Neil grinned to himself and went back to his painting and tidying up. Although the White Dove was superficially battered, it wouldn’t take much to bring back her glamour, and she wasn’t going to need a major overhaul this year. Neil reckoned to have finished her off by the end of the week. Then he could get back to his small yard across the other side of the wharf and complete work on a fishing boat he was refitting.

It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning, and the fog was at its densest. The sun was a pale yellow disk, and the wind had stilled. Neil found that he was sweating as he sorted and tied the new ropes, and he felt for a moment as if he could scarcely breathe.

He glanced out toward the bay and frowned. He was sure he could see something out there in the water. He screwed up his eyes against the yellowish haze of the fog; whatever it was, it was too far away to distinguish clearly. It was tall and pale and upright, like a drifting buoy, or the sail of a small weekend dinghy.

It was only when the fog stirred that he began to understand, with an overwhelming sense of dread, that the shape wasn’t a sail at all, nor a buoy. It was a man. A man in a long white coat, standing silent and unsupported in the middle of the bay.

Biting his lip with uncertainty, Neil rose to his feet. The fog passed in front of the figure in veil after veil, but there was no question at all. It was a man, or the ghost of a man. He wore a dark broad-brimmed hat and a duster, and he stood on the water as if it was dry land.

Neil shouted, “Hey! You!” but his voice sounded flat and weak in the fog, and the man took no notice at all.

Panicking, Neil turned back to the wharf and called: “Doughty! Doughty! Come take a look at this! For Christ’s sake! Come take a look at this!”

A voice whispered, “Allen… please, Allen…”

“Doughty!” yelled Neil.

The door of the cocktail bar opened, and Dave Conway from the fish stall came out, a tall red-bearded man with a well-known line of sarcasm. “Anything wrong there, Neil?” he called out.

“Dave, do you see something out there in the bay or am I crazy?” Neil shouted.

Dave peered out at the fog. It was now so thick that the man had almost disappeared. There was just a fading trace of his white coat.

Dave said, “Sure, I see something. You’re not crazy after all.”

“Tell me what you see! What is it?”

“Well,” said Dave, “I wouldn’t like to stick my neck out, but I’d say that’s fog.”

Neil, tense, let out a sharp, exasperated breath.