Nick Miller had just started to cross the bridge as Hammond emerged from the top of the steps and leaned against the parapet sobbing for breath.

Miller moved forward quickly. ‘Anything wrong?’

‘Police!’ Hammond gasped. ‘I need the police.’

‘You’ve found them,’ Miller said crisply. ‘What’s up?’

‘Girl down there in the water,’ Hammond said. ‘Other side of the coal barges beneath the wharf.’

‘Dead?’ Miller demanded.

Hammond nodded. ‘Gave me a hell of a turn, I can tell you.’

‘There’s an all-night café on the other side of the bridge. ’Phone for a patrol car and an ambulance from there. I’ll go down and see what I can do.’

Hammond nodded, turned away and Miller went down the steps quickly and moved along the bank. It had stopped raining and a cool breeze lifted off the water so that he shivered slightly as he jumped for the deck of the first coal barge and started to work his way across.

He couldn’t find her at first and then a sudden eddy of the current swirled, clearing the flotsam from the surface and she stared up at him.

And she was beautiful – more beautiful than he had ever known a woman to be, that was the strangest thing of all. The body had drifted into the arched entrance of a vault under the wharf and hung suspended just beneath the surface. The dress floated around her in a cloud as did the long golden hair and there was a look of faint surprise in the eyes, the lips parted slightly as if in wonder at how easy it had been.

Up on the bridge, there was the jangle of a patrol car’s bell and in the distance, the siren of the approaching ambulance sounded faintly. But he couldn’t wait. In some strange way this had become personal. He took off his trenchcoat and jacket, slipped off his shoes and lowered himself over the side.

The water was bitterly cold and yet he was hardly conscious of the fact as he swam into the archway. At that moment, the first rays of the morning sun broke through the clouds, striking into the water so that she seemed to smile as he reached under the surface and took her.

A line of broad steps dropped into the basin twenty yards to the right and he swam towards them, standing up when his knees bumped a shelving bank of gravel, lifting her in his arms.

But now she looked different. Now she looked dead. He stood there knee-deep, staring down at her, a lump in his throat, aware of a feeling of personal loss.

‘Why?’ he said to himself softly. ‘Why?’

But there was no answer, could never be and as the ambulance turned on the wharf above him he went up the steps slowly, the girl cradled in his arms so that she might have been a child sleeping.

2