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statement? That his life had been a joke? He hadn’t been laughing much the night before.
    ‘I’m sure I saw the man last night,’ Perez said. ‘He was one of the guests at the Herring House party.’ Then, as the thought suddenly occurred to him, ‘I wonder where he got hold of the mask? He certainly didn’t have it on him then.’
    This time Sandy didn’t answer. I shouldn’t have left the man alone, Perez thought. He was frightened of being left alone.
    ‘Do you mind waiting here for the doctor? I’ll go and chat to Kenny Thomson. He might have some idea who the dead man might be, where he was staying. If someone in Biddista has been taking paying guests, Kenny will know.’
    Sandy shrugged. ‘It seems a weird sort of place for a visitor to want to stay. What would you do all day here?’
    ‘Look at it, man. The peace. Nothing to do. This is what they come for.’
    Sandy looked out across the water. ‘It’s more likely he came up from Lerwick specially, chose the loneliest sort of spot he could find to do away with himself.’
    But Perez thought he hadn’t just come here to kill himself. He’d been at the party for a reason.

Chapter Six
    Perez walked up the track to Kenny Thomson’s house. He was very tired now and his brain felt sluggish. He thought the exercise might make him more alert. Skoles, the Thomson place, was more like a farm than a croft. Since he’d bought up the land all around him Kenny had more sheep than he needed for his own use and there were cows in one of the low parks near the house. But everything was still done in the old way. Perez liked that. A field of tatties just coming up, the lines straight and true, and a field of neeps. In lots of places crofters were selling sites for new housing, but it seemed Kenny hadn’t been tempted to go down that route.
    Perez tried to remember when he’d talked to Kenny last, but couldn’t think. He might have nodded to him in town, bumped into him at Sumburgh or in the bar on the ferry. But Kenny was more than a casual acquaintance. The year of Perez’s sixteenth birthday, Kenny had spent the whole of one summer in Fair Isle and they’d worked together. It was the time they did the major work on the harbour in the North Haven. Kenny had been brought in to oversee the building work and Perez had been one of the labourers, his first proper job over the school holidays. Hestill remembered the blisters, the aching back and the ease with which Kenny, twenty years his senior, slender and dark then, could lift a Calor cylinder under each arm when he helped the islanders unload the boat, the way he could work all day at the same pace without seeming to get tired.
    Kenny had started off lodging in the hostel at the Observatory, but after a couple of weeks had moved down the island to stay at Springfield with the Perez family. It was further away from the site, but he felt awkward in front of all the birdwatchers, he said, and it would be a bit more money for them if they took him on as a lodger. In the evening he would shower and then join the family for dinner. ‘Kenny’s no bother at all.’ That was what Perez’s mother had said, and it had been true. He had been unobtrusive, considerate, setting the table and helping her with the washing-up afterwards. A perfect guest.
    Now, Perez tried to remember what the two of them had talked about as they were digging out drains and mixing cement. Kenny hadn’t given very much of himself away. He’d listened to Perez talking about his plans for college and how much he hated life at school, but he had hardly talked about himself at all. Occasionally he’d let something slip about his life in Biddista and the other folks who lived there, but very rarely. And would I have been interested anyway? Perez thought. Kenny just seemed middle-aged and boring. A stickler for doing things right. He was already married to Edith, who had been left behind. She’d been staying at Skoles, taking care of Kenny’s