For the next six weeks I spent my time badgering the suits for updates on Shinju’s murder investigation and upending bottles of Famous Grouse Scotch into Mum’s kitchen sink. But nothing I said or did seemed to make much difference at the police station, or at home. I finally wised up and remembered I couldn’t solve Mum and Pop’s problems. But maybe I could do something to help find my sister’s killer. The pearl was unique. Only a few companies could have produced it. I figured a BSSP pearling ship was a good place to start. I was headed back out to sea and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Broome was closing in on me.
Tom and I hadn’t crewed together for several seasons, so I was surprised to find him stowing his gear onto the Adelaide three cabins down from mine late one afternoon at the end of February.
“Hey, stranger,” I said.
He gave me his crooked smile and a quick nod, but that was all I got. After checking my wetsuit, mask, and regulator for signs of wear and damage, I stowed the gear in my locker and headed for the galley. I kept an eye out for Tom, but he never showed. I guessed he ate in the captain’s cabin with his father. The cook served grilled saltwater barramundi and fresh veggies. My favorite. Afterward I turned in early. Being the only female diver on the Adelaide, I never had to share a cabin. Not unless I wanted to, of course. But one-nighters in sandy sheets were not my thing. To the blokes on the ship, I was just another mate.
The ship arrived at our destination sometime during the night. Oyster bed locations are guarded secrets, so except for Captain Lafroy and his first mate, the rest of us hadn’t a clue about the Adelaide’s exact coordinates.
Pinctada maxima — the oysters that produce South Sea pearls — are found only in Australian and Tahitian waters. Because P. maxima have a short lifespan, just six years, pearl manufacturers have to maintain a steady supply harvested from the ocean. As a diver, my job is to scour the sea floor and snatch as many of the giants as I can during my shift. Oyster season is from January to March. Unfortunately, it’s also the high season for the deadliest creature in the world, the box jellyfish. One sting can kill a person in thirty seconds.
My diver’s watch buzzed at 5 A.M. I pulled on a one-piece bather, a well-worn kimono, and boat shoes, then padded down to the galley for a cup of green tea. Sounds of the morning routine drifted through the open portholes: shots of compressed air hissing as the ship’s air tanks were tested, the flapping and submerging of the sail anchor, and the creaking of the two metal harvesting arms, each dangling six air hoses and tethers, as they swung into place over the water. The ocean lapped lazily against the ship, and I had just closed my eyes to enjoy the familiar sounds when the blaring of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” shattered my peace. Damn that Yank, and Tom Lafroy. Besides annoying me with his favorite music too early in the morning, he hadn’t come through with what he promised.
“Da says he can’t get the Indian Princess records from BSSP,” he’d told me a few weeks earlier when we met at the Honeyeater Café for an update. He’d sat picking the grilled fennel root and bean sprouts from his soy burger, then smothered the patty with Keen’s mustard. “The company’s worried the pearl was stolen. Sounds like it might have been a stray, like you suggested. Da says he’s tried contacting a couple of his captain buddies, but everyone’s clamming up. So I went back to Jack’s.”
“Find out anything?” I asked as I scraped his discards onto my soy burger.
He shifted his eyes away from me. “The boys said the diver was a new bloke from Sydney. His body was found at Coulomb Point last October.”
I noticed for the first time how his fingers tapped a nervous staccato on the table. I wasn’t sure he was telling me everything.
But now, as I sat in the galley on the Adelaide, Johnny Cash was singing “I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher” through the porthole, and I wondered if I’d been a fool to believe him. I gulped the tea and returned to my cabin to get ready for my shift.
Exposure of just one square inch of skin is deadly during box jellyfish season. An ounce of venom can kill sixty men. Cody, my dive buddy, a mate I’d partnered with numerous times, checked the hood that covered my head and neck, the tightness of my mask, the juncture where my gloves overlapped the nine-millimeter neoprene suit at my wrists. I did the same for him. Once we completed our check, we gave a thumbs-up to the dive master and climbed onto the dive platform. Each of the ship’s two metal arms, one port and one starboard, serviced six divers. Fitted with air hoses and tethers, the device allowed us to be pulled along for extended periods with an ample supply of air. All I had to do was scan the uneven seabed and pluck oysters. Easy. Like riding a finely tuned bike.
I was assigned the far tether on the starboard side, my buddy the second from the end. Once underwater and then again on the sea floor, we exchanged a thumbs-up to indicate that our ears had equalized, our air was flowing, and we were good to go. Every five minutes throughout the dive, we were to signal our status. Adjusting the air in our buoyancy compensators, we hovered an arm’s reach from the ocean floor.
At a depth of thirty feet, weightlessness as well as the current teased the strain from my muscles. Pulled along by the tether, I spotted speckled cowries and spiral-shaped wentletrap shells tumbling along the seabed. Under a brain coral, a sea slug rippled its purple-trimmed mantle. It was good to be back.
I refocused on my work, straining my eyes to distinguish the oyster shells from the drab underwater terrain. We were paid per oyster, and shifts could amount to big bikkies in your pocket. At the fifteen-minute mark I returned my buddy’s signal. My netted bag was half full of oysters, despite the poor visibility. I was certain to return to the surface with a full haul.
Captain Lafroy gradually turned the boat north. The currents were stronger in this section and had churned up the water, making it difficult to see the oysters even though they were as big as supper platters.
I spied a huge oyster shell peeking out from a clump of dead man’s fingers when my lungs felt the tug of decreased air flowing through the hose. I calmed myself, slowed my breathing, and looked up, following the heavy black hose that was keeping me alive. The slack in the hose didn’t concern me at first, but when I inhaled a small mouthful of saltwater, panic prickled my sense of calm. And when I saw the black tubing descending in lazy loops before me, I knew my lifeline was severed.
I searched for my buddy. We could share his air. The water darkened as an overhead cloud hid the sun. Visibility was now only a few feet. Where was he? My body screamed for air. Instinct to inhale invaded my brain. But if I did, I’d fill my lungs with water. Training kicked in. I flipped onto my back, released my weight belt, and fumbled for the CO2 cartridge attached to my buoyancy compensator. I yanked hard on the cord. The BC expanded like a balloon. Exhaling what little air I had left in a constant flow of little bubbles, I shot toward the surface. With all my strength, I forced myself not to suck in the blackness around me. It seemed thirty feet had turned into a thousand. My lungs ached, but to survive I had to exhale every bit of breath in my lungs. A free ascent would protect me from getting the bends. In theory, anyway.
I popped to the surface like a harbor buoy. Riding the four-foot waves was rough, but I quickly realized a new danger approached. The huge underwater sail anchor — dragged behind the ship to decrease the ship’s speed so divers could work — was almost on me. If I got tangled in its cables, I’d be strangled before I could drown.