Haslam shook his head. ‘She used to live here at El Cerco but she’s now working with Mr Idle in San Martin.’

I thought of the rambling house on the island in the lagoon. ‘Does Mrs Salton now live entirely alone in the house? I mean, apart from servants.’

Haslam looked at me consideringly for a moment, then said briefly, ‘I wouldn’t know.’

We’d been walking for several minutes and it suddenly struck me that this was an indecently large airstrip to accommodate a relatively small plane. I asked Haslam about it.

‘I thought the same thing when I first came here. What you have to remember is that it wasn’t built by Mr Salton. The strip predates that lagoon house by many years.’

That surprised me. The northern tip of the island was remote by any standards, and it seemed unlikely that anyone would put a random airstrip – especially one as big as this – so far away from the island’s residential centres.

‘It was actually built by you Brits in the war,’ said Haslam. ‘Transport station for most of the Caribbean. The Yanks had squadrons here too. After they all shipped out, it was used occasionally for local traffic. But then Mr Salton bought it up when he moved back to the island. Now it’s just his plane that flies out of here.’

‘How long is the runway?’

‘Pretty long. Six thousand and two feet, if you want to be exact. They could run commercial flights from here just as easily as from Benning, if ever they decided to develop this end of the island. But I guess with Mr Salton gone, that’s not going to happen any time soon.’

I smiled wryly. ‘Oh, I’m not sure about that. I know a man in London who’s very interested in keeping Mr Salton’s investment plans alive.’

We turned the corner of the hangar and I saw the aircraft: a Lear executive jet, about half a million dollars’ worth of luxurious machinery. Its purpose was to transport a busy man about his empire. But the man was dead and his wife apparently not air-minded. No wonder Haslam looked worried: it was odds-on that Mrs Salton would cash in this white elephant and divert the proceeds to something more useful.

He introduced me to Philips, a short, stocky man with a London accent – not Cockney, but unmistakeably metropolitan. We exchanged brief greetings and then Philips engaged Haslam in a technical conversation. I stood looking at the plane for a while, then butted in. ‘Do you mind if I go aboard?’

‘That’s okay,’ said Haslam. ‘Just don’t smoke while we’re on the ground.’