‘I’ve brought a pan of soup,’ Jane said. ‘It’ll just need heating up.’

He took the saucepan from her and stood in the doorway.

‘How’s Poppy?’ Jane really wanted to ask what he would do now. She presumed that he would want to leave the island as soon as the weather improved. Then she would have the place to herself. To tidy and scrub and order. The new warden would be glad of a cook who knew the ropes.

‘I’ve sent her back to bed,’ Maurice said. ‘She’s exhausted. The shock, I suppose.’ He looked up at Jane. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without Angela. I can’t imagine life without her.’

It wasn’t the sort of practical answer Jane was looking for, though she would have been happy to talk to Maurice, even about Angela, if that would have helped. But he shut the door without asking her into the flat, more distressed now, it seemed, than when he’d first learned his wife was dead.

Jane couldn’t bear the idea of spending another minute in the field centre. It wasn’t just the image she created in her head of Perez in the bird room, taking his photographs, collecting his samples, moving in his quiet, precise way around the dead woman. She needed to get away from the place for a while. She felt as if she’d been indoors for weeks. The truck was parked just outside the back door so she assumed that Fran was still in the bird room with him. Jane thought she’d walk down the island, talk to Joanne in the shop, and perhaps call in on Mary at Springfield as long as Perez and Fran hadn’t returned. The wind would be behind her and she thought someone would give her a lift back. Jane wouldn’t want to be thought curious or ghoulish, but Mary was the closest thing to a friend that she had in Fair Isle.

Outside, the wind took her breath away, but the rain had stopped and there were flashes of sunshine, sudden spotlights on the green sea and the sodden grass. For the first time she began to wonder who could have killed Angela, to work out how it might have happened. Like everyone else she’d assumed at first that Poppy had been responsible, but perhaps it wasn’t that simple. Away from the tension and the raw emotion inside the building it was possible to regard the murder as an intellectual puzzle. Surely her intellect was as strong as the inspector’s and she knew the people there better than he did. Angela had been right about one thing: Jane was ready for a new challenge. She imagined going to Perez and offering him the solution. She would enjoy his approval.

There were a couple of people in the shop, there not to buy, Jane thought, but to talk. They were delighted to see her, of course, and much less restrained about gossiping than the residents of the North Light.

‘They say there were gallons of blood.’ ‘Has Jimmy arrested the child yet?’ ‘What a terrible thing to happen on the Isle.’