The Island

by Ben McPherson

  After a minute I was on him. I sat on his tail, matching his speed, a car-length behind.

  Twice he stood on his brakes, guessing perhaps that my nerves were dulled by worry and by lack of sleep. But my nerves were sharpened by the certainty of the righteous man. And so I braked when he braked, and accelerated when he accelerated, tracking him move for move.

  Twenty minutes out I knew he was heading for Garden Island. He took a turning from the carriageway, timed very late. I swerved out behind him and on to a lazy backroad that led across endless flat fields of maize. Bror slowed. Impossible to shake me on this narrow road. I eased off the accelerator, allowing the gap to increase. We drove at a steady sixty all the way, parked next to each other on the road that led to the slipway.

  The ferry was heading towards us across the sound. On Garden Island people were disappearing up the rise. I sat, watching Bror in his car. He made a telephone call. I wondered, almost casually, whether he was ordering our deaths. We were at the end of something. I knew that. Still the fear that Bror wanted me to feel was obliterated by a seething rage.

  Why was this man not in jail?

  I got out of my car, stood waiting by the water’s edge as the ferry moored up. I turned to find Bror walking down the slipway towards me.

  Security on the mainland was light. Informal, almost. I watched Bror as the police officer patted him down. He stood patiently, watched as I was patted down in my turn. He smiled. I was not expecting the smile. It was warm and inclusive, as it had been the first time we had met. That same quality of understanding and – even now – a part of me wanted to interpret it as kindness. But I was no longer seduced by his charm. He did not wish me well. To Bror I was merely a means to an end.

  ‘Have they euthanized your dogs yet?’ I said.

  He considered this. Again he smiled. ‘Perhaps.’

  Anyone watching us might have thought we were friends as we stood together at the bow of the ferry, facing Garden Island. Just the two of us, and the ferryman in his cab above the deck, as the man on shore cast off the rope.

  The ferry edged out into the sound.

  I turned to Bror. ‘You’re clever. You see the problems with what the Andersens believe.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You made me believe that you despised their beliefs.’

  ‘Any sane person does.’

  ‘I think the reality is worse. I think what they believe is irrelevant to you. You care about what they do. It’s the praxis of terrorism that excites you. You’re in love with the chaos and the pain.’

  ‘Interesting theory.’ The most charming of smiles. ‘Impossible to prove.’

  ‘You can’t explain away the fertilizer on your farm,’ I said.

  ‘And yet, that’s exactly what I had my lawyer do. We are a farm. We use fertilizer.’

  At the boat dock on Garden Island I could see Tvist. At his side was an escort of firearms officers.

  There was a look in Bror’s eye, like a dog on the hunt, expectant and keen. And as I looked towards the officers a terrible wrenching thought began to form. Because I saw now that Bror was planning the murder of Police Chief Ephraim Tvist.

  49

  Bror stepped briskly ashore, nodded to the firearms officers, ignored Tvist, continued up the rise towards the buildings.

  ‘Tvist,’ I said. ‘You have to end this.’

  Tvist watched Bror for a moment. He turned to me.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You don’t realize the danger you’re in.’

  ‘I really do.’

  ‘He spent the night at his farmhouse.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I narrowed my eyes. How did he know?

  I saw him think for a moment. The tiniest of frowns. ‘Perhaps I can tell you this, Cal. We’ve picked up six of his followers so far,’ he said. ‘All armed, all wearing police summer uniforms.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Here. Bror does not know, because we have disabled all telephone signals.’

  ‘That leaves two.’

  ‘Possibly. And if I arrest Bror before I arrest them, these men will go to ground. But on this island I have a hundred armed men and women. A hundred and eleven, in fact. And this time they are properly trained and they are primed. Bror will be arrested as soon as he attempts to leave. In the meantime we will be watching him like a hawk and noting who he speaks with. You and your family are perfectly safe.’

  ‘The target is you.’

  Tvist laughed. ‘Then I must hope my people are as effective as I believe.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘Edvard was there at the farmhouse. He’s been feeding information to Bror.’

  Ephraim Tvist simply smiled his level smile.

  ‘You knew?’ I said.

  ‘I can’t discuss procedure. But Edvard is no traitor.’

  ‘You suspended him.’

  ‘He fell under the spell of a man who promised him salvation. And when Edvard saw the harm he had done, he wanted to put that right. I reinstated him. Now …’

  We began to walk up the hill. There were fewer of us on Garden Island today. The survivors and the families of the deceased were outnumbered by Tvist’s men and women. There was a readiness in the air, a strange sense of anticipation.

  ‘So, Edvard …’ I said.

  ‘A good man may do evil if the devil crosses his path. Are we not all fallible? But Edvard passed on information about today, so I’d say he has redeemed himself.’

  Those dark, dark eyes. That patient smile.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I accept that you’re better at this than I realized.’

