Ann Cleeves - Blue Lightning

‘Shall I bring you tea?’ Usually she adored tea in bed. It was his way of pleasing her.

‘No. I’ll get up,’ she said. ‘Our last day before I go back.’

They had the kitchen to themselves. They giggled and whispered, supposing Mary and James to be still in bed. Again she thought there was something exciting, illicit in their being alone together in his parents’ house. She fancied herself like a heroine in a nineteenth-century novel maintaining the proprieties. But not like Sarah Fowler, she thought. Fran would always have more spirit than her. Perez was standing behind her chair, watching the toast on the Rayburn. She reached up, put her arms around him and kissed him. By the time they’d finished breakfast the sky was getting lighter.

‘What are your plans for today?’ She’d always promised herself that she wouldn’t interfere with his work. She had her own life; she didn’t need to meddle in his to stop herself being bored. But here on the Isle things were different. Boredom had crept up on her over the last two days. Another hour alone with his parents and she’d go stark staring mad.

‘Angela’s mother arrives on the midday plane,’ he said.

‘And this morning?’

He gave her a sudden, wide grin, so she realized he knew how she was feeling.

‘I’m going back to the North Light. Come with me. I promised Sarah I’d find her someone to help in the kitchen.’

‘So it’s a skivvy you’re after?’

‘I thought you might talk to her,’ he said, serious now. ‘Find out if her husband knows more about Angela than he’s letting on. He admits to having met her. I sensed something. A tension.’

‘You think he’d had an affair with her? His wife’s not going to know about that, surely. She would never have agreed to come here with him if she thought there was something going on. And even if she had suspected they were lovers, she’s not going to talk to me. It’s not something she’d want to chat about to a stranger while we’re washing the dishes.’

‘You don’t want to come with me, then?’

‘Hey, Jimmy Perez. Just try and stop me.’

The wind had increased again, buffeting the car from the north. Fran tried not to think of her trip back to Shetland mainland in the boat the next day. As they approached the lighthouse there was a sudden shower of hail, ferocious, so the balls of ice bounced off the windscreen and the noise in the car meant they had to stop speaking. The yard was white as if it had snowed. Fran remembered her first meeting with Perez. The ground had been white then too.

The residents were still sitting in the dining room over scraps of toast and cold coffee. They were all at one table and the rest of the room looked empty and bare. Maurice was with them. He wore the same clothes he’d had on when Fran had last seen him. There was a small grey splash of what might have been porridge on his jersey. She had a sudden urge to shake him. Pull yourself together, man, and have some pride. Bad enough that you let your wife make a fool of you.

Perez, she knew, would only feel sympathy. She thought again he was more like a social worker or a priest.

Maurice looked up with sad, red eyes. ‘If you’re looking for your colleagues from Inverness, they went out early. They wanted to look at the ground near the Pund one last time. They said Ms Blake took footwear impressions from the track, but the heather’s long and they still haven’t found the knife. Sandy’s in the bird room.’ Then he rested his head in his hands as if the words had exhausted him.

Sarah got to her feet and began to clear the tables. Fran found a tray and began to help. ‘I’m your assistant for the day.’

‘Really, there’s no need.’ Sarah gave a quick, sharp smile. A touch of panic? What would she be frightened about? Sharing the place with a murderer. Of course that would be reason enough.

‘Trust me, there is. Another day at Springfield with Jimmy’s folks and I’d go quietly crazy.’

So Fran found herself in the field centre kitchen, peeling carrots to make soup, while Sarah was kneading dough for pizza.

‘Doesn’t it feel weird doing all this?’ Fran asked, the first thought that came into her head. ‘I mean, doesn’t it feel like stepping into a dead woman’s shoes? It always seemed to me that the kitchen was entirely Jane’s domain.’

Sarah stopped for just a moment and then returned to work, pressing the heel of her hand into the dough. Her sleeves were rolled up to the elbows.

‘I’d never thought of it like that,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t have that sort of imagination. Maybe I need to work because it stops me worrying about what’s happened here. I mean, if you really thought about it, how could you carry on?’

‘Sharing supper with a murderer, you mean?’ Fran looked up but she didn’t stop slicing carrots. Nosy neighbour, that was the tone she was aiming for. And really, she’d once worked for a women’s magazine: she could do gossip as well as any Shetlander.

Sarah shook her head. ‘I really can’t believe anyone here killed two women. They seem so pleasant, so…’ she paused, ‘civilized, ordinary.’

‘So you don’t sit here in the evenings with a glass of wine, all looking at each other, wondering which of you is going to be the next to die?’

‘No!’ Sarah looked horrified and Fran wondered if she’d gone a bit too far. She could occasionally be flippant and felt liberated – and a little wicked – after a week of watching her words carefully. The chopping board was full and she pushed the sliced vegetables into a pan, before continuing with the neeps.

Sarah rolled the dough into a ball and lifted it into a bowl. She took a clean tea towel from a drawer and covered the dough. ‘Now I’ve just got to wait for it to rise.’ Fran thought she seemed very happy in this domestic role. Did she prefer it to her work with disturbed families? Had she made so little fuss about returning to the mainland because she was happy to escape her career for a while?

‘Obviously, you can’t help wondering,’ Sarah said. ‘I mean, I suppose some of us make more probable murderers than others…’

‘So who’s your preferred candidate?’

Sarah shot a sideways glance that was almost conspiratorial. Fran thought she’d probably missed the company of other women. Since Jane’s death and Poppy’s departure, Sarah had been stuck here surrounded by men, and although some men could gossip, none was as good at it as a woman.

‘Of course, I can’t imagine what the motive might be…’

‘But?’

‘Hugh,’ Sarah said. ‘He has that streak of cruelty. I can imagine any of the others killing Angela…’

‘Even your husband?’ Fran expected an immediate denial, but Sarah took the question seriously.

‘Perhaps even him,’ she said. ‘Angela had this knack of winding people up. For her own amusement. Or perhaps just because she had no social skills at all. She knew what she wanted and just went for it. But although I can imagine John, and any of the others, killing Angela in a fit of rage, I can’t see them stabbing Jane. She was lovely. Completely inoffensive.’

‘Even if she’d discovered who the murderer was and threatened to expose him?’

‘Even then,’ Sarah said. ‘Surely it would be a step too far.’

Fran leaned heavily on the knife to cut a particularly dense piece of turnip. Is this how much strength it would take to stab a person, to push through muscle, fat and bone?

‘But you think Hugh might have done it?’

‘I’m not saying that exactly, but of all of us I think he’s the most likely. He seems to have no morality, no qualms about using people. A bit like Angela herself, I suppose.’

‘But as you say, he has no motive.’