The door was unlocked. Inside, Kane was surprised to find the hut still crowded with possessions. The police had opened all the drawers and storage, rolled up a rug, and pulled the furniture around. There wasn’t much else to search. The bathroom still contained Rory’s toothbrush and toothpaste; there was tinned food in the cupboard. Bedding had been removed, but not a half drunk bottle of red wine on the bedside table. Kane checked the obvious hiding places: behind the air vent, then the cistern. The bottoms of the drawers were real. He upturned chairs and checked the underpanels of the seats. He had a quick look for any bugs or surveillance devices, but it felt absurd. There wasn’t even a plug socket.

Kane sat on the front steps, gazing out to sea, and imagined Rory doing the same. You would feel like a true castaway. One of the self-sufficient ones, perhaps. You had met all your human needs. Except one. And in the silence and the heat it becomes all-consuming.

Rape the girl, kill her, kill yourself. It was plausible. According to Kane’s notes, Rory’s body had been discovered by a runway engineer, Gordon McNamara, in the morning of Sunday November 8, at approximately 0600 hours. McNamara was a keen scuba diver and had been hoping to fit in a dive before work, hence arriving at the remote English Bay at six am. He said he saw the body hanging from the antenna as soon as he got there—it was visible from the road down to the beach. The runway engineer had left his car to check what he was seeing, then rapidly returned and drove back to Georgetown to summon help. He made no attempt to cut down the body by himself: McNamara said he knew Rory had been dead for a while, as birds had begun pecking at him. Sergeant Morrogh and five other residents cut Rory down an hour later using a handsaw. The line Rory had used in place of rope was old electrical cable from the BBC store. They made no attempt at resuscitation. His body was taken to the hospital, where Dr. Derek Nulty pronounced him dead. By this stage the Administrator had been informed and had alerted authorities on Saint Helena and in the UK.