At least he'd been right about 'here'. The Mirriam was sailing sedately down the Nene.

The course the Nene took for the first thirty kilometres east of Peterborough was a new one. The PSP's delay in authorising construction of the city's port meant that the old river course had been lost at the start of the Warming, disappearing beneath the water and silt which laid siege to the city boundaries. A couple of years later, when the wharves' foundations were being laid, the dredgers cut a straight line from the port right out to the old estuary at Tydd Gote.

Mirriam was following a huge container freighter out towards the Wash. There was another freighter trailing a couple of kilometres behind. They were the only things moving in a very confined universe. All Greg could see was river, sky, and high gene-tailored coral levees, covered in tall stringy reeds.

The tide was full, just beginning to turn, showing a thin line of chocolate mud below the bottom of the reeds.

Mirriam seemed to be losing ground on the freighter in front. Greg glanced over the taffrail to see four crewmen inflating two odd-looking craft on the edge of the diving platform. They were blunt-nosed dinghies with a couple of simple benches strung between the triplex tubing that formed the sides. A loose surplus of leathery fabric ran round the outside. It was only after a big fan, caged in a protective mesh, hinged up to the vertical at the rear of one of the dinghies that Greg realised they were actually hovercraft.

Gabriel nudged him and he turned to see Kendric approaching. Mirriam's owner was wearing olive-green track-suit trousers and a light waterproof jacket. Hermione was at his side, as always; dressed in natty designer equivalents of her husband's attire. But it was the woman keeping a short distance behind who held Greg's attention.

She was in her late twenties with a second chin just beginning to develop; her dumpy face was framed by straight jet-black hair, cut in a fringe along her eyebrows, falling to her shoulders at the sides. Her skin was dark and leathery, heavily wrinkled from excessive sun exposure.

He was convinced that she was the woman he'd seen at the ambush. He could still see her slightly bulky frame in that trio walking calmly down the road.

Kendric's gaze swept across Greg and Gabriel, utterly unperturbed. A cattleman checking his stock.

"Put them in with Rod and Laurrie," Kendric said to Mark, "You and Toby come with us."

"Yes, sir," Mark replied.

"Postponed," Toby muttered in Greg's ear. "That's all."

"Right, get them down there," Mark was saying.

Kendric and Hermione began to descend the ladder to the diving platform. The crewmen were holding the fully rigged hovercraft steady in Mirriam's wake.

"You'll have to take our cuffs off," Greg pointed out.

"Maybe we'll just throw you down," said Toby.

"Take 'em off," Mark said. "And you two, don't think about jumping."