'Flea?'

'Yeah, I was thinking — anyone up there ever known it be anything other than nil vis down here?'

A pause while Dundas consulted the team on the quayside. Then he came back. 'Negative, Sarge. No one.'

'Definitely nil vis about a hundred per cent of the time, then?'

'I'd say that's a high likelihood, Sarge. Why?'

She placed the hand back on the floor of the harbour. She'd come back to it with a limb kit — no way could she swim to the surface with it and lose forensic evidence — but now she held on to the search line and tried to think. She tried to catch an idea of how the witness had been able to see it, tried to hold on to the idea and work it out, but she couldn't nail it. Probably something to do with what she'd got up to last night. That or she was getting older. Twenty-nine next month. Hey, Mum, how about that. I'm nearly twenty-nine. Never thought I'd get this far, did you?

'Sarge?'

She paid out the rope slowly, working against the surface attendant's pressure, making it look as if she was crawling back along the base of the quay. She adjusted the coms lead so the connection was secure.

'Yeah, sorry,' she said. 'Zoned out a bit there. Five bells, Rich. I've got the target. Coming up now.'

She stood on the harbour in the freezing cold, mask in her hand, her breath white in the air, and shivered while Dundas hosed her down. She'd been back down to recover the hand with the limb kit, the dive was over and this was the bit she hated, the shock of coming out of the water, the shock of being back with the sounds and the light and the people — and the air, like a slap in the face.