Wherever she’d been, Fran would have died. They said that over and over again to Perez as if he were supposed to find some comfort in it. She could have been stabbed next door to the most well-equipped hospital in the world and still they wouldn’t have saved her. The attack was too violent. And besides, the helicopter did arrive very quickly. Perez remembered very little of that. Flying out with Fran’s body, knowing that this wasn’t Fran, not essentially. Looking down as Fair Isle disappeared beneath them – a scattering of lights marking each of the familiar crofts – wondering suddenly if he’d ever be able to return again. If he’d ever be able to face it.

His father was in the helicopter with him. His mother had wanted to be there, but Perez couldn’t bear the thought of her fussing. And now, at this moment, for perhaps the first time in his life, he’d thought he had the right to disregard other people’s feelings. His father had offered tentatively: ‘I could come out with you, lad.’ Suddenly that was just what Perez needed: the taciturn man with the granite face, flawed but still certain. Unsentimental.

Then there was lots of waiting about in an office in the Gilbert Bain hospital. Gallons of tea. Distant noises – the clang of a tea trolley hitting a metal bedstead, cheerful voices. The doctor, who looked to Perez no more than a teenager, repeating over and over again that there had been nothing they could do. He’d been with the team that had come into Fair Isle in the helicopter and in the morning when it was getting light and James was telling Perez they should go back to the house in Lerwick, because Jimmy needed to eat and to rest, the doctor clung onto them. As if he was the bereaved person. And Perez didn’t want to go. Because somehow this young man, with his acne and his bad breath, was the last link he had to Fran.

In the hospital they’d offered Perez pills to help him sleep, but he’d refused them. He didn’t deserve to sleep again. He sat in the narrow kitchen in his house by the water in Lerwick watching his father frying bacon and eggs. The older man’s face was grey. He was exhausted but his movements were deft. He warmed the plates, flipped the oil over the egg to make sure it was cooked. As soon as the meal was over he washed the dishes. ‘Why don’t you get some rest?’

While his father was lying on Perez’s bed, the detective replayed the moments of Fran’s death in his head, over and over again, like a film on a loop. Maybe thinking that eventually there would be a different ending to the story. Knowing that was crazy but wanting to believe it.