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and nibbling at low scrub. Dawn and dusk were their times; they were happier in half-light, like all prey animals. One raised her head as he passed, pricking the ears that looked far too large for the neat head, her tongue going out to moisten the shiny, plastic-looking nose. Then she went back to her bushes. They were used to him, and even to the dog at his heels, though sometimes it sniffed the air as if some atavistic memory stirred.
    Matt did his errand, then returned to the boat. He had no idea how long Lissa might be and with the dog again in the prow, he settled down to wait.
    From across the water he heard a brief, strange, coughing roar, and his head came up, listening. It wasn’t repeated, but Matt smiled. They’d have to bring in the stags tomorrow and isolate them; the rut was beginning. It wouldn’t be long before the buck on the island was barking his intentions too.
    It was only minutes later he saw Lissa coming back down the hill, pale dress glimmering like a ghost in the gathering darkness. He bent to start the engine. It meant he didn’t have to see the tears he knew would be trickling down her face.
     
    From the wooden chalet above Fleet Bay, Derek Sorley trained binoculars on the island – the island he now refused to call Lovatt. He had only recently learnt the old name – Tascadan. It was Gordon Lovatt, Matt’s great-grandfather, who’d changed it in 1883, and the locals still hadn’t forgiven him for his arrogance.
    The sound of the motor boat had brought Sorley to the picturewindow which was about the only good thing about this shabby, gimcrack place, with doors that had warped and gaps round the ill-fitting windows that the draughts whistled through and sometimes even the rain, with the wind in the wrong direction. And there was the dirt-cheap rent too, admittedly – modern holidaymakers demanded standards his landlord was too mean to provide.
    Sorley would have preferred to live in Kirkcudbright where he had a job at the moment driving a van for a stationery company, but with a piddling wage, docked anyway by the Child Support Agency for that vampire bitch, his ex-wife, all he could afford was a room in someone else’s house and having got rid of one nagging woman he’d no wish to acquire another. At least here he’d the place to himself.
    Seething with loathing, he watched the Lovatts and the devil dog heading for the island. It was the dog had sniffed him out that day, all but given him a heart attack, staring at him as if sizing him up for attack – shouldn’t be allowed, having an animal like that. Then Lovatt had come to see where his precious dog was and lost it completely, yelling at him, making accusations, ordering him off his land. With the dog growling, Sorley wasn’t going to stay to argue.
    He’d been so careful, too. He’d checked that Sunday: he’d seen Lovatt make a visit and return before he tackled the causeway of rocks and shingle which made the island accessible at low tide. There was no reason Lovatt should have come back unless he’d been tipped off – and strangely enough, Cal Findlay’s boat had been in the bay earlier.
    What made Sorley sick was he’d just had a reaction from his second-hand metal detector, there by the burial cairn. Gold, it had signalled – gold! His heart had flipped, then turned a couple ofsomersaults. Things like that didn’t happen to him – but maybe his luck had turned. Norse gold was big, big money.
    Lovatt had no right to ban him. Scottish Right to Roam legislation should mean no private property any more beyond your garden, but when he’d taken it up with his local councillors – without mentioning the metal detector – they weren’t interested.
    If only he’d got there before Ma Lovatt popped her clogs. No one ever went near the island then. She’d a tenant farmer, Hugh Donaldson, whose croft adjoined Lovatt land; he’d retired just before Ma Lovatt died, and his son Steve had thrown up his job in Paisley to come