“I don’t need things written,” said Calley. He asked about the master of the Jenny.

“Browne,” said William.

“Speak up.”

“Browne.”

“He has a house or he lives on his ship?”

“A house. In Dumbarton. A town close to Glasgow.”

“Address?”

“He comes to me. But the town is small. He will be known there.”

“You’re expecting him back?”

“Not for another month. Longer perhaps.”

“And he’ll be in this Dumbarton until he sets off back here?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Well this is all very tiresome,” said Calley. He bent down to help William stand, walked him round to his desk chair. He looked down at him. He still had the brass head. He turned it in his hands. Seconds passed. Softly, as if intended only for these two men in the privacy of the room, the cathedral bells rang the hour. “All right,” said Calley. “This is how it is. I am going to leave a man watching this house. Watching night and day. If I find you have spoken to anybody about my visit this man will come into the house and he will see to you. Then he will see to your wife. Then he will see to your children. Are you following me? I need to know you understand me.”

“I understand,” said William. “No one will know you were here. I swear it.”

“We have a special liberty, William Swann. The law has waved us through. We cannot be touched.”

He placed the brass head on the desk, stepped backwards and opened his coat so William could see what he had there. Then he buttoned it again, took another stride back, paused by the curtain as if listening for any movement in the outer world, turned, slid behind the curtain, and was gone.

For a long while William stared at the curtain, then he lowered his forehead on to the open page of the ledger. He was sweating; his sweat smudged the ink. When he raised his head there was a smear of it on his forehead, possibly an S. He cursed Lacroix under his breath. The adored brother. The idle brother. And no wonder he had looked as he did, a creature like Henderson running him to ground. But to have said nothing! To have given them no warning! Nothing!

He shuddered. He had a killing rage in him, as though his father had woken in him at last, his father’s blood. But all too late.

On the steps from the house to the quay the water moved in a living skin and carried what it found: a mussel shell dropped by a gull; the button from a lady’s coat; petals the rain had knocked from a cherry tree, one of whose boughs, pink and extravagant, overhung the steps.