It took Eric a few seconds to work out what Tim was getting at. “Those are my initials, you idiot!” he snapped. He took a deep breath and raised his hands. “Look,” he went on. “There’s no point arguing among ourselves. We have to stick together. It could be our only hope.”

The others fell silent. I had to admit, Eric was speaking sense. Blaming one another wouldn’t help.

“Both Brenda and . . . Tim’s little brother saw somebody last night,” he went on. I didn’t know why he couldn’t call me by my name. “Now that could have been one of us, dressing up to frighten the others. But remember, we were all inside the house . . . and this thing, whatever it was, was outside. So maybe it was someone else. Maybe it was someone we don’t know about.”

“You mean . . . someone hiding on the island?” Mark said.

“Exactly. We know we can’t call the police. We know we’re stuck here. But it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is find out if there’s anyone else here.”

“We’ve got to organize a search party,” I said.

Tim shook his head. “This is no time for a party, Nick,” he muttered.

“You’re right, Eric,” Libby said. “We’ve got to go over the island from head to tail.”

“But at the same time, I think we should keep an eye on each other,” Brenda said. “I’ll feel safer that way.”

Eric went upstairs to get changed. Mark went with him. From now on, we were going to do everything in pairs. Brenda and Libby cleared the breakfast things. I’d already noticed that most of the food in the house was canned–which was just as well. Even the cleverest killer couldn’t tamper with a can, so at least we wouldn’t starve. At half past nine we all met in the hall. Then we put on our coats and went outside.

The search began back at the jetty, right at the head of the crocodile. The idea was that we could cover the entire island, working like the police searching woods when someone has disappeared. That is, we kept thirty feet apart, always in sight of one another, moving across the island in a line. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and the sea was blue, but even so I could feel a chilly breeze on Crocodile Island. And there was something else. I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being watched. It was weird. Because it was obvious that there wasn’t anybody in sight . . . not even so much as a sheep or a cow.