Ann Cleeves - Blue Lightning

This time he replied to the question before Rhona could step in: ‘We have informed Mrs Moore’s father, but we still have to trace her mother. I’d be very grateful if she could contact me through Highland and Islands police.’ He was surprised by a camera’s flashlight and felt foolish.

There were no further questions. Perez thought the media wanted to be away from the island as quickly as possible. This might be a huge story for them but they didn’t want to be stranded on a lump of rock for the night. He thought they were less concerned about there being a murderer on the loose than the fact that there was no pub here. As they waited at the airstrip for the planes to come in, the main topic of conversation was where they could get their first drink.

Rhona Laing went out with them, pushed her way past the reporters to get on to the first plane back to Tingwall. Perhaps she’d rearranged her dinner date at the Busta House Hotel and wanted to get home in time to change.

‘Keep in touch, Jimmy.’ A little regal wave. No last-minute instructions, no insistence that he wrap up the case quickly. She realized he understood the pressure. Another couple of days and the press would be demanding that someone else, someone from the city, should take over.

The second plane took off just as it was getting dark. He watched it disappear across the horizon. Now all the day visitors had gone. Apart from the North Light residents the only strangers on the island were members of the specialist search team. They would stay at least for another day. He decided to get home and speak to his father. The Shepherd would have been long unloaded and Big James would be at home, in front of the television, waiting for the football results. Perez felt a brief moment of pleasure at the thought of disrupting the sacred household ritual of Final Score.

He was walking down the track to pick up his borrowed car, and wondering where Sandy was, when his mobile rang. He was so certain that it would be Sandy, reporting on the results of the search, that he didn’t check the screen and was surprised to hear Maurice.

‘Are you busy, Jimmy? Could you spare a few minutes?’

Maurice was waiting for him in the flat. The place was untidier than Perez had seen it, untidier certainly than when he’d been there with Poppy the night before. Maurice might have cleaned up his act for public appearance but in private things were still falling apart. With Poppy gone, perhaps he no longer felt the need to put on a show. On the table in the living room there was an ashtray full of cigarette ends. Maurice shrugged. ‘I’d given up. Angela hated it. Now…’ He went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. ‘Have a dram with me, Jimmy. I’ll drink alone if I have to but I don’t like it.’

Perez nodded. Had Maurice called him back to the North Light just because he was lonely? He sipped the whisky and waited.

‘The mail came in on the boat today,’ Maurice said. ‘You know what it’s like when the weather’s been bad. You get a heap of the stuff and most of it junk.’

Perez nodded again. ‘And some of it’s for Angela?’

‘Of course I should have realized it would be, but it threw me, seeing her name on the envelopes.’

‘I’d like to take the mail with me, if that’s OK,’ Perez said. He should have thought about it and asked Joanne at the post office to set Angela’s mail to one side. ‘I’ll bring it back. Have you opened it?’

‘Not the letters addressed to her!’ Maurice sounded shocked.

‘But there was something that worried you? That’s why you phoned.’

‘It was the bank statement.’ Maurice stood up and pulled a sheet from the pile of paper on the table. ‘Our joint current account. I don’t understand it.’

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘I don’t usually deal with our personal account. Of course, I manage the field centre budget, but most of our joint income came from Angela – from television and from her books. So really the joint account was always hers and she dealt with it.’ Perez wondered what that might be like – to have a partner who earned so much more than you. It might happen to him when Fran became really famous. He told himself that of course he’d be fine with it, but deep down he wasn’t sure. And it occurred to him for the first time that Angela might have been quite wealthy. The couple had no real expenses. They lived rent-free and the trust paid all their living expenses. Money was a powerful motive for murder.

Maurice was continuing: ‘Angela went off for the day just before the weather closed in. A dentist’s appointment. She had dreadful toothache one night and arranged it urgently. The statement says she took three thousand pounds in cash from our joint account. Why would she have done that? Why would she want so much money? All we use cash for here is for the occasional drink at the centre bar and maybe chocolate from the shop. Everything else is settled on account.’

‘Is the cash here? Has the search team been through the flat yet?’ Perez had asked it to start at the Pund and move on to the North Light.

‘No.’ Now Maurice just seemed confused. He still stood with his back to the window, looking in at Perez.

‘Where would Angela have kept money? Handbag? Wallet?’ There had been no handbag in the bird room when the body was found.

‘She used a small rucksack instead of a handbag,’ Maurice said. ‘Her purse would probably be in that.’ But he made no move to find it.

‘Should we look?’ Perez spoke gently. Again he thought that although Maurice was managing to hold himself together to keep the field centre running, he was struggling to cope when he was alone. ‘Where might the rucksack be?’

‘In this cupboard with the coats.’ Maurice was already on his feet, scrabbling through a pine cupboard that stood in the entrance to the flat. He threw out odd boots and shoes and emerged with the sack. By the time Perez got to him, it was too late to suggest that it should be bagged up and regarded as evidence. Maurice squatted where he was and tipped the contents on to the floor.

The burst of manic energy seemed to have left him drained and he just sat, looking at the pile of objects on the carpet. Perez knelt beside him.

There were scraps of paper, including a couple of till receipts, which Perez would look through later, a small diary, a packet of tissues and a large leather purse. Maurice saw the purse at the same time as Perez did and reached out for it before the detective could stop him. It was fat with a wad of rolled notes. Maurice counted them out.

‘Three hundred and fifty pounds,’ he said. ‘And a bit of loose change. What did she do with the rest of it?’

‘Maybe early Christmas shopping?’ Perez suggested. His mother always went into Lerwick in November to stock up. Most of the islanders bought presents online, but she said she enjoyed her trip out to the shops. As much as anything it was a time to catch up with old friends.

‘Angela? Are you joking? Angela didn’t do Christmas!’

But we will , Perez thought suddenly. This year it’ll be me and Fran and Cassie in the house in Ravenswick . He was ashamed then of thinking about his own happiness in the face of the man’s misery.

Maurice looked up at him, his eyes bright and feverish. ‘I need to find out what was going on here. I know I said I didn’t care, but it’s making me crazy. The speculation. The possibilities. It just goes round and round in my head.’

Perez replaced all the items in the bag. ‘I’ll take this with me too. It’ll help me sort this out for you. It’s probably got nothing to do with Angela’s murder. All kinds of thing come to light during an investigation. As soon as I know anything I’ll be in touch.’ He stood up. Maurice remained on the floor. Perez bent down and carefully helped him to his feet.