‘I asked them if they could be any more specific,’ he said. ‘So, they showed me a photo of a man they were, quote, seeking information about. Pulled from some guy’s driver’s licence by the look of it.’

‘Did you recognise him?’

Biller hiked up his dusty jeans and stood with his hands on his hips. ‘He was in here a few days ago.’

‘What? When? Did you serve him?

Biller nodded, smugly. ‘There was nothing all that strange about him from what I could see. Looked pretty straight, and it wasn’t like he was paranoid and checking if he was being followed or anything. If he was caught up in something dodgy he certainly didn’t act like it, and that’s what I told the cops.’

‘That’s so creepy, that he was in here,’ Abby said. ‘What do you think happened?’

‘This many cops on the island, it has to be murder, right? So my guess is the guy in the photo is either dead, or the one who did the killing.’ He looked at her with small, sinister eyes. ‘What have you heard?’

She filled him in on what Caddy Larson had told her, and Paul and Liz Ryan, and Chris De Luca’s police scanner. Then she told him about the crime scene at the boat ramps, saving the best for last. Biller listened to all of it with a wild, buzzing expression, peppering the conversation with the occasional nod, wow or Jee-zus!

‘You actually saw the crime scene?’ Biller asked.

‘Uh huh,’ Abby said. ‘That whole area was crawling with police. They even had a boat on the water, and there were forensics people going in and out of the old ferry terminal.’

‘The ferry terminal,’ he echoed. ‘Well that raises a whole list of new questions.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you know what they say about that place, right? What goes on in there?’

‘No, what?’

The wrinkles on his forehead deepened. Abby had seen this look a number of times, on the faces of many of Belport’s lifers. Biller was trying to determine her security clearance.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t say,’ he said.

Abby had lived on the island for nearly eighteen years, and for all intents and purposes she was a bona fide local. But she wasn’t a lifer. She wasn’t born up the road at Belport Medical. All communities had layers of secrecy, she guessed: hidden truths and secret doors. Abby’s years on the island had earned her access to a great many of those secret doors, but there were apparently still a few that remained locked.

‘Come on, Biller,’ Abby said. ‘What about the ferry terminal?’

‘Well, some people say the terminal is a, you know, a beat.’

‘A beat?’