Hugh Shaw had been waiting outside, smoking a cigarette. He must have seen Sarah Fowler leave the hall, but although he knew it was his turn to be questioned next he still waited to be summoned. Perez saw him through the open door and felt a sudden impatience. Was the young man’s indolence, his leaning against the wall and finishing his cigarette although he knew the detective was waiting for him, an attempt to make a point? Or had the pose become so much of a habit that he couldn’t help himself? Perez couldn’t face sitting here, prising answers from this arrogant youngster who acted as if he owned the place. He grabbed his coat and rucksack and went outside.

‘Come on. Show me this rare swan. We can talk as we go.’

Perez felt better just in the physical activity of walking. After the rain, the colours of the landscape – the grass and the muddy bog water and the lichen on the walls – seemed very sharp and bright. He led Hugh away from the road and towards the airstrip. He didn’t want to meet anyone else from the field centre and he also wanted to prove to the man that this was his place. If Hugh came here every autumn for the rest of his life he wouldn’t understand the island as well as Perez. Hugh wasn’t at all disconcerted by the unusual interview technique. He seemed perfectly at ease as they made their way north over the hill and kept up with Perez stride for stride over the heather.

‘Were you sleeping with Angela Moore?’

Again, perhaps he’d hoped to shock the boy, to jolt him from the self-assured confidence that Perez found such a barrier. It didn’t work.

‘Well, we didn’t do a lot of sleeping.’ Hugh stopped and looked down over the island. They could see each of the croft houses, set out like a child’s drawing. The clarity of the light made the perspective look wrong. Everything was flat and too close. Hugh took out another cigarette, the only sign that he might be nervous. ‘How did you know?’

‘Someone told me Angela liked pretty boys.’

‘She picked me up the first night I was here.’ Hugh had a smile, wide and welcoming, but fixed; there was somehow, even when he was talking, a shadow behind the words. It gave Perez the sense that he would take nothing seriously. ‘I was last up in the common room. I’d been drinking all evening. I’d wanted to visit since I first heard about the Fair Isle field centre; it was so cool to be there finally. I felt like celebrating. And Angela wandered through from the flat and found me there. “Let me give you a tour of the island.” It was a clear, still night, just before the westerlies started. Cold. There was ice on the windscreen. Unusual so early in the year, apparently. She took me up to the west cliffs and pointed out the lights of Foula right in the distance.’