What They Knew

Sera started a list that night in the back of her holiday notebook, the same notebook she used for sketches and observations and things she wanted to remember, and she wrote down everything that was a fact.

One: the Marianne had been at its mooring at nine pm, confirmed by the harbour master. Gone by six am, confirmed by their father who had gone down early.

Two: the mooring rope had been cut, not untied. A clean cut, the harbour master said. Something sharp.

Three: the harbour camera had a gap of exactly five hours and thirty-five minutes. Not a gradual malfunction. A precise gap.

Four: nobody in the harbour had heard an engine. The Marianne had an engine but also sails, and the harbour at night was quiet enough that an engine would have woken someone. Nobody had heard anything.

Five: the tide had been going out from midnight to four am. A boat leaving without an engine, using the tide, would have drifted south.

She looked at her list for a long time. The facts sat on the page in her neat handwriting and what they added up to was not an accident and not a random theft. What they added up to was someone who had planned this carefully, who had known the harbour, who had known the boat, who had chosen their window and used it.

She looked at her list. Then she went and knocked on Ned's door.

He was already awake, sitting on his bed with his own notebook open. He had been keeping notes too, which she had expected, because Ned approached problems the same way she did, methodically, from the edges inward.

"The camera," she said, sitting down on the end of his bed. "Five hours and thirty-five minutes is too specific for a malfunction."

"Agreed," Ned said. "Someone disabled it. Which means someone knew where it was and how to access it."

"Which means someone local," Sera said. "Or someone who had been here long enough to learn the harbour."

"Or someone who was told," Ned said.

Sera looked at him. That was the darker thought. Someone who was told meant someone with an inside contact. Someone who knew the harbour well enough to share that knowledge.

"Dad said two new boats came in last week," Ned said. "Visitors. He pointed them out."

"I remember," Sera said. "The blue one and the white one with the red stripe."

"The white one left yesterday morning," Ned said. "Before the Marianne was discovered missing."

They looked at each other.

"That could be a coincidence," Sera said.

"It could be," Ned agreed. "Do you think it is?"

"No," Sera said. "But we need more than timing."