Gatt pushed me down the corridor, then dragged me up the stair to the next deck, where the operating room of the pearl ship was set out. Justin's body was gone from the large, bloodstained table, and Gatt pushed me towards it. I tried to summon up some last vestige of effort.

"I haven't swallowed any pearls, Chay," I said desperately, "but I know where they are, my share and Paula's, of the best pearls we set aside, more than I could ever swallow. I'm the only one who knows. Paula doesn't. I moved them when I was alone on the island. You kill me and they're gone forever."

He hesitated just a fraction and I ploughed on. "And I know more than that. Things your syndicate will want to hear. Do yourself a favour, just listen. Mankey wants the three of us dead Justin, me and then Paula. You should know why."

He hauled me around, and stared at me, his cruel face twisted in a frown. Finally he spoke. "What's to know?"

When I'd finished telling him, trying not to sound hysterical in my panic to make him believe me, he stared at me in silence a bit longer, then raised the b.l.o.o.d.y knife. I gulped as he pressed the point into the soft flesh beneath my chin.

"You're not going anywhere," he said, and turned abruptly and strode off.

I looked wildly around, but any tools or possible weapons were locked away. I ran to the door, down the stairs, then turned sharply into a doorway as I heard Mankey's voice, yelling loudly at Chay.

I found myself in the galley, and this did present more possibilities. I selected a heavy cleaver and then peeked out into the corridor again. They were between me and the cabin where they were holding Paula. I didn't want to grapple with Chay, even armed with a cleaver, and decided I'd have to go up and over the top. But before I took to the stairs I turned back and looked wildly around the galley for some inspiration. I noticed the gas rings on the stove, and turned them all on full, unlit, then hurried out. When I reached the top deck I raced forward to the prow. There were more stairs there, and I dropped down to the cabin level again, getting to Paula without having to pa.s.s Mankey and Chay, although their angry voices were very close. She looked up at me, then at the cleaver in my hand.

"Ben! I thought . . . What are you going to do?"

I stared at her left wrist, trapped by the handcuffs, and she gave a little gasp. "Oh no."

The handcuffs were tempered steel, and I knew the cleaver couldn't cut through them. Paula saw the look in my eye and said again, voice tight, "What are you going to do, Ben?"

"I have to get you out of here, Paula," I whispered. "Turn your head away."

I raised the cleaver, then brought it down as hard as I could. She gave a little shriek as the blade bit into the aluminium tube stanchion to which she was handcuffed. It was hollow, the metal softer than steel, and it buckled under the blow. Another slash and it gave way. I threaded the handcuffs free and she fell into my arms.

"Come on," I hissed. "We have to get away."

I eased open the door and cautiously peered out. From the next cabin I could hear the growl of Gatt's voice, putting the questions that I had planted in his head, and then Mankey's reply, his usual smooth persuasiveness ruffled by panic. "I swear, Chay, there was nothing like that. You can't seriously believe anything he told you."

We slipped out into the corridor and retraced my route to the stern of the ship. Out in the dark water I heard a sound of thrashing disturbance, and guessed Justin's body, thrown overboard by Gatt, was attracting curious predators. There was no chance of us swimming, but the ship's tender was tied to the stern rail, and we hurriedly climbed down into it and cast off. Not wanting to risk the noise of starting the outboard motor, I used the oars stowed on board to pull us away, towards the dim form of the Starry Night anch.o.r.ed nearby. It seemed to take me an age to get us over there, expecting to be discovered at any moment, and a couple of times something in the water thumped against the boat. We reached the back of the Conquest and clambered aboard. I rushed to get the motor started, my fingers all thumbs, then abruptly froze as a blinding beam of light caught us, along with Gatt's angry roar.

"Don't move an inch, you fuggin mongrels," he bellowed, and the beam of light slid forward across the boat. As it moved off our faces I was able to make out his silhouette on the top deck of the pearl ship. With a chill I saw that he was holding his rifle in one hand, his other arm wrapped around a bundle of some kind. Then I realized that the bundle was moving, struggling. It was Derek Mankey.

Gatt gave another shout. "Your mate wants to join you. Here . . ." He heaved Mankey forward over the rail, and with a yell, arms windmilling, he pitched down into the sea.

We stood transfixed as Mankey surfaced, spluttering, and then began splashing ineffectually towards us.

