Malcolm Kerr’s yard was shut up, the big wooden doors padlocked. Vera was about to wander back to his house when she saw him walking past the fisheries towards the harbour, a dark figure dressed in oilskins and boots, recognizable by his stooped back. She hurried to catch him up.

‘I wanted a word.’

He stopped. It seemed he’d been engrossed in his thoughts, because he hadn’t heard her footsteps behind him and she’d startled him. ‘Well, you can’t. I’ve got work to do.’

She looked at his eyes and thought he hadn’t drunk so much the night before and had managed some sleep. He was truculent, but more human. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘Prof. Craggs left some of his equipment in the water off the island. He didn’t want to pick it up the last time we were out because of the weather. I said I’d come and get it the first chance that I had.’ He carried on walking.

The boat was already tied up at the harbour wall and ready to go. Not the Lucy-May that carried the trippers around Coquet Island in the summer, but a small open boat with an outboard at the back. A newer version of the vessel that had carried her and Hector out to the island years before.

Vera looked down at it. It seemed sturdy enough. ‘Room for a small one?’

He stared at her as if she were mad. ‘You want to come out with me?’

‘Why not? You’ll not be long, will you? And like I said, I need a word.’

He chuckled. ‘Taking a bit of a risk, aren’t you? If I’m a murder suspect, I could pitch you out between here and Coquet, and nobody would know. And, whatever I say, you’ve got no corroboration. It’d never stand up in court.’

She looked at him for a moment. Of course he was right and it was a daft thing to do. ‘Ah, I’ll risk it.’

She carefully lowered herself down the metal ladder fixed to the wall and into the boat. Gravity helped. She hoped the tide was on its way in and that the water would be higher when they returned. Then she wouldn’t have so far to climb up. The boat wobbled when she stepped in and she had a moment of panic, imagining herself tumbling into the freezing brown water. Kerr fished a buoyancy jacket from under the back seat and threw it to her and arranged a plastic cushion for her in the middle of the boat. ‘Don’t move. The weight of you, you’ll have us over.’ He tugged on the starting rope and the engine coughed into life.