Ava prepared the coffee in a silence which didn’t end when she joined her at the table. Whatever she’d wanted to say to Rhona in person, she was finding it difficult to do so, now she was here.

Eventually she blurted it out. ‘You were on the Orlova today looking for evidence of the girl Rory was talking about.’ It was less of a question than a statement.

Rhona gave a brief nod.

‘Did you find it?’

Rhona saw no reason to lie. After all, Erling would no doubt be relaying the news to the island, asking for folk to look out for a possible survivor from the Orlova.

‘I can’t discuss what I found, but yes, I believe someone has been hiding there. Probably female.’

There was a long pause, while it appeared Ava was fighting herself as to how she might respond. Eventually it arrived.

‘She’s here,’ Ava said. ‘Dougie brought her from the ship.’ The words finally out, she was waiting on Rhona’s response.

Rhona hadn’t wanted to examine the dog’s blanket, but sitting so close to it, she’d already registered the white hairs against the blue of the tartan, which had made her suspect that the dog and Dougie may have been on the Orlova. To hear he’d brought the girl ashore was both surprising and wonderful news.

Before she could say this, Ava rushed on. ‘Dougie told Nadia she would be safe here with me. That I was investigating Go Wild, and I would tell her story, but no one could know she was here.’

Rhona now understood what last night’s behaviour had been all about. Ava’s reaction to their discussion at the dinner table and her wariness of Rhona being on Orkney again.

She knew I would examine that room in the ship. She knew a forensic search might reveal that Dougie and the dog had been there.

‘You need to tell Erling about this,’ Rhona said. ‘She’s a witness in a murder investigation and has knowledge of Go Wild.’ She avoided the words ‘possible suspect’ although conscious of that possibility too.

‘She begged me not to, not until I release her story. She says the company has connections everywhere. They’ll find her and kill her. She’s convinced they’re already on Orkney. It was never imagined the Orlova would come ashore anywhere. It was just another ghost ship floating about in the Atlantic. What happened aboard would never have been discovered, and if it was, it would be years from now, when the bodies were nothing but skeletons.’

What Ava said was more than likely true. The Orlova, like many of the ghost ships littering the world’s oceans, was a curiosity, nothing more. Until it had come ashore at Yesnaby.

‘Nadia would be placed in protective custody,’ Rhona said.