  Tvist shook his head, amused. ‘It’s my job, Cal. Have some faith.’

  I saw them at once. Vee welcomed me with smiles and with hugs. Elsa embraced me warmly, then took a half-step back, let her hands rest easily on my shoulders. I looked about me. Tvist did have the island locked down. His men and women were everywhere. And there was Bror on the far edge of the group, smiling at me across the clearing. I looked away. I would not play his games.

  ‘We can leave at any time, Vee,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ said Vee. ‘All good.’

  Our brave little daughter, growing up fast. My best belovèd Vee. Sleek and streamlined. A world away from the stick-thin child she was a few short months ago, with her knotted fists and her dark suspicious eyes.

  Tvist placed himself close to Bror. These two men, each using me to get to the other. Though I understood Tvist’s reasons now. He smiled. I nodded, glad of his presence. For as long as we were on the island we were safe.

  ‘So we’re ready?’ said Elsa.

  There was a warmth in my wife’s voice I had not expected. I searched her face, looking for anger, or bitterness, but there was no edge to her words. Instead there was a glow in her ice-blue eyes that I had thought was gone, an intimacy in her gaze that I thought had been lost to me. So gentle she looked, so kind and so strong.

  ‘Viktoria Curtis,’ said John Andersen.

  ‘What?’ said Vee.

  The world grew quiet. John Andersen was staring very intently at Vee. The judges and the police were watching; the victims’ families; the survivors; Bror too. Only Paul Andersen was facing away.

  ‘About your sister,’ said John Andersen.

  Paul Andersen turned towards us too, so close that I could smell the chewing tobacco on his breath. Like candy, with a dark, cancerous edge. I felt the fear in my Vee, felt her struggle as the men tried to hold her with their gaze. I reached out to her with my free arm, tried to turn her towards me. But Vee would not be turned.

  ‘Look down, love,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Vee.

  From across the clearing I felt the smile curling across Bror’s lips. I saw the cruelty in him now, though he was a cleverer man than the brothers, better at disguising his true self.

  ‘Your sister sends warm wishes,’ said Paul Andersen, enjoying the moment.

  ‘We hope one day you
will join us,’ said John.

  ‘My sister is dead to me,’ said Vee.

  Elsa stepped in front of our daughter, eyes blazing, facing the men. Any trace of gentleness was gone from her. She would strike them down if she could, I thought to myself.

  The birdlike judge stepped forward. ‘John Andersen; Paul Andersen: you will address all remarks to me; most particularly you are not to address minors. Is this understood?’

  The Andersen brothers said nothing.

  ‘Is this understood?’

  The men nodded. Bror turned away, unable to disguise his smile. I saw now the pleasure he took in our pain, and something in me wanted him dead.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ I said. ‘They have nothing for us.’

  ‘No, Dad,’ said Vee.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Dad, it was always going to be like this.’

  I caught Elsa’s eye. She nodded.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘All right.’

  The men had prepared a statement. It was long and dissociative, full of diversions and paranoia: all Arabs, and Jews, and Marxist Cabals. It contained no new information, except that they wished to be known by new Nordic names. Mjölnir and Torshammer. They demanded that the court recognize these names, which seemed unlikely. Hard to believe that two such childish men could inflict so much damage on a country. Unlikely that they could have done it without Bror’s help. Or Licia’s.

  We broke for lunch at eleven. The men were led away.

  ‘I used to think this was the last place where Licia was happy,’ said Elsa. ‘I would imagine her waking up down by the boat dock, looking out across the water, and it gave me some sort of peace, thinking that for a time on this island she was happy. But she was already lost.’

  Through the gap in the trees I saw a table and two chairs. John and Paul Andersen were looking out across the lake.

  ‘Sitting there, eating and drinking like normal people,’ said Vee. ‘Unbelievable.’

  To the left the armed guard: three policewomen on stools, keeping watch. Paul Andersen wiped his mouth on a napkin. He took out a small tin, opened it, formed a lump of tobacco into a rough cube and inserted it between his upper lip and his gum.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is unbelievable.’

  There was something obscene about the men at their picnic table, looking out across the fjord, wiping their mouths on their napkins, joking with their guards. As if nothing, to them, had consequence. As if this were just another day and theirs were just another family.

  ‘Vee,’ said Elsa. ‘I want to speak with your father.’

  Vee hesitated, but she could see Elsa meant it, and she sloped off towards the lunch queue. Bror was watching our daughter too, though he was careful to keep his distance.

  ‘When this is done,’ said Elsa, ‘please help her to forgive me.’

  ‘She does forgive you.’

  This surprised Elsa. She laughed. ‘For what?’

  ‘For bringing us to this country. You couldn’t know what that would mean. None of us could.’

  ‘You’re a good man, Cal, but you really haven’t understood. Not yet.’

  Vee was smiling at us from the lunch queue.

