“I told the police. Connor won’t go near the police now, for obvious reasons. John Morrogh’s done his fair share of ill-advised socializing. He knew Rory. I don’t know what else he knows, but I imagine a scapegoat would always come in handy. I told him all this and he said he’d look into it, but has he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me neither.”

Thomas squatted to peer into the pond, moving the water with his fingers. Kane thought of the sheer sides of the island, the hungry sea, the hungry rats. In the diary found on Ascension Island, the abandoned mariner had recorded his nightly fear that the rats would eat him as he slept. They’d colonized the place. It was one explanation as to why his own skeleton was never found.

“I heard something else at the café,” Kane said. “Apparently there was another girl who might know what happened: Lauren something.”

Thomas straightened.

“Who said that?”

“The woman who runs the place. She said this girl knows something. She’s been too scared to talk until now. Apparently, she was very close to Petra.”

“Lauren’s close to Connor as well. What did they say she knew?”

“I don’t know. But she’d been scared and now she might go above the police, straight to other authorities—straight to the UK.”

This was clearly news to Thomas. He nodded, looking almost hopeful.

“Well, that would be something. Did she see it?”

“Maybe. She’s just been too terrified to talk.”

“I bet.” Thomas shook his head. “Then I really hope she’s okay. Because whatever Lauren knows, it’s not that my son is a murderer. Which puts her in a very vulnerable situation. She needs a guard. Shit.”

Thomas stared anxiously back at the water. Kane imagined they were thinking the same thing: They weren’t in a position to guard Lauren Carter. Kane wondered who she would try to speak to, who it was safe to speak to.

It had got late. The setting sun pierced the bamboo and ignited the spaces between the lilies. Thomas circled the pond distractedly.

“No frogs today. You watch the ecosystem here like it could fall apart at any minute.”

The sunset crept up on them as they made their way back, first as a general thickening of light, and then the bamboo thinned out and there was a view down a thousand feet across the lava plains. Both of them stopped.

The sun was dissolving into the Atlantic, becoming blood red as they stared. Kane had never seen a sun so red. But equally breathtaking was the effect it had on the landscape. Volcanic mounds caught fire and the ground revealed itself as pink, purple, and blue.

“It drops so fast here,” Thomas said.