“Fish cakes are the specialty.” The woman spoke politely but not warmly. Kane ordered fish cakes and an iced coffee, took a seat far enough from the bar to let the women continue talking, close enough to hear them. A message came in to his phone as he waited, via its satellite function: the code that meant Taylor had uploaded information. Kane logged in and saw Taylor’s messages. He read through the details of the second pathology report and Taylor’s terse conclusion: I don’t think Rory killed himself. That lent a sharpened edge to the day. More puzzling was her subsequent message. Kane skimmed through it quickly. Rory had been interested in someone called Jack Moretti, a man who had hung himself in similarly mysterious circumstances a decade ago. Kane stared at Taylor’s notes, trying to figure out what he was meant to do with this information. Part of him wondered at Taylor’s state of mind, and what the implications were for himself if she was losing the plot. His instinctive response was that this wasn’t the input he needed from HQ.

Let me know if you come across any reference or connection to Moretti.

That was profoundly vague tasking. He closed the message down as the manager came over. She looked at him again as she set the coffee down.

“New here?”

“Yes. Flew in yesterday. I’m Edward. Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you, Edward,” she said, without conviction or an introduction of her own.

The coffee was good. He’d read that Saint Helena produced some of the most expensive coffee in the world, and wondered if he was sampling it. The fish cakes were spicy and fresh. Kane was thinking of spending the last of the afternoon assessing the state of play, avoiding heat exhaustion and maybe reading a bit more history on the pretext of living his cover. The woman fanning herself at the bar didn’t take her eyes off him. Eventually, under the pressure of her stare, he looked up and nodded.

“It was you, last night,” she said.

“Me?”

“In the fight.”

“In Georgetown, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I tried to help some kid who was getting beaten up. I wouldn’t call it a fight. I’d only been on the island about an hour. What was it about?”

“That boy’s no good. That’s all you need to know. I’m not saying it was okay what the men did, but you should know: That boy’s not a victim.”

“Really? What’s he done?”

The women exchanged glances.

“Heard of Petra Wade?” the manager said.

“I saw the posters at Georgetown.”

“Well, maybe that tells you.”

Kane frowned.

“You think that boy . . . ?”

Silence fell. Finally the woman in shades said: “Everyone who’s been on this island for more than a week knows it was him.” She turned back to her drink.

“Why hasn’t he been arrested?”