The wind-burnt, craggy face of a fisherman on the pier. A housewife walking on the road with a bag of messages. Aunt Mary was one of these people, undemanding, unobtrusive and honest. All his life she’d asked nothing of him. Only now, as she lay dying, she’d made a simple request. He convinced himself that it was more than greed and duty that had sent him on this journey. His conscience would not forgive him if he failed her. After this all the ties would be gone.

2

WAITING FOR THE ferry, Cal calculated on his palmtop computer what he might expect to inherit. Mary had never been one for spending money on herself, so there might be a couple of grand in her savings and she was canny enough to have taken out insurance to pay for the funeral.

The house would be his. It might sell for about a third of what he would get for a city house of similar size. If he did it up he might get more, but he needed the money now. There would be no shortage of buyers seeking the island idyll. He could sell it off quickly.

Cal’s entrepreneurial ambitions too often outstripped his means and much of his energy was taken up borrowing to pay debts. His income base was property, buying rundown flats, holding them for a couple of months and then returning them to the market. He was prepared to tart up the decor but he avoided anything structural. Usually he made a couple of thousand on each transaction.

But Cal aspired to more. The high life attracted him, and he had a point to prove, even if only to himself. His car, his apartment, his clothes, all represented the success he wanted to be, but his income could not sustain his outlays. He lacked the inside knowledge that would give him that crucial advantage as a speculator. On the two occasions he had secured more upmarket properties, there had been a temporary slump in the market and his resources had been drained dry by the time he had sold them. One had even been sold at a loss.

That was part of his dilemma over coming to see his aunt. Finally his networking had paid dividends. Lisa, who worked for an established estate agent, had given him a tip that the owner of a large Georgian townhouse had just died and her family were seeking a quick sale because they lived abroad. It would need work, but there was a fat profit to be made. Cal had been expecting to make his move over the next couple of days and he and Lisa had been celebrating their imminent pay off all last night. And now this. He didn’t want to lose out by not being on the spot. On the bright side, there was the prospect of his inheritance.

The metal snake of cars started to move. He drove into the belly of the roll-on roll-off ferry and had to follow the casual directions of a shiphand waving him closer to other vehicles than he thought was really safe. There would be a chip in the black pearl paintwork, of that he was sure.

A short time later the ferry eased away from the pier in a low growl of engines and splashing of ropes.