Hardy, willing his legs forward, looked up and grunted.

‘How’s the baby?’

Hardy kept moving. ‘Don’t know.’

Pico rested his cup on the edge of the pool and slid in. He shivered as the cold water came under his suit. Next time Hardy came around, Pico grabbed the shark and goosed its belly. ‘Let it go,’ he said.

Hardy walked another two steps, then released the fins. The shark turned ninety degrees and took a nosedive into the tiles on the bottom of the tank.

Pico sighed. Hardy leaned his elbows up against the rim of the pool. ‘Lack of family structure,’ Pico said. That’s what does it.‘

‘What does what?’ Hardy was breathing hard.

‘I don’t think they have much will to live, these guys. You know, abandoned at birth, left to fend for themselves. Probably turn to drugs, run with a bad crowd, eat junk food. Time we get ’em, they’re just plum licked.‘

Hardy nodded. ‘Good theory.’

Pico, in the bottoms of his wetsuit, his enormous stomach protruding like a tumor, sat on the lip of the tank, sipping coffee and brandy. Hardy was out of the pool. The shark hung still in the water, its nose on the bottom. Without saying anything, Pico handed his mug to Hardy.

‘We’re doing something wrong, Peek.’

Pico nodded. ‘Follow that reasoning, Diz. You’re onto something.’

‘They do keep dying, don’t they?’

‘I think this one OD’d. Probably mainlining.’ He grabbed the mug back. ‘Fucking shark drug addicts.’

‘Lack of family structure,’ Hardy said.

‘Yeah.’ Pico plopped in and walked over to the shark. ‘Want to help hoist this sucker out and stroll through his guts? Further the cause of science?’

Hardy emptied Pico’s coffee mug, sighed and brought the gurney over. Pico had tied a rope around the shark’s tail and slung it over a pulley in the ceiling. Suddenly, the tail twitched and Pico jumped back as if stung. ‘Spasmodic crackhead shark rapists!’