“No, we’re not,” Radhika said. “More like friends with benefits.”

“I see,” Jacky said.

“Can we change the topic?” Marty said.

Rad frowned at him. “Why are you being such a sour puss?”

“You know I’ve slept with both of you, right?”

“That’s a conversation starter,” said Jacky.

“My point is, you should feel uncomfortable around each other. You shouldn’t be acting like best friends.”

“Would you prefer for us to fight over you instead?” Rad asked playfully. “Pulling hair and ripping clothes and rolling around on the sand?”

Marty took another, longer sip of the Scotch, leaving little more than ice cubes in the tumbler. “Why don’t we skip the small talk and get to the point of why you’re here, Jacky.”

“Absolutely.” She folded her hands together on the table. “I take it you haven’t watched the news today, or you’d know why I’m here.”

Marty rarely watched the news. CNN and the BBC were the only two English-speaking channels that his TV received. Sometimes he put them on as background noise, or when he wanted the simple pleasure of hearing people (other than Pip) speaking English. But that was about the extent of his interest in the wider world. “I had CNN on today for a while,” he said, “but I wasn’t paying much attention to it.”

“I’m talking about the local news.”

“I never watch the local news.”

“You should, Marty. You’re living in Sri Lanka. You should watch Sri Lankan news.”

“It’s in Tamil, which I don’t speak.”

“You should learn! You’re living in—”

“What’s the big news?” he asked impatiently.

“I recorded the segment. It’s better if you watch it.”

Jacky brought up a video on her phone and handed the device to him. The paused frame showed a woman standing in front of a weather map. “Did you come all this way to tell me there’s a tropical storm on the horizon?” he said sardonically. “Should I be back at the Oannes battening down the hatches?”

“Press Play.”

Rad leaned close to see the screen. Marty tapped Play. The weather segment ended, replaced by a reporter standing in a shed with a microphone held up to her bright red lips. He didn’t understand a word of what she was saying.

“I told you I don’t speak—”

“Just watch.”

Soon the camera panned to a decapitated great white shark lying on a steel necropsy table. The shot cut to a bleached-white skull on a blue tarp and next to a wooden ruler. The lower jaw was missing, as were all of the teeth. Yet this specimen was clearly human, as demonstrated by the globular cranium, the zygomatic arches below the eye sockets, the triangular nasal cavity, the maxillary bones, and the hard palate in the front of the mouth.

Except, he thought, his brow furrowing, the frontal bone that formed the forehead protruded far too much to be…

The shot cut back to the reporter.

Marty jabbed the screen, pausing the video. He dragged the buffer bar back several seconds. When the skull appeared again, he zoomed in on it.