On those smaller boats all around the Absconder were deckhands, staying above wherever the diver was fishing below. The divers prised abalone from the rocks and sent them to the surface in catch bags, on shot lines with underwater parachutes filled with air from the divers’ regulators.

Catch bags full of abalone, but other things too, as Ahab well knew . . . things that were left out here, for Davey to pick up, bring back to shore, and sell on, right under the nose of the law.

‘It’ll still be there later,’ said Ahab.

‘Always plenty in the sea,’ agreed Davey. ‘But we’ve got a quota. Business stops for no one. I’ll signal the divers later.’

‘You really want to risk it?’ said Ahab.

Davey straightened. ‘Don’t forget who you’re talking to.’

‘I know exactly who I’m talking to.’

Chips shuffled her feet. She glanced between the two men, uneasy.

Davey laughed, breaking the tension. ‘Don’t worry, Chips. We respect the elders that have gone before.’

He might really have intended to be respectful, but all it did was wrench Ahab’s chest. There was no way to change the past . . .

Ahab gave a wordless salute as farewell and climbed back down to his boat. Ned turned the wheel, pushed down the throttle, and set them towards Shacktown.

One of these days, he would have to tell the police about the Business. But could he really do it? Ruin Davey’s life, Chips’s life, the lives of countless others . . .?

But what about the lives they ruined?

Angrily, he pushed the thought aside. As he’d done so many times before.

He couldn’t do anything – not yet. As much as it goaded him, sometimes to the edge of insanity, Ahab was a man of his word.

But his self-control had its limits. One day he would find a reason to break his promise.

As they neared the sea cliffs, mist from Devils Kitchen caught the pink dawn like smoke. Devils Kitchen: a huge, deep trench in the cliffs of Pirates Bay, where the water and wind had eroded a chasm, forming a dangerous swirl of waves and fury, turning the swells of the Great Southern Ocean into a boiling cauldron. It was gigantic, magnificent, and dangerous as hell. But that wasn’t where it got its name – early European settlers in the area had seen this mist rising and claimed it was the Devil, boiling his meat pot.

Now the buildings of Shacktown came into view, spreading across the wooded hills to the stark cliffs, spilling right down to the beaches. Ahab surveyed it all from his boat, the beach mansions and the holiday shacks and all those in between, waiting in the she-oaks and banksias and sands.