They’d already started walking along the single-track road. A hire car with a couple of tourists came towards them and they climbed onto the verge to let it past.

Perez left his questions about Markham until they’d arrived at her house. It was tiny, a single-storey croft-house, freshly whitewashed. A kitchen with a small table, a sofa against one wall and a portable television; a bedroom and a shower room built onto the back. There was a view down to a pebble beach. She left the door open and the sound of sheep seemed to fill the room.

‘You weren’t tempted by life in the city then?’ Perez knew she’d been to university in Edinburgh and achieved a good law degree, but hadn’t taken the steps needed to become a barrister or solicitor.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I missed the islands every minute I was away.’ It was a dramatic statement, but Perez thought it was probably true. It was hard to imagine her in a busy street jostled by crowds, hemmed in by tall buildings, no view of the sky. Some Shetland kids thrived on the anonymity and the sense of freedom, when they escaped home for the first time. It seemed Evie hadn’t been one of those. ‘I bought this place as soon as I came back. It was dead cheap, hardly more than a wreck. My father helped me do it up.’

‘Where do you work now?’

‘For Shetland Islands Council, in the development unit. We encourage new business into the place. It’s important as the oil reserves run out.’ She switched on the kettle and spooned coffee into a jug. Perez sat on the sofa.

‘You’ll be busy now then,’ he said. ‘This business with the gas coming ashore at Sullom Voe.’

‘That’s not really my area of expertise.’ She poured water onto the coffee and the smell reminded him of Fran, who’d been a coffee snob. ‘I’m more interested in green industries. I think that’s the way forward, especially in a place like Shetland. We could become almost self-sufficient and provide a model for the rest of the world.’

He thought she was an evangelist by temperament.

‘Did Jerry Markham contact you when he was home this time?’ There was a pause and he wondered if she was considering whether she might lie.

‘He tried to contact me,’ she said at last. ‘He left messages on my answer machine here and on my mobile – he must have got that number from friends, because it’s not the one I had when we were together.’

‘Did he phone you at work?’ Perez sipped his coffee. The mug had a bright-blue glaze and he recognized the work of a local potter, a friend of Fran’s. This is how it’ll be, he thought. As long as I live in Shetland, there’ll be no escaping her.