"One evening he said he was going out with the dog. An hour later I heard the dog scratching at the back door and no sign of Jack. I went outside and heard the car engine running in the garage. There was a hose from the exhaust to the window, him inside."

I groaned.

"But no, it wasn't sudden, really. He'd been getting more and more depressed. When I found him I knew that this was just the last stage of what began three years ago, when everything fell apart." She sounded very bitter.

"Jeez, that's terrible, Paula. Must have been shocking for you."

"What happened has been hard on us all. Terry had his heart attack, leaving Alice with all those kids, you and Vicky split up . . ."

"We're a sad lot, that's for sure."

Three couples, six good friends, happily making our way in the world, our lives trashed by one ruthless man. It was Jack who'd introduced us to Derek Mankey, Jack who should have known better, being himself an accountant.

"I'm tired of being sad, Ben," she said. "I want my life back."

"Yeah." I nodded, avoiding her eyes. Of course she did. We all did, but it wasn't so easy.

Maybe it should have been. People are ruined financially every day and they get over it bushfires, floods, bankruptcies they pick up the pieces and start again. But the way it happened to us was particularly insidious. Derek Mankey had offered us a vision of an irresistible future, for ourselves and our kids, and we had jumped at it. We weren't stupid between us we had a fair bit of business experience. But Derek was very clever, very plausible and very dangerous. He revealed his plans to us one step at a time, drawing us in, until we had committed everything we owned and could borrow. And while our eyes were fixed on the golden promise ahead, he slipped away with everything, leaving us to face the creditors, the auditors, the banks and the Tax Office. Worst of all, he'd arranged things so that it was we who faced the accusations of fraud, whose names and pictures appeared in the newspapers, whose reputations were destroyed. It turned us against each other and ourselves, and in the end I had to get out just to keep my sanity.

I reached for my gla.s.s, but it was empty.

"I mean it, Ben," Paula said. "And I think I know a way to get back some of what we lost. I've found him."

"What?"

"Derek Mankey. I know where he is."

I just stared at her, and she got to her feet. "Here," she said, "let me get you another drink."

I watched her go to the bar and felt a little cold shiver of dread. The mere mention of Derek Mankey's name had brought back a flood of painful memories. In the mess that followed his disappearance, Terry had died of a heart attack leaving his wife Alice penniless with five small children, then my marriage had broken down, and now Jack had killed himself.

Paula returned with my whisky. I needed it, and thanked her and took a gulp. I noticed she was sticking to mineral water.

"I'm not sure I want to hear this, Paula," I said. "Frankly, I never want to hear that bloke's name again."

"Ben, it's time we faced up to things." She leaned forward, speaking with a quiet intensity, and there was a light in her eyes I remembered fondly. She had always been the most vital, the most exciting of the six of us. "Jack's death shook me."

"Of course . . ."

"I realized I'd spent the last three years in a kind of daze," she said, "a half-life, just coping from day to day. Derek didn't just steal our money, he stole our lives, our futures, our confidence in ourselves. We thought we could turn to the authorities to fix things, but instead they accused us of being responsible for his frauds and dragged us further down into the dirt. When I found Jack dead that day, I realized that the only way we were ever going to be free was to put things right ourselves, with Derek Mankey."

She paused. I had the gla.s.s of whisky half-raised to my mouth, and she stared at it. I followed her gaze and saw the shake in my hand, which grew worse as the silence lengthened. I put the gla.s.s back down on the table with a thump and she reached out her hand to mine and gave it a squeeze.

"I think you know what I'm saying is true, Ben. We can't run away from this any more."

I took a deep breath. "Go on then. Where is he?"

"Western Australia."

That made sense I'd heard people who want to disappear tend to head out west. "How did you find out?"

