The Harbour Master

The harbour master was called Mr. Prentice and he had run the harbour for twenty years and had the brown, weathered face of someone who spent most of their life looking at water. He was not unkind but he was not particularly interested in talking to two children about a police matter, which he said clearly and not unpleasantly when Sera knocked on his office door the next morning.

"We are not asking about the police matter," Sera said. "We are asking about the white boat with the red stripe that left yesterday."

Mr. Prentice looked at her. Then at Ned. Then back at her. "Why?"

"Because it left before our boat was reported missing," Sera said. "And we would like to know who was on it."

"That information is in the harbour log," Mr. Prentice said. "Which is a harbour document and not available to the public."

"We are not the public," Ned said. "Our family has had a berth in this harbour for eleven years. We pay harbour fees. That makes us members."

Mr. Prentice looked at Ned with the expression of someone who had not expected a ten-year-old to know the word berth. "It makes you berth holders," he said. "Not members."

"The distinction seems minor," Ned said.

"The distinction is legal," Mr. Prentice said. But he had opened the harbour log. "I will tell you this much. The boat was registered to a Mr. D. Calloway. He gave an address in Bristol. He came in eight days ago, paid for six nights, stayed nine, left yesterday at five fifteen am."

"Five fifteen," Sera said. "The camera came back on at five seventeen."

Mr. Prentice went still. He had not made that connection. Sera could see the moment he made it, the slight change in the set of his face, the careful neutral expression going slightly less neutral.

"That is probably a coincidence," he said.

"Probably," Sera agreed. "Do you have a description of Mr. Calloway?"

"Tall," Mr. Prentice said, after a pause. "Older. Fifties maybe. Grey hair. Quiet man. Paid cash."

"Cash," Ned said.

"People pay cash," Mr. Prentice said. But he said it like a man who was beginning to have second thoughts about cash.

"Did he talk to anyone in the harbour?" Sera asked. "Regularly, I mean. Anyone he seemed to know."

Mr. Prentice looked at the log. He looked at the wall. He looked at his hands.

"He had coffee with the Ridley boy a few times," he said finally. "Young man who helps with the boat maintenance. Tom Ridley."

Sera wrote this down. She thanked Mr. Prentice and left. Outside, in the harbour wind, Ned fell into step beside her.

"Tom Ridley does the maintenance on the jetty cameras," Ned said.

The harbour wind was cold off the water. Sera pulled her jacket tighter and looked at the empty mooring where the Marianne should have been. The rope end still hung there, cut clean, moving slightly in the current.

Sera looked at him. "How do you know that?"

"I read the maintenance schedule," Ned said. "It is posted on the harbour board. I read things that are posted on boards. It is a habit."

Sera looked at the harbour. Somewhere out on the water, or somewhere further, the Marianne was sailing without them. She thought about her grandfather, who had bought it in 1987, who had sailed it every summer, whose handwriting was still on the logbook in the cabin.

"Let us go and talk to Tom Ridley," she said.