Herman Heller was standing at the ship’s rail smoking his pipe and watching the pale brown river roll by. Here in St Louis, the weather was humid and uncomfortable, and there was a dark stain of sweat down the back of Herman’s light blue T-shirt. He was thinking about a woman he knew in New Orleans – a quiet, jolly woman with a big nose who ran a delicatessen on the south side of the city. She had a husband who was confined to a wheelchair, and she didn’t ask anything of Herman but vigorous humping when he was there and suggestive letters when he wasn’t. Herman was good at suggestive letters. The woman’s blutwurst was unsurpassed.

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.