Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves Page A

the flat, they wouldn’t have an audience.
    But when James came he took charge and the whole thing was managed quickly and without drama. All Fran had to do was hold the door and let down the back of the lorry. While Perez was talking to his father, his accent changed and she hardly understood what they were saying. Not many words were exchanged. She supposed they’d worked together before on the croft and loading the boat. James drove the lorry away and they stood watching at the back door of the field centre.
    ‘Wait in the car,’ Perez said. ‘I need to tell Maurice what’s happened.’
    She expected him to be a long time. There would surely be other questions. Perez was a meticulous investigator. But he came out very quickly. It seemed to her that he was distressed.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Maurice was heartbroken,’ he said. ‘Much worse than when he found out that Angela was dead. I thought something new had happened to upset him. But it’s the fact of her leaving the North Light. While she was in the bird room, there was still something of her there. Now he realizes that she won’t be coming back. Ever.’
    Chapter Twelve
    On her way back to the North Light, Jane passed the lorry and the Springfield car. The vehicles were going south, in the opposite direction to her. She stood on the grass by the side of the road and saw first the lorry driven by Big James and then Perez and Fran in the car. All three waved to her, but they didn’t stop to speak and on the island that was unusual. She waited for a moment and watched them disappear over the rise by the entrance to Setter. It came to her that Angela’s body would be in the lorry, and she wondered what the woman would have thought of making such a lowly exit from the North Light. Usually it was used for carrying sheep to the boat for the abattoir. She remembered what Perez had said about Angela always appearing miserable to him. I never really knew her, Jane thought. I took against her without any real reason and I never made the effort to understand her.
    Almost at the lighthouse she saw Ben Catchpole walking towards her. Even in the gloom she could make out his red hair at a distance, the only colour visible in the grey landscape.
    ‘Did you see the swan?’ she asked. ‘Dougie came into Springfield to use the phone while I was having tea with Mary. Such a fuss.’ You’d have thought someone was being murdered. She stopped herself speaking the words just in time.
    ‘It’s roosting at Golden Water.’ He turned and began walking back to the field centre alongside her. She realized he’d come out to find her. He was out of his depth and she was the only person he could ask for advice. ‘I don’t know what to do. Dougie’s already put the word out on the pagers. Every lister in the country will be desperate to get in to see it.’
    ‘While the weather’s like this, we don’t have to do anything.’ Jane could see he found the ‘we’ reassuring. Despite all his experience, the green activism, the doctorate, he seemed out of his depth. ‘We can make a decision when it clears. Perhaps by then the investigation will be over.’
    Ben kicked a piece of shingle off the road. ‘Who do you think did it?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘She treated me like shit,’ he said. ‘But I would have died for her.’
    In the centre, Jane dropped off her coat in her room and closed the curtains. The wind had dropped a little, or perhaps she’d become accustomed to it. The light had gone. In the kitchen she lit the Calor gas under the vegetables she’d prepared earlier and put plates to warm. The table was already laid. Just for the six of them: four visitors, Ben and her. With the main lights on she couldn’t see outside – just her reflection in the big windows, looking pale and thin. She was a dried-out middle-aged woman. I need a lover, she thought. Someone warm and big-breasted with a deep laugh to breathe some life into me. The potatoes had come to the