She hesitated, and then began the story she'd rehea.r.s.ed. "Pure chance. After Jack died I was a mess, and by the time of his funeral I was just about washed up. Then one day, out of the blue, I got a phone call offering a bargain holiday in Broome, five nights accommodation at a resort, plus a camel ride on the beach and return flights, all for just two hundred bucks. I felt I needed to get away, and this was too good to turn down, so I thought, what the h.e.l.l, and agreed. And it turned out to be exactly what I needed. Have you ever been there?"

I shook my head.

"It was a complete change, somewhere quite different. There was a restaurant overlooking Cable Beach where I'd go of an evening to watch the sun set over the ocean, and there was this nice young guy working behind the bar I'd chat to. One evening I had a long talk to him."

I felt a twinge of jealousy, quite unreasonably of course, imagining Paula engrossed in conversation with some handsome bronzed youth. "So?"

"His name was Justin. He told me about his previous job, working on a pearl oyster farm up north, in the waters off the Kimberley coast. It was hard work, he said, but he enjoyed it, he'd learned a lot about the industry, and it had paid well. But he'd got on the wrong side of his boss, the owner of the lease, an arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Justin said, a bully given to bouts of bad temper. 'Cranky, we used to call him,' he said, ''cos his name was Mankey. That wasn't the only thing we called him behind his back.' I just stared at him while he told me that this Mankey had kicked him off the boat without giving him the pay he was due, or the bonus he'd been promised. Justin said he'd give a lot to get even with him.

"Mankey's an unusual name, but there must be others around, so I said, 'I used to know a Mankey. He was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d too Derek Mankey.' And Justin said, 'Derek, that's right. Came from out east. Stocky little guy, not much hair, bright blue eyes. Smooth as b.u.t.ter one minute, vicious as a cut snake the next.' "

"That's him," I agreed. "But where does that get us?"

"Since Mankey kicked him out, Justin had had plenty of time to dream up ways to get even, and he'd come up with an idea that he said was foolproof. All he needed was a couple of partners to help, and a bit of money to hire a boat, and he could make us a million dollars without Derek Mankey even knowing he'd lost it. That's a million dollars each."

I stared at her.

"That's less than he took us for, Ben," Paula said, "but it would sure help me to move on."

"A million dollars each?" I repeated, staring at Paula in disbelief. "And Mankey won't even know it's happened? Paula, one thing I've learned from this whole sorry mess is that if a scheme sounds too good to be true then it is too good to be true! How gullible does this Justin think we are?"

"Yes, I know, Ben, that's what I thought at first. But just hear me out."

I looked at my empty gla.s.s. "I'm going to need another drink to swallow this load of baloney. You?" She shook her head and I lurched off to the bar. I was annoyed that Paula had fallen for whatever bulls.h.i.t this young Casanova had come up with, but I was interested all the same. There's nothing like a good tale of larceny to stimulate the imagination.

"All right, let's hear it."

"It seems Derek must have used the money he fleeced from us to buy an oyster farm lease in the ocean off the Kimberley. Justin says it's huge, with thousands of oysters, way out in the middle of nowhere. At harvesting time, Mankey takes a special ship and crew up there from Broome, and they work the field, extracting pearls from the oysters, and implanting the beads of mussel sh.e.l.l that will form the core of new pearls. Of course Mankey doesn't do any of the work himself it's hard and very skilful. But he goes to keep an eye on the crew and make sure they don't get up to any tricks."

I was trying to form a mental picture of the scene. "Don't they have sharks up there?" I asked.

"Yes, and worse, salt water crocodiles. They're really vicious. Anyway, the thing is that Mankey relies on the crew to keep the operation on track. Each oyster can produce three or four pearls in a lifetime, each bigger than the last, so you've got oysters at various stages of development, some surviving and others not."

"So?"

"The point is, no one really knows at any point how many oysters there are in the farm. At harvest time they just work up and down the lines, operating on what they find. So if someone hired a boat and went up there immediately before the harvest, they could remove oyster racks in a random pattern, and no one would know. Of course you would need the inside knowledge of someone who's worked the farm, and who knows what they're doing. That's Justin. We would put up the cash to hire a boat, and then act as labourers with him. Within a week we should be able to gather several thousand pearls, and be away before Mankey and his ship arrive, none the wiser. We'd take them to Hong Kong, and sell them on the open market there, no questions asked."

