He read again to the end of the report.

“Did you know that Tom French has a conviction for possession of cannabis?”

Rob answered with absolute certainty.

“That’s impossible. I told you. He was frightened of dope.”

“He appeared in court in October two years ago and received a three-year probation order. His probation officer is J. Kenning. Perhaps we’ve found the mysterious Jenny.”

There was no phosphorescence on the sea now. The sky and the water were separate shades of grey. George brought a flask of coffee and half a bottle of scotch from his bag, and they drank to Tom, and to the greenish warbler they were about to see. Tina woke without fuss and dressed without modesty. When they left the cottage and went out into the cold morning, Molly was still sleeping.

They found the greenish warbler after a painstaking search of all the cover in the valley. The golden orioles had gone. George had a systematic approach to bird watching, and Rob wandered on alone, impatient. George looked in every bush, checked the source of every moving twig or leaf. He was meticulous and wanted to savour the place. Tina followed Rob. She carried mist-net poles on her shoulder like a spear, and could have been some exotic tribesman tracking prey. George did not know if she were hunting Rob or the bird. When Rob found the bird it was so close that he could have reached out a hand to touch it.

Near the head of the valley, at the end of a lane from the village, was a tiny graveyard which must have served Trekewick and the nearby area. A high stone wall surrounded it. The wall was rough and crumbling. Rob found a foothold, lifted himself up and looked over. The bird was about four feet away in a sycamore tree. His movement disturbed it and it flew into a gorse bush. Tina had seen it in flight, but George had to wait a frustrating twenty minutes for the bird to come out of the undergrowth before he saw it well.

Tina had to catch it; it would be a ringing tick. Without explanation or asking for help, she put a single shelf net between the gorse bush and a headstone. They followed her instructions and crouched behind the wall. The bird was trapped quite quickly and she extracted it deftly from the tangle of the nylon mesh. She ringed it before letting them see it in the hand. She had very long hands, knotted and muscular like a piano player’s. She let the bird go gently and reluctantly. Throughout this process she lectured on wing length and wing formula, weight and bill size. She spoke intensely, checking occasionally that they were concentrating. When the bird had been released she folded the net, took down the poles and walked off. They watched her go. Her stealthy, sure-footed tread made no noise.

George expected some comment from Rob about her, some explanation of her presence, but there was none, and he turned again to look at the warbler, which had not been frightened away by its ordeal.