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He opened the front door to his flat and went in.

SHOCK

The lifeboat crew trained weekly in the summer months, so Sunday morning of

the following weekend found Steve unlocking the boathouse ready for the arrival of his colleagues. It was a fine day and the sea calm, but – unusually – none of the fishing boats was out nor any being prepared. A few people were standing around near Charlie Johns's Fair Go, but Charlie wasn't among them. In fact, Steve realised, he didn't recognise some of them. And they were oddly dressed for the beach, in dark, sober clothes.

An inkling of the truth suddenly hit Steve, and with a liquid sensation in his gut he started towards the quay. He was intercepted by Martin, the lifeguard. One look at Martin's face was enough.

'Oh, God,' Steve said. 'Charlie –'

'Yesterday. Heart attack, as far as I know.' Martin nodded over his shoulder towards the soberly dressed group. 'They're his family from up-country. Daughter and son-in-law and so forth.'

'Oh, shit.' Shock, sorrow and guilt hit Steve in a powerful mixture. All this past week he had been meaning to call on Charlie. But he had put it off; he had thought Charlie's illness wasn't serious. And now it was too late.

'There'll have to be a post-mortem,' Martin said gloomily. 'Seeing as it was so sudden. I mean, everyone thought it was just that bug that's been around. People don't die of things like that, do they?'

'No. But if it was his heart...' The words trailed off and Steve sighed heavily, shaking his head. 'He always seemed so fit.'

'Yeah. Mind you, he was getting on a bit, wasn't he?' Martin sighed, too. 'Poor old bugger. He'll be missed.' Then he glanced up the road. 'Here come the first of your crew. Better tell them.'

'Yes.' It wasn't something Steve relished. 'Yes, I will.'

The training session was a cheerless exercise, and no one felt like staying around afterwards. The bereaved relations had gone by the time the boat was put away, but as Steve was about to leave, Gus Trevorrow, who had been Charlie's long-standing friend and drinking partner, approached and asked him to call at the house later in the day.

'There's something Charlie wanted you to have, boy,' he said. His seablue eyes were red rimmed. 'I don't know what 'tis; family'll tell you. Come round about four, all right?'

Steve said all right but couldn't bring himself to ask Gus all the questions about Charlie that he wanted to. The news was spreading by the time he got back to the village, and three people 'phoned him during the afternoon to see if he had heard. Ruth did not ring, though. Not that he had expected her to; they had met up once more since the first time in the Huer's, and she had promised to see him again. But she hadn't given him her number and he didn't know how to contact her. He would have liked to talk to her now. He would have liked to be with her.

At three forty-five he changed his shorts and T-shirt for something more appropriate and walked to Charlie's bungalow on the small estate at the edge of the village. The door was answered by a balding, fortysomething man who said he was Charlie's son-in-law and thank you for the condolences and please come in. The living room was gloomy, the curtains half drawn, and Charlie's daughter, Liz, whom Steve had never met before, was serving tea to several of Charlie's closest friends and their wives, while two early-teen children – Charlie's grandkids, presumably – sat fidgeting and bored in a corner.

'It's only a small thing,' Liz said, smiling tiredly at Steve. 'But apparently Dad told his friends that he wanted you to have it. He said you'd know what it was about.'

She went to the sideboard and fetched something wrapped in tissue paper. Unfolding the paper, Steve didn't realise what he was looking at for a moment, but then he recognised it. It was the strange metal cylinder that they had brought up from the dive when the crab pot line became tangled.