‘Seriously, it’s a great view.’ Morgan finally appeared and immediately flicked the kettle on. He reached into a wonky cupboard, took three mugs down. ‘You can’t see back to the mainland because of the mountain, but if it’s clear enough, looking the other way, you can see Dublin.’

‘I need to know when you’re heading back,’ Thorne said.

Morgan peered out of the window and up at the sky. ‘An hour, maybe a bit more.’

‘No chance of staying any longer than that?’

‘You’re pushing your luck after dark,’ Morgan said. ‘That crossing’s tricky enough as it is.’ He could see the frustration on Thorne’s face. ‘Why don’t you stay?’

‘Can’t do it,’ Thorne said.

‘Most of the cottages are empty.’

‘I need to get my prisoners back behind bars. That’s the deal.’

Morgan nodded. ‘Probably a damn sight cosier for them as well. Not exactly tempting, I can see that, staying here this time of year.’ He leaned down, took milk from a fridge and sniffed it. ‘Plenty of people the rest of the time though. All those cottages get rented out, believe it or not.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yeah, they’ll be full come May–June time.’

‘Takes all sorts.’ Thorne could appreciate how dramatic the landscape was, even if wide open spaces had never excited him in quite the way they clearly did a great many others. Still, with no running water or mains power, he remained unconvinced about the place as a holiday destination, except for those with masochistic tendencies.

‘Well, we get boatloads of twitchers for a start.’

‘Yeah, I saw one,’ Thorne said.

‘They come for the Manx shearwater colony mainly.’ Morgan looked at Thorne, smiled at the blank stare he got back. ‘Not your thing?’

Thorne shrugged. ‘I know what a magpie looks like, a robin. Beyond that, I haven’t really got a clue. A chicken…’

‘Then we get the amateur astronomers coming out, because there’s no light pollution, and loads of artists too. Writers, painters, what have you, coming over here on retreats. They like the quiet, I suppose.’

‘So, how many on the island right now?’

Morgan thought for a minute, counted on his fingers. ‘Well, there’s the family up at Tides House… there’s the warden and his wife. They’re not here all the time, like. I reckon he’s only come across because he knew you lot were coming… bit of a sticky-beak. There’s the young couple who help him run the observatory, do all the scientific data and that.’ He raised another finger. ‘There’s the birdwatcher in one of the small cottages… no shearwaters this time of year, but still plenty of birds if you’re mad keen. So, not that many. Put it this way, there’s more of you than there are of us.’

Morgan made the tea. He handed Thorne a mug and shouted up to tell his father that there was one waiting for him.

‘Down in a minute,’ his father shouted.

‘You gave us a bit of a laugh earlier on,’ Morgan said.

Thorne looked at him.

‘The sheep. We heard all about it. You’re using the maritime frequency, remember.’ He nodded towards a large radio receiver mounted on the wall. It looked almost steam-powered, housed in a wooden surround with twisted curly wires, but it clearly worked perfectly well.

Thorne could hear Bernard Morgan on his way down. ‘I don’t need to tell you I’d rather you didn’t talk to anyone about any of this.’

‘You don’t need to,’ Morgan said. ‘No.’

‘Only some people have already been shouting their mouths off.’

‘Some people haven’t got any lives,’ Morgan said.

‘Fair enough,’ Thorne said.

‘We know who your prisoner is, by the way. Well, who one of them is, at any rate.’

Thorne looked towards the radio.

Morgan shook his head. ‘My dad worked it out, after what he said to me on the boat.’

‘Right.’ Thorne remembered Nicklin speaking to Huw Morgan just before he got off the boat. Something about seeing him again.

Bernard Morgan appeared in the doorway. He picked up his tea from the table. ‘I can remember bringing those boys across all those years ago,’ he said. His voice was deeper than his son’s, hoarser, but the accent was the same, the intonations. ‘There was some incident later on, wasn’t there? Then two of the boys escaped. It was closed down fairly soon after that, if I remember right —’

Thorne’s radio crackled into life. Holland saying, ‘Guv…?’

Thorne said, ‘Yes,’ and began moving towards the doorway. He kept going, out towards the lighthouse entrance, even though he realised that the conversation was being simultaneously broadcast through the speaker of the ancient radio receiver.

Holland told him that Howell had seen something on the GPR screen and that they were digging again. Thorne told Holland to let him know if and when anything turned up. Was turned up.

When he walked back into the kitchen, Huw and Bernard Morgan were standing side by side, cradling their mugs of tea, watching him.

‘Only one boy escaped,’ Thorne said. ‘Only one boy ever got off the island.’

Huw Morgan nodded his understanding. ‘Sounds like you might have got lucky,’ he said. ‘If not now, maybe tomorrow, eh?’

Walking back, Thorne saw that the tide had drifted even further out, but that the masses of weeds that were plastered to the rocks still appeared to be moving. Looking again he saw that the movement was actually the rippling of blubber; that there were, in fact, hundreds of seals basking just below him on the rocks. There were a few lighter-coloured pups dotted among the groups of enormous adults, seven or eight feet long in a variety of blotchy greys, browns and speckled blacks. The creatures seemed largely unconcerned by his presence, even when he stepped down and climbed carefully across the rocks towards them. But they would only allow him to get within fifteen or twenty feet before lumbering away with surprising speed, barking and snarling, towards the water.

Thorne stood and watched them until Holland came through on the radio again.

‘We’ve got a body,’ he said.

‘You sure?’

‘There are bits of clothes.’

Thorne took a step back towards the verge, the sudden movement disturbing a huge bull seal, which dragged itself in the opposite direction, hissing at him.

‘Training shoes,’ Holland said.

TWENTY-SIX

Tides House

They had been told to stay inside, and those whose bedrooms were at the back of the house had seen the helicopter land in the field behind. Simon and Stuart had stared from their window, saying nothing. They had watched the paramedics run across the field into the house and emerge a few minutes later with Kevin Hunter’s body on a stretcher.

Now, an hour later and with the boy believed to be responsible already in police custody, the ten ‘guests’ that still remained in Tides House were trooping into the sitting room, where Ruth was waiting to address them.

There was plenty of chat as they took their seats, plenty of rumour.

A few were saying that Hunter was probably dead already or that he’d been cut up so badly that he was gone well before the helicopter had even got there. Some were whispering about the boy who had done it, a softly spoken lad with a shaved head and dark eyes named Ryan Gough. Simon listened closely, but could not hear anyone talking about why Gough had attacked Kevin Hunter.

One of the screws asked for quiet. Then he asked again, rather more forcefully, until things got as quiet as they were likely to get, and Ruth stood up.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘This isn’t going to be easy.’ She looked pale and tired. She looked like she’d taken a good kicking. ‘Obviously, you know by now that a boy was seriously assaulted today. Kevin Hunter was attacked by another boy in the kitchen, just after breakfast.’

‘Is he dead, miss?’

Simon craned his head, but could not see who had asked the question.