‘But in the meantime, you need feeding.’

‘I’m really grateful for your help,’ Thorne said. ‘Anything you can spare.’

She walked across to a small door, which Thorne had not noticed until now. She opened it and flicked on a switch. Thorne saw stairs heading down, bare floorboards, a naked light bulb. ‘This food? Is it for you and the other officers, or is it for everyone?’ She glanced at her husband then looked back to Thorne. ‘For the men in handcuffs?’

Patrick dried his hands on the tea-towel and draped it across the handle of the range. ‘Come on, Caz, what do you think?’

‘We’re not allowed to starve them, I’m afraid,’ Thorne said. ‘Maybe they can just have leftovers.’

Caroline nodded, showing no appreciation at all of Thorne’s attempt at levity, then stooped quickly and disappeared down the stairs.

Patrick picked up a wine bottle and two glasses and joined Thorne at the table. He offered one of the glasses to Thorne.

‘I’d better not,’ Thorne said.

‘It’s good,’ Patrick said. He poured one for himself. ‘Home-made, but it does the trick. If you’re lucky, Caroline might bring you a bottle or two up from the cellar with the rest of the stuff.’

‘Great,’ Thorne said. ‘I’ll have some later then.’

‘Iechyd da, as they say in these parts.’ Patrick held out his glass and Thorne touched his empty coffee cup to it. The farmer glanced towards the cellar. ‘She’s been a bit jumpy ever since you lot arrived,’ he said. ‘It’s all about Freya, you know?’ He was English, like his wife. He had a high, light voice, a trace of a Northern accent. ‘I mean, it’s one of the reasons we took this place on, because we thought it would be different from life back there. No need to worry about… certain things. A good place for her to grow up, you know?’

‘And is it?’

‘Oh yeah. It’s great for me and Caz too, don’t get me wrong. The spiritual side of it. Oh yeah, we get a lot out of that.’ He nodded, swirled the wine around in his glass. ‘It’s bloody hard work mind you, but honestly, we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’ He downed his wine and poured himself another. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had much chance to look around.’

‘A bit,’ Thorne said. ‘I went over to the lighthouse. Saw the seals.’ Saying it, Thorne realised that he’d actually covered a good deal of the island in the last two days, even if most of the time had been spent in the distinctly un-spiritual pursuit of long-dead murder victims. ‘Yeah, seen a fair bit.’

‘You wait,’ Patrick said. ‘Now you’re spending the night, you’ll get a look at the most incredible sky you’ve ever seen. Well, you will if this bloody rain eases off. We’ve got special “dark sky” status, did you know that?’ Thorne said that he didn’t. ‘Because there’s no light pollution. Well, no pollution of any sort, come to that.’

‘Right.’

‘It’s a one-off, this place.’

Thorne said nothing. He wondered how much longer Caroline was going to be in the cellar. He could hear her moving around beneath them.

Patrick must have caught Thorne glancing at the cellar door. He said, ‘We keep all the dried goods down there. Rice, pasta, what have you. Loads and loads of tinned stuff. Fuel for the generator.’ He held up the bottle. ‘Plenty of this too, like I said. I tell you what, if there’s ever a nuclear attack or the world gets overrun by zombies, we’re quids in.’

‘How often do you get back to the mainland?’

‘I haven’t been back for six months,’ Patrick said. ‘Caroline goes over every couple of weeks, does a bit of shopping or whatever if she’s feeling a bit low. Buys herself some clothes. A treat, you know? Obviously, once Freya’s going to school she’ll be going across every day.’

‘You think you’ll still be here then?’

‘God, I hope so.’ Patrick leaned across the table. ‘Not sure I’d be able to cope in a city now.’ He drank half a glass, thought for a few moments. ‘Whoever you are, whatever problems you might have had before, somewhere like this forces you to make peace with yourself. Do you know what I mean?’

Thorne hadn’t got a clue, but nodded anyway.

‘Not that it worked for your friend in the handcuffs. The one who was here when he was a boy, I mean. I suppose some people are just more attuned to that side of things than others.’ Patrick nodded, seemingly pleased with his own insight. ‘The spiritual side.’

‘He’s definitely not one of them,’ Thorne said.

‘Come on then, how dangerous is he?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, it’s pretty clear he’s not a fraudster, anything like that.’ Patrick tapped a fingernail against his glass. ‘What do they call them, white-collar criminals? I mean, like Caz said, you’re not down there digging for gold coins, are you?’

Thorne wasn’t sure why the farmer was asking, when he had already seen similar enquiries from his wife go unanswered. Perhaps he thought that, man to man, with a bottle of wine on the table, he might be more successful than she had been. Or that information which Thorne might consider too frightening for her ears might be suitable for his. Whatever, his reasons for wanting to know seemed anything but voyeuristic. There was none of the excitement Thorne had heard in the voices of those lads in the Black Horse; that desire for a cheap thrill that Nicklin had accused Burnham of harbouring.

All Thorne saw and heard was sadness. Resignation…

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

Patrick raised his hands. ‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.’

‘It’s understandable,’ Thorne said. ‘I’d want to know, if I was sitting where you are.’ He watched the man reach for the wine bottle and tried to imagine exactly that. He asked himself how he would cope if he were doing what Patrick Black did.

He doubted seriously that he would last a week.

The work was clearly strenuous and the hours ridiculous, but he told himself that he could handle that. The spartan nature of the domestic arrangements was unpleasant, but he thought that he would probably get used to them.

The problem would be his own company.

He looked across the table and wondered just how well the man sitting opposite got on with himself, day in, day out. Why, however attuned he was to all things spiritual, he was drinking a third glass of wine in less than ten minutes.

Thorne stood up when he saw Caroline Black emerge from the cellar with a couple of what looked like well-stocked plastic bags.

‘This is going to have to do,’ she said.

Thorne took one of the bags from her, very happy to hear bottles clinking inside. ‘This is great, thank you.’

‘Should be enough to get you through the night.’ She passed the second bag across. ‘And breakfast in the morning.’

‘It’s really kind of you.’

‘We help each other out on Bardsey,’ Patrick said. His voice was a touch deeper now, a little less precise.

Thorne said, ‘Right,’ and turned towards the kitchen door. ‘Listen, it was really nice to meet you.’

Caroline Black was standing at her husband’s shoulder. She said, ‘Just a shame about the circumstances, that’s all. I hope you understand when I say we’ll be glad to see the back of you.’

Somewhere upstairs, Thorne heard the dog bark, the little girl telling it to be quiet. A childish impression of the tone she had clearly heard her mother use.

‘I understand,’ he said.

Stopping at the door, he noticed an old tobacco tin on the dresser and wondered whether one or both of them smoked. He suddenly had a clear image of the two of them sitting outside on a warm evening, enjoying their front garden and sharing a fat joint as the sun began to sink. Waiting for the stars to begin peppering that vast, amazing sky and watching their daughter chase the dog across the fields.

‘His name’s Stuart Nicklin,’ he said.

Patrick Black clearly recognised the name. He said, ‘Ah…’

Thorne watched the farmer reach for his wife’s hand. ‘And I’m truly sorry I brought him here.’