‘What’s happened?’ Jane imagined another body. Her mind was racing.

‘I have to call the lighthouse.’ He saw they were staring at him. ‘There’s a bird in the South Harbour. Trumpeter swan. A first for Britain.’ When they didn’t answer he repeated, yelling at the top of his voice: ‘A first for Britain.’

Chapter Ten

All morning Dougie Barr hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Angela. Images of her swam in and out of his head. Of course he’d seen her on the television before he’d met her. She’d been famous before she married Maurice and was appointed as warden of the field centre, one of the new wave of young people brought in to present wildlife programmes, employed to make natural history more sexy and pull in a fresh audience. Dougie understood what they were doing. He knew about selling. Since then Angela had become a part of his life. A secret obsession.

Everyone remembered Angela because of her hair. Right down her back, sleek and beautiful even when she’d been camping out in the wastes of Alaska for a fortnight, or trekking across a desert. But it had been the hands, long and brown, that had stuck in his mind when he’d first seen them on screen. He’d noticed them at once, holding binoculars to her eyes, and later picking up a young razorbill as she prepared to ring it. When she first greeted him in the field centre he’d stretched out an arm to shake hands and looking down at the grip he’d been thrilled: the long strong fingers were just as he’d imagined. He’d thought that handshake had been one of the most intimate experiences of his life. He was finally touching the woman he admired more than any other.

One evening, plucking up courage after a couple of beers, he’d asked her why she’d applied for the field centre job. She’d been sitting in the common room preparing to call the log of the species seen that day, squatting on a chair, her knees under her chin, drinking lager from a can.

‘You’re famous,’ he’d said. ‘You could travel all over the world for the telly. You could make a fortune. Why come to Fair Isle?’

She’d smiled. ‘It’s an addiction. I love it. Just like you do. I came to Shetland when I was still a student and was seabird assistant here for a season after I got my degree. I swore I’d be warden one day. The first female to run the place.’ She’d set down the can. ‘Television is just other people telling you what to do. I’m in control here. That’s important to me.’

Dougie pictured her dead in the bird room and thought she wasn’t much in control now. There were people who said she’d only married Maurice because she needed a partner to be administrator; it was the only way the trustees would appoint her. Dougie didn’t know anything about that – he’d never had the nerve to ask her. They’d always seemed a strange kind of couple. Now, he thought her ambition to run Fair Isle Field Centre had killed her.