Chapter Twenty-nine
The next day was Sunday and suddenly everything was still. All activity ceased. No planes filled with birdwatchers and media folk. No helicopters. No murder. Even the weather was quiet. The island woke to a clear, cold dawn. On the bank by the shop, the wind turbine was motionless.
Perez asked Sandy to spend the day at the field centre: his role to reassure the remaining residents and to continue taking statements about Jane Latimer.
When Perez was a boy Sundays on Fair Isle were sacred. Every week he was taken to church twice – once to the kirk and once to the Methodist chapel. Before he was born, the islanders had decided they couldn’t live with sectarianism and this was their way of dealing with it: whatever denomination they’d been born into, they’d all go to both services, kids scrubbed, men in suits or fancy hand-knitted sweaters, women in skirts and proper shoes. Sunday was a day of rest then. There was no work on the croft. No fishing. It had been different for the women, of course. There had to be lunch and the pans had to be cleaned, but they couldn’t hang washing on the line – even if it was a good drying day – or the neighbours would talk.
Perez took Fran to the morning service in the kirk. He knew it would make his mother happy to have them there and he needed time for reflection, away from the investigation. Let Sandy take the lead for a while. He felt too that Fran should understand what living in the Isle was about – she still had romantic ideas of a harmonious community existence. He wasn’t sure she’d stomach the part religion played in bringing about the cohesion – the sort of religion preached by his father at least.
Thought of his father had been with him, reminding him of his cowardice, since he’d woken up. Perez still hadn’t confronted the man about his relationship with Angela Moore. The night before, the moment had never been quite right. Perez had got back to Springfield in time for a late supper and the family had spent all evening together. To take his father outside and say he had something important to discuss would have alerted Mary and even if she suspected anything about her husband and Angela she would hate to think the relationship had become part of the inquiry. Over the meal James had been jovial, a good host. Perez thought his father was probably relieved. He’d taken the jewellery from the Pund and thought his secret was safe. What had he done with it? Thrown it out of the
Shepherd
on the way to the mainland? Or perhaps James was pleased Angela had died. The temptation to sin had been removed.
They left early for the kirk because James would be preaching, and took the long way round by the road because the ground was still sodden. Fran thought God was about as real as the tooth fairy. She came from a family of unbelievers and, to her, religious faith was incomprehensible. But today she behaved herself. She was soberly dressed in a long brown skirt and a little tweed jacket, brown leather boots. Just as they went in through the kirk door, she whispered to him: ‘I hope you know I’m only here because I love you, Jimmy Perez. You owe me.’
Then after a quick grin she followed Mary to her seat.
Whenever they discussed religion, Perez always ended up agreeing with Fran. Stories and metaphors, that was the Bible. But in his gut he couldn’t dismiss his father’s teaching so lightly. He’d grown up with the notion of sin and had spent his adolescence haunted by guilt. He thought guilt was like a tapeworm living – and growing – inside him.
They’d just sat down when John and Sarah Fowler came in. The congregation turned to look at them; visitors were always welcomed to services but were something of a novelty. John beamed amiably around him, but Sarah still seemed tense. Perez thought she’d been most happy in the field centre kitchen. Away from the lighthouse she seemed lost.
His father took as his text Galatians 5:22 on the fruits of the spirit. At first Perez let the words wash over him. He was still thinking about the double murder, looking for connections between the women. He’d assumed at the beginning that Jane’s death had come as a direct result of Angela’s but it wouldn’t do to close his mind to other possibilities, to dismiss altogether an irrational killer targeting women. The team in Lerwick should do a more detailed check on the North Light visitors and staff. Were there unsolved crimes of violence against women in the areas where the incomers lived? He felt in his jacket pocket for a pen, so he could jot down a few notes.
Then the meaning of his father’s sermon seeped into his consciousness. Perez set down the pen and the scrap of paper and began to listen more carefully. As he laid the pen on the narrow shelf built into the seat in front of him he saw his hand was trembling. Anger. It was all he could do not to walk out.
James had moved on to talk about self-control. One of the fruits of the spirit. It might be the last in the list but it was by no means the least important. James leaned forward and repeated the words for emphasis: ‘By no means.’ He turned over a sheet of paper on the lectern. James took his preaching seriously; he always made notes.
‘In Proverbs, we learn that controlling one’s own passions is harder than conquering a walled city fortress. A man must have mastery over his own behaviour. If he can’t control himself, he’d be like the city after its walls are destroyed. Defenceless.’ The last word came out in a thundering roar, but seemed to have little impact on the audience and James sought to find an image closer to home. ‘Think how it would be if you were out in a small, flimsy kind of boat in the gale we’ve had in the last couple of days. Bad enough in something like the
Shepherd
, which is built for the job. But imagine one of those small dinghies the bairns play in close to shore in the mainland on summer days. And a force ten wind battering into the hull. You’d be drowned by the waves. Lost.’ The audience nodded then in understanding and looked at their watches. Fifteen minutes. Big James never went on for much longer than that. And it seemed he was coming to a close: ‘Without self-control the other fruits of the spirit would be impossible. Kindness, gentleness, patience and peace. All those would be swept away and drowned by selfish desires and emotions.’
The music started and they swung into a hymn. Sarah Fowler had a sweet voice and seemed to know the words. The couple were sitting just in front of them and Perez could make it out over the rest of the congregation. Beside him, Fran was singing too, but she could never hold a tune. It was something they laughed about.
After the service the islanders stood outside in the sunshine and chatted. No talk of the murders. The conversation was about when the bairns would get in from the Anderson High, a sixtieth birthday party to be arranged in the hall. Perhaps the Fowlers’ presence constrained them. The couple stood for a moment too on the edge of the crowd, rather awkwardly.
