For seven years, it has sat there unnoticed. Just off Nelson's thrumming main road. Charter yachts soundlessly passing over, pleasure craft fizzing white tails, silt and sea life washing through, divers groping within metres.
You used to be able to drive down to the wharf at Wakefield Quay. You could park up and fish on your car bonnet.
Today, a yellow barrier blocks all vehicles. A sign warns of danger, 'Risk of falling'.
And for the last seven years, missing Nelson teenager Leo Lipp-Neighbours appears to have lain in his orange-yellow 1987 Toyota Corolla station wagon, at the bottom of Port Nelson.
By pure chance, commercial divers found it on Monday, bobbing with the tides, eddies, and container ship propeller wash.
Human skeletal remains were found inside.
And for seven years, Lipp-Neighbours' parents, Charlotte Lipp and Colin Neighbours, have wondered whatever happened to their boy - accident, misadventure, suicide, foul play?
Now, they are much closer to finding out the truth.
"All parents could imagine what it's been like," Charlotte told the Herald when asked about her reaction to the news.
She didn't want to speak further, while inquiries are ongoing. Police say results from the investigation of the remains "will take some time".
The last person to see University of Canterbury engineering student Lipp-Neighbours - on January 24, 2010 driving away from his valley suburb flat at around 4am - was his best mate Ben Clark.
Yesterday, although he still has plenty of unanswered questions, he spoke of his relief at the discovery.
"It's good that he is finally home," Clark told the Herald.
Lipp-Neighbours' friends said he was "in a dark mood" on the night he disappeared. That he left his flat after a night out clubbing saying he was going "to be at one with nature".
Despite extensive searches around the top of the South Island and appeals - including a $50,000 reward - there had never been any trace of the 19-year-old or his distinctive-coloured car.
Until now.
The chance encounter divers had with it on Monday has finally brought a break in one of New Zealand's highest-profile missing persons cases.
Luxury 56m luxury superyacht Fidelis had berthed at Wakefield Quay in Port Nelson.
After hunkering down for the weekend, crew dived to uplift the giant yacht's anchors on Monday ahead of pushing off again.
It was then that a diver spotted what he thought was a car tyre, and possibly a vehicle.
He didn't inspect any closer, but instead told vessel agent John Baudier of Yacht Services New Zealand.
Baudier reported a potential hazard in the harbour to Port Nelson.
The port then phoned experienced local commercial diver Bruce Lines, who happened to be working on another dive job just 50m away.
Lines went and had a look, while the port also contacted police.
"I found it pretty quickly," Lines told the Herald.
Visibility in Nelson waters is usually poor, with its silty, muddy estuaries and New Zealand's highest tide, which can ebb and flow up to 4.6m.
But Lines said the water was as clear as it's been "for years" on Monday.
He found the vehicle at a depth of 7-9m, and about 20m from the edge of the wharf.
"It was a fair way out really. Further than you'd think," Lines said.
"Then again, there could've been some movement over the years from prop wash from ships and tugs working around that area."
Covered in marine life and silt, he first thought it may have been a 4WD vehicle.
Intrigued, he thought he'd at least find out its colour to give the port, and police, something more to investigate.
"So I rubbed the door panel and straight away a bright yellow popped out. Instantly, I thought of Leo," Lines said.
"I guess it's such an unusual thing to see a yellow vehicle, you just don't see them, apart from the odd Lamborghini, so it was a real trigger, and the fact it was old. It looked like it had been there for years, and I thought s*** that's two likely scenarios."
When he surfaced, he explained his findings to police officers who had just arrived.
"That put a bit more interest and heat into the situation," Lines said.
He used his phone to check photos online of Lipp-Neighbours' car before going down for another look.
He cleaned some more of the vehicle and thought there was a pretty high chance it was the same missing car.
"It confirmed it really."
Nelson Bays police area commander Mat Arnold-Kelly soon confirmed skeletal remains were found inside.
"We're reasonably confident that it is Leo's vehicle," Arnold-Kelly said.
As the car was removed for forensic examination, Lipp-Neighbour's parents and friends watched on.
Theories on what happened to Lipp-Neighbours over the years have included his car going off a steep bank, suicide and in more recent years, that he was the victim of foul play.
His parents have said how they had considered every scenario and had "been around in circles".
The out-of-character disappearance led to a massive search around Nelson and further across the region and neighbouring areas.
Divers had searched around the coastline but that stretch of water was never covered.
Lines has dived Nelson Port for two decades.
"There's not much of it that I haven't dived. But that one spot... it's just outside of everything," he said.
"The crazy thing is that we've done full bottom searches under superyachts there but we've never had [a yacht] big enough to justify going that little bit further, until the other day.
"We might've got 6-10m from it. It's just snuck under the radar."
In retrospect, Lines says the spot where the car was found was "such an obvious place to look".
"Four minutes from his house, one of three places you could literally get into the water... It's just one of those things, just how it was overlooked I don't know. But that's the thing with retrospection, I guess."
Lines, along with many other locals spoken to by the Herald this week, hopes that the find will bring some answers and finality to Lipp-Neighbours' family and friends.
"As horrible as it would be to relive it, at least it will bring them some closure - they haven't had that before now," Lines said.
"If we just found the car and no evidence of Leo, it would've dragged it out further for them. But the fact it's very likely we have got him and the car, it's a really good result."
The only evidence that such a tragedy has ever occurred at such picturesque spot is a pile of bouquets, and a candle, left over the last few days.
The cloudy green water below the wharf eddies and flows, bobbing its quarry of flotsam and jetsam - leaves, bark and stray, tossed hot chips that schools of tiny fish nibble on.
Tourists meander by, diners laugh over lunch, and a tanned elderly man with a shock of white hair and white singlet stops to look at the flowers.
"It's so sad," he says, not to anyone in particular.
Asked if he knows anything about the case, he replies: "We all know about poor wee Leo."
He added, "It's like he's come home, but he never even left."
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