“That is strange all right.” Although now that I thought about it, I remembered seeing a death notice for a man I knew. Though his marriage had broken up long before, his wife was mentioned while his new partner wasn’t. “But that’s not the case here,” I said. “Bob and his wife were still together.”

Phyllis shrugged. “I know.” Fred returned with the stick and she threw it again, gazing after him as he rocketed towards the shoreline.

“What’s that?” she asked suddenly.

I looked. There was something lying on the sand, close to the water, a box of some description. It looked as if it had washed up with the tide.

“Why do people drop litter in such a beautiful place?” Phyllis sighed. “Let’s take it away.”

We walked towards it. It was a big plastic storage box with a blue lid, of the kind you’d get in Tesco to store books or toys. It was lying on its side. When we reached it, Phyllis clamped her hands onto her knees and peered down. “There’s a blanket in it.”

I looked. She was right.

She frowned. “That’s strange.”

“What?’

She pointed. “Look, there are lots of little holes in the lid. They’ve been made with a screwdriver or something, they’re like breathing holes …” She trailed off and looked up at me, her eyes wide.

And with that, Maeve’s words echoed in my ears: simple enough really, a large box with a blanket or lukewarm hot water bottle and breathing holes would do it.

It was a relief to park in front of my cottage in Malin. I’d been back so briefly that the past twenty-four hours away had seemed way longer than they should have done.

Phyllis and I had driven back into Glendara with the plastic box in the boot. It was a tight squeeze, but I wanted to keep it away from a dishevelled and sand-covered Fred. My mind was racing – was this what the snake had been transported in? Had the man I thought was Lissa’s husband tried to dispose of it by chucking it into the sea? Lissa had said that her husband was a lorry driver: Chris could get hold of anything.

At the station, McFadden had taken the box with little comment. I expected nothing very much would surprise him after this weekend. I told him about the man we’d seen before we found the box and he said he’d ask Molloy to give me a call. I also told him what Mary had told me about the airline tickets.

Charlie came to his door with Guinness in his arms, looking mightily relieved to hand him back. Like most cats Guinness doesn’t like the wet, but he’s also a tom, so being confined to barracks with a corgi he regarded as an inferior might not have suited him as much as I’d thought.