Instead, they were going overland, to the top of Cape Pillar. Once they got there they’d have to make their way down to a nearby beach via an abandoned ‘path’ climbers had once hammered out of the cliff face, back in the sixties.

If they survived that, they’d have to dive to the cave in the middle of a Black Wind – and, unlike the relative shelter of Devils Kitchen, this time they’d more or less be out in open water.

He could hardly focus on what lay ahead – Davey was trying to kill a child. How had it come to this? Or had Davey always been like this and he’d just never seen it?

Ivy is dead.

Kane is dead.

Davey is trying to drown our little imposter.

As they neared the top of the cliffs, the Black Wind grew stronger, buffeting them and making the speeding bikes wobble dangerously. When the bush finally thinned out and they reached the brink of the cliff at Cape Pillar, it turned ferocious: just as strong as it would be at sea. The sky was menacing, rain pounded down, and the waves below roared with anger.

‘We have to climb down that?’ shouted Ahab above the tempest. ‘We’ll break our necks!’

The rocky path switchbacked down the cliff, barely a foot wide, leading to a tiny gravelly beach battered by the ocean. The only safety on the way down was rusted metal poles that might once have supported a chain-link fence.

‘First rule of scuba diving,’ said Mackenzie with a rueful smile. ‘Just breathe!’

Ahab wiped the freezing rain from his eyes. ‘Then let’s go!’

Mackenzie went first, taking both his gear and Forest’s. He gripped rocky edges, smoothed and eroded by years of exposure, willing his limping feet to find purchase, trying to keep the rain from his eyes as he took each step after gruelling step. He glanced back to be sure Ahab was still following. He’d never realised how old Ahab looked, but he saw it now, with the wind and rain lashing the man’s face.

Distracted, his foot slipped on the rain-slick rock, and for a horrifying instant he felt himself hanging out over the edge, before he pulled himself back to the cliff face using one of the rusted poles.

Down, down, down they went, each step as terrifying as the last. The weight of the gear pulled at Mackenzie’s arms, his sides stiff and sore from the beating Tranquil had given him on Margot’s Revenge. His emotions rolled and pinwheeled, the last of the Golden Sunshine leaving his system. Ivy’s violent death at Shelby’s hands, the fact that Kane had been caught up in the dangers of the drug game . . .

Don’t think about it. Save the fake Forest. One thing at a time.

Breathe in, breathe out.