‘Yes, Judge.’ Wayland takes another sip of his drink. It is by far the finest Scotch he has ever drunk.

‘Grampy Beecher was the one who pointed out that island to me. I was ten. He’d had the care of me for the day, and I suppose he wanted some peace and quiet. Or maybe what he wanted was a bit noisier. There was a pretty housemaid, and he may have been in hopes of investigating beneath her petticoats. So he told me that Edward Teach – better known as Blackbeard – had supposedly buried a great treasure out there. “Nobody’s ever found it, Havie,” he said – Havie’s what he called me – “but you might be the one. A fortune in jewels and gold doubloons.” You know what I did next, I suppose.’

‘I suppose you went out there and left your grandfather to cheer up the maid.’

The Judge nods, smiling. ‘I took the old wooden canoe we had tied up to the dock. Went like my hair was on fire and my tailfeathers were catching. Didn’t take but five minutes to paddle out there. Takes me three times as long these days, and that’s if the water’s smooth. The island’s all rock and brush on the landward side, but there’s a dune of fine beach sand on the Gulf side. It never goes away. In the eighty years I’ve been going out there, it never seems to change.’

‘Didn’t find any treasure, I suppose?’

‘I did, in a way, but it wasn’t jewels and gold. It was a name, written in the sand of that dune. As if with a stick, you know, only I didn’t see any stick. The letters were drawn deep, and the sun struck shadows into them, making them stand out. Almost as if they were floating.’

‘What was the name, Judge?’

‘I think you have to see it written to understand.’

The Judge takes a sheet of paper from the top drawer of his desk, prints carefully, then turns the paper around so Wayland can read it: ROBIE LADOOSH.

‘All right …’ Wayland says cautiously.

‘On any other day, I would have gone treasure-hunting with this very boy, because he was my best friend, and you know how boys are when they’re best friends.’

‘Joined at the hip,’ Wayland says, smiling. Perhaps he’s recalling his own best friend in bygone days.

‘Tight as a new key in a new lock,’ Wayland agrees. ‘But it was summer and he’d gone off with his parents to visit his mama’s people in Virginia or Maryland or some such northern clime. So I was on my own. But attend me closely, Counselor. The boy’s actual name was Robert LaDoucette.’

Again Wayland says, ‘All right …’ The Judge thinks that sort of leading drawl could become annoying over time, but it isn’t a thing he’ll ever have to actually find out, so he lets it go.

‘He was my best friend and I was his, but there was a whole gang of boys we ran around with, and everyone called him Robbie LaDoosh. You follow?’

‘I guess,’ Wayland says, but the Judge can see he doesn’t. That’s understandable; Beecher has had a lot more time to think about these things. Often on sleepless nights.

‘Remember that I was ten. If I had been asked to spell my friend’s nickname, I would have done it just this way.’ He taps ROBIE LADOOSH. Speaking almost to himself, he adds: ‘So some of the magic comes from me. It must come from me. The question is, how much?’

‘You’re saying you didn’t write that name in the sand?’

‘No. I thought I made that clear.’

‘One of your other friends, then?’

‘They were all from Nokomis Village, and didn’t even know about that island. We never would have paddled out to such an uninteresting little rock on our own. Robbie knew it was there, he was also from the Point, but he was hundreds of miles north.’

‘All right …’

‘My chum Robbie never came back from that vacation. We got word a week or so later that he’d taken a fall while out horseback riding. He broke his neck. Killed instantly. His parents were heartbroken. So was I.’

There is silence while Wayland considers this. While they both consider it. Somewhere far off, a helicopter beats at the sky over the Gulf. The DEA looking for drug runners, the Judge supposes. He hears them every night. It’s the modern age, and in some ways – in many – he’ll be glad to be shed of it.

At last Wayland says, ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ the Judge says. ‘What do you think I’m saying?’

But Anthony Wayland is a lawyer, and refusing to be drawn is an ingrained habit with him. ‘Did you tell your grandfather?’

‘On the day the telegram about Robbie came, he wasn’t there to tell. He never stayed in one place for long. We didn’t see him again for six months or more. No, I kept it to myself. And like Mary after she gave birth to God’s only son, I considered these things in my heart.’

‘And what conclusion did you draw?’

‘I kept canoeing out to that island to look at the dune. That should answer your question. There was nothing … and nothing … and nothing. I guess I was on the verge of forgetting all about it, but then I went out one afternoon after school and there was another name written in the sand. Printed in the sand, to be courtroom-exact. No sign of a stick that time, either, although I suppose a stick could have been thrown into the water. This time the name was Peter Alderson. It meant nothing to me until a few days later. It was my chore to go out to the end of the road and get the paper, and it was my habit to scan the front page while I walked back up the drive – which, as you know from driving it yourself, is a good quarter mile long. In the summer I’d also check on how the Washington Senators had done, because back then they were as close to a southern team as we had.

‘This particular day, a headline on the bottom of the front page caught my eye: WINDOW WASHER KILLED IN FREAK FALL. The poor guy was doing the third-floor windows of the Sarasota Public Library when the scaffolding he was standing on gave way. His name was Peter Alderson.’

The Judge can see from Wayland’s face that he believes this is either a prank or some sort of elaborate fantasy the Judge is spinning out. He can also see that Wayland is enjoying his drink, and when the Judge moves to top it up, Wayland doesn’t say no. And really, the young man’s belief or disbelief is beside the point. It’s just such a luxury to tell it.

‘Maybe you see why I go back and forth in my mind about where the magic lies,’ Beecher says. ‘I knew Robbie, and the misspelling of his name was my misspelling. But I didn’t know this window washer from Adam. In any case, that’s when the dune really started to get a hold on me. I began going out almost every day, a habit that’s continued into my very old age. I respect the place, I fear the place, and most of all, I’m addicted to the place.

‘Over the years, many names have appeared on that dune, and the people the names belong to always die. Sometimes it’s within the week, sometimes it’s two, but it’s never more than a month. Some have been people I knew, and if it’s by a nickname I knew them, it’s the nickname I see. One day in nineteen forty I paddled out there and saw GRAMPY BEECHER drawn into the sand. He died in Key West three days later. It was a heart attack.’

With the air of someone humoring a man who is mentally unbalanced but not actually dangerous, Wayland asks, ‘Did you never try to interfere with this … this process? Call your grandfather, for instance, and tell him to see a doctor?’

Beecher shakes his head. ‘I didn’t know it was a heart attack until we got word from the Monroe County medical examiner, did I? It could have been an accident, or even a murder. Certainly there were people who had reasons to hate my grandfather; his dealings were not of the purest sort.’

‘Still …’

‘Also, I was afraid. I felt, I still feel, as if there on that island, there’s a hatch that’s come ajar. On this side is what we’re pleased to call “the real world.” On the other is all the machinery of the universe, running at top speed. Only a fool would stick his hand into such machinery in an attempt to stop it.’