Rick Roe was tall. But his shoulders were broad, so that the first impression you got of him was that he was a man of average build standing some way off. Some might have called him handsome, but Rick did not think of himself as being so. His features were almost classically even, but the mouth had a certain humorous twist which made the statuesque proportions of the face seem gratefully human. The mouth, in fact, was interesting. The regular teeth stood out very white amid his deep tan, while the lips were firm but somehow sensuous, belying the almost ascetic nose. The eyes were blue – like aquamarines nestling among the jeweller’s crumpled chamois leather as he narrowed his gaze against the hard, almost tangible noonday glare. The eyebrows were russet thickets – slightly raised, as if surprised and perhaps a little scandalised to find themselves sitting on top of a pair of aquamarines. The hair was russet, too – cut en brosse, and there were fine russet hairs gleaming along the forearm raised to ward off the hard, almost tangible noonday glare.

He was wearing a faded blue shirt, which looked as if it had been splashed and soaked in salt water a great deal. The shirt was tucked into a pair of whitish canvas trousers, held up by a narrow leather belt. The buckle on the belt was simple – a plain loop of brass of the sort that could be seen fastening the belt that held up the stained trousers of a thousand sunburnt men lounging or strolling on the quays of any Mediterranean port.

But it was the shoes that held the attention. They were cheap espadrilles made of worn blue canvas. The laces had once been white, but were white no more, and the lace in the right shoe was a deeper shade of grey than its fellow in the left. The soles of the shoes were made of coiled rope, and one imagined, without quite knowing why, that they would have black stains of tar on the bottom of them.

Rick could feel the roughness of his fingers against his deeply sunburnt brow as he gazed. His fingers were long – surprisingly long and fine for such a well-built man. The nails were cut square, and shone like the mother-of-pearl Rick saw when he was skin diving off the end of the island.

The fingers grew from strong, well-formed hands, with russet hair on the back of them, and the hands were attached to the muscular arms by broad, sinewy wrists. There were four fingers and a thumb on each hand . . .