‘What is this?’ Sholto asked in a low voice, the words like ashes in his mouth.

‘This is the crime scene – how and where the victim was found, sir. It was a vicious attack.’

‘Attack?’ The word – more of a cry – escaped her like a bullet. ‘You mean he was killed?’ Her breath came heavily, her body feeling leaden.

‘You sound surprised, Miss Gillies.’

‘I thought he . . . died. That he got left behind and he died of hunger, or thirst. Or exposure. Not . . .’ She stared again at the fingertips in the edge of the photograph.

The policeman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Miss Gillies, Mr Mathieson was murdered. There was nothing accidental about his death.’

Murdered? The word swam in her head.

‘Do you feel faint?’ Sholto asked her, seeing how she paled. ‘This is a terrible shock for her, Sergeant,’ he said to the policeman. ‘Effie, do you need to sit down?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ she murmured. She began shaking her head, slowly at first. ‘No. No. I know every person in that village and none of them – not a single one – is capable of murder. They wouldn’t have it in them to do that.’

There was a pause.

‘Except one of them clearly did, Miss Gillies. Which is why it’s important you tell me whether you recognize anything in the picture.’ He stepped forward and tapped a finger on the knife. ‘. . . How about that?’ he asked. ‘Have you seen that before?’

‘It’s just a fishing knife,’ she murmured, her mind racing. None of this made sense. She stared at the rope. Had he managed to get himself free? Cut himself loose? But how? He had been unconscious when she left him ‘. . . There must have been a thousand fishing knives on the isle.’

‘What about the bottle?’

She shook her head. It had been empty, not broken, when she’d seen it last. ‘We have no alcohol on the island. The minister was always very strict about that.’

‘There were a lot of visitors to the isle that last week. Perhaps one of them brought it?’

She swallowed. ‘Maybe. I wouldn’t know.’ The lies came, one after another. Would the captain be interviewed too? He wasn’t an islander, merely an occasional visitor. He hadn’t been over in the last month before the evacuation. Why should they even think of him? He would be forgotten, surely, his role in bringing over a murder weapon sinking into the obscurity of history?

‘Well, what about this, then?’

She looked down, anticipating his finger on the loop of cut rope – but he had tapped on something small, almost indistinct in the picture. The angle was strange, so she hadn’t noticed it at first. She brought the photograph closer to her face, feeling herself grow weak as the shape presented itself.

‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked, watching her closely.