‘So how long are you planning on staying out here?’ asked Mark, disturbing Chris’s woolgathering.

‘I don’t think we’ll need to be too long here. I can probably do the shoot in one dive if the water’s clear and we have a good day for the weather.’

‘The water here’s pretty cold this time of year. I’d say not far off zero degrees down below. It’ll have to be a short dive, no more than thirty minutes tops. You think you can get all that you want in that time, Chris?’

‘Well, if not, then we can do a second dive, I suppose.’

‘It’s been a while since we did any together. How are you with diving on wrecks? How many have you done?’

‘Only one… that time with you in Florida. When was that? Two

… three years ago?’

Mark looked a little unhappy. ‘Okay, so tonight we’ll go over the safety rules again. It seems like you could probably do with a refresher course. It’s a dangerous type of diving, especially with all the added complications of a cold-water environment. But then you know all this, don’t you?’

‘That’s why I hired you, mate. So you can do all the worrying and fussing.’

The last of the evening’s light was fading quickly as they entered Port Lawrence and parked up near the wharf.

It was a small fishing town, with a population of five and a half thousand. On Fridays and Wednesdays it pulled in people from all over the county for the market, and in the summer, townies came from as far away as Boston and New York to enjoy the odd long weekend of provincial charm. Outside of the vacation seasons and market days, it was a ghost town.

There was plenty of space to park along the wharf, and Chris rolled the Cherokee up beside several delivery trucks facing the wharf’s edge. He looked out of the windscreen at the row of trawlers tied up like horses outside a saloon bar.