Herman was deep in his reverie when Dan Bashnik came up to the bridge in his red woolly hat and held up what appeared to be a black metal baton. ‘Square,’ he said. ‘Take a look at this.’

Herman took out his pipe. ‘What’s that? Where’d you find it?’

‘Number One hold. It was just lying there on top of the grain.’

Herman held out his hand for it. Dan Bashnik passed it over, and watched while Herman inspected it. Herman hefted it in his palm, then twisted it around, and finally sniffed it to see if it smelled of anything.

‘What do you make of it?’ asked Dan.

‘I don’t know. Never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s part of a grain sorting machine, got itself loose.’

‘You going to hand it in?’

‘Sure, it’s no use to me.’

Dan wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Well, if there’s any kind of reward for it, don’t forget who found it.’

‘I should forget my friend, Dan Bashnik?’

‘You’d forget your own mother if it meant the difference between two bucks and ten.’

Herman jammed his pipe back between his pecan-coloured teeth. ‘Just fuck off, Bashnik. If there’s anything in it. I’ll make sure you get your share.’

He opened the door to the bridge and laid the black metal baton on the varnished shelf beside the maps of the Mississippi. It stayed there all afternoon and all evening, until Herman went ashore to check the cargo inventory and the bills of lading. Then – almost as an afterthought – he shoved it into the pocket of his windbreaker.

It was dark as Herman made his way down the gangplank to the dockside. There was the whinnying of cranes, and the clatter of fork-lift trucks, and the odd cold echoing sound of warehouses and water and ships. Herman walked across to the offices with the steady plod of a man who has been doing the same thing for twenty years at somebody else’s expense. He looked neither right nor left.

One of the St Louis safety inspectors was in the office when Herman walked in, a white-faced young man with a John Denver haircut and an immature moustache. He was smoking a cigarette and flicking through a girlie magazine. Errol Marx of the grain company was there too, a shaven-headed black man with heavy-rimmed eyeglasses.

‘You ready to leave?’ asked Marx.

‘Just as soon as we clear the paperwork,’ Herman told him.

Marx reached for his clipboard, took out a ballpen, and sniffed. ‘It took you long enough to get that goddamned grain on board,’ he said.

Herman didn’t answer. He did his job at one pace and one pace only, and that was Heller’s pace. If anybody objected, that was tough tits. He reached into his pocket for his matches.

The safety inspector said, ‘It’s unfair, you know. All these magazines are full of white girls. Only one or two black girls. Don’t you think that’s discrimination?’