"The debris washing ash.o.r.e is amazing: small bales of U.S. twenties, Tupperware containers filled with cocaine ... It's unG.o.dly what TV networks keep on their yachts. It's absolutely the best Easter egg hunt of all time on the beach. And by international salvage laws, it's finders keepers."

It had been ages since I'd done some serious power looting: Beirut in the 1990s, shooting for BBC2. A bomb went off and an entire upscale shopping precinct was evacuated. Nicked myself fifteen thousand quid worth of Rolexes. And then my blood froze-wait: "Is Sarah okay?"

"I saw her on the beach, so I guess she is."

Neal jumped in. "I used to be a paramedic. Maybe I can help."

Kyle and Emma were practically squeaking with excitement. Emma said, "I've been waiting to administer the breath of life to drowning sailors for ever so long. Just think of the number of men I can revive!"

Neal pulled me aside and whispered in my ear, "Zodiac."

"Neal, what the f.u.c.k are you talking about?"

"Zodiacs. Now that the yacht is gone, the Zodiacs are the only way to get from anywhere to anywhere. If we find one for ourselves, we'll be one-eyed kings in a totally blind country."

"Neal, for a street-tard, you are totally f.u.c.king brilliant. What should we do?"

"First, let's get to the beach. During my convalescence, I've been going over maps of the entire region. Lots of little islands here-perfect for stashing a whole cruise liner, let alone a small inflatable boat."

I let Neal's grotesque abuse of the word "convalescence" pa.s.s and followed him to the main beach with plunder in my heart.

49.

First off, no sign of Sarah, but I knew she was safe. The bonus good news was that the first thing I found at the high tide line, all tangled in the kelp, was the cold, lifeless body of LACEY. Not that I wished her any ill, but really, the world was a much better place without her. Personal upside? Sarah would no longer perceive me as being "taken." Such an honourable girl, my Sarah; she'd never steal another woman's man. The planet could certainly use a big dose of Sarah's spirit-there'd be no more wars, no misery, just peace, peace and more lovely peace. Now, if only that f.u.c.ktard Stuart were dead. No sign of his corpse.

A brilliant full moon added a festive Polynesian dimension to our exploits. Pretty much everything on the beach was tangled up in everything else. At the south end, an improvised morgue was being established, but by whom, and for what reason, I couldn't imagine. Chop them all up and use them for crab bait, as far as I was concerned. On that note, crabs were already scampering up from the waters in pursuit of a feast. Neal also said to watch out for what he called "necropickpocketers."

"A rare breed of thief, the necro."

"Neal, there is no possible f.u.c.king way such a tiny category of street riff-raff exists."

"Deny it if you will, Ray, but I've seen them myself at crime scenes, plying their trade. They usually work with someone else to act as a distraction-quite often a clown making twisty balloon animals. You've got everyone squealing, 'Whee! It's a little bunny!' and meanwhile your necro is right in there with the corpse, taking the stuffing out of the goose. Chilling, it is."

"Let's just find ourselves a Zodiac to steal."

Down the beach, I saw my daughter administering the kiss of life to what was most likely a cameraman pretending to be waterlogged. Part of me was hoping that one of her patients would come on to her, thus giving me a reason to go over and crush him. Fatherhood!

Kyle had put away his camera and was helping arrange bodies into neat rows. How on earth did I sire two such virtuous beings? And where was their sense of larceny? Could they not understand that reckless amounts of drugs and cash were a desirable thing to have in one's life?

To be honest, Neal and I were at first slightly diverted from hunting for a Zodiac, both looking for bales of money and tubs of cocaine, and about three-quarters of the way down the sand, we caught each other with the exact same miracle-expecting beachcomber's expression and had a good old-fashioned laugh at our mutual weakness.

"Ray, just think of s.h.i.tloads of money, all yours, for free! For doing f.u.c.k all!"

"Or a brick of c.o.ke merely for being in the right place at the right time."

"Okay, okay, I know ... still, we've got to focus. Steal a Zodiac and be kings of this small empire."

"Thank you, Neal."

"You're welcome, Ray."

"Look there," said Neal, pointing to a Zodiac temporarily beached at the high tide line. "That one is going to be ours."

"Right. Let's just saunter over and slip away before anyone gets huffy."

Neal and I did a dum-dee-dum-dee-dum walk in the boat's direction. At one point, I tripped over a dead producer, but Neal said, "Ignore him, Ray, it's too late."

I felt like I was on a battlefield-and winning-because I was alive and all these dumb f.u.c.kers were dead.

Just then our plan became more complex: on the strip of packed wet sand near the water, we spotted Stuart running towards the Zodiac. He was carrying some boxes labelled EMERGENCY MEDICAL SUPPLIES and wore the smug expression of someone who spends his life waiting for the world to turn to s.h.i.t so he can jump in and be a hero and make everyone like him.

Neal and I picked up our pace, and we arrived on opposite sides of the boat at the same time. It was bigger than I remembered, and somewhat like a bouncy castle with a big-a.r.s.e engine attached.

"Potter? What the f.u.c.k are you doing here?" Stuart yelled. "Helping? I find that hard to believe."

I winked at Neal. "Of course I'm helping, Stuart. Neal is an ex-paramedic, and I do happen to care deeply about humanity in crisis. Just tell us what to do and we'll cheerfully be your slaves."

