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Suzanne’s absence from it. I closed the study door softly and went to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. The spiced food and the beer and wine drunk with it would have made me seek water anyway, so close to bed. But it was my father’s request, over dinner, that made me really thirsty now. I felt the dry-mouthed affliction of nervousness, even of fear. And it was my father’s proposition at our table in the Kundan that had triggered it. That, and the walk back to the flat. The river had been low under Lambeth Bridge, lapping softly and invisible, what little noise it made distorted by the fog. The fog, almost impenetrable in Portsmouth, had extended its tendrils as far as the capital. There was almost no traffic and curiously no pedestrian traffic at all, though it was not remotely late by London standards. But from the moment my father’s taxi drew away, I endured the strange suspicion of being trailed though dissipating mist, all the way over the bridge and to the safe refuge of home.
    That night I dreamed that Harry Spalding and Michael Collins met, the encounter in some dim and monochromatic no-man’s-land. They were uniformed and they took off their caps and their Sam Browne belts and came together to wrestle. And Collins, the broth of a boy from his father’s farm in County Cork, naturally the bigger and stronger man and much the more skilled at grappling, gained the upper hand. And then Spalding’s limbs seemed to lengthen and burnish and they blackened like those of some great, bony insect and he crushed and then greedily devoured hisopponent, his arms and legs segmented now and chittering foully as he scrabbled away into the darkness from the scene. I awoke, sweating. It had been a horrible dream, all the worse, as nightmares so often are, for being so nonsensical and meaningless.
    I got out of bed, went back into Suzanne’s study and took the cashmere sweater she had left draped across the back of the chair at her desk. It had been the source of the earlier scent, a mingling of her skin and hair and the perfume she habitually wore. I folded it on to my pillow for comfort but still felt spooked. I sat up and took my mobile from the bedside table and texted Suzanne to call me if she was still awake. I was grateful she was only in Dublin, in the same time zone. Her research work could take her anywhere in the world. In Dublin and London it was only just after midnight.
    She called me back straight away.
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Nothing. Have you heard of a man called Harry Spalding?’
    There was a silence as I’m sure she flicked through the mental Rolodex in her clever, beautiful head. ‘Yes. In Paris in the 1920s he once offered Bricktop a hundred thousand dollars if she would sleep with him.’
    I had no idea who or what Bricktop was. A courtesan? An entertainer? ‘Bricktop’s response?’
    Suzanne laughed. ‘Something fairly unprintable, I should think.’
    ‘Have you heard of the Jericho Crew?’
    There was another silence. This one was less productive. ‘No, I haven’t. It doesn’t sound very salubrious, though, whatever it is. Or was. What’s this about, Martin?’
    ‘My father bought the wreck of Spalding’s boat today. His yacht. The
Dark Echo
?’
    At the other end of the line, I heard Suzanne swallow. ‘Well. Your father has never been one for superstition.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘I’ll tell you when I see you, Martin. I’ll tell you all about Bricktop, too.’
    ‘My father intends to have the boat restored, made seaworthy once again. He intends to sail her. He wants to sail her around the world. And he told me tonight he wants me to accompany him.’
    She laughed. There was no mirth in the sound. ‘I thought your father liked me.’
    ‘He does like you.’
    ‘But he wants to take you away,’ she said.
    ‘Which means that he must like me as well.’
    I could hear her thinking. ‘I’ll see you at the weekend,’ she said. It was Wednesday. She was due back on