Chapter One

On this still day Porlock Bay curves, in a grey sweep of pebbles, from the steep wooded slopes above Porlock Weir around to the haze-speckled cliffs of Hurlstone Point.
      Behind this ridged bank of pebbles, sea-breached, are three fields that are being slowly reclaimed by the Bristol Channel. And behind these overgreen fields are the chocolate dark houses of Porlock. Above a lit garage and tourist shops, steep wooded valleys climb to the bald, cloud-touched moors.
      The few buildings of Porlock Weir, at the wooded end of the bay, are separated from Porlock itself by several fields. The centrepiece of Porlock Weir (which has no weir) is the stone-built harbour office, untended, combining also tea rooms and dilapidated shop. Its stone is charcoal dark, its zigzag pointing white.
      Across the way is the long orange front of the Anchor Hotel, four star. Squashed in beside it is the thatched White Ship Inn. Down the alley to the harbour is a row of workshops.
      The harbour itself is not, in the conventional stonewalled sense, so much a harbour, as a stream-fed creek, inside a pebble ridge, which - to form the harbour - is closed off by stone pillars and an iron gate.
      Across the other side of the harbour's iron gates, built upon the pebble spit, is a row of cottages. The end cottage is thatched, the other two tiled, their windows iron-framed. The pebble banks falling away from them are held back by stepped palisades of skinned trunks. Long sticks - some tied together - have been stuck into the pebbles on either side of the stream that seeps under the harbour's plate iron gates and trickles down towards the sea.
      This day the tide is out. A soft metal sheen of mud has been left over the three green fields. And, away across the weak, milk chocolate of the Bristol Channel, the white of Barry's buildings are just about visible. Not a day for sightseeing.
      A few visitors, though, have clanked over the walkway above the harbour gates, have ambled out past the cottages, around the shallow end of the harbour's green water, and back by the boat houses and artist's workshops through the alley to the car park.
      Perched on their keels at the end of this tide-out puddle of a harbour, are a line of stranded yachts. Where the yachts can and cannot park is marked out by lines in the shape of two parallel rusted chains.
      In the water, under the walkway, is a crabber afloat and a green, water-filled dinghy. One yacht has been stranded up the seaward bank, the blue base of its hull settled onto tyre-padded chocks. Printed, in black, across the hull's white stern is,

'WATER MUSIC
MINEHEAD'.

A maroon Volvo estate is parked on the level compacted pebbles between the yacht and the three cottages. The driver's door and the rear door have been left open.
      The yacht's varnished cabin door, behind its big-wheeled helm, is also open. So too are the hatches that lead down into its sail locker and inboard engine. The square hatch-covers have been laid skewiff upon the deck, angles sticking out between the safety line and the curve of the hull.
      Lounging back on one of the cabin sofa-beds, Jonathan Bowles watches the rugby on a small portable telly. In this, the first half, England is already coming from behind against France. The kicking of the French backs, some close passing and two fast wingers have gained them the points. The discipline and weight of the English pack, however, is beginning to tell. Although the English are still losing too many line-outs, even when it is their throw-in.
      Jonathan Bowles' girlfriend, Anna Gabriel, is down in the sail locker with a fibreglass patch.
      Working below what, when afloat, is the waterline, Anna has a battery-operated fan down there to push the solvent fumes from the confined space - both hatch-covers having been removed to assist through-ventilation.
      Not much daylight comes down through the shoulder-width hatchway. What does is blocked by her own crouching body. Anna has to use a torch to see what she is doing.
      She is thorough. Even this inner patch she will make as smooth as she can with hand-held emery. The external patch, prior to matching it in blue, she will make wholly smooth. For that she will use an electric sander powered off the engine. But not today as it would interfere with Jonathan's rugby reception. Enough for now that she has identified the pinprick leak, marked the site of the patch externally, got the first patch fixed to the inside and has made a start rubbing it down.
      Both being caught up in what they are doing - Jonathan ignoring the occasional slight rocking caused by her rubbing - neither hear their car being driven off. Only when Jonathan becomes aware of a persistent shouting does he glance to the porthole.
      An absence, however, takes longer to register: the memory has to be consulted, images checked through.
      "The car!"
      Tipping the foam mattress off the sofa-bed, he scrambles his bulk through the small low door.
      Short Jack, from the Gallery Shop, is doing the shouting, is pointing to the car which, its brakes squealing, is coming to a stop between the stable block and the old woman's shop. So red and flustered is he, it looks like short, fat Jack might have tried to stop the Volvo with his bare hands.
      The suddenness of the braking has brought the Volvo's rear door down closed, only for it to slowly rise up again as the driver pushes open the passenger door. A fat woman rolls herself onto the seat. The long car accelerates out of sight behind the black and white building.
      "Anna!" Jonathan calls low and hard, "Anna!"
      Blonde hair pushed up in a back-to-front black baseball cap, Anna's head comes up through the sail locker hatchway. She was already aware - through Jonathan's bumping about on the boat, combined with the sound of the shouting - that she should uncramp her back and legs and take a look.
      Now she blinks in the white light at where the car was, across at fat Jack, who - with his short arms - is now making an exaggerated arms-wide gesture. Anna is dizzy from the fumes and from getting up too quickly.
      "Fuck it," Jonathan says quietly.
      "My tool bag's fallen out," Anna can see the brown canvas bag up between the two lines of rusted chains. (Anna also undertakes all the repairs and decorating in their square yellow house up in the woods.)
      "Nothing else?" Jonathan is looking back again over the road before the gallery shop and stable block, the path from the chains.
      "You pushed them up near the front?"
      "Behind your seat."
      An elderly couple on the harbour entrance walkway, a woman with two golden retrievers up past the end of the sheds, look at them. The younger dog's legs are thin and wet, its belly fur hanging in dark spikes. In the workshop next to the gallery the red eye of the glassblower's furnace winks as a stranger comes walking up to Jack.

"We're going to have to call the police," Jonathan says.
      Anna looks over to Jack.
      "No choice."