It was late at night, after closing time, and the pub was empty save for Ahab and Detective De Corrado. He had promised to tell her about the curse, but that required the right atmosphere – an oil lantern set between them gave their conversation a conspiratorial air.

The detective had asked if she could bring a colleague, but Ahab had refused. ‘You can tell them the important bits.’

‘Tell me the story then, Innkeeper,’ said De Corrado. She took a sip of a fresh gin and tonic. Detective De Corrado, to her enormous discredit, was not a fan of whisky.

‘You know the Tessellated Pavement?’ said Ahab.

‘I went for a little sight-seeing earlier to orient myself,’ said De Corrado. ‘Those rocks – the lines in the stone look like they’ve been ploughed with a tractor.’

‘Or something more ancient,’ said Ahab. ‘Sacrificial altars built by the sirens of Pirates Bay.’

‘. . . Mermaids?’

‘Common knowledge. There’s sirens in the bay. Wickedly dangerous,’ said Ahab, with deadly sincerity. ‘They’re the ones who send the Black Wind. They hunger for the souls of sailors. That drone is their singing. If you hear it out on the sea, it really does sound like a song . . .’

De Corrado played with the straw in her gin. ‘You’re teasing me.’

‘Sometimes, at night, you can even see them. Their witch lights, deep below the surface, or in the caves . . . the caves. They’re hidden in rubble of stones that make up the Black Shore, or in the fallen dolerite pillars, or burrowed deep under the cliffs. Here we have the largest system of sea caves in the southern hemisphere, maybe even the world – it hasn’t all been explored yet.’

His voice trailed off, letting the wind rattle the panes. The Black Wind.

‘A wind that springs out of nowhere and leaves just the same. Can’t be predicted, can’t be forecast. A wind that sets the ocean into strange currents, crossing over themselves like a contradiction. Criss-crossed just like the Tessellated Pavement. These seas drone.’

He went quiet again, so they could hear the sound of it. ‘Out at sea, all you can do is race back to shore as fast as you can. There’s no sailing it, no living with it. And . . . it can draw things out of you. Things you don’t want. Things that lure you into the deep.’

‘What do you mean?’ said De Corrado. Her voice was mocking, but her eyes belied her interest.

He sipped his whisky.

‘Let me recite a poem:

When first I heard the sirens’ song,

’twas out upon the sea.

Their gaze was hot, their hunger high.

A coward, I did flee –

terror, I flew, to my domain.

But she did follow me,

far from that misty bounding main,

the Black Wind of the sea.

Now ever I must flee,

there is no peace for me.’

‘. . . Unsettling,’ was all De Corrado had to say to that.