Ann Cleeves - Blue Lightning

‘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.’

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.’

‘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.