‘So?’ Another flash of anger and defiance.

‘I wondered if you were there yesterday. Someone was out on the hill and you might have seen something.’

‘I was on the hill in the morning. Jane was still in the lighthouse then.’ Ben stood up and walked out, almost flouncing, tossing his red hair like a young girl. Poppy had gone but it seemed Ben had taken her place as token petulant teenager.

‘We’re all rather short-tempered, I’m afraid,’ John Fowler said. ‘It’s the stress. You mustn’t take it personally.’

On the table beside him lay a notebook, the top page covered in squiggles of shorthand. Again Perez suspected his motives. Would all this become an article in a grand Sunday newspaper? It would make a good story, he could see that. The group of witnesses gathered together in the same building on a windswept isle, wondering which of their number was a murderer.

The journalist muttered something about helping his wife and wandered into the kitchen. Hugh said he’d go to Golden Water; it would be a good chance to catch up with his friends and he might as well make the most of his moment of glory. Perez and Maurice were left alone.

‘She was gay, you know,’ Maurice said suddenly. Then, when Perez didn’t respond immediately: ‘Jane Latimer. She was gay. Probably not relevant and it didn’t make any difference to me, but I thought I should tell you.’

‘Was it something she discussed?’

‘She didn’t make a big deal of it, but it wasn’t a secret. She talked occasionally about her partner – her former partner. She works in the media: television, film. Something like that.’

‘Did she form any relationships while she was here?’

‘Not to my knowledge, but then I might not have known. She would have been discreet. It seems unlikely though. We don’t get many single women staying at the North Light.’

Perez thought Sandy would be excited by this revelation. He would find it significant. But Perez didn’t believe that Jane was the primary victim in this case. She was killed for what she knew or what she had guessed, not for who she was.

Outside, there was the sound of an engine and through the long window he saw the helicopter arriving to take the dead woman back to the mainland. There would be no dramatic send-off for her, but he thought she would have preferred it that way.

Chapter Twenty-seven