"You'll have to go quicker than that, you little slug," Gatt jeered, and raised the rifle to his shoulder. I saw the muzzle flash, heard a crack, and then a howl from Mankey.

He kept thrashing his arms, and Paula said, "He missed," but I knew better. Gatt didn't want to kill him; he wanted him to bleed.

Coughing, spluttering, flailing, Mankey continued moving slowly towards us. Then, very suddenly, he disappeared. After a moment he surfaced again, gave a horrible scream, then was jerked down once more. He didn't reappear.

A terrible silence settled over the scene.

Then at last Gatt called out to me. "You want that to happen to you and your girlfriend, Ben?" He raised his rifle menacingly.

Despite the terrifying circ.u.mstances, I felt an absurd pleasure that he should call Paula that. I put my arm around her. She was trembling, and I pulled her protectively close.

"No, Chay," I shouted back.

"Where are the pearls?"

"If I tell you, can we go free?"

"Sure mate. I guarantee it."

I hesitated, but what choice did I have? "They're on board the ship with you." I told him where I'd hidden them, and he said, "This better be right. Don't you move while I look."

We watched him climb down to the next deck, and I said to Paula, "It's going to be all right. That's all he wants."

After a moment he reappeared at the ship's rail. "Good on ya, mate."

"You've got what you want, Chay. There's one thing . . ."

But he cut me off harshly. "Sad thing is, I can't let ya go."

"You promised . . ."

"Doesn't work like that, mate."

He raised his rifle to his shoulder. Feeling numb, as helpless as a tethered calf, I watched Chay line us up in his sights, adjusting his aim to the roll of the swell. I saw the muzzle flash, felt the wind of the bullet pa.s.s my ear, then watched a blinding ball of light burst out, consuming first the dark figure of Chay, and then enveloping the whole of his ship. The shock wave blew us off our feet and our boat began rocking madly as pieces of metal and burning plastic showered around us.

While I'd been on board the pearl ship I'd turned on all the cooker taps in the galley, and now Chay's shot had ignited the gas-filled hold. I had been about to tell him about the gas when he'd cut me off to say he was going to have to kill us. How's that for dramatic irony.

We watched the fireball subside, leaving a flickering ruin where the ship had been, the surrounding waters scattered with small flames and a stinking pall of smoke hanging over it all. I made sure Paula was all right, then sent out a Mayday distress call on the radio. I hadn't had a drink of water in thirty-six hours, and thankfully gulped from a bottle in our little galley. Then I got the boat's toolbox and sat down with Paula and tried to unfasten her handcuffs while I explained what had happened.

Right from the beginning, things hadn't been as they'd seemed. Paula's apparently innocent cheap holiday offer to Broome had been engineered by Derek Mankey. He didn't own the pearl fields, but rather operated them for a syndicate of, I imagined, rather dangerous people. They employed Chay Gatt, not to protect Mankey, but to watch him, to make sure he didn't siphon off pearls for himself. Frustrated by this arrangement, Mankey had hit upon a scheme to defraud them, just as he had once defrauded Paula and me and our friends. He couldn't just send his sidekick Justin in a boat up to the pearl farm to steal pearls, because the constant aerial and satellite surveillance of those waters would have sent word back to Broome of an illegal operation. So when he'd heard of Paula's husband's suicide, he'd hit upon a nasty scheme to lure her, and me, into playing the role of the thieves. We, with Justin acting on Mankey's instructions, would raid the pearl farm, gather the pearls, then be betrayed by Justin and duly punished. But the pearls would not be discovered, and would be retrieved later by Mankey and Justin.

Things, of course, didn't work out that way. First I removed the pearls, causing distrust between Mankey and Justin, and then Chay began to suspect that something dodgy was going on. Justin had in fact decided to cheat them all, by swallowing the best of the most valuable pearls, and when Chay forced the truth out of him, he suffered that terrible fate on the ship's operating theatre.

We sat in silence in the dark, thinking over the whole extraordinary story, then Paula said, 'I owe you an apology, Ben. I thought you had become a useless drunk, and instead you turned out to be the hero."

"No," I said, "you were right, I had."

"And I had become a bitter and angry old b.i.t.c.h. Maybe this has changed us both.'

I took her hand and felt the pressure of her fingers.

"Shame about the pearls, though," she said.

"Yeah."

"How much were they worth, do you know?"

"Justin reckoned a couple of million."

