He hesitated. There was evidently more to come.

‘But there’s another angle. The bankers and the big corporations have also got it made here, and they don’t like gambling and the associations that go with it. They don’t want the off-shore trust funds confused with the spin of a roulette wheel. That’s bad for business.’

‘I can see their point.’

‘So they made sure they had their own man – Conyers. He was their boy, and he had his instructions: get the election out of the way and then crack down on the gambling. Mr Black had to pick an opposition leader and he picked Salton.’

‘Salton? But he’d only been back on the island five minutes.’

Jackson shrugged. ‘You can make a lot of noise in five minutes, Mr Ogilvie. Especially with someone like that behind you.’

‘So the cheap housing was just an expensive red herring.’

‘Make no mistake about it: if Salton had lived he’d almost certainly have been the next Prime Minister.’ Jackson waved airily at the file. ‘But all that flapdoodle in his speeches was for the suckers. You can bet that as soon as he got into power those house rents would have been raised pretty swiftly.’

He was on a roll so I kept up the masquerade. ‘I’ve been reading the account of the inquest. Do you believe Salton died of natural causes?’

Jackson sat down opposite me at the table and leaned back: he looked like he was settling in for the duration. ‘Winstanley is a doddering old fool at the best of times but even if he was the best pathologist in the world I doubt he could have made much of what was left of Salton.’ He grimaced. ‘I saw the body when he was brought in.’

‘He’d been out there for days, hadn’t he? Wasn’t anyone looking for him? Didn’t Mrs Salton raise the alarm?’

‘Which of those questions would you like me to answer?’ said Jackson. There was more than a hint of condescension in his voice. ‘No. The first anyone knew about it was when the body was found.’ He stared at me. ‘Don’t you find that strange?’

‘She must have had an explanation that was acceptable to the police.’

‘The police?’ Jackson snorted. ‘They’re in Conyers’s pocket, from Commissioner Barstow down to the last man on the beat.’

‘That’s an interesting take, Mr Jackson. In fact, you’ve raised a lot of interesting points.’

‘Glad to be of help, Mr Ogilvie,’ he said genially. ‘You’ll be visiting Mrs Salton?’

‘Probably tomorrow.’

‘You’d better telephone first,’ he advised. ‘No one gets to El Cerco without an invitation.’

‘Have you got a telephone directory?’

He grinned. ‘You won’t find the number in there. It’s unlisted.’ He picked up my notebook and scribbled in it. ‘That’ll find her.’