I was passed by cool-looking people in air-conditioned cars and I wondered, not for the first time, whether I should get a soft top. I didn’t have a woman to ride in it with me-wearing a scarf and with her sunglasses pushed back on the top of her head-but maybe I could do something about that. Roberta Landy-Drake’s cheque would take care of the rent and the mortgage for a month; a couple of steady weeks work for Guthrie, and maybe then I could think about a soft top. I thought about it anyway as I drove sedately north, past the hamburger bars and surf shops, and eventually past the pub in Newport where we used to come in the bad old days with our genuine thirsts and phoney addresses, and pass ourselves off as bona fide travellers.

The approach to the marina was through a bumpy car park beside a pub that hadn’t existed back in the Sabbatarian days. I parked in a small patch of shade that would get smaller as the day wore on. The marina was an arrangement of boat sheds, office, workshops and jetties all connected on different levels by steps and walkways. I walked down to wards it, jiggling my keys and thinking ambivalent thoughts about boats.

Guthrie was waiting for me on a wooden walkway that led to the moorings. He was wearing jeans, a tee-shirt and canvas shoes. I was relieved to see that he didn’t affect the cap and scarf of the pseudo sailor, but I hadn’t expected he would. We shook hands and I realised that the hard ridges I’d felt the night before were from boat work. He might have sounded full of beans on the phone but he looked a little tired now, not at the peak of his form, and he was hiding his eyes behind sunglasses.

‘Going out to check some of the moorings’, he said. ‘Routine work in this game.’

‘Don’t you employ people to do that?’

‘Sure, but I like to keep my hand in. Along here, and watch your step.’

The planks and rails seemed to be in good condition-no splinters, no flaking paint. There must have been more than a hundred boats tied up there-big, swank things like overblown birds and neat, smaller craft with more interesting lines. The water was a deep green around the pylons and the boats were mostly white with blocks of red, blue and brown. The bright sun flashed on brass name plates- Pocohontas, Bundeena, Shangri-la.