‘Well, they should have been back by now. Steve left an hour ago.’ They stopped outside the boathouse. ‘Let’s get some lights on here. Where’s the switch?’

‘In the boathouse.’

I felt Leotta grab my arm and I instinctively put a silencing finger to my lips. With the other hand I raised my pistol.

Someone came into the boathouse and shone a torch around. ‘This might be it.’ There was a metallic snap and light flooded into the boathouse from the quay. The man went outside and said, ‘I don’t like her. She spooks me.’

I twisted round and peered through the crack in the door where the hinges were. The two men were standing out on the quay, which was now brightly lit. One was perhaps in his forties and wore a black beard, the other was younger, another beach boy type. He was saying, ‘Well, she cooked up this job. If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be here.’

‘She still spooks me. I don’t like the way she plays with guns. And where the hell is she?’ There was frustration in his voice.

The younger man walked to the edge of the quay. ‘Hey! The boat’s back.’

The older one joined him. ‘Is that the boat Steve took?’

‘Yeah, I came down with him. We must have missed them coming down from the airfield. They’ll be up there by now.’

‘I guess so,’ said Blackbeard. ‘Let’s get back.’ They turned and walked up the quay towards the boathouse. I thought they were going to come inside again to turn off the lights, but they didn’t. Instead they walked past the boathouse and out of sight, and I wondered if they would call in on their colleague in the telephone exchange. I hoped he was still out of action and out of sight in his electrical cupboard.

I needn’t have worried: the gravel crunched again on the road up to the airstrip. The last I heard was the younger man saying, ‘When’s the plane due?’ I’d have liked to know the answer, but Blackbeard’s voice came only as an indistinguishable murmur.

Leotta’s grip on my arm loosened. ‘Come on,’ I said in a low voice. ‘We’ll be back at the house in fifteen minutes or less.’

I tried to remember if the quay could be seen from the road to the airstrip. Now that it was lit up, anyone moving out there would stand out as though illuminated by a searchlight. And I didn’t dare turn the lights off because I didn’t know if anyone was supposed to be around to do it. I ran the reel of memory again and came to the conclusion that the quay was hidden by the swell of the hillside and could not be seen from the road. It was time to move.