Burns Night, January 2000. In the early days of the new millennium, on the Oban-Mull ferry, Mull piper and council worker-cum-alcoholic, Duck, slumps uninvited at the table of Bosnian refugee and architecture student, Davud (a loner who has developed a fascination with fire). Sitting nearby is a scandal-hit politician. Then two burnt-out cars are discovered on a barren glen on Mull. Inside them, only teeth and bones. 

Meanwhile, Sergeant Ivor Punch is busy policing a protest that includes a strange visitor – a man purporting to be Robert Louis Stevenson, who talks of a mysterious island that appears off Mull only twice a century, which he once saw while sailing by Skerryvore Lighthouse.

As buildings burn and dead bodies are discovered, Sergeant Punch seeks to find the crux of the mystery by looking to the past. But with mysterious forces at play, he needs to decipher what is real or imagined – before the island falls into chaos.