As Ronnie walked up from the beach onto the main village high street, he noticed that the library was still open. He hesitated because at this point, he wasn’t sure what he had seen, and whether he had just drifted off into some daydream whilst standing on the beach. But as he was passing by anyway, well he supposed it would do no harm. He went in and approached the librarian for some help.

“Hello, Ronnie” she muttered, the surprise written all over her face. Murran was quite a small village, and Ronnie was well known – as much for his hatred of school and books as anything else.

“What can we do for you?” she asked as she regained her composure, and began to view the situation with some amusement.

Ronnie was a little flustered because he knew what she was thinking. The last time he was in the library was when his class visited from the school, and he had not exactly been the model pupil whilst there. He hoped Alice, the librarian, wouldn’t hold it against him. She was grinning at him now so that was a good sign.

“I have a school project on smuggling” he lied, “and I wondered if you had any books on that subject from the time when it used to happen on this coast, especially in 1647” he added.

Alice knew he was lying, but didn’t question him about it. She knew most of the teaching staff, and if there were any school projects she was always told about them.

The school didn’t have it’s own library, but instead used the village library for the pupils as it was so close. She decided to go along with him for now.

“I will see what I can do” she replied, and went off in search of some books.

Ronnie took some scrap paper and a pen from the box on the counter and went to find a seat. He had just settled himself at one of the large tables when Alice returned with a pile of books. One of the books looked very old and there was evidence of much repair to it over the years. Before he could ask about it, she told him he had to be very careful with it as it dated right back to 1647, and was the equivalent of a police record for that time.

Ronnie looked at the books, and didn’t know where to start. Alice looked at Ronnie and thought: “I give him five minutes at the most”, but she was wrong. It’s true that it did take Ronnie about five minutes to settle down into looking through the books, but once he got going, he started to make lots of notes from the various accounts about smuggling during that time.

He had made lots of notes, but was beginning to despair because there was no mention of Joshua Smith or even of any particular event which happened during 1647. Of course, he hadn’t opened the police record yet. Well, he had opened it, but quickly shut it again as the language was old, it was hand-written, and it was altogether difficult to understand.