Chapter Nineteen
While the field centre staff and guests were having lunch, Perez walked down to the haven to talk to his father. There was the habitual anxiety before the encounter. He’d grown up with the sense that he’d never match the older man’s expectations. Big James wanted a son who was an islander, who understood the traditions and sensibilities of the place. Most of all he’d wanted a boy who wouldn’t question his own authority.
The crew were lowering the boat from the slipway into the water. Perez would have been glad to help but the operation was over before he arrived at the jetty. Old school friends grinned up at him.
‘You arrived just in time then, Jimmy. Are you volunteering to come out with us tomorrow?’
They knew he suffered from seasickness if the water was very lumpy. More teasing. Had he always been the butt of their jokes? It wouldn’t have been because he was a Perez – here in Fair Isle that was a mark of honour – but because he was different, more thoughtful. They’d all been surprised when he said he wanted to join the police. It was the last thing they would have expected of him. He’d joined up for all the wrong reasons: not for car chases and action, or even a regular salary. He’d had a romantic notion of making things right.
‘The body of the murdered woman went out on the chopper,’ Perez said, smiling at them, because really there was no malice in the teasing. ‘No point me coming out with the boat. And you won’t have to deal with her.’
‘That wouldn’t have caused us any bother. It’s the living that make the fuss.’
Mary had made Perez sandwiches, enough to feed an army. He stepped onto the deck of the
Shepherd
and handed them round. His father was in the wheelhouse and though he waved to Perez he didn’t come out to join them; even on the boat he kept himself apart. He was the skipper and they all knew it.
‘What did you make of Angela Moore?’ Perez leaned against the rail. The sun had come out again and he could feel the faint warmth on his face.
The young men looked at each other and then at James in the wheelhouse to make sure he couldn’t hear. The skipper disliked lewd jokes and bad language.
‘She knew how to have a laugh,’ one said. Careful. After all, Jimmy Perez was police, also his father’s son.
‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Tammy Jamieson was the youngest crew member, a clown, easygoing, generous. Not given to discretion. ‘She’d shag anything that moved. If he was fit enough.’
Then they were all jumping in with stories of Angela’s wildness, the flirting and the drinking. They’d been talking about her among themselves since they first heard of the murder. There was the day the cruise ship put in and she disappeared below deck with the head purser. The politician who’d flown in for an hour to speak to a meeting of the island council, and was still in the North Light two days later, and most of the time spent in her bed. ‘At least her husband was away that time.’
‘Has she ever had an affair with an island man?’ Perez asked.
Now they were careful again. They shuffled and giggled but they wouldn’t speak.
He pressed them: ‘There must have been rumours.’
‘Oh, you know this place. There are always rumours.’ And he could get no more out of them than that. It was already two o’clock and he had an appointment in the community hall with assistant warden Ben Catchpole. He might get Tammy on his own later. He might talk with a few beers inside him.
On the way south Perez thought about Angela. He hadn’t realized the reputation she’d gained on the island. His father would call her a scarlet woman. Perez had known her as a celebrity, someone the place was proud to acknowledge as a resident. This was another woman he couldn’t get a fix on. Sarah Fowler and Angela Moore: two unfathomable women. He was losing his grip. He thought maybe he should speak to Angela’s family. They had no record of her mother’s whereabouts, but there was a father, who’d brought her up. He lived on his own in Wales. The local police had informed him of Angela’s death but Perez had no information about how he’d taken it. He wished he could have been there when the constable had knocked at the father’s door, but what would he have asked?
Was your daughter always a sexual predator?
He made a mental note to track down the Welsh officer who’d notified Angela’s father of her murder.
Ben Catchpole was waiting for Perez outside the hall. Perez saw the tall figure as he walked from the road. It was playtime in the school and the children were playing in the yard; a couple of the girls were swinging a long rope for the others to jump over. Perez waved to the individuals that he recognized. They giggled and waved back.
Inside the hall, he set the tape recorder on the table and asked if Ben had any objections. The man shook his head. Then Perez realized he was terrified, so scared that he was almost frozen and could hardly speak.
‘How long have you been working at the North Light?’ Factual, unthreatening.
‘This is my third season.’
‘Isn’t that unusual?’ In Perez’s experience most of the assistant wardens just stayed for one year. He looked at Ben’s statement. Although he looked so young he was nearly thirty. ‘I mean, it’s only seasonal employment. Aren’t you looking for something more permanent?
‘You think I should be settling down, Inspector?’
Perez didn’t answer and after a pause Ben continued: ‘I grew up in a weird kind of family. I mean it didn’t seem weird when I was growing up, but it was different from other kids’. My mum was one of the Greenham women and she couldn’t settle to domesticity when she left the Common. There was always a battle to fight, strangers coming to stay, discussions into the night about politics and justice and the environment. I suppose for me communal living seems kind of normal.’
‘I’ve checked your criminal record. You were found guilty of criminal damage. Lucky not to get a custodial sentence, according to the notes. That was here on Shetland?’
Ben must have been expecting the question, but still he hesitated before answering. ‘It was the anniversary of the
Braer
disaster. You know, the tanker that went aground at Quendale, leaving a slick of oil miles wide?’
Perez nodded. The disaster had made national news for weeks. Shetlanders had made a fortune out of the visiting media.
‘Nothing had changed! I mean, still people don’t take environmental issues seriously. I broke into the terminal at Sullom Voe.’
‘And did thousands of pounds’ worth of damage to oil company property.’ Perez had been working in the south at the time, but the Shetland police had still been talking about it when he joined the service there.
