Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves Page B

boil and she turned down the heat. She’d mash them to serve with the gammon she was roasting. Ben was the only veggie left in the place since the last plane went out and there was a quiche left over from the party that he could have. She knew there was a packet of broad beans still in the freezer and she’d serve them with a white sauce. Shame the last gale had killed the parsley in the little field centre garden. But all the time she was deciding the trivial domestic details that so calmed her, she was thinking about Angela’s murder. An act of anger , she thought. Or revenge.
    She walked down the corridor that linked the kitchen to Maurice’s flat. Her leather shoes slapped on the tiles and echoed so they sounded like following footsteps. She knocked at the door and when there was no reply she went in. Maurice was sitting hollow-eyed, alone in the dark. She switched on a table lamp, and took a seat beside him.
    ‘Where’s Poppy?’
    ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. She saw he couldn’t care about anything. He was entirely wrapped around in his own grief. ‘She might be in her room.’
    When Jane stood up to look he called after her. ‘They’ve taken Angela away.’
    ‘I know.’
    Poppy was lying on her bed watching television, an Australian soap. On the screen, two impossibly beautiful teenagers were lying on a sandy beach staring at each other. For a moment Jane thought it was crass and insensitive for the girl to be engrossed in a sentimental love story while her father was so miserable. But the girl’s presence wouldn’t make things easier for him and she’d never pretended to be fond of Angela. The birdwatchers had been chasing all over the island after some rare bird and that was just as inappropriate. As inappropriate as Jane taking a secret delight in her attempts to unravel the mystery of Angela’s death.
    ‘Are you hungry?’
    Poppy switched down the sound, but continued to stare at the sunny landscape, the young lovers.
    ‘Starving.’ She turned abruptly towards Jane. ‘Is that really gross? To want to eat when there’s a dead woman lying in the bird room?’
    ‘Of course not. And she’s not there any more. Jimmy Perez has taken her away.’ Jane sat on the bed. ‘Where do you want your dinner? In the flat or with us?’
    There was a pause. ‘Do they all think I killed her?’
    ‘I don’t know what they think. I don’t believe it was you.’
    The soap opera ended and the titles rolled silently towards a blue horizon. Poppy lay back on the pillow. ‘Could I have something here? I can’t face Dad either. He keeps crying. I’ve never seen him cry before.’
    ‘I’ll bring something through.’
    ‘Is there pudding too?’
    ‘Lemon meringue.’
    ‘Can I have a piece?’
    Jane smiled and nodded.
    At the table the talk was all about the swan. There was a pile of reference books between them. Dougie Barr was manic. It was as if he were on speed, the words tumbling out one after another. ‘Sometimes you see a bird and you just know ! Like, that it’s the best bird you’ll ever find in your life, the thing you’ll be remembered for.’ He set down his knife and fork and turned a page in the big book beside him, then picked up a can, not of beer, but a highly coloured fizzy drink. Jane thought the sugar in it, added to his mood, had turned him into a hyperactive child. ‘I wasn’t even sure trumpeter migrated, but it does. Look. The Alaska population is migratory. So my bird came all the way from Alaska.’ My bird. As if he’d given birth to it. He began to eat again, very quickly, and occasionally small pieces of food flew out of his mouth. Perhaps he finally remembered that there’d been a death in the centre because he added: ‘Angela would have understood that. She knew what it was like to find a rarity. Her reputation was built on it.’
    ‘That and her hair,’ Sarah Fowler said.
    The interjection was so unexpected, so bitchy, that for a moment Jane wasn’t sure how to