And then, a sound. A tune. Whoever was downstairs was humming.
It was a familiar song. I opened my eyes, utterly confused. Was that . . . ABBA?
I raced out to the top of the stairs and shone my torch down the stairs.
“Who’s there?”
A loud clatter followed, and several loud expletives. My torchlight fell on a man. He’d fallen flat on his arse and was holding his hand up against my torchlight. I moved quickly down the stairs, much faster than I should have.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I said, when I reached the bottom. I took pleasure in shining my torchlight directly in his eyes. Built like a tank, he looked like a Viking—a thick copper beard, a round belly stretching the fabric of an Iron Maiden T-shirt, long amber hair pulled back into a ponytail, tattoos covering his hands. Just then, a horrible thought occurred to me.
“Are you . . . the owner, Patrick Roberts?” I said, lowering my torch.
“Finn McAllen. Isla said you’d need of a plasterer.” He had a deep, booming voice that bounced off the walls. “I can come back later if that’s easier . . .”
“No, no,” I said. “The dead of night is absolutely the right time for checking out a lighthouse . . .”
“It’s only eight o’clock,” he said. “I came as soon as I finished my other job.”
“You’ve not been in earlier?” I said, thinking back to the bones. “There was something left in the lantern room . . .”
“Nope,” he said, dusting himself off. “I had a big job on today. I told Isla I’d have come sooner but it’s been manic . . .”
So he hadn’t left the bones upstairs. That is, if he was telling the truth. I watched him carefully in the cold glare of the torchlight.
“You’re here to see what plastering needs doing, correct?”
“Correct. Isla mentioned the place is getting a mural or something painted inside. You’re the painter, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“OK,” he said, in a way that suggested he was expecting a different answer. “Show me what needs doing.”
Everything, I thought, but instead I pointed the torch at the sections of the stonework that I couldn’t paint over, not without the mural looking disjointed and uneven. We took the stairs and climbed to the first turn.
“Place is a mess,” he said, wobbling the banister.
“Please don’t do that,” I said. “You’re likely to pull it off.”
“Sorry. I thought Roberts would have sorted the place out before getting it decorated.”
“I think it would take quite a while to sort this place out.”
“Not at all,” he said with a sniff. “Dynamite would sort it in seconds.”
“Oh, before I forget,” I said, shining the torch up at the bats flitting in the high corners beneath the lantern room. “I need to get someone out here to take care of the bats.”
“You mean, take care of the bats or take care of the bats?” he said, drawing his finger across his throat at the second repeat.
“I don’t want them harmed. But I’ve no idea if the paint will bother them.” As I said this, a large bat flitted closely overhead, making us both duck.
“I think they’ll bother you more than you’ll bother them,” he said, chuckling. “I’ll take care of them. I do a bit of pest control, on the side.”
“Didn’t you say you do plastering on the side?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “There’s a lot of ‘on the side’ when you live on an island.”