The Wilhelmina Rosen had passed Arnhem and moored for the night. The wharf he always used when they tied up on the Nederrijn was popular with the two crewmen he employed; there was a village with an excellent bar and restaurant less than five minutes’ walk away. They’d done their chores in record time and left him alone on the big barge within half an hour of tying up. They hadn’t bothered asking if he wanted to accompany them; in all the years they’d been working together, he’d only once joined them on a night’s drinking, when Manfred’s wife had given birth. The engineer had insisted that their captain should wet the baby’s head with him and Gunther. He remembered it with loathing. They’d been down near Regensburg, drinking in a series of bars that were familiar with the needs of boatmen. Too much beer, too much schnapps, too much noise, too many sluts taunting him with their bodies.

Much better to stay on board, where he could savour his secrets without fear of interruption. Besides, there was always work to be done, maintaining the old Rhineship in peak condition. He had to keep the brasswork gleaming, the paint smart and unblistered. The old mahogany of the wheelhouse and his cabin shone with the lustre of years of polishing, his hands following a tradition passed down the generations. He’d inherited the boat from his grandfather, the one good thing the bastard had done for him.

He’d never forget the liberation of the old man’s accident. None of them had even known about it till morning. His grandfather had gone ashore to spend the evening in a bar, as he did from time to time. He never drank with the crew, always preferring to take himself off to a quiet corner in some bier keller far away from the other bargees. He acted as if he was too good for the rest of them, though his grandson thought it was probably more likely that he’d pissed off every other skipper on the river with his bloody-minded self-righteousness.

In the morning, there had been no sign of the old man on board. That in itself was remarkable, for his regularity of habit was unshakeable. No illness had ever been permitted to fell him, no self-indulgence to keep him in his berth a minute after six. Winter and summer, the old man was washed, shaved and dressed by six twenty, the cover of the engines open as he inspected them suspiciously to make sure nothing evil had befallen them in the night. But that morning, silence hung ominous over the barge.