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something was trapped between the boat and the pontoon, just outside my bedroom. And the tide was receding, which meant it was unlikely to be washed clear again. It would stay there, knocking, until the hull of the boat came to rest on the mud. Which was still hours away.
    With a sigh, I sat up in bed, listening. It was coming with the rise and the fall of the water, a rhythmic bump. It was nestling against my boat, big enough to make a sound. What could it be? A plastic container, something like that?
    Shivering, I pulled my jeans on in the dark, a sweater from the pile of washing. The boat was cold now; the stove had long since gone out. Just inside the hatch to the storage area was my torch, big and powerful and cased in rubber. I’d had a Maglite but I’d dropped it in the water during my first week on the boat and never got it back again. One of the first pearls of wisdom Malcolm had dispensed was: ‘Put a float on anything important.’
    I opened the door to the wheelhouse, my teeth chattering. It was bitter up here, freezing, the sky above barely grey. I slipped on the trainers that were by the wheel; they were cold and damp, but better than bare feet on the wet boards outside.
    No sign of anyone. The boats in the marina were all silent and dark, the ones on this pontoon still rising and falling gently on the outgoing tide, the ones nearer to the shore already sitting on their bank of river mud.
    To my surprise, I heard a noise from the direction of the car park – a door shutting? Then the noise of an engine starting up, and tyres on gravel. A dark shape of a vehicle driving out of the car park. No rear lights, no headlights. Why didn’t they put their lights on? And why hadn’t the lights come on in the car park? They were motion-sensitive. I remembered someone complaining to Cam that the lights shone into their cabin when the foxes were out by the bins. Solution – the bins were moved. But surely the lights should come on if someone was in the car park?
    Silence, apart from the lapping of the water against the bow. Even the motorway bridge was silent. Then it came again. A soft bumping, accompanied now by a gentle splashing as a little wave drifted over whatever it was. It must be something big.
    I crept along the port side of the gunwale, holding on to the side of the cabin for support. I was still a little bit drunk, the gentle rocking of the boat making me nauseous.
    For some reason I felt afraid. Out here, away from London, it felt wrong to be awake at this time of the night.
    When I got roughly alongside the bedroom, I turned on the torch, surprisingly and suddenly bright, a powerful beam shining out from it and hitting the vast conifers that rose behind the marina office. Then I directed the beam down into the space between the Revenge of the Tide and the pontoon.
    I couldn’t tell what it was, at first.
    A bundle. Something covered in fabric.
    My first thought, my first crazy, misplaced thought, was of the black plastic sack full of random fabrics that I’d thrown carelessly into the storage space in the bow. But it couldn’t be that. This was clearly something heavy, judging by its sluggishness, its reluctance to be moved by the water. It was floating, knocking into the side of the hull – right where my bed was.
    I went back to the wheelhouse and found my boat-hook, a long pole which had come with the boat and to my knowledge never been used, not by me at any rate – the Revenge hadn’t left this mooring since I’d moved in. The hook was heavy and unwieldy, and for a moment I contemplated leaving everything where it was and going to sleep on the sofa with my duvet, but it was no good. The knocking was regular but not regular enough – just random enough to slowly but surely drive me crazy.
    I tucked the boat-hook under my right arm and clutched the torch in my left, but the hook was too heavy – it needed both hands. I put the torch down on the roof of the cabin, its beam shining across the