‘The rush. The power. The . . . the clothes, the toys, the girls. The respect.’

‘Not the drugs themselves?’ said Ahab.

‘No,’ said Mackenzie firmly, ‘if I touch ice again, I’ll lose my mind.’

Finally he was showing some steel. Ahab even believed him.

‘But you’ll willingly let that drug loose on other people?’ he said.

‘We don’t have a choice. It’s the only way.’

He could have thrown him overboard for that. The Business ran on unexamined assumptions, the path of least resistance, handed down from generation to generation.

‘I’m sick of hearing that there’s no other way. What if you worked with police?’

Mackenzie shook his head furiously. ‘Are you insane?’

‘Why not? Why shouldn’t we?’

Mackenzie put his head in his hands.

‘So what do you want me to tell you?’

‘I need . . . different advice.’

Ahab considered the man in front of him. He had new clothes, a new haircut, even an expensive gold chain around his neck, but he looked terrified, like a scared little boy. Yet the man was built like a brick shithouse. And Ahab had seen how aggressive he got when angry. Why was he always so timid?

But Ahab knew. Between his father and his brothers, they’d really worked a number on the boy.

‘Alright, I’ll give you some advice . . .’ said Ahab. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘What . . .?’ He looked confused. ‘It’s Mackerel.’

‘Really? It says that on your birth certificate?’

‘No . . . it says Mackenzie Dempsey.’

‘Mackenzie. So why do you call yourself Mackerel?’

‘It’s just my nickname.’

‘And why is it your nickname?’

He shrugged. ‘Dad gave it to me. I’d caught a mackerel, but I thought it was a tuna.’

‘Tell me that story,’ said Ahab.

‘Me and Davey went with Dad on a fishing trip. I was only little. He said that we were gonna catch a tuna – it was an initiation thing. He’d done it with Jesse, and now he was gonna make men of us two.’

‘Go on.’ Ahab already knew the story. Mackenzie’s father had told it to an appreciative crowd at the pub that very night, and many nights thereafter. The nickname had stuck to the poor boy as firmly as a Greenlip abalone to a rock.