Kane walked back to his car, pondering his next move and how to translate this situation into a report for Kathryn Taylor. She would be relieved to have an alternative suspect. He could imagine her leaving the mystery of Rory’s fate intact. Just before he got to the road, he saw Thomas sitting alone in a patch of shade cast by a crossroad signpost, with his box of leaflets beside him. He stared at nothing, wearing a look of emotional exhaustion. Kane stopped. For a moment he couldn’t help watching him. Was that a man whose son had killed someone? Would you feel the crime was in some way your own, that you had brought a killer into existence? At the same time, Kane knew this was his opening. On any mission you sifted the lives around you, feeling for the weak, the vulnerable, those who would give you a way in. Thomas’s nightmare was his window onto the island; the man’s outsider status, his fear and resentment and desperation, made him perfect for cultivation as a source. He was already in Kane’s debt, trusted him implicitly.

“Hey.”

Thomas looked up.

“Hey.” Then the look of concern returned. “I wouldn’t hang around with me. Not here.”

“Why?”

“They not tell you in the store?”

“Not in the store. I heard some stuff in the café. Sounded like a lot of rumors and not much sense. Is that what last night was about?”

“That’s what I’m assuming.”

“What’s going on?”

“A hell of a lot more than some people realize.”

An engine growled into earshot. Ahead of them, on the road leading away from the village, a van stopped suddenly. It looked like it had been used for refuse collection at one point, with a caged tipper back, but now said Extermination across the front doors. Kane smelled rotting fish, then saw the traps in the back of the vehicle.

“Stay still,” Thomas said. “They won’t see us.”

Four men got out, one carrying a bolt action shotgun. They wore the red polo shirts Kane had seen on the attackers last night. He recognized the two men. The gun was mounted with telescopic sight. They all moved to inspect something at the side of the road, their shadows long on the ground, crouching to a patch of sand arranged around an upturned bucket. So these were the cat hunters. One man produced a glass bottle and found a syringe. Another, in thick red gloves, reached into the sack of raw fish. They injected poison into the fish, then placed the fish on top of the bucket. Then they drove on.

“There you go,” Thomas said. “But who’s going to kill the rats when the cats are gone?” He spat into the dust.

“Where can we talk?” Kane said.

“Not here. Let’s get out of the village.”

“Where?”

“Have you seen Green Mountain?” Thomas asked.

“Only from beneath.”