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‘What language is that, Tilly?’

‘Computers, silly.’

‘Oh. Here, grab these mugs and take them outside, can you?’

They were in Atkinson’s kitchen. Poe was making more of that wonderful coffee; Bradshaw was making something green and awful called matcha tea.

When they were seated, and after Poe had checked in with the cop on the other side of the island, they got down to more intelligence gathering.

‘Can you think of anyone who might want to cause you harm?’ Poe said. ‘Someone we might not automatically think of.’

‘I can’t, no. And I get what you’re saying, but I don’t think it’s anyone from J. Baldwin. It wasn’t a publicly listed company and my understanding is that when they filed for bankruptcy they lost everything. I don’t see how they could have afforded this Curator of yours.’

Nightingale was chasing down the financial angle but Atkinson made a fair point. According to Melody Lee, the Curator didn’t come cheap and no one involved in the company had that type of cash any more. Not unless they’d hidden it offshore somewhere.

‘What about the families of the children who were injured?’

‘I can’t see them having the motivation – the court case against J. Baldwin was iron-clad.’

Iron-clad and compelling, Poe thought. It had removed all doubt about Atkinson’s culpability. But if it wasn’t someone from J. Baldwin, and it wasn’t someone whose children had been chemically burned, who was left? Who else had been damaged by Atkinson’s hung jury and subsequent exoneration?

‘Do we know if anyone’s career was damaged, Tilly?’ Poe said. ‘Someone in the police, maybe? It was high profile and the chief constable in those days was our old friend Leonard Tapping. No way he didn’t find a suitable scapegoat.’

‘I’m not sure we’ve looked at that, Poe. I’ll check now.’

She removed her mobile and began typing.

‘You won’t get a signal here, Tilly,’ Atkinson said.

‘We’ll see about that.’ She scurried off inside.

Poe turned back to Atkinson.

‘What about the islanders?’

‘Here?’

Poe nodded.

Atkinson shook his head. ‘We’re not a community, Mr Poe, we’re a gathering of hermits. The people who live here aren’t the type to commit to time-consuming machinations like this. They might get into the occasional argument with the supply boat but otherwise we avoid human contact at all cost.’

Bradshaw was standing on a chair waving her mobile in the air as she searched for a signal. Despite being indoors she was still wearing her lifejacket and woollen hat.

‘What a bunch of weirdos,’ she said.

Chapter 68

It had been an interesting night. Poe had felt like a gooseberry at times. Bradshaw and Atkinson had talked non-stop about computers and Netflix and movies and books. If she’d been able to get a signal on her mobile she’d have probably moved in with him.

So Poe had done what he was there to do: he’d watched.

He’d watched the sea disappear under the moonless night and he’d watched it reappear as dawn struggled through the murky clouds, shockingly bright but only in comparison to the Stygian darkness it had followed. He’d watched the seals slip into the freezing water and he’d watched them return to eat their catch on the slippery rocks. And he’d watched the clouds tighten and the first flecks of snow float weightlessly down – colourless confetti landing silently on the terrace before melting into nothing.

But most of all he?

??d watched the approaches to the island.

He doubted a boat could dock on the western side but he wasn’t taking any chances. Everything about this case had been unlikely and, now that he’d spent almost twenty-four hours there, slipping unseen onto an island with 360-degree surveillance somehow no longer seemed impossible.