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a cardigan over his pyjamas. That seemed odd to Perez. Why wasn’t the man dressed? His father was the nearest thing the island had to a leader and he should be out there to supervise if there was a problem. Then he thought maybe his mother was ill and they were waiting for the nurse who was resident on the island. No way would a doctor get in this morning.
    ‘They want you up at the field centre,’ James said, breaking into his thoughts. ‘You can take the car. I’ll not be going far today.’
    ‘What’s wrong?’ Jimmy drank the tea, helped himself to a couple of home-made ginger biscuits. He was still half asleep. ‘Why do they want me?’
    ‘You’re the police, aren’t you?’ James looked up. ‘There’s been a murder.’
    Perez had to bang on the lighthouse door to be let in, because it was locked. It was still dark and the beam from the tower circled way over his head. The locked door struck him as unusual, but perhaps someone had watched crime dramas on television and realized it was important to keep people away from the scene. Jane came at once to open up. She was fully dressed in jeans and a sweater, though it wasn’t yet seven thirty. Inside, all the lights were on. The lighthouse was too far from the other houses to be on mains electricity and he heard the buzz of the generator in the distance. Jane looked very pale but quite composed.
    ‘In here.’ She opened a door that led directly from the lobby. ‘In the bird room.’
    He stood in the doorway and looked inside. It was a small square space with one window facing east. He supposed all the equipment was to do with the business of ornithology. There were plastic tubes covered with small metal rings of different sizes hanging from one of the shelves, pliers, a set of small balance scales, a pile of small cotton bags with drawstring tops. There was the base field centre smell of wood from the floors, but it was overlaid by something faint and organic, which he supposed came from the birds: the oil on their feathers, the muck left in the bags while they were waiting to be ringed.
    Under the window there was a wooden desk and a swivel chair. Sitting on the chair was a woman. Angela was slumped across the desk as if she’d fallen asleep in the middle of her work. But in her back was a knife. It had an ivory handle that protruded through the scarlet silk top she’d been wearing the evening before. There wasn’t a great deal of blood and no sign of a struggle. The knife had gone in just to the left of the spine and under the shoulder blade. Straight into the heart. Either the killer had known what to do or it had been a lucky strike. Lucky for him at least. Twisted through the black hair, like a garland, was a circle of white feathers. It gave Angela a frivolous air, reminded Perez of one of those flimsy hats that fashionable women wore to Ascot. She certainly hadn’t been wearing feathers in her hair when he’d last seen her and he realized now that they’d all fall away if she stood up. The arrangement had been made after her death.
    ‘Who found her?’ Perez struggled to make this real. It was too close to home and the image was like the jacket of one of the old-fashioned detective stories his mother had enjoyed. Even the feathers belonged to a different era.
    ‘Ben Catchpole, the assistant warden. It was his turn to do the trap round. He came in to collect some bird bags on his way out.’
    ‘Where’s Maurice?’
    ‘In the kitchen. I woke him to tell him. Ben’s there too.’
    Perez looked more closely at the still figure. ‘Didn’t Maurice realize something was wrong when she didn’t come to bed?’
    ‘He’s in no state to discuss details.’ The words were sharp, a reproof. ‘I haven’t asked him.’
    ‘Do you always lock the main door of the centre?’ Perez spoke as if he were only vaguely interested in the routine of the place, as if it could have no possible significance to the crime.
    ‘No,’ Jane said. ‘Of course not.