I laughed. "Paula, that is the craziest thing I've ever heard! We're middle-aged lounge lizards . . ."

"Speak for yourself."

"Well, we're certainly not in the blush of youth, ready to fight sharks and crocodiles for the treasures of the deep!" I guffawed some more, but she didn't smile.

When I calmed down, she said. "Yes, it won't be easy, and maybe you're not up to it. In fact, seeing you here knocking back the Scotch I'm sure you're not. You'd just be a liability, actually. But I'm thinking of Alice too. Since Terry had his heart attack she's been struggling harder than any of us, trying to bring up those five little kids. Derek Mankey did that to her, and it makes me very, very angry. Angry enough to want to do something about it."

Her eyes were blazing, and I felt ashamed. Ashamed, and also excited. She was right, it did feel as if I'd been sleepwalking for the past three years. She wanted to shake me awake. A small part of me wanted her to succeed. The rest was absolutely terrified.

There wasn't a snowflake's chance in h.e.l.l that we'd ever do it, I rea.s.sured myself, but I thought I'd better look as if I was prepared to consider the mad scheme seriously. "Okay, let's go over it again." I made a show of taking a notebook and pen out of my briefcase and she launched into it, this time in more detail. When she came to an end I asked, "And the timing of this, Paula? When would it have to be done?"

"Now," she said. "Right now."

I was still telling myself that this was ludicrous as our plane dipped down towards the blazing red earth of Broome. To the west the ocean stretched blue to the horizon, and the notion of taking a boat out across that expanse and up to the Kimberley to help ourselves to several million dollars worth of Derek Mankey's pearls, just sounded like something out of a boys' own adventure comic. But Paula was adamant that we should at least go over to speak to Justin, the former member of Mankey's crew who had come up with the crazy idea.

He was waiting for us at the terminal, and he looked pretty much what I'd expected, a loose-limbed, long-haired, bronzed young man with a lazy smile. I thought Paula responded a little too eagerly to his welcome, and I acted gruff and reserved as he swung our bags into the back of a small 4WD and took us to the motel he'd booked us into on the edge of Chinatown. The light was dazzling, the temperature pleasantly warm after the chill we'd left at home, and we changed into lighter clothes before heading out for an orientation tour. Justin took us first to the long jetty at the south end of town, to point out a large boat, or small ship (I'm a little vague on maritime matters), anch.o.r.ed a hundred metres out in the bay. It was Derek Mankey's apparently, a cross between a factory ship and a laboratory the way Justin described it, purpose designed for the large-scale impregnation and harvesting of pearl oysters.

"A crew of ten for the harvest," he said softly. He was wearing large mirrored sungla.s.ses and a cap, and I had the impression that even at this distance he was nervous of being spotted by anyone on board. "They're waiting for the ocean temperatures to stabilize, when the oysters can be safely operated on. But we won't be operating on them, just harvesting, so we can go now."

"How long before they leave?" I asked sceptically.

"Should be about ten days, I reckon. This is the ideal time for us to go."

"On what?"

"I'll show you." We set off again, to the mangroves that grew further up the sh.o.r.e. He slowed at a small bay with a golden sandy beach, and pointed to a boat lying half-tilted on the low tide mud beyond. "Starry Night, an eight-metre Conquest. Available for charter for the next two weeks."

I looked at it, trying to imagine the three of us sharing that grubby little thing, bobbing about in a crocodile-infested ocean. "It's very small, Justin."

"Only thing suitable that's available, mate. I've made a provisional booking, but we gotta confirm and pay by the end of the day."

He told us how much, and I blanched.

"Okay," Paula said calmly.

"Hang on," I protested. "We need to talk about this."

