Perez had been in the sixth form with Billy, remembered him as a pale, quiet boy who’d always come top in French. Perez wondered if he used his flair for languages on the overseas visitors who came to the islands. Not that Whalsay was really on the tourist map. There wasn’t anywhere for them to stay apart from the camping bod that attracted students and backpackers, and one hotel. Symbister was a working harbour and seven of the eight pelagic fishing boats in Shetland put in there. For this reason Whalsay folk didn’t need to sell cups of tea or hand-knitted mittens to make a living. They kept up the old traditions of hospitality and knitting but money didn’t come into it.

Sandy’s phone call had woken Perez up. His first reaction had been fear, which had nothing at all to do with his work as a detective. His girlfriend, Fran, had gone south for a couple of weeks over Easter, taking her daughter Cassie with her. ‘My parents haven’t seen her for months,’ Fran had said. ‘And I want to catch up with all my friends. It would be so easy to lose touch, living here.’ Perez knew it was ridiculous but when he thought of London he thought of danger. So while Fran dreamed of nights out at the theatre with her friends, leaving doting grandparents to make up months’ worth of babysitting, he’d been thinking gun crime, stabbings, terrorism.

The anxiety must have been with him even in his sleep, because the noise of the phone triggered an immediate panic. He sat up in bed and grabbed the receiver, his heart was racing and he was wide awake. ‘Yes?’

Only to hear Sandy Wilson, mumbling and incoherent as only he could be, with some story about his family, an accidental shooting, his grandmother dead. Perez listened with half his brain, the other half flooded with relief, so he found himself grinning. Not because an old woman was dead but because nothing terrible had happened to Fran or Cassie. He saw from the clock on the bedside table that it was nearly three o’clock.

‘How do you know it was an accident?’ Perez had said, interrupting at last.

‘My cousin Ronald was out after rabbits and it was such poor visibility, you can see how it might have happened. What else would it be?’ A pause. ‘Ronald likes his drink.’

‘And what does Ronald say?’

‘He couldn’t see how it could have happened. He’s a good shot and he’d not have fired into Mima’s land.’

‘Had he been drinking?’

‘He says not. Not much.’

‘What do you say?’

‘I don’t see what else could have happened.’