As soon as I reached the top of the steps I could see the car. It was either Frejah Harsent’s roadster or one exactly like it. The black bodywork glittered in the sunlight, shards of reflection shimmering as the engine turned over. The car I had once seen as beautiful and desirable now looked menacing, intrusive, frightening. I did not go down to meet her.

Since our brief meeting on Dearth Island I had often thought about Frejah Harsent, what she had said, the story she told me. I knew she had lied to me, but I still did not know why. Lying is something you inflict on people you know, the ones already around you, or people you intend to cheat or deceive. Why pick out a stranger then feed him a series of untruths?

There were still unexplained details I had not yet untangled. Why, for instance, had she given the name of the murdered man as Waller Alman? The Waller part of the name I understood, perhaps. But Alman? I was now certain the dead man was called Lew Waller Antterland.

That murder had led to another. She had not mentioned the death of Dever Willer Antterland, so presumably she had not been involved with it as a police officer. Or as anything else? But how could she not know about it? He was almost certainly the killer of Lew, the thief who removed Lew’s money. So did she deliberately omit it from the story she told me? If so, why?

Over the past couple of weeks I had spent most of my time concentrating on the novel I was writing, and observing with a sense of combined fascination and dread the falling apart of the financial substructure of my home island. Yet the small mysteries Frejah Harsent created for me had never really gone away.

Because of the elevation of my garden I was above the low-slung car. From where I was standing at the top of the steps I could see down to Frejah, or more exactly her grey-haired head, glimpsed through the upper window of the gull-wing door. She was leaning forward, adjusting something on the dash. Did she know I was there? She gave no sign of it. Was I expected to walk down to the car, expressing my surprise that she had come to my house?

She moved her hands back to the steering wheel. The engine continued to rumble.

Stupidly, I felt immobilized by indecision, but it was not my own indecision. She had arrived unannounced at my house. It would not be a social call. She wanted something of me, something related to those old murders. I could turn around, step back into the covering shade of the trees, return across my lawn, pretend I was unaware of the car and had not seen her. Or I could walk casually down the stone steps, greet her in some way, speak to her, perhaps invite her in.