We returned to the motel, stopping on the way for beer at a bottle shop at Paula's suggestion. She was probably hoping to sweeten me up, and I wasn't objecting. I thought it'd take a bit more than that to convince me to go along with this madness.

But as we sat around the small table in Paula's room, poring over Justin's charts and listening to his plans, I became increasingly impressed by his professionalism. I'd been misled by his youthful looks, but it turned out he had a Skipper grade three mariner's certificate, and was obviously a very experienced sailor and pearl farmer. He also had a steady, commonsense att.i.tude that I felt instinctively I could trust, and after a while I began to believe that it might indeed be almost possible. It was wildly beyond anything I'd done before of course, and it was unabashed theft, but I opened another can of beer and listened quietly to Paula's impa.s.sioned pitch about how we had right on our side, and a duty to help the poor fatherless children of Alice, widowed, like Paula herself, by the heartless Derek Mankey, and at the end I surprised both them and myself by saying, "Okay then. Let's do it."

The fact that, of the original three couples who'd invested in Mankey's schemes, I was the only male left alive, didn't bother me as much as perhaps it should.

Once I'd made the decision, I felt an overwhelming sense of liberation and optimism, as if I were throwing aside all the failures that had weighed upon me over the past years. We were suddenly a great team, laughing and shaking each other's hands, the three musketeers setting off on a grand adventure. Paula hugged me, and whispered her thanks, and tears came into my eyes. Silly, of course, but what Mankey had done to us three years before had cast such a shadow over our lives that it was perhaps understandable.

There was much to be done. Justin had prepared detailed lists of the things we'd need extra drums of fuel for the long trip, food, tools and many other supplies, for there were none where we were heading, on that long wilderness coastline of north-west Australia. But first we had to confirm our charter of the Starry Night. We set off from the motel for the owners' offices in the commercial area of Broome's Chinatown.

Justin led us down one of the narrow laneways that runs off Carnarvon Street, packed with little tourist souvenir shops, cafes and real estate offices, and we had just emerged on to Dampier Terrace when he came to a sudden stop, and pushed us back into the shadows of a shop veranda hung with bright fabrics. We followed his gaze across the street, where two men were walking along the pavement. I recognized Derek Mankey straight away behind the dark gla.s.ses, skipping along on his short legs to keep up with his companion.

"You little b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I growled.

He looked full of himself, head back, puffed up like a little c.o.c.kerel in a scarlet shirt and black pants. I didn't know the man he was with, a good thirty centimetres taller than Mankey, and physically much more formidable. His shaved skull was deeply suntanned, tattooed biceps and pecs bulging beneath his black T-shirt, and a mean expression on his moustached face.

"Who's the other guy?" I said softly to Justin.

"Name's Chay Gatt, works for Mankey."

"Chay?" I said.

"Short for chainsaw, supposedly. A hard man. Always at Mankey's side."

"Really?" I wondered what Mankey was into these days. When he'd ripped us off he'd only needed his smooth forked tongue.

We watched them go into the showroom of one of the big pearl retailers on that stretch of Dampier Terrace, then Justin led us off in the other direction to the marine charter office. An hour later we emerged, our credit cards severely depleted, and hurried away to start organizing supplies. By evening we had most things in hand, and Justin took us back to the motel. He was nervous about us being spotted out on the street, and we decided to have takeaway in my room. Justin said he'd fetch it, then at the last minute asked Paula to go with him to help choose. They were away a long time, and when they returned I could sense that something had happened. Paula was tense, and she and Justin wouldn't meet each other's eyes when they spoke. I drew her aside and asked her what was wrong, but she just said, "Nothing." I asked, "Has Justin been bothering you?" but she shook her head and turned away. I put it down to last-minute nerves.

