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wide-brimmed hat and the pale sheen of his coat as he paid the driver. It crossed my mind that it was a good angle from which to paint a picture of a London street – but in the same instant I knew I wouldn’t do it; nobody would buy it. He disappeared from sight and a few moments later I heard his footsteps labouring up the bare stairboards. I opened the door and ushered him in, a tubby, round-looking man with small eyes in a smooth face. His clothes were a businessman’s clothes, but not English. The small eyes took in the cluttered studio, scanning the walls as though in search of something. ‘I guess you’re an artist, Mr Ross. That right?’
    â€˜I kid myself sometimes.’
    But there was no answering smile. The small eyes stared at me, cold and humourless. ‘You got a picture of your brother?’
    â€˜Just why are you here?’ I asked him.
    He took his hat off then and sat down on the bed, a little out of breath. ‘It’s a long story.’ Brown-stained fingers fumbled for his cigarettes. ‘Smoke?’ I shook my head. He flipped one out of the pack and lit it. ‘It’s about the Duart Castle . As I told you over the phone, my name’s Lane, Ed Lane. I come from Vancouver. I’m over here on business – oil and gas; my company runs pipelines. I mention that just to show you I’m a man of some standing. The reason I’ve come to see you is a private one. I’m investigating something that concerns my wife’s family. A matter of a Will. There’s a lot of money involved.’ He paused for breath, reached into the pocket of his light-coloured raincoat. ‘I’ve got some photographs here.’ He had come up with an envelope. But instead of producing the pictures, he sat dragging at his cigarette and staring round the room. ‘An artist,’ he breathed as though he’d just thought of something. ‘Do you do portraits?’
    â€˜No.’
    He frowned. ‘You mean you can’t draw heads, faces, people’s features?’
    â€˜I don’t paint portraits, that’s all.’
    He looked at the table then, twisting his head round and reaching for the rag I’d dropped over the jacket design. Behind the lettering I had already painted in the first of a series of heads representing humanity in fear. ‘There you are. That’s the sort of thing.’ The little button eyes stared at me as though I’d purposely misled him. ‘You remember your brother, do you? You haven’t forgotten what he looked like?’
    â€˜Of course not. But I don’t see …’
    â€˜You could draw me a portrait of him, couldn’t you?’
    â€˜I could.’
    I think he saw I was getting annoyed, for he smiled and said, ‘Sure. You want to know what it’s all about first.’
    â€˜You mentioned some pictures,’ I said.
    He nodded. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later. First, there are the press-cuttings.’ He pulled some clippings from the envelope, selected one and handed it to me. ‘You saw that at the time, I expect.’
    It was from the Daily Telegraph , dated 24th February, 1944, the news of the sinking of the Duart Castle and the arrival at Donegal, Northern Ireland, of two boatloads of survivors, together with the list of their names, thirty-five in all. Pinned to it was a cutting dated 2nd March giving the official account of the torpedoing and the names of those who were missing, presumed dead. Iain Alasdair Ross. There it was to bring back to me after all these years the sense of loss I’d felt at the time, the feeling of being alone in the world, all my family dead. ‘I read it in The Scotsman ,’ I said and passed it back to him.
    â€˜Sure. It was in most of the papers.’ He was riffling through the bunch of cuttings. ‘That all you read about the Duart Castle ?’
    â€˜That’s all there was, as far as I know. Papers were