‘How much damage did they do to Shetland wildlife?’ Ben sat back in his chair, not really expecting an answer. ‘My mother came to court. She’d never been so proud of me.’ Perez couldn’t tell what he made of that. Would he have preferred a more conventional mother?
Perez slid Ben’s written statement across the table.
‘Is there anything you’d like to add to this?’ Perez asked.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you were close to Angela. She was more than just your boss, wasn’t she? Yet you don’t mention that in the statement.’ For a moment Ben just stared at Perez and it seemed he would maintain the poise, the pretence at confidence. Then he seemed to lose control of the muscles in his face. It crumpled. He screwed up his mouth and frowned like a child trying not to cry. Perez went on. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ Ben said. ‘Finding her in the bird room. At first I thought she’d fallen asleep there. She worked so hard that sometimes that happened. I’d go into the bird room before starting the morning trap round and find her still in front of the computer. I haven’t been able to sleep since she died.’
‘That isn’t quite what I asked you.’ But Perez saw now that Ben would talk to him. The strain had come through pretending he didn’t care too much what had happened to the woman. ‘Tell me about your relationship with Angela.’
‘I worshipped her.’
And suddenly Perez saw himself as a schoolboy, intense and passionate, following his German student around the island, declaring his devotion. ‘What did Angela make of that?’
‘I expect she thought I was pathetic, ridiculous, but I didn’t care.’
‘Did she say you were pathetic?’
‘No, she called me sweet.’ Ben spat out the word.
‘You had sex with her?’
Ben flushed suddenly and dramatically. ‘Yes!’ Then, forcing himself to be honest: ‘Though not so often recently.’
‘She had sex with other men in the field centre too. And not just in the centre. Visitors, islanders even.’
The assistant warden didn’t answer.
‘How did that make you feel?’
‘I didn’t have the right to feel anything,’ Ben said. He seemed to have composed himself. Perez thought he had been through the same argument in his head many times. ‘I didn’t own her, I couldn’t dictate how she behaved with other men.’
‘That’s very rational,’ Perez said.
‘I’m a scientist. I am rational.’
Perez wanted to laugh out loud. There was nothing rational in this infatuation.
‘When did it start?’
There was a beat of hesitation. ‘My first season. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never met anyone like her.’
‘You hadn’t met her before you started work at the field centre?’
Ben stared directly at him. ‘No. Where would I have met her?’
‘Is she the reason you keep coming back?’
‘No!’
‘Where did you get together? It must have been hard in the lighthouse, with other staff and visitors about.’
‘In the Pund. That was our place.’
Perez nodded. The Pund was a ruined croft house. Once it had been set up as a bothy for campers, with a loft bed. Aristocratic naturalists had stayed there before the war but it had fallen into disrepair and was no longer used. It would be a romantic place for an illicit meeting and he could see how the young man would love the excitement of hiding away there, the sun slanting through the gaps in the roof, the charge of expectation when he heard Angela approaching.
‘You do know she was sleeping with Hugh too?’ he said.
‘He dropped hints.’ Ben kept his voice unemotional. ‘There have been other visitors and Hugh was her type.’
‘You didn’t discuss it with him?’
‘Of course not! None of my business.’
Perez had a picture of life in the North Light in the week running up to Angela’s death. The wind and rain making people feel trapped inside the building. Angela manipulating events for her own amusement, playing the young men off against each other, fuelling Poppy’s resentment, suggesting that Jane wouldn’t be welcome to return to the isle the following year. And Maurice? How would he have reacted to the mounting tension, to Angela’s games? Would he have welcomed them as one way of relieving her boredom, of ensuring that she would stay married to him? Perez thought the situation must have been intolerable.
‘Do you know which of the islanders was her lover?’
‘No!’ Ben was shocked. ‘It wasn’t something we discussed. She would have hated me prying.’ He paused. ‘If I’d asked about anything like that, she would never have seen me again.’
‘Was Angela undertaking a particular study at the moment?’
‘She was writing up the summer seabird census. I don’t think there was anything else.’ Ben frowned. How was this relevant? He seemed almost to resent the conversation moving away from his affair with Angela. He longed for the opportunity to talk about her.
‘Anything involving the collection of feathers?’ Perez asked.
‘You’re thinking about the feathers in her hair?’
‘I wondered if they’d have been in the bird room already.’
Otherwise the murderer must have brought them with him
, Perez thought.
And why would anyone do that? What sort of point was being made?
‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember seeing them. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Angela was quite private about her own research. She was paranoid about people stealing her ideas, getting into publication before her.’
‘What could she hope to prove through a study of feathers?’
Ben shrugged. His interest was only marginally engaged. He was still more concerned about his own feelings. Perez thought how self-absorbed some people were. How they liked to create dramas with themselves playing the leading role.
‘An analysis would prove identification,’ Ben said. ‘Through DNA. You can also get an idea where a bird might have come from. That’s to do with trace elements found in the environment.’
There was a moment of silence. Perez found his concentration slipping. He looked around him. The hall was the place for wedding parties. He imagined bringing Fran back here as his wife for the traditional ‘hame-farin’. She’d be wearing the dress she’d worn for the marriage ceremony – that was the custom. The place would be decorated with flowers and balloons, a big banner across the stage: ‘
Jimmy and Fran
’. There’d be music and dancing.
I wanted to marry her from the minute I saw her.
That idea was new to him and the sudden realization took his breath away. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to say the words to Fran. She’d laugh at him.
Shallow and sentimental,
he thought.
That’s me.
