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know how long he was missing.”
    “Yes we do.”
    “We do?”
    “Yes. He was there when the bridge crew sat down for lunch. I saw him. And when I’d finished eating, he was gone. It was twelve thirty-six when I called full stop. I wasn’t eating for more than ten minutes. Let’s widen the margin just in case and say he went missing sometime between twelve twenty and twelve thirty-six. That’s a sixteen-minute window. We were cruising at fifteen knots, as we have been since leaving Scotland. That means we covered about four nautical miles between him falling out of that raft and us cutting power. We’ve gone another mile since. You think we have no chance of finding him in five nautical miles? Seriously?”
    “Gentlemen,” Coote said, raising his voice, an occurrence so rare as to make everyone stop and listen. “I think it would be wise to listen to what Jason here has to say. I didn’t bring him here just for his charm and good looks.”
    All eyes turned to Jason. Amanda and Ella entered the room as Coote was speaking. They said nothing, waiting for Eagle-eyes to have his say.
    Jason cleared his throat. He wasn’t used to an audience. “I believe we spotted something, around the time you think Stieg went missing. The sonar picked up a blip, very close by. It lasted about forty-five seconds.”
    “A blip? What’s a blip? Be more specific, man,” Martin said, frowning.
    “I’m afraid I can’t. There was no manual lookout at the time. The sonar alerted me to something apparently popping onto the screen, but by the time I’d deployed the full optronics mast array, it had gone again. So whatever it was, I never got eyes on it.”
    Jake pulled out a chair and sat down, forehead in his hand, elbow resting on the table. “I assume you tried to find it again?”
    “Of course.”
    “No sign?”
    “Nothing. I ran a full array of checks. Sonar, visual, infrared, the lot. There was nothing there. I was about to call your bridge to see if your lookout had seen anything, when you ordered the full stop.”
    “So there we are, old boy. What do you make of that?” Coote said, taking a seat next to Jake.
    Jake shook his head. “I don’t know. You’re the experts.”
    Martin looked at the two captains, his face creasing into a look of exasperation. “Well it’s obvious, isn’t it? It must have been some kind of malfunction. Or are you suggesting that a Martian UFO materialised out of thin air, kidnapped Stieg — presumably for one of those alien autopsies — then dematerialised just as quickly?”
    Nobody appreciated the sarcasm.
    “A malfunction is a possibility, but a very remote one. All our systems are twinned. False positives are extremely rare. Both systems have to be in agreement to generate the kind of alert I saw. I will, however, run a full diagnostic.”
    Jake nodded. “So, Grau, what are his chances, if he’s in the water?”
    “I do not know the man personally, but assuming he is in good shape, he should be able to survive a couple of hours. The water is cold, for sure, but not so bad that it will kill him instantly.”
    “Stieg very strong,” one of the fishermen said. “Good swim. Strong.” He repeated the words to his colleague in their own tongue, and the other man nodded vigorously.
    “Then I don’t think we need to waste time with a vote, do we, ladies?” Coote looked at Amanda and Ella. “No point gathering the others. We’re already headed in the right direction. Let’s try and find the man.”
    • • •
    Grace was beginning to regret ever having insisted on doing something other than patrol work. In her determination to get back to solving crime, she had forgotten the arduous leg work involved in most police investigations. Sitting at the tiny desk in the gloomy office, with the continuous noise of the food preparation area outside, and the service counter beyond that, she leafed through page after tedious page from the file.
    Back home, in the real world, the world that