They all stood staring at the parcel. No one made a move to open it.

‘Smells a bit ripe,’ a woman’s voice said.

‘That’s cause you’re standing down-wind of auld Geordie,’ came the reply, producing a few titters of laughter from the crowd. The old man in question volubly cursed his accuser, provoking further laughter, but still no one seemed willing to approach the salvaged object, let alone open it.

‘Let me take a look,’ Raven said, holding up his bag. ‘I’m a doctor.’

As a physician he was well used to taking charge of a situation and dealing with things others found distasteful. The onlookers seemed happy enough to defer, parting to let him through.

As he reached the front, he caught a whiff of the odour leaching from the package and understood the hesitance of the crowd. He knelt down beside it, pulled a knife from his bag and carefully cut the binding. There were audible gasps from around him as he peeled back an edge of the paper, revealing a tiny hand. Reluctantly he peeled back some more, enough to disclose the head and torso of an infant: a human child wrapped up and tossed away.

The fisherman sniffed and wiped his nose on the end of his sleeve. ‘Told ye it wasnae treasure,’ he said.

Raven was seized by a surge of pity. As an obstetrician he had seen enough tiny corpses to be inured to the sight of another dead baby. He had held them while they were still warm, knowing no breath would ever issue from their lips even as their mothers looked on in hope. Yet something about this caught him unawares. Perhaps it was simply the fragility of the twins he had helped deliver that morning. He had feared for their start in life, but this served to remind him that for some there was no start at all.