They stood back to admire their handiwork. There was no doubt about it, the thing was huge. It had changed the face of Mure forever; you’d have to saw it apart to take it down.

“Oh my God,” said Innes.

“Marsali does know it’s four meters high?” said Konstantin, finally feeling a bit worried, though of course it was far too late.

“No,” said Joel. “Because you wouldn’t tell me what was happening.”

“Yes, but did you tell her today?”

“I told her it was four . . .” Joel let his voice trail off.

“I’m not sure,” observed Innes finally, “that she ever got metric.”

There was a pause.

“You mean she thinks it’s four feet ?” Konstantin hooted.

“That,” said Innes slowly, “is a distinct possibility.”

They all looked at the concrete, now rapidly hardening.

“Oh, come on,” said Konstantin finally, mischief creasing his features. “Let’s just set it up.”

Chapter 44

B loody hell” is rarely something you want to hear your pilot say. Fortunately it was rather muffled, even in the tiny space of the minuscule prop plane that acted as a rural bus between the far northern islands, with its eight seats and rather rudimentary noise insulation.

Saif didn’t need to hear it, partly because he’d been entirely sunken in a misery so deep and vast the black endless sea and sky outside did nothing but mirror his mood.

In fact, before he realized what had just been said and snapped to attention, a tiny bit of him considered that if the pilot was saying the plane was about to plunge into the sea, well, that wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing in the world, it would at least bring an end to the maelstrom of thoughts tearing up his head, which was an idea so horrifying and upsetting he banished it from his mind immediately, astounded.

But he had thought it nonetheless.

He wrenched his mind away from everything, all the dark thoughts swirling there, and blinked several times.

They were descending, so they were nearly at the tiny airstrip in Mure, manned by a husband-and-wife team who also ran the post office, so there was absolutely nothing they didn’t know about every single soul on the island.

Normally from the left-hand set of portholes you saw exactly what you’d expect to see: a tiny mound, like an extended comma in shape, with lighthouses dotted all round it to protect passing shipping and lights clustered on the whole of the southeast corner, where the village was, tiny pinpricks of warmth in a vast dark ocean; homey, and comforting, and somehow a tiny bit awe-inspiring, the way human beings could thrive and prosper so far away on such a tiny spot of land, so far out at sea.

But tonight it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all. Just behind the main streets, on the hill that led to the school was . . . Well, what the hell was that?

Saif and the other travelers—a bird-watching couple from Nova Scotia who had excitedly tried to engage him in Gaelic and a young, smartly dressed woman on her own—all peered out the left-hand side until the copilot came back and told them to balance up the plane and stop craning on one side.