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.