He replaced the phone on its hook and walked through his little suite, towards the narrow doorway to the inn below. He patted Keegan on the way, who wagged his tail lazily against the sunbed without opening his eyes. He’d recognised Ned’s voice at the door, or his reaction would have been very different.

‘No sign of Jesse or Alexandra, but Forest has been taken to the Royal Hobart,’ said Ned.

‘Thanks, lad,’ said Ahab.

‘What’s the plan?’

‘I have to go see her.’

Ned winced. ‘Do you . . . do you need me to come along?’

Ahab appreciated Ned’s bravery.

‘All good, mate.’ He headed down the stairs.

‘Roger,’ Ned called after him, relieved.

Ahab’s mind turned back to her.

Ivy Dempsey.

Aunty Ivy.

She was the mother of Jesse, Davey and Mackenzie Dempsey. She was the richest woman in Shacktown, and also the most corrupt. She was as dangerous as the tides. In fact, he’d give himself a better chance of surviving the cross sea than an encounter with her.

He grabbed his coat.

Ahab walked the trail down to the Tessellated Pavement, another popular tourist spot. The Pavement was a flat stretch of rock reaching into the ocean, covered by a latticework of rectangular saltwater pools, so geometrically precise they looked man-made. Were siren-made, if you believed the legends.

Here the Black Wind was a steady hum, and the waves crashed and sucked at a beach covered in tree bark and stones. Strong wind, beating sun, and people everywhere. Music played somewhere but it had no chance with the wind in the trees and buffeting the buildings further up the shore, the waves on the rock, that melancholy drone. A huddle of people watched a storm petrel dip and coast in the wind. Birds loved the Black Wind.

He walked along the Pavement and down onto the sand, footsteps crunching shells, dried cuttlefish backbones and gumnuts. He looked beyond the storm petrel, to where the sky opened up over the bay, making a mockery of the weathered cliffs and hills that tried to contain it.

Weathered. Ahab knew that every seaside, the whole ecology of coastal life, existed because of erosion and the forces of the wind and sea. But here in Shacktown the weather beat down on the coastline more than anywhere else he’d visited. And he felt it himself today – like the place might finally be wearing him down. It sure seemed that way if he was honestly thinking any good would come from a chat with Ivy.

Her house was just up ahead. A beachside mansion, it was set among grounds cleared of the hillside grasses, bordered by gumtrees but still ever-so-lucratively close to the sea. The front of the house faced a quiet street, but the rear offered a private, well-trodden staircase that ran down the harsh slope to the beach.