Fran went up to talk to them: ‘Did you walk all the way from the North Light?’
‘It’s a lovely day,’ John said. ‘And we wanted to get away for a while. I’m sure you understand.’
‘I’ll give you a lift back,’ Fran said. ‘That is OK, Mary? I can use the car?’
Mary looked for James as if the decision wasn’t hers to make, but Perez answered for her. ‘Sure, no problem. Take it. But come straight home or you’ll be late for lunch.’ He didn’t like the idea of Fran without him at the lighthouse.
He was still furious at his father’s hypocrisy; how dare James preach about self-control? Perez thought he couldn’t sit down for another meal with the man until the matter of Angela Moore had been discussed. Even if he’d got the whole thing wrong, if he made a complete fool of himself, he had to know.
Mary hurried away after a few words with her friends. She had the meat to get into the oven. Fran went with her, followed by the Fowlers. She muttered to Perez as she went: ‘If I don’t get out of these clothes soon, I’ll almost believe I’m a Sunday school teacher or a member of the WI.’
‘I’ll hang on for my father,’ Perez said. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘Of course not. You don’t see him often enough.’
James was still playing at being minister, shaking hands and asking after his flock. At last the rest of the congregation drifted away and the two men were left in the bright autumn sunshine, their long shadows making strange shapes on the boggy grass.
‘That sermon.’
James turned to face him. They’d started to walk slowly away from the kirk. ‘Yes?’ Pleased that his son was showing an interest.
‘I really don’t know how you’ve got the nerve.’
‘What do you mean?’ Big James’s face was dark and impassive. No reaction other than a slight frown.
‘Did you show much self-control when it came to Angela Moore?’
His father stopped suddenly in the road. What had Perez been expecting? Bluster and denial? A plausible explanation, which would make
him
seem ridiculous? Certainly not this stillness. He stopped too, waited for a moment for some response, then looked into the man’s face. James was struggling to compose himself. There was no sign now of the fluent preacher, the spiritual leader of the island. James could find nothing to say.
Perez waited. All his life he’d been scared of this man and now his father was stuttering like a child caught in some petty mischief.
‘You were having an affair,’ Perez said at last.
‘No!’
‘You slept with her.’
‘Once,’ James said, his voice high-pitched with stress. Then, more controlled: ‘Yes, I slept with her once, but there was no sort of relationship.’
‘You gave her presents. Jewellery.’
‘I fancied myself in love with her.’ The man paused. ‘But it was lust. I see that now.’ He began walking very quickly down the road. Perez followed until they were marching in step.
‘And what did my mother make of that? She was happy, was she, that it was only lust?’
James stopped abruptly. ‘You have no right to pry into another man’s marriage.’
‘I have every right!’ Perez realized he was yelling so loudly that the back of his throat hurt. ‘I’m investigating a murder and you’re a witness. You’ve corrupted a crime scene!’
‘Always the detective, aren’t you, Jimmy? Can’t you leave the police out of this for once?’
They stood for a moment, staring at each other, the hostility sparking between them.
‘All right then,’ Perez said eventually. ‘Let’s leave the investigation out of it. For a while at least. Let’s keep it personal. All my life you’ve given me the morality lecture, the guilt trip. Tell me how you justify sleeping with another woman. How can you live with yourself after that?’
‘With my head I knew it was a shameful, stupid thing, but it was that woman.’
‘So you’re blaming her? She forced you to have sex with her, did she?’ Perez felt the anger returning. He couldn’t bear to see his father so cowed, so pathetic. The least he could do was take responsibility for what had happened.
‘It was after a do at the North Light,’ James said. ‘About this time last year after all the visitors had left. A bit of a party, music. Jane put on a magnificent spread – a real sit-down supper. It was to thank the island for its support over the season. Angela claimed it was her idea, but I think Jane and Maurice hatched it up between them.’
‘Go on.’
‘There were a few drams before the meal and wine with it. I’m not really used to wine.’
Perez said nothing. Let his father make his excuses.
‘She took me into the bird room, made a big show of locking the door behind her. I . . .’
‘Mother was still in the building!’ Perez interrupted because he couldn’t face hearing the details of his father and Angela Moore having sex. That was more information than he needed. But still he imagined it. The smell of wood and birds, the hard desk, the excitement and the urgency, the need to have it over before they were missed.
‘And that was the only time?’ Perez asked. He supposed his father was right. One hurried encounter hardly counted as an affair. Fran and her London friends would probably dismiss it as a trivial mistake.
‘I dreamed about it happening again,’ James said. ‘I wanted it to. But it never did.’
‘You tried to persuade her?’
‘I made a fool of myself. I see that now.’ He looked at Perez. ‘We’d chatted at parties before it happened, flirted a bit. I hadn’t thought she would do
that
with me if she didn’t care for me.’
Perez saw for the first time that his father was an unworldly man. Throughout his childhood he’d thought of James as having great knowledge and experience. But of course his father had never lived away from the Isle. He’d been too young for National Service, had never been to university. Angela would have found him an easy target.
Perez found his anger was already starting to fade, replaced by the inevitable understanding. He didn’t want to understand – that was for social workers, for weak indecisive people who made excuses for criminal behaviour. But he could never quite find it in him to condemn. Perez saw that as a failure, a kind of cowardice. Now he began to see how his father had been tempted. A long marriage. A life of routine – the rhythm of the croft, the boat, the kirk. And along had come a young woman, sexy and famous, appearing to find his father attractive. Of course he’d deluded himself.
James continued: ‘She was all games. This was a boring place for her. She needed more excitement in her life. I told her I loved her, bought her presents. I suppose it was a kind of amusement for her. Maybe she was flattered by it.’
