Standing in the stern of the boat, Giacomo paused to light a cigarette. The teacher was a good soul, and would pay well over the odds for crabs and mussels, but she’d had the misfortune to be born on the mainland, and it was well known that mainlanders would believe anything. Giacomo breathed out a lungful of smoke, which drifted indolently away across the water towards the drooping heads of the wild grasses on a nearby mudbank. The dull roar of a plane taking off from the international airport at Tessera reminded him of his business. Dipping the crossed oars into the water once more, he leant forward with his whole body, urging the sandolo across the shallow water.

The light was fading fast by the time Giacomo beached the skiff on the flats exposed by the ebbing tide. He stepped out, his waders sinking into the mud, and hauled the craft clear of the water. Before him rose a mass of creepers and brambles, overgrown bushes and stunted trees, spilling down over the low wall sealing off the island. At the centre, a set of steps led to a bricked-up gateway. Slinging a blue canvas bag over his shoulder, Giacomo squelched off across the quagmire towards a stretch of wall completely submerged beneath the burgeoning greenery.

Beneath the overhanging shrubbery it was already night. Giacomo took a rubber-covered torch from his pocket and shone it round. A rat jumped from a hollow in the wall into the shallow water at its base. The hollow had been formed by the removal of two of the flat ochre bricks of the three-hundred-year-old wall. Giacomo remembered the effort it had taken, hammering away with a mallet and a cold chisel for the best part of twenty minutes. They built to last in those days, even for such clients as these. Other bricks had been gouged out above, and using these holds Giacomo scaled the wall and perched on the top. All was still. Even in broad daylight, people gave this particular island a wide berth. Nothing would persuade anyone in their right mind to venture there once darkness had fallen.