He read the obit again through bloodshot, squinted eyes, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘This obituary is from 1996. How do you know it didn’t spend the last twenty-three years in the attic? Although I suppose Pam and I still had the place back then, and I can’t imagine why either of us would save something like this.’

‘The lock-box was pretty much the only clean thing in a very dusty attic,’ Kate explained. ‘Even if it was up there all that time, someone has looked at it very recently.’

‘Then it’s evidence.’

‘Evidence the cops missed,’ she said.

‘We shouldn’t even be touching this,’ he said, placing the obituary carefully down on the desk. ‘There might be fingerprints or DNA on it. This might belong to whoever killed him, Kate.’

‘It was John’s,’ she said firmly. ‘He either brought it with him to the island or dug it out when he got here.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Remember the bug zappers Eckman told us about? They were up there too, in a circle around the lock-box. It was like he’d set them up to … I don’t know … protect him from whatever it was that was inside the box.’

‘The ghost of David Stemple?’ Fisher asked, dryly. He popped two Disprin into a glass of water and watched them fizz, twirling the glass in a circular motion, trying to speed up their dissolving.

‘He was scared of something, Fisher,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘I know. I don’t mean to be flippant. This is just … a lot.’

He picked up his glass of Disprin even though it wasn’t quite ready – big clumps of medication floated inside – and drank it in one gulp, wincing at the taste. ‘Have you tried looking online?’

‘Google gave me three hundred thousand results. It’s a pretty common name.’

‘Stemple,’ he said, moving the word around his mouth, as if tasting wine. ‘Maybe it does sound familiar now. I’ll give Pam a call. She might know something … You okay, love?’

Kate had slumped forward on the bed, elbows to knees and face to hands. She had spent her marriage looking at her husband through a keyhole. Now, she was catching a glimpse of what lay beyond the door, and what didn’t confuse her, was terrifying.

‘I just don’t know why he didn’t come to me with whatever the hell he was going through?’

This is what happens when we don’t talk about the monsters.

There was a flash of something that might have been guilt in Fisher’s expression, then he shook it off. ‘None of this is on you, Kate. John had a support network. There were plenty of people he could have come to.’