‘Yeah, that’s right. I beat Questing hands down, too. I sat on that ruddy bluff till I just about froze to the rock, and I’ll bet you anything you like I never took me eyes off the Peak. I looked right across the harbour. There’s a big ship in and she was loading in the blackout. Gee I’d like to know what she was loading. I bet Bert Smith knows. He’s cobbers with some of the wharfies, him and Eru Saul. Eru and Bert get shickered with the wharfies. They were shickered last night, Bert says. I don’t think it’s so hot going round with—’

‘The Peak and Mr Questing,’ Dikon reminded him.

‘OK. Well, just when I thought I’d been had for a mug, it started. A little point of light right where I told you on the seaward face. Popping in and out.’

‘Could you read it?’

‘Neow!’ said Simon angrily in his broadest twang. ‘If it was Morse it was some code. Just a lot of t’s and i’s and s’s. He wouldn’t use plain language. You bet he wouldn’t. There’d be a system of signals. A long flash repeated three times at intervals of a minute. “Come in. I’m talking to you.” Then the message. Say five short flashes: “Ship in port.” That’d be repeated three times. Then the day when she sails. One long flash: “Tonight.” Two short flashes: “Tomorrow.” Three short flashes: “Tomorrow night.” Repeat. Then a long interval, and the whole show over again. What I reckon,’ Simon concluded, and inhaled a prodigious draught of smoke.

‘But did you, in fact, see the sequence you’ve described?’

With maddening deliberation Simon ground out his cigarette, made several small backward movements of his head which invested him with an extraordinary air of complacency, and said: ‘Six times at fifteen-minute intervals. The end signal was three flashes each time.’

‘Was it, by George!’ Dikon murmured.

‘Course I haven’t got the reading OK. May be something quite different.’

‘Of course.’ They stared at each other, a sense of companionship weaving between them.

‘But I’d like to know what that ship’s loading,’ Simon said.

‘Was there any answering flash out at sea? I couldn’t know less about such things.’

‘I didn’t pick it. But I don’t reckon she’d do anything. If it’s a raider I reckon she’d come in close on the north side of the Peak, so’s to keep it between herself and Harpoon, and wait to see. There’s nothing but bays and rough stuff up the coast north of the Peak.’

‘How long did you stay?’