‘This is Rhona Laing,’ he said. ‘The Procurator Fiscal. She’s supervising the police investigation here. The Scottish legal system is different from the English and she’ll be involved through to the prosecution.’

‘Have you seen Jane?’ Maurice spoke for them all. At the moment Jane’s whereabouts seemed to concern him more than the appearance of a lawyer from Lerwick. Who would make the coffee? ‘She seems to have disappeared. We thought she might be at Springfield with you.’

Dougie saw a look pass between Perez and the Fiscal.

‘Jane Latimer is dead,’ the woman said briskly. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

They all stared at her.

‘What happened?’ Hugh’s smile had disappeared. Dougie thought his face looked quite different without it.

‘We’re here to ask questions, not to answer them,’ Rhona Laing said. ‘Her death is suspicious. That’s all you need to know for the present.’

Dougie thought her approach was very different from Perez’s. But probably easier to deal with, he thought. More straightforward. He found Perez’s silences, his quiet understanding, terrifying. This woman would bluster and bully but she wouldn’t have the detective’s ability to read minds.

‘When did you last see her?’ Rhona demanded. She stood at the head of the table and looked at them all. She didn’t have to ask them to introduce themselves. Perez must have described them to her. It seemed to Dougie that she was enjoying herself. Perhaps she spent most of the time in an office, and the flight through the dark to the island, this confrontation with possible suspects, was a great adventure to her.

‘She was here for lunch,’ John Fowler said. ‘She served it and cleared it up. I haven’t seen her since then.’

‘Did anyone see her after lunch?’

Nobody answered. ‘This is a small island,’ Rhona said. ‘There are few places to hide. It seems she walked away from the field centre at some point in the afternoon. It didn’t look as if she drove. Surely somebody saw her. Who was outside?’ She sounded like a teacher trying to elicit a response from a particularly unresponsive class.

Still there was no reply. Dougie’s phone began to ring. The call was from one of the Bristol birders, a member of the rarities committee.

‘Switch that off!’ Rhona snapped at him without looking round. She pulled up a chair and sat at the table. It was Perez’s turn.

‘We have to decide how to proceed from here,’ Perez said. ‘The boat will go tomorrow. We’ve agreed that Poppy should be on it. Her mother will be meeting her in Grutness to take her home and we’ll know where she is if we need to talk to her again. Was anyone else planning to leave?’