sure he had the man’s attention. ‘Angela was pregnant.’ Maurice blinked at him. ‘You didn’t know?’

  Slowly Maurice shook his head.

  ‘She’d arranged to go south,’ Perez persisted. ‘I was wondering maybe for an abortion. But if she’d stopped drinking, was looking after herself, that doesn’t quite make sense.’

  Maurice looked up. ‘The baby wasn’t mine. I had a vasectomy years ago. Maybe you should talk to the father.’ The first hint of bitterness since Angela had died.

  ‘Who would that be?’ Perez asked. ‘Who should I talk to?’

  ‘Maybe you should look close to home, Jimmy. Big James followed my wife around like a love-sick puppy.’ Then he shrugged, a sort of apology for loading his pain on to the other man. ‘No, it couldn’t be him. If anything happened there it was nearly a year ago.’

  ‘A more recent admirer then.’

  ‘Oh, they all admired her,’ Maurice said. ‘And who could blame them? The more difficult question is which of them might she have fallen for. Enough to carry his child. I didn’t think she cared for any of them that much.’

  ‘It could have been a mistake, an accident.’

  ‘Angela didn’t make those sort of mistakes, Jimmy. I found the morning-after pill in her bag once.’

  ‘Not a maternal bone in her body,’ Perez said. ‘That’s how you described her to me.’

  ‘So I did. But perhaps biology overtook her in the end. Perhaps she’d decided she wanted a child even if she couldn’t have one with me. Angela was used to getting what she wanted.’

  Perez looked at the man. He didn’t seem as astonished by the news of Angela’s pregnancy as Perez had expected. Had there been signs? Sickness? After all, he’d had three children of his own. Had he guessed she was carrying a child, but not asked, not really wanting his suspicions to be confirmed? Or was the information just too much for him to take in?

  ‘I wonder if Jane guessed that Angela was having a baby,’ Perez said. Jane had been observant. Nothing much happened in the field centre without her knowing about it. If Jane had worked this out, could it be a reason for her death? ‘Did Jane drop any hint about it to you? Maybe after Angela died?’

  ‘No!’ It came out as a shout. Maurice held up his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy, but I didn’t know Angela was pregnant.’

  He hadn’t drawn the curtains and Perez looked out into the darkness. There were the lights of a ship, a big tanker from the shape of it, moving steadily south. Maurice had turned his body away, as if to make clear that the discussion was over. It was time for Perez to leave.

  ‘We’ve traced Angela’s mother.’

  No reaction.

  ‘She’s coming into Fair Isle tomorrow. I’ve booked her on to the afternoon plane.’ He paused, but still Maurice gave no sign that he’d even heard. ‘I think she’d like to meet you, but that’s your decision.’

  At last Maurice turned his head. ‘Of course I’ll meet her. You’ll make the arrangements, will you, Jimmy? You’ll bring her here.’

  ‘Why had Angela booked train tickets to go from Aberdeen to London at the beginning of November? It seems she had a meeting with her publisher, but do you know what that was about?’

  ‘No! It seems to me now that I didn’t know anything about her. She was my wife, but she could have been a stranger.’

  He looked up at Perez, now obviously expecting him to leave, but still Perez sat where he was.

  ‘Is the lighthouse tower always kept unlocked?’

  ‘Of course not, Jimmy. It’d be a health and safety nightmare. We have kiddies staying here in the summer. You couldn’t have them running up and down the stairs, tampering with the light.’

  ‘But I found it unlocked this afternoon.’

  Maurice shrugged. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘It could be. Did you have a key here?’

  There was a pause. Maurice looked up from his whisky. ‘It was kept with the big bunch on the hook in the larder.’

  ‘The same one as the key to the bird room?’

  ‘Yes, but we never used most of them.’

  ‘But anyone staying in the centre would know where they were kept?’

  ‘Only if they’d asked Jane. She was the keeper of the keys.’ Then Perez thought at last he’d found a motive for the cook’s murder. She’d known the killer had been in the tower. Had he hidden something else there?

  They sat for a moment in silence. ‘Were you never tempted to go up there?’ Perez asked at last. ‘To see where Angela was going, to see who she was with? You’d get a view from there of everything that was going on.’

  Maurice set down the glass so violently that some of the liquid spilt on to the polished table. ‘You don’t get it, do you, Jimmy? I didn’t want to know where she was going or who she was meeting. As long as she came home to me every evening I didn’t care.’

  Sandy was in the common room, drinking beer, talking to the three single men. Perez hoped Sandy realized he was in the North Light to work; this wasn’t a few days’ unofficial leave from
the routine of the office. Immediately he decided that the thought was unfair; these days the Whalsay man took his job seriously. No one would be better than Sandy at getting these men to discuss Angela Moore and her relationships.

  Perez helped himself to a coke at the bar and slipped some money into the honesty box. He took a seat just outside the circle of chairs. There was a pyramid of empty beer cans built on the coffee table in the middle. Hugh Shaw was at the end of a story – something about a birdwatcher in a brothel in Tashkent. He nodded to acknowledge Perez’s presence and continued to the tagline. Sandy almost choked, he was laughing so much. The others were more restrained; Perez guessed they’d heard it before.

  Sandy saw Perez look at the empty cans. ‘These aren’t all ours,’ he said. ‘The boys from the search team were here earlier. They’ve only just gone to bed.’

  ‘Could I have a few words, Sandy?’ No point his sitting there drinking with them. They’d never accept him as one of the boys.

  They returned to the bird room, the closest thing they had to an office here, the memory of a woman’s body still lying over the desk between them.

  ‘Did the team find anything in the tower?’

  ‘You were right. That was a pillowcase and the lining of the pillow itself. There are small fragments of feather still left inside. Nothing else. No fingerprints. The handrail going up the steps and round the lens had been wiped clean.’

  ‘The screwed-up pillowcase would have gone in a pocket. The killer must have gone straight up to the tower after murdering Jane.’ Perez pictured the killer, looking down the island. Had he seen Perez walking towards the Pund? Had he been already aware that the body had been found before Rhona Laing and the rest of the team arrived in on the plane?

  Perez nodded vaguely in the direction of the common room. ‘Do any of them admit to having been up the tower?’

  ‘No, they all claim to have assumed it would be locked.’