He had known his father had taken the jewellery. Who else would have done it? Not Sandy or Vicki. Why would they? They hadn’t any personal connection with the investigation. And nobody else had had the opportunity. He had realized his father must be involved as soon as Vicki had asked the question, but he hadn’t answered. Did that make him as corrupt as the people he despised? The politicians who found work for their children, the businessmen who paid for planning rules to be overlooked. The Duncan Hunters, who blackmailed and bribed their way to success.

James had got up at the same time as Perez. They’d stood in the kitchen at Springfield drinking tea, eating toast made from his mother’s home-baked bread. But Mary had been there too and besides, tense and confused after a sleepless night, Perez wouldn’t have known what to say to the man. He wouldn’t have been able to control his anger. Because after the first realization of what his father had done, rage had swamped his brain and drowned out reason. How could his father, who blethered from the pulpit in the kirk about righteousness and morality, live with himself? How could he be such a hypocrite? Perez, who’d never really understood the impulse to physical violence, was scared of what he might do. He imagined how it would feel to smash his father’s face with his fist until the blood ran through his fingers. So he’d stayed silent and just nodded when James offered him a lift up the island on the truck with the rest of the Shepherd crew.

They’d dropped him at Setter and he’d walked to the Pund from there. It was just starting to get light. Every blade of grass and head of heather was covered in hoar frost. As he got closer to the house he disturbed a snipe in the grass. He stopped for a moment and watched it zigzag away across the hill. In the old days, he supposed, men would have shot it, though it wouldn’t have provided more than a mouthful of food.

After the first shock, Perez wasn’t even surprised that his father had taken the earrings and bracelet or by the betrayal that the theft implied. It made sense, explained details that had previously seemed irrelevant. Perez remembered the embarrassed shuffling of the boys on the boat when he’d asked if Angela had an island lover. His father’s offering to help by staying with Jane’s body if Perez wanted to meet the plane. Later, James must have taken the opportunity to steal the jewellery when he was setting up the lights in the Pund and their attention was elsewhere. He wouldn’t have realized Perez had searched the ground floor of the building before finding Jane’s body.