‘What have you got for me this time, Jimmy? Should I be packing my bags and taking my seasick pills?’

‘Not yet. This one I have to deal with on my own. I have a dead woman with a knife in her back and no way of getting any forensic support.’ He talked Vicki through the situation, imagined her sitting with her elbows on the desk taking notes, grinning at his dilemma, the inevitable can of Diet Coke beside her. ‘So what should I do? I can’t leave her there indefinitely. The chopper should get in tomorrow but there’s no guarantee.’

‘Remember your latest crime scene management training, Jimmy.’ She’d led the refresher course, one of the few he’d felt it worth travelling south for. ‘What do you think you should do first?’

‘Take photographs,’ he said. ‘Lots of photographs.’

‘Even more important if we can’t get the experts in straight away.’ He knew she was teasing but didn’t care.

‘What about the body?’

‘Bag it up carefully and put it somewhere cold. Has anyone on the island got a walk-in chiller or a big fridge?’

‘There’ll be folk with freezers.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘A freezer won’t do. We don’t want ice crystals in the body. If you don’t have a full-size fridge, put her in an outhouse. Somewhere watertight, where you can keep her cool.’

As he pressed the button on his mobile at the end of the conversation, he wondered where he’d find a bag big enough to take the body of a fit young woman.

Rhona Laing’s secretary put him through to her immediately. Rhona demanded efficiency and usually got it.

‘Yes?’ The Fiscal was in her fifties, immaculate, dressed like the Edinburgh lawyer she had once been. He could picture her sitting at her desk. ‘I thought you were on leave, Inspector. Visiting your parents.’ That was the other thing about Rhona. She seemed to have spies everywhere.

‘There’s been a murder.’

‘Where?’ Her voice was measured. He’d never heard her express shock.

‘Here on the Isle.’

‘You’re like the Angel of Death, Inspector. Violence seems to follow you around. First Whalsay, now Fair Isle.’

Perez thought that was unfair. His colleague Sandy Wilson had found the body in Whalsay.

‘The victim’s a young woman,’ he said. ‘The warden of the Fair Isle field centre. I’d met her but I didn’t know her well. As I’m here and there’s no chance of the Inverness team getting in, I think I can run the investigation without a conflict of interest.’

‘Your victim is Angela Moore?’ Her voice was sharp. ‘She’s a television celebrity. They seem to wheel her out to talk about everything from Shetland wind farms to the decline of the tiger. There’ll be press interest.’

‘If they get to hear about it—’

‘Don’t be naive, Inspector! Someone will already have tried to sell the story to the national press. One of the islanders or one of the guests. This has to be sorted out quickly. By the time the weather clears and the reporters can fly in, we need to have made an arrest.’