Stuart gave me a moral X-ray, which he clearly found inconclusive. Still, he said, "Okay, then. Get in the boat and come with me. There are some people clinging to the reef who need to get to sh.o.r.e."

"Bob's your uncle." G.o.d, this was going to be easy.

We were about halfway between the sh.o.r.e and the reef when I said, "Stuart! Stop the boat a second." I pointed urgently over the side.

He did so.

"I think it's ... a ... a drowning woman ... and she's holding a child!"

"Seriously?" He left the engine on idle and got up to look at my fict.i.tious victim, at which point Neal whacked him on the back with an oar, sending him off into the churn. I took over the tiller and-ta-da! We were out of there, leaving Stuart dog-paddling and screaming unspeakable things at us. He was, pardon my French, totalement f.u.c.ke.

I looked at my watch: it was midnight. "Now let's go find Sarah."

50.

"I must say, Neal, being a pirate is a total f.u.c.king rush." I was at the Zodiac's prow, feeling like the king of the world.

"I see its attraction, Ray."

"Plunder and killing!"

"Swagger and pillaging!"

Neal had taken over the driving, and he was making foamy, l.u.s.ty figure eights in the Zodiac, all overseen by stars as bright as a drunken Piccadilly night. Our short-term plan was to stash the boat in a small cove Neal knew of a few miles away, but then we found a bale of cash about the size of a loaf of bread inside a jumbo plastic Ziploc bag-finally, a decent reason to not want a nuclear war. "About time I got properly pimped out in some new threads on Jermyn Street. And just imagine the cardboard box you can buy with all this, Neal!"

I was in such a good mood that I even forgot about Neal's unwillingness to s.h.i.t out my piece of red plastic, and then it hit me: the Cure T-shirt.

f.u.c.k.

"Neal, we're going to have to go back to the tent city."

"Whyzzat, Ray?"

"The Cure T-shirt."

Neal took on the look of someone who's just been shot. "Where is it?"

"I told you. It's hidden under a corner of Fiona's tent."

"Is it clean and bagged?"

"It is."

"All right, I have a plan."

Neal having a plan is about as complex as Neal finding a parking spot.

"We'll hide the boat in these mangrove roots," he said, "and then we'll sneak in and get it."

I stared at him in silence. "That's it? That's your plan?"

"Do you want the shirt or not, Ray?"

"Let's not dilly-dally, then."

After we camouflaged the Zodiac among the mangroves, we entered some palmetto scrub. It was maybe a ten-minute walk to the tent city, and we were unsure of what our reception would be there. I didn't think Stuart would have drowned, but a loudmouth like him would probably make a big deal out of our whacking him out of the boat. f.u.c.k it: it was our word against his. He fell out of the boat. End of story.

Neal hissed, "Ray, look at this."

I glanced down to where he pointed: a creature in a sh.e.l.l was plodding across the sand.

"What's that?"

"It's a hermit crab of the superfamily Paguroidea."

"I've heard of the Paguroidea family. Almost 1,100 subspecies in it."

"Indeed there are. They have an asymmetrical abdomen concealed in an empty signature gastropod sh.e.l.l."

"Remarkable."

"Indeed. And now look up at the sky."

I did so.

"Orion's Belt. It's very clear tonight."

"You mean those three stars in a row? Tell me more about Orion's Belt, Neal."

"Certainly. The Belt of Orion is what is called a small 'asterism' in the constellation Orion. It consists of the three bright stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. These stars are more or less evenly s.p.a.ced in a straight line, and so can be visualized as the belt of the hunter's clothing. In the northern hemisphere, they are most visible in the early night sky during the winter, in particular during the month of January at around nine p.m."

"The natural world really is amazing, isn't it, Neal?"

"It certainly is, Ray."

"I find it relaxing to observe the small things that we, in our hectic lives, tend to overlook." I pointed out a shrub. "That's the Coccoloba uvifera, more commonly known as the sea grape. It's a species of flowering plant in the buckwheat family, of all things."

"Really?"

"Oh yes. It's native to coastal beaches throughout the Americas. I suspect this specimen here was introduced as an ornamental."

"You have to watch it with introduced species, Ray. They can wreak havoc on an ecosystem."

"Most people underestimate the fragility of marine landscapes."

Suddenly it became hard to see-and then I couldn't see anything, at which point I felt a searing bolt of pain on my forehead. f.u.c.k me ragged-had I pa.s.sed out again? I hadn't eaten a f.u.c.king thing in hours.

"Ray? Ray? You okay?" Neal was looming over me, backlit by stars. "You banged your head on a palm tree."

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l. I had the most ghastly dream while I was pa.s.sed out there. A nightmare-a delusion? Whatever you want to call it. You and me were walking along and talking about plants and stars, and it was so f.u.c.king boring. I mean, me talking about plants?"

"Never want that to actually happen."

"You said it. How far are we from the tent city?"

"It's just ahead."

Neal helped me to my feet. We found a small path and tiptoed along it, ending up just a few tents down from Fi's. Brilliant. A handful of people were to-ing and froing, their eyes glued to iPhones.

"Perfect. Everyone's too busy to notice us."

"Okay, Ray, you go out and get the T-shirt."

"Me? Why me?"