I gave a little snort at the thought, and she giggled, and then we were both laughing, tears running down our faces, our laughter echoing out across the waters to the wilderness beyond.

When we finally settled down, I lit a lamp and then reached under my left armpit and with a wince ripped off the dressing strip I'd stuck there. I held my hand under the light and showed her what I had. She gasped as she recognized it the blood pearl, its impossible deep l.u.s.trous colour glowing in the light.

I finally managed to get the handcuffs free just before the first helicopter arrived, and the questions began. We told the story we'd agreed upon, the innocent trip to the pearl farm at the invitation of Derek Mankey, the smell of gas in the ship's galley, the shocking explosion, the devastating loss of Mankey, Justin and Chay Gatt. We were given a medical check, then allowed to take our hired boat back down to Broome, where we were interviewed again, over several days. We enjoyed our enforced stay there, Paula and I, and as the days pa.s.sed, we became closer.

A couple of months after we returned to the east coast, we had another holiday together, to Hong Kong. While we were there we visited the pearl market. Justin had told us that the blood pearl was worth more than all the rest put together, and our discreet inquiries with the merchants in Hong Kong confirmed it. They were astonished by it and eager to buy, but we decided to hang on to it. Paula wears it now, on special occasions, as she did recently on our wedding day.

THE COMMON ENEMY.

Natasha Cooper.

THE SCREAMING STARTED early that night, only a few minutes after "News at Ten" had started, instead of nearer midnight. Sue Chalmers swore.

"Don't let it get to you," Dan said, chucking the Evening Standard on the floor by his chair. "Block it out."

"How can I? Night after b.l.o.o.d.y night. They have to yell like that to make it sound as if they're having fun, when they're really feeling sick as dogs from all the booze and just as unsure and lonely and wondering why they don't enjoy the stuff everyone else does as we were when we were in our teens. I'd like to ram their stupid little heads against the nearest wall and bash some sense into them."

Dan pulled his long body out of his chair, brushing his hand casually against her hair as he pa.s.sed on his way out. She was so tense the pressure on her scalp seemed like an a.s.sault instead of the comfort she knew it was supposed to be.

"I know," she said through her teeth. "They're only young. And you hate it when I'm so vehement. But it gets to me."

"Tea?"

"Why not?" She leaned back and turned her head so she could smile over the back of the chair. "Sorry."

The newsreader was talking about the Middle East and Sue hated herself for getting so wound up about a bit of irritating noise when there were people out there living in h.e.l.l. Dying, too. A dose of that kind of reality would sort out the shrieking, drunken teenagers and make them see what really mattered.

When silence fell five minutes later, it was like warmed oil oozing into an aching ear. Sue felt able to concentrate on the news again. Dan came back with the tea. This time, his hand on her head felt right, kind. She leaned closer to him.

Ten minutes after that footsteps sounded on the narrow pavement outside. They were even more familiar than the partying teenagers' screeches: Maggie Tulloch from three houses down was on her way home from another long stint in the probation office. Tonight her feet were dragging more than usual. She must have had a frustrating day. Sue liked her, and admired the way she went on and on trying to make her clients behave like human beings instead of filthy, thieving thugs.

Maggie heard Sue's television as she walked past the windows of number twenty-three, knowing she had only a minute and a half more of freedom. You shouldn't use your job as an excuse to stay out late, she thought, then took some rea.s.surance from the knowledge that her work mattered.

If only one of the miserable, infuriating, self-indulgent, drug-addled ex-cons she had to deal with refrained from hurting someone else because of her efforts, then her addiction to work would be justified. The trouble was, none of them had refrained yet, and she'd been doing the job for thirteen years.

She stopped on her own front door step and had to force herself to get out her key and stuff it in the keyhole. The television was on in her house too, but unlikely to be showing anything as real or useful as the news. Leaning sideways to listen, she caught Celia Johnson's clipped and tragic voice, saying: "It can't last. This misery can't last."

Oh can't it? Maggie crunched her key in the lock and turned it.

"Hi, Mum!" she said aloud as she dumped her briefcase by the cold radiator and swung off her thin linen jacket to hang it over the end of the bannisters.

"You're late, darling."

I wish you wouldn't call me darling, she thought, when everything else you say shows how much you hate me.

"Your supper's probably ruined, although I did turn the oven down a couple of hours ago. It's chicken."

