The bay was not. The others who stood with him were soaked, or would have been had the island police not known to wear full-scale rain gear. Macalvie had brought nothing with him from the mainland of Cornwall except Gilly Thwaite, his scene-of-crime officer, and Detective Sergeant Cody Platt. Gilly stood there shivering despite the cape one of the Scilly policemen had settled around her shoulders. Shivering and cursing under her breath at her superior for being one of those who likes to take his time.

It had taken Macalvie and his team less than an hour from the time he’d dropped the phone back into its cradle in Exeter to the moment the light plane landed on St. Mary’s, one of the Isles of Scilly, twenty-six miles from Land’s End. There was no airport on Bryher, the smallest of the populated islands, so from St. Mary’s they had taken the short boat ride with Detective Chief Inspector Whitten.

All in all, Gilly was thinking, a fairly good clip. It was not that Macalvie couldn’t move quickly—he could move like lightning—it was that when it came to viewing the dead, he took his time. God, but did he ever take his time. He might as well have been frozen in it, and here was a good place for being frozen. His request to DCI Whitten (the one who’d rung him up) was that nothing be moved, nothing be messed with.

I’ll tell the sea, Commander, not to move anything.

Brian Macalvie had been looking at the body for fifteen minutes.

“There are just too many variables, guv,” said Gilly. The “guv” was anything but obsequious. It was bad-tempered is what it was.

He had finally kneeled down to study the face more closely, but without brushing aside the dead woman’s seaweed-laden hair.

“I mean,” Gilly went fearlessly on, “your crime scene has been compromised again and again by the waves and wind.” As if to underscore this point, a wave crashed against the outcropping of rocky promontory. Then another. It was like thunder breaking at their feet.

Macalvie looked at her over his shoulder and she shut up.

The island police had already taken photos. Gilly knew her boss hated even the camera’s poking about over the scene, as if its seemingly random flashes were witchy, pulling from the dark things which would have been better left there. It was as if the camera were leaching soul from substance, as in the old superstition that a picture captured the spirit and held it.

At his side, DCI Whitten said, “Perhaps whoever did this did it and left—went back to the mainland. Maybe he shared the belief of those ancient people who buried their enemies on islands because that way they couldn’t come back and make trouble.