Northline Breach Patrol RPG

The half-eight boat into Dunmara comes in on a flooding tide, twenty minutes late, late enough that the queue on the slip has started sounding its horns into the rain.

Then the ramp comes down and the horns stop.

There is frost on the steel. Not spray, not salt — frost, in the last week of August, thick enough to hold a print, and the print in it is longer than any boot on this island. It runs up the ramp. Not down. The cars that ought to be rolling off sit dark with their engines idling and nobody touching a door handle. On the pier a collie has flattened itself against the creel stack, ears back, and will not be shifted for anything its owner says to it.

Ailsa Crannach comes down the ramp edge sideways, hi-vis soaked through, keeping her hand off the wet rail. She knows anda by sight the way everyone on this slip does, and she comes straight over, past the harbourmaster, past the two lads with the chocks.

"You're the one that reads ground." She doesn't look at you while she says it — she's watching the vehicle deck behind her, where water is coming off something in a slow rhythm that doesn't match the swell. "So tell me what came off my boat. I counted foot passengers twice at Oban and I've one more walking off than I loaded."