‘Alright, why don’t you go to the car and I’ll meet you there,’ she said, blushing. ‘I’ll just lock all this away . . .’

The coastal roads back to Shacktown were bumpy, wending through cleared paddocks edged with common heath and tea-trees. He felt at complete peace there in Shelby’s Jeep, fiddling with his gold chain. He hadn’t said anything – he wasn’t sure if a sober person would speak right now, with so much illegal product in the back seat.

‘Don’t laugh,’ said Shelby, ‘but, lately, I’ve been trying to imagine Davey’s face if the roles had been reversed. If I had come out and told him I was some drug queenpin.’

Mackerel chuckled. Now he was fiddling with his seatbelt, pulling it in and out, in and out . . . ‘Just happy little daydreams, hey?’

‘Yeah, well,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘In my daydreams, one day I decide to become a queenpin myself. Persephone. Like the queen of the underworld? Bit of a joke – Persephone was married to Hades, lord of the dead.’

Mackenzie kept his eyes out the window. ‘Davey didn’t tell you the truth because he wanted to protect you.’

‘Yes, Mackenzie, you’ve told me a hundred times. But he shouldn’t have married me if this was the life he chose. Not without telling me.’

‘He wanted to tell you,’ said Mackenzie.

‘A lot of stuff makes sense now.’ she said. ‘He wanted to recruit me, didn’t he? When we first started dating?’

‘He loves you.’

‘What made him think I’d ever want to cook ice?’ said Shelby.

‘People don’t usually turn Davey down . . .’ said Mackenzie. ‘We’d never met a proper chemist before. Plus you were smart, funny, drop-dead gorgeous. He had this picture-perfect plan for you and him. I think, in the end, that’s why he didn’t tell you.’

‘He didn’t trust me?’ said Shelby.

‘He couldn’t face the danger of you becoming a cook.’

‘I mean, you survived prison. That can’t have been fun, but I’m sure I could’ve handled it.’

‘I’m not talking prison, Shelbs,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Ice cooks . . .’

‘You keep saying it’s dangerous, but you never tell me why, exactly. We’re in this together now. Stop keeping things from me.’ Even while driving, she was able to glance across and pin him down with a fearsome look.

He sighed. ‘A friend of a friend was a genius with ice. She could cook it from stuff you buy at Woolworths, a real miracle worker . . . They found her three years after she was abducted. She’d been kept in a shipping container in the Victorian bush, chained to her lab by her ankle. She lives in a support home now. She’s never recovered.’

Shelby cursed. ‘Tell me you’re joking.’

‘That’s why Davey’s scared of you getting involved in all this,’ said Mackenzie.