‘Can you remember anything else about the conversation?’

‘I think a paper was missing. She accused one of us of having taken it.’

‘Anyone in particular?’ Perez asked. He turned to look at the woman, at the thin, intense face. Why did this matter so much to her?

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘At least it didn’t seem so to me at the time.’

‘Thank you.’ He assumed she would get out now, that the conversation was finished, but she sat where she was. He waited, thinking that waiting was one of his skills. He could do it better than anyone else he knew.

‘You should speak to Ben Catchpole,’ she said at last. ‘Hugh too, perhaps. Angela liked pretty young boys.’

‘You’re saying she slept with them?’ He heard the surprise and disapproval in his own voice. How Fran would mock him if she’d been listening in! She was always telling him he was narrow-minded, prudish. And if they’d been talking about a man, would Perez be equally shocked?

There was no direct answer. ‘She was predatory,’ Jane said. ‘She needed admirers. I don’t know for certain about Ben and Hugh, but it certainly happened last year. She took up with a young visitor and really screwed him up.’ She continued to stare ahead of her into the darkness.

‘What did Maurice make of the arrangement?’

‘I would guess,’ Jane said, ‘that he pretended not to know. Maurice likes an easy life. And more than anything he wanted Angela to be happy.’

‘Thank you,’ he said again, and this time Jane did get out of the car. Through the back windscreen he watched her run towards the lights of the field centre.

In Springfield they were watching television. The thick curtains were drawn against the storm. There was a fire of peat and driftwood and he could smell that as soon as he walked into the house. His mother got up when she heard him come in and made him coffee, brought out a plate with oatcakes and cheese. His father poured him a glass of whisky. Fran was alone on the sofa, her legs curled under her, and he bent and kissed her head. He smelled the shampoo she always used, along with the peat smoke.

‘We weren’t expecting you back so early,’ she said. ‘Is it all over?’

‘No, but I couldn’t go on this evening. I wasn’t getting anywhere. Plenty to do tomorrow though.’

‘We’ve just seen the forecast,’ his father said. ‘The weather should start to change in the morning. There’s a high pressure coming in.’

‘You’ll get the boat out then?’

‘Not just yet. There’ll still be too much of a swell. And I can’t see the plane making it either. The chopper might be OK. And the day after should be fine. Everything should be back to normal by then.’

Except, Perez thought, that there’s a dead woman padlocked in our shed and I still have to find her killer. Not normal at all.