Early the next morning we went out to float the Starry Night off on the high tide, and Justin took her to a more convenient mooring he'd arranged further down the sh.o.r.e. There we ferried our supplies and loaded them on board. By mid-morning we were ready to leave. With heart in mouth I followed Justin's instructions to cast off, and we moved out in a wide arc across Roebuck Bay, keeping well away from Mankey's pearl ship anch.o.r.ed by the jetty on Entrance Point. Once out in open seas we swung north to run parallel to the long stretch of Cable Beach. Through binoculars I could see tourists riding a chain of camels across the sand. How innocent and safe they looked, and I was filled with a sudden desire to be with them. We were setting off in a tiny tub on a 1,400-kilometre round trip to the far northern point of the Kimberley, to steal pearls out of crocodile- and shark-infested waters, from a man whose closest companion was named after a chainsaw. How had I allowed myself to be talked into this?

Despite my initial cold feet, the journey up the coast began to settle me down. The ocean was calm, the sun was shining, and our mood became cheerful. Justin set a moderate speed, wanting to conserve fuel and not overtax the outboard, and when we stopped at lunchtime for a sandwich we threw lines over the side and managed to catch a couple of reasonable golden snappers. The coastline was rugged orange sandstone topped by low scrub, with the occasional grove of palms nestling in the hollows. After the first couple of hours we saw no other boats, nor signs of habitation on the sh.o.r.e, and gradually adjusted to the idea that we were alone in a vast wilderness. All around us we saw evidence of a dense and turbulent life beneath us in the ocean: a sea snake skimmed off across the surface as we pa.s.sed; small fish flew into the air; the fins of sharks or dolphins surfaced and disappeared; and on a sandy beach we saw a long dark log, which lurched into movement at the sound of our engine and began to slither towards the water.

"A salty," Justin said. They were much more dangerous than their fresh-water cousins, he told us, being the largest reptiles on the planet and capable of hunting far offsh.o.r.e.

Justin was a competent and knowledgeable skipper, with a calm air that I was coming to trust, despite my initial doubts. At dusk he took us into the lee of a small island in the Buccaneer Archipelago, where we anch.o.r.ed for the night. We had come half way to our destination, and he was satisfied. Paula cooked up the fish for us on the stove in the little galley, and we relaxed with a couple of bottles of wine beneath a vast canopy of stars. At one point, Justin caught me watching Paula as she worked at the galley, and murmured, "Good looking lady, Ben. I reckon you two hit it off, yeah?"

I felt myself colouring. "Just friends, Justin. Good friends." Then I felt I had to add, "She's just buried her old man."

He gave me a raffish grin and I looked away, feeling a bit stupid that I'd had suspicions about him and Paula.

The next morning we eased out of our little bunks at first light and stood to stretch and watch the sun catch the rim of the fractured cliff beneath which we were anch.o.r.ed. The water looked inviting, placid and warm, but Justin wouldn't hear of us taking a dip. He wouldn't even let us put a hand into the sea to wash our dinner plates.

"Too risky, mate," he said. "You don't know what's lurking beneath you."

He pointed out an osprey's nest nearby, a dishevelled stack of sticks on top of a rocky outcrop, and we watched the owner stretch its wings in the morning sun while we gulped down coffee and toast and prepared to move on.

I took turns with Justin at the helm as we threaded our way on a northeasterly course through the Coronation Islands and around Bigge Island. We rounded Cape Voltaire in the early afternoon, and I sensed an increased alertness in Justin as he took over and changed our course to easterly, heading in to the Osborn Islands. I was dozing after a light lunch when I heard the engines throttling back and sat up with a start. We were in the middle of a sheltered stretch of water between the mainland and a long island. The sea was covered with round white floats in regimented lines, thousands of them, disappearing into the distance. I got to my feet and tried to take it in. The floats were set a couple of metres apart along each of the lines, which were s.p.a.ced far enough apart to allow a boat to pa.s.s between them. There were hundreds of lines, thousands of floats, spread as far as the eye could see.

