‘A bad case of concussion.’ Sophie was succinct. ‘His skull might be fractured. They’ll do a scan and take it from there. What happened, Till? I’ve been going out of my mind with worry about the pair of you.’

‘I’m sorry, Soph. Come into the tent and I’ll tell you. And you, Thomas, seeing as you’ve been dragged into this too.’ She and Sophie sat on Connor’s stretcher in the glow of the pressure lamp that, already lit, filled the space with a warm glow, while the professor folded himself neatly onto his haunches against the canvas wall. ‘Sophie’s probably already told you,’ she began, ‘that Luke and I were intending to catch a bat for you, so you’d have a live specimen to study. He is quite certain, you see, that they’re different to all the ones he knows. Only when we arrived, we saw light in the cave and Luke rushed in thinking it was someone mucking up, before I could tell him. He didn’t know, and I feel bad about that, too. He—’

‘Sorry, what didn’t he know?’ Leary interjected.

‘That the cave was being used by wildlife traffickers. We discovered it a little while ago and I told Sophie but not the others . . . Anyway, it was full of cages – birds and maybe reptiles – and oh, Sophie, they’re still caged in the back of the Land Rover, but Connor says they’re evidence and we can’t let them go yet.’

‘Yes, well, never mind that now. Luke rushed in and—’

‘I was going after him and I heard this yell. When I went in, he was slumped down beside the cages bleeding and holding his head, and then he sort of keeled over and just lay there.’ She told them the rest, her voice trembling when it came to Gerry’s death and how Matt had almost killed her.

Sophie put her arm around her in response. ‘That bastard!’ she muttered. ‘Years he’s worked here and he could still do that to Luke? He might’ve killed him. So Gerry was mixed up in it, just as you thought?’

‘And worse,’ Tilly said. ‘Drugs and people smuggling too, only that seems to have failed because the boat sank and they all drowned.’ She ground her teeth. ‘Matt said they’d paid upfront and the country didn’t need any more damn Muslims anyway. I broke his kneecap while he was trying to kill me,’ she added matter-of-factly.

‘Go, girl!’ A wide grin split Sophie’s face. ‘Elaine would be proud of you. I’m proud of you. So where is he now? He didn’t get away?’