When the boat was tethered, I went up on to the quay on my belly. A light shone from a building on the other side of the boathouse, where the estate office was, but that was all there was to be seen. Leotta handed up the spear gun and the spears, and I helped her ashore. I put my lips to her ear. ‘Stick close to me,’ I said. ‘We go all the way around and avoid open spaces.’

So we went quietly, trying to behave as much like ghosts as possible, and gradually we approached the window with light streaming from it. I flattened myself against a wall and edged closer to look inside the room. The first thing I saw was a switchboard, which made me more cheerful than I’d been in hours. The second thing was something that cut my cheerfulness off at the roots: a hand coming into view to pick up a cup of what could have been coffee.

I drew back my head, counted to ten, took a deep breath and looked again. The man was sitting at the switchboard sipping from the cup and reading a comic book. He must have given up trying to telephone the house. Maybe he thought Mrs Haslam was too busy showing off her sharpshooting skills to answer the phone – there had been plenty of shots fired, after all. As he put the cup down again and flipped a page, I glanced around the room and noted thankfully that he had his back to the door.

Again I withdrew, flapped my hand at Leotta, and ducked down to pass under the window and towards the door of the office. Gently I turned the handle and applied a slight pressure. It would be unreasonable to expect that the man had locked himself in, and I was glad to find that, in spite of the comic book evidence to the contrary, he was indeed a reasonable man. The door was open.

We slipped into a darkened hallway. A light shone under a door. I strung the spear gun, put in a spear, took a pistol from my pocket and whispered, ‘Open that door when I tell you. Quietly.’

We crept up to the door and I waited until Leotta had her hand on the door knob. ‘Now!’

Light flooded into the hall as the door swung open. The man had his back to me, teetering on two legs of the chair as he relished the adventures of Bugs Bunny. I stepped inside the room and said, ‘Take it easy.’