The oak barrel struck the granite with a wet, heavy thud that rattled the gutting-tables. Outside, the Albert Quay was a smear of grey fog and oil-slicked stone, the air thick with the scent of North Sea salt and the low, rhythmic groan of the tide. The dockers left without a word, their boots hollow on the cobbles, leaving Effie alone in the damp chill of the curing shed.
She wiped her reddened hands on her blue-and-white striped apron, her sea-grey eyes narrowing at the unmarked wood. There was no stencil on the side, no merchant’s mark or port of origin, only the dark, sodden grain of Shetland oak. Her gaze drifted to the shed wall, where a pale rectangle of dust marked the spot where her father’s brass stencil plate had hung since the 1924 drift. It had been missing since Tuesday.
He wouldn't have sent this, not after twenty-three years. She reached for the heavy iron pry-bar, her breath blooming white in the morning air. The shed was too quiet, the only sound the dripping of the eaves and the distant, lonely cry of a gull. Effie jammed the metal tip into the seam. The pry-bar slides under the first oak stave, and the wood gives way with a sound like a drawn breath.
