It took us only an hour to cover the island. There really wasn’t very much there. Most of it was covered in grass and shrubs that only came up to the knee, which no killer could have hidden behind—unless, of course, he happened to be extremely small. There were a few trees but we checked the branches and Tim even climbed one to see if anyone was hiding at the top. Then I climbed up to help Tim down again and we moved on. We came to a couple of ruined outbuildings. I went inside. There was nobody there—but I did see something. Another security camera, fixed to the brickwork. Of course, a rich man like Rory would have had to be careful about security. I remembered the camera I had noticed in the kitchen. He had probably covered the whole island. Was that why I had felt we were being watched?

We went past the house and continued toward the crocodile’s tail. The ground rose steeply up, finally arriving at a narrow point at least sixty feet above the sea. This was what I had seen from the boat. Six great rocks, steel gray and needle-sharp, rose out of the water far below. Looking down made my head spin. I wondered briefly if there might be a cave somewhere, perhaps tucked underneath the lip where we were standing. But then a wave rolled in, crashing against the cliff face. If there was a killer down there, he’d be soaking wet. And anyway, as far as I could see, there was no way down.

We moved away, retracing our steps. There was nobody outside the house, but how about inside? Starting in the hall, we went from room to room: the library, the dining room, the conservatory, the hall, and so on. We looked behind curtains, under tables, in the fireplaces, and up the chimneys. Tim even looked in the grandfather clocks. Maybe he thought he’d find somebody’s grandfather. We covered the ground floor and then went up to the first. Here were the bedrooms, with our names still attached to the doors. We went into every one of them. There was nobody there . . . apart from the three very dead bodies. It wasn’t easy searching those particular rooms, but we made ourselves . . . although I think Tim was wasting his time doing it with his eyes tightly shut.

Nobody in the rooms. Nobody in the corridors. We found the attic but all that was there was a water tank. Tim dipped his head in and I made a mental note not to drink any more water. Not with his dandruff. Eventually, we gave up. We had been everywhere. There was nowhere else to look.

We started to go back down to the kitchen but had only gotten halfway there when Libby let out a little gasp.

“What is it?” Eric demanded.