"No worries." Maggie walked towards the kitchen, repeating Celia Johnson's thought: it can't last; this misery can't last.

How sensible it had seemed when her father had died only months after her husband had decided that married life and a toddler were not for him after all. She'd needed help; her mother, pension-less, work-less and utterly lost, had needed somewhere to live and something to do. Thirteen years ago.

The toddler was now fifteen, nearly sixteen. And Maggie's mother was not lost or uncertain any longer. Absolutely certain, in fact, about everything that was wrong with her daughter and the way she was bringing up Gemma, and not at all surprised Michael had decided to leave because who could possibly want to spend his life with someone who wouldn't eat what she was given, who dressed so badly, who swore so much, who was so work-obsessed she was the most boring person on earth, who was so . . .

Don't do it, Maggie said to herself. Don't let her get to you. These are old battles and they can only be fought by two people. Refuse to fight back and she'll stop. One day she'll stop.

She listened again, then felt her neck muscles relaxing. For once there wasn't any thudding angry music from Gemma's room, distracting her from the work she had to do if she was to get anywhere near a decent university. Maggie looked at the kitchen clock. Ten fifteen. That meant fifteen minutes to eat whatever was edible from the oven and calm down, then nip up to talk to Gemma and make sure she was feeling okay about tomorrow's exam, then a long hot bath and bed.

An open bottle of Australian Shiraz stood by the cooker. She slopped some into a huge old rummer. It had been one of the few wedding presents Michael hadn't taken with him. Then she took herself to task, found a second rummer, polished it carefully, filled it with wine and carried both through to the sitting room.

"Oh, darling, is that for me?" Her mother glanced away from the screen for a second. "Isn't it rather a lot?"

"You don't need to drink it all if it's too much," Maggie said, lowering herself on to the sofa and letting her eyes close for a second. She took a deep swallow. "Mmm. My drug of choice!"

"Don't be like that, darling. You're nowhere near addicted, even if you do drink ra-ather more than you should."

"Thanks, Mum." Maggie looked at Celia Johnson being intensely unhappy on the screen and wondered whether the choice of film was meant as a reproach. She knew her mother was lonely, and maybe it wasn't her fault that she wouldn't even try to make friends or find herself any kind of occupation except watching DVDs of old films. "How was your day?"

"Tiresome." She flashed a long-suffering smile at Maggie, who smiled back and felt her jaw muscles crack. "You know the gas man was supposed to deal with the boiler."

"I remember. Didn't he come?"

"Of course not, and then there weren't any pomegranates left in the supermarket, so I couldn't do Gemma's favourite dish, which I'd promised her as a pre-exam treat."

"She'll understand." Maggie drank again. "And you've obviously managed her brilliantly tonight, getting her to work without that awful music taking half her attention away from her books."

"Oh, she's not in tonight, darling. She needed a treat to relax her before tomorrow, so I gave her a little something to augment your mingy allowance and said she could go and see that friend of hers, who lives so near. Gillie, isn't it?"

Maggie put down her gla.s.s as though she didn't trust herself not to throw its contents all over her mother.

"You did what? On the night before an exam? Mum, how could you? You know how hard it's been to make Gemma take her work seriously. For G.o.d's sake!"

And then her mother laughed, with a pitying, condescending kind of amus.e.m.e.nt that turned all kinds of ancient levers in Maggie's brain.

"Funny how things change, darling. I can see you now, standing with your arms akimbo, thirty years ago, explaining to me precisely why I was the cruellest woman in the world when I forbade you to see your best friend on a school night."

Maggie turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen. Even dried-out charred chicken would help stifle all the words she couldn't say, musn't say.

I'm not a cruel woman, she told herself. Anyone would find this hard. It can't last.

She switched off the oven, opened the door and looked at the blackened stumpy chicken legs. There were four, which meant Gemma hadn't eaten before she left. The ration was always one drumstick and one thigh each. Her teeth were more than sharp enough to rip the hardened flesh from the bones of two of the joints, then she ran the cold tap until the water was icy, washing first her hands and then her face.

When she went back to the sitting room, she was calm enough to say: "I know I was a tiresome adolescent, but you can't hold it against me forever. You know why I want Gemma to stay here on school nights. Encouraging her to rebel may give you satisfaction, but it's damaging all her chances."

"Don't make such a fuss, darling. She'll be back any minute now. She promised to leave Gillie's by ten."