Cesky hadn’t even figured that much in her calculations at the time. He’d wanted to get his wife and four daughters to Seattle, she recalled. Some crap about big business opportunities there, with that shimmering death-haze on its doorstep. Proved himself to be an instant pain in the arse – well, a bigger one than most of the passengers she eventually took on, which was saying something – and Miguel Pieraro had done her a solid favour by beating him down when he did. She knew Cesky was hanging around the Fairmont on the day when Shah came in to evacuate the paying passengers, and Miguel’s extended family. She smiled fondly at that – extended family, he couldn’t have extended the numbers much further – although she’d been furious at the time. Apart from that moment, neither Shah nor the Mexican had had to deal directly with him. Miguel had given old Henry a pretty good scare, not to mention a public humiliation. The vindictive little prick had then blasted out text messages all over the city saying that anybody who needed to be evacuated could rely on Julianne Balwyn to get them out on her boat. Thousands turned up.

Being honest about it, Jules could see why Cesky would imagine he owed them some payback. Any normal person would feel the same, especially if they’d been abandoned in a dangerous shithole teetering on the edge of collapse. But normal people wouldn’t take it any further than that.

And normal people, she had to admit, probably wouldn’t have got themselves and their families out of Acapulco. They’d have died there. Cesky had shown himself to have the balls to cope with being kicked off her boat, and to leverage himself and his family onto another one. A pity it sunk and one of his kids drowned. Perhaps if that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t be sitting here talking to Pappas. Perhaps he could’ve just let it go and been content to have escaped.

‘So the other passengers you took on,’ Nick asked when she’d finished, ‘these rich reffos and wet-backs – what about them? Who were they, and where are they now?’

Julianne shook her head. ‘Not all of them made it across. We lost a few when we ran into the Viarsa, a big pirate ship, in the South Pacific. And I’m afraid that once we made Sydney, I didn’t exactly bother getting forwarding addresses for my Christmas card list.’

Pappas, who was scribbling away even though his recorder was picking this all up, gave a little shake of the head. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘If they’re kicking around somewhere, I’ll find them. Especially if Cesky has already had a go. You said that before this mate of yours, the Mexican bloke, gave him a bit of a touch-up, Cesky had also had a fight with some internet porn guy?’