‘I need to talk to you, Joan.’ His voice was soft like cream too, but the accent was Fair Isle, not mainland Scots.

‘Well, take a seat by the fire, Jimmy. And you won’t mind if I take up my knitting. It’s hand-spun wool, and the Yanks will pay a fortune for a Shetland all-over jersey.’

He nodded. ‘Stuart was working on the foundations of his new house,’ Perez said. ‘He found a body. Old, but preserved in the peat. Would you know anything about that, Joan? You’d likely have been living in this house when he died, and in those days that was Holmsgarth land.’

She changed the knitting pin in the horsehair belt, and as the needles clicked she began to talk. She thought it was time the story was told, and this gentle man, who knew about grief, was the right person to hear it.

‘There was a dance,’ she said. ‘I was there with my sisters. And there was this soothmoother, an engineer at Sullom Voe. James Mackie.’

‘Is that the name of the man Stuart found?’

She hesitated for a moment and then she nodded, thinking again that it was time for the truth to be told. ‘I had two sisters, Annie and Edie, and they fancied him, fought over him. You know young girls. And it was a wild time in the islands, Jimmy. The oil was coming ashore and we were overrun by strangers. It seemed kind of lawless. Like a gold-rush town.’ She knew that was no excuse for what had happened that night, but she wanted him to understand. He said nothing and she thought he would sit there all night, if that was as long as it took.

‘Most folk had been drinking,’ she said. ‘Not me. I’ve never liked it so much, but my sisters had been outside with some of the boys. They had bottles of whisky in the cars. You know how it goes, Jimmy. Much the same these days with young people.’

Still he said nothing. In her head she relived the scene. Mackie walking through the door, the music starting and him walking up to her and giving her a little nod. ‘Would you dance with me, Joan?’ That voice which had haunted her dreams. Caressing. And she’d set down the plate of scones she’d been holding and he swung her onto the floor and the music carried them around, until she was dizzy with the sound and the excitement at having been chosen. At the end she’d been aware of Edie and Annie watching them, thinking he’d picked their big sister for the first dance out of politeness, waiting for their turn. Only their turn never came. James Mackie had danced with the old maid all night.

‘He walked us home,’ Joan said. ‘All three of us. My sisters were in a dreadful state. Angry.’ And she’d understood their humiliation. Of course they’d danced, but with the local boys and the roustabouts from the rigs. Not with the smart man in the shirt, with the soft voice and the polished shoes. Not with the object of their dreams. And on the way home they’d behaved like spoilt little girls again. Their father had doted on his younger daughters and given them everything they wanted. Joan, the child of a previous marriage, had been expected to behave. She explained all this to Jimmy Perez, who listened, nodding occasionally to show that he understood.