‘Go and lay up for breakfast in the dining room!’

Jenny nodded and left the room; I went to the bar and phoned Jimmy Perez. I was at school with Jimmy. Shetland’s that sort of place: Jenny was at school with my daughter. Jimmy’s a Fair Islander, and the story is that he has the strange name and the dark looks because his ancestors were washed ashore from El Gran Grifon, an Armada ship that was wrecked there. He had a crush on me when we were at the Anderson High, but he was too shy to do anything and I ended up marrying Tammy Leask. More importantly now, against everyone’s expectations Jimmy Perez went on to join the police, working first in Aberdeen, then back in Shetland as detective inspector.

He arrived before the two Englishmen came down for breakfast, and I was grateful for that. I wouldn’t have known how to break the news of the woman’s death or how the matter should proceed. I was standing at the door of the bar when Perez came into the hotel. He always looks kind of scruffy. This morning I suppose there was some excuse: he must have come straight from his bed or from that of his woman, who lives up the bank in Ravenswick. He stared at the body and for a moment he said nothing. He’d left the outside door open and I could hear the suck of the tide on the shingle.

‘Who is she?’

‘She signed the register as Melissa Forbes. Home address in Surrey. The rooms were booked on a company account. Jefferson Systems. I thought maybe they had a contract at Sullom Voe.’ Sullom Voe is where the oil comes ashore and it pulls in lots of southern workers.

‘Has she stayed here before?’

I looked up at him, but it’s always hard to tell what Jimmy’s thinking. ‘I don’t remember them as guests in the hotel.’

‘You’re sure?’ Wanting more from me. A different answer.

‘No, I can’t be sure.’

‘Anything stolen?’

‘Her bag’s still there under the chair.’

He nodded as if that was just what he expected. You’d have to be pretty dumb to commit a theft in Shetland. It’s hard to escape from here.

‘Recognize the tie?’

I shook my head. ‘It could have belonged to one of her colleagues, but I couldn’t swear to it.’

I expected Perez to approach the body. His stillness unnerved me. I’d always felt skittish in comparison to him, too talkative. Today, though, was not the time for chatter.

‘Tell me about her companions,’ he said at last.

‘Peter Jefferson and Laurence Jones.’ I paused. I wasn’t sure what more there was to say. My thoughts about the three were pure speculation.

Perez smiled and for a moment I wondered how I could have chosen Tammy Leask instead of him. ‘Come on, Margaret. You can do better than that. You’re as good at the gossip as I am.’

So I found myself talking about what I’d seen the evening before. How the woman’s eyes glittered in a feverish way as she looked out at the world over her glass; how Jones had shrunk away from her advances, as if even the brush of her arm against his sleeve disgusted him; how his boss had seemed to want to bring them together. Perez listened intently, as if the answer to this violent death lay in the pictures I was creating with my words. ‘I had the feeling that Jefferson would have liked to see them in bed by the end of the night,’ I said at the end. And that was true. I’d thought it at the time.