"Beneath the floats and longlines," Justin explained, "are suspended netting panels carrying the oysters, Pinctada Maxima, the biggest pearl-bearing oyster in the world. The guys come up here regularly throughout the year to clean them of grunge weed, coral, barnacles then in August for the big operation of harvesting and seeding. I have a pretty good idea where the most mature oysters are, six years old, with the biggest pearls. That's what we'll be looking for. We'll start tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Yeah, we'll do it in the dark. Customs and Immigration fly constant patrols along this coast, and we don't want word getting back to Broome that a small boat has been spotted working the field. We'll head around to the far side of that island now and get a bit of grub and rest, and come back after dusk." He looked hard at me. "No booze tonight, mate."

"Right," I agreed, although it seemed to me that was exactly what I'd need to brace me for the prospect of groping about in a dark ocean seething with tiger sharks and crocodiles.

Once night fell we returned to the oyster beds, the water shimmering beneath a half moon by whose pale light we could make out the rows of thousands of floats on the long lines from which the panels of oysters were suspended in the nurturing ocean currents. Justin steered the boat up a long avenue between the lines, heading for one of the areas in which he knew that the oldest oysters were located, and from which the largest and most valuable pearls might be expected. I felt very tense, an intruder in this alien landscape, conscious of the creatures lurking beneath us, the tiger sharks and savage salt.w.a.ter crocs, into whose domain we were trespa.s.sing. Paula sensed my anxiety, and stretched out her hand to mine. I took it gratefully and squeezed it.

"All right." Justin throttled back, bringing the boat to a halt between two lines. Paula took his place at the wheel, and he came to my side at the stern, carrying a long gaff. We were both wearing life-jackets and protective gloves. He had already explained how we should work, him snagging the rope below a float and the two of us hauling the metal-framed oyster panel to the surface and on to the boat, but as we began I discovered that it wasn't as easy as it had sounded. I stumbled and slipped, and caused the boat to tilt violently before we finally manhandled the first panel aboard. I sat there gasping as Justin opened it and removed two of the six molluscs, each as big as a man's widespread hand, dropping them into a plastic tub. Then we heaved the panel with the remaining oysters back over the side, and Paula took the boat slowly forward until Justin told her to stop again. In this way we moved about the oyster beds, without apparent pattern, removing small numbers as we went, so that the harvesters due the following week wouldn't detect our theft. I began to develop some rhythm and expertise, but after a while this began to deteriorate as fatigue set in. At midnight Justin called a halt.

"We've had a long day," he said. "This'll do for tonight."

I was grateful, my hands and arms aching from the work. We had collected two big tubs full of oysters, maybe a hundred, and I still hadn't seen a pearl.

That changed the next morning. After a restless sleep in our confined quarters, I woke again at dawn, and watched the island we were anch.o.r.ed by take shape. It had a fine looking sandy beach, beyond which low scrub covered a hillside surmounted by a rocky outcrop. The other two woke after a while, and Justin suggested we grill some oyster meat for breakfast. He took a sh.e.l.l from one of the tubs, and attacked it with a special tool he had, levering it open.Paula and I huddled closer to see what was inside, the shining opalescent mother-of-pearl inner lining of the sh.e.l.l, a blob of pale flesh, and at its heart a large white pearl. Paula gasped, and Justin picked it out, put it in his mouth to clean it, then held it up for us to see.

"Not bad," he said. "Fifteen millimetre, good shape, fine l.u.s.tre."

He explained the qualities we were looking for, the best colours, the different shapes, and began opening other sh.e.l.ls. It was like a lottery, you simply couldn't tell from the outside what you were going to find within. In some cases there was nothing at all, in others the seeded pearl was accompanied by other naturally formed pearls, or keshi. There were the gnarled baroque shapes, ovals and pure spheres, and a range of colours, gold and pink and white. When we were finished, the oyster sh.e.l.ls and surplus meat thrown over the side, Justin spread the pearls out on the table and sorted them into categories, excellent, fair and rubbish. There were only four excellent ones, perfect large spheres with a golden l.u.s.tre, which Justin put into a small bag. I was devastated all that hard work for only four gems.

"The fair ones are worth keeping too," he said, and scooped up the so-called "rubbish" and threw them over the side.