Mary had made Perez sandwiches, enough to feed an army. He stepped onto the deck of the Shepherd and handed them round. His father was in the wheel-house and though he waved to Perez he didn’t come out to join them; even on the boat he kept himself apart. He was the skipper and they all knew it.

‘What did you make of Angela Moore?’ Perez leaned against the rail. The sun had come out again and he could feel the faint warmth on his face.

The young men looked at each other and then at James in the wheelhouse to make sure he couldn’t hear. The skipper disliked lewd jokes and bad language.

‘She knew how to have a laugh,’ one said. Careful. After all, Jimmy Perez was police, also his father’s son.

‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Tammy Jamieson was the youngest crew member, a clown, easy-going, generous. Not given to discretion. ‘She’d shag anything that moved. If he was fit enough.’

Then they were all jumping in with stories of Angela’s wildness, the flirting and the drinking. They’d been talking about her among themselves since they first heard of the murder. There was the day the cruise ship put in and she disappeared below deck with the head purser. The politician who’d flown in for an hour to speak to a meeting of the island council, and was still in the North Light two days later, and most of the time spent in her bed. ‘At least her husband was away that time.’

‘Has she ever had an affair with an island man?’ Perez asked.

Now they were careful again. They shuffled and giggled but they wouldn’t speak.

He pressed them: ‘There must have been rumours.’

‘Oh, you know this place. There are always rumours.’ And he could get no more out of them than that. It was already two o’clock and he had an appointment in the community hall with assistant warden Ben Catchpole. He might get Tammy on his own later. He might talk with a few beers inside him.