Peter Markham shrugged. ‘Nobody who cared enough about him to kill him.’ He turned so that he was facing Perez. ‘Sometimes I think we should have forced him to stay here and look after Evie. She could have made him accept some responsibility. But Maria wouldn’t have it. An island girl wasn’t good enough for her boy.’

‘Jerry told you he was in Shetland this time for work.’

‘That’s right. I think he’d persuaded his editor that he needed to cover the gas coming ashore. The new energy.’

‘Is that what he told you?’

‘I’m not sure that he told me anything. I was busy. That day we were rushed off our feet. That was the impression he gave his mother.’

‘His editor didn’t know anything about a story,’ Perez said. ‘Jerry had arranged to go to a meeting about the tidal energy, but he’d told her he was taking leave.’ He paused. ‘She thought he might be ill. Suffering from stress. Burnout. She said he hadn’t been himself since before Christmas. Not so sharp.’

‘Jerry was fine,’ Markham said. ‘He would have told his boss he was unwell to get a few days away. He believed his own fiction sometimes. That was what made him such a good liar.’

‘Did he often tell lies?’ Again Perez was shocked that Markham could describe his son in such a clear-eyed way.

‘He was a writer,’ Markham said, as if that explained everything.

‘Why would he come home,’ Perez said, ‘if he wasn’t here for work?’

‘He would have needed money. That was why he usually came back.’ Markham took a crumpled cigarette packet from his coat pocket and struggled to light one, drawing deeply when he managed it.

‘Had he asked you for a loan?’

‘Oh, he wouldn’t have asked me,’ Markham said. ‘As I said, his mother would refuse him nothing.’

‘Is it OK if I talk to Maria?’

‘Why not? She’ll believe her son’s a good man, whatever you say to her.’

Perez found the man’s cynicism unbearable. He stood up. Markham spluttered on his cigarette. ‘I loved him, you know,’ he said. ‘I just wish things could have been different.’ Another cough. ‘I wish he could have been different.’

Maria was in her nightclothes and dressing gown and in the living room the curtains were still drawn. Perez opened them and saw that Peter Markham was still on his bench in the garden below. The flat smelled stale, and Perez wondered if Maria had washed since Jerry’s death. She had family in the islands. Why weren’t they looking after her?

‘Have you thought of moving out for a little while?’ he asked. ‘There are people who would put you up.’