  Elsa turned to me. ‘I need you to understand that I will forgive you, Cal,’ she said. ‘Though it will cost me.’

  ‘Forgive me for what?’

  ‘For the women. In the bars.’

  ‘What women in bars?’

  ‘Did you think I didn’t know?’

  She was smiling as if nothing were wrong. Still, the accusation stung.

  ‘Elsa, nothing has ever happened.’

  ‘It will.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Believe me, it will. For you there will be a new life with one of these women. But I will forgive you, because the man I married is a good man. Perhaps in time you will forgive me too.’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘Not for this.’

  ‘For what? Elsa?’

  ‘There is a reckoning to be made.’ Her wolf eyes staring levelly at me, unreadable now. From her bag she took an envelope. ‘Give this to Ephraim Tvist. It explains.’

  I took the paper from the envelope.

  Dear Ephraim,

  I cannot live with the knowledge of what I did to Pavel Lisowski. I wish to confess my crime.

  Now I felt true fear. I looked at my wife, at her wolf eyes, blue-grey in the sunlight and flecked with gold, calmly appraising me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, Elsa, no.’

  She was looking out across the fjord. ‘I have doomed our family,’ she said very simply. ‘Did you not know?’

  ‘Elsa, whatever’s happened, whatever you’ve done, we can put it right.’

  ‘Read it,’ she said. ‘It’s as much to you as to him.’

  Pavel went to his death quietly and with dignity. Almost gladly. He sank to his knees and turned away. I shot him twice in the back of the head, hoping that the soundproofing of his studio would muffle the report of the gun. It seems it did.

  Mine was a crime of rage and frustration. I was blinded by both. We lost Licia. The fact that – as I saw it – you would not investigate, broke something inside me. I blamed Pavel for turning my daughter’s death into a spectacle. I was so very wrong. The makers of this spectacle are Bror, and the Andersen brothers, and my older daughter Alicia Curtis. Pavel was simply doing his job.

  ‘You’re not in your right mind,’ I said.

  ‘I wasn’t for a time,’ she said. ‘I am now.’

  ‘But it isn’t true.’

  ‘Oh, Cal.’ That look she gave me, so very clear and so very sure. ‘You must let fate take its course.’

  The terrible irony of this is not lost on me, Ephraim. I took the life of a man who did nothing wrong, and for that I must pay.

  You will have my full cooperation.

  I made a cone of the paper. From my pocket I took a lighter and set the paper alight.

  Elsa was shaking her head. ‘Don’t fight me over this.’

  ‘I will fight you tooth and claw, Elsa. Without you we are not a family.’

  The edge of the paper darkened and curled in on itself, the flame invisible in the harsh sunlight.

  ‘There will be justice, Cal. For me there will be prison, and for you there will be a new life with a new woman. This is a necessary rebalancing.’

  She began to walk away.

  When I could no longer hold Elsa’s confession I dropped it on to the rocks at the side of the path, watching it till it was a mass of fragile black ash.

  And all the while Bror stood watching me, his arms folded, smiling.

  50

  When I rejoined the group I could not see Elsa.

  ‘Cal Curtis,’ said Paul Andersen. ‘Ask me a question.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘Anything you like,’ he said.

  The judges were standing in a huddle further down the path. I could not see Tvist. Without him, his officers seemed unsure as to how to act.

  I looked Paul Andersen in the eye. I could feel his cruelty, could feel the sheer terrifying energy of the man. But I would not be cowed.

  ‘I have no questions,’ I said.

  ‘Ask my brother.’

  ‘No questions,’ I said. ‘Not one.’

  This surprised him. He looked about him, then drew himself up to his full height. ‘We are knights. One day we shall return to battle. This is no metaphor.’

  He was studying my reaction. He had prepared these words. He wanted the journalists around us to quote him, in English.

  ‘Good for you,’ I said, as if to a child. I looked away.

  That’s when I saw Elsa. She was on one knee by the rocks that led down to the fjord, her body facing away. She stood slowly, turning as she did, leaving her grey bag at the side of the path. Now she was walking swiftly, knees slightly bent, eyes fixed ahead.

  At first no one reacted. A few stragglers sat on white chairs at white tables, finishing their waffles and their coffee. As El
sa reached the Andersens she said something I did not hear. The brothers turned to face her. Paul Andersen began to stand. John Andersen too. Still the scene was calm. Elsa’s stride was purposeful, measured.

  I called her name.

  Her eyes met mine but would not settle on me. She replied in whispered words that I did not hear. Beside me a policeman got to his feet. At the food tent people turned to watch.

  The brothers stood, arms folded across their chests. Elsa raised her right hand. I saw something dark and metallic.

  Elsa’s left hand braced across her right.

  ‘STOP.’

  A policewoman shouldered her weapon. Two more officers began to stand. The policeman beside me reached for his pistol.

  Elsa assumed a stance.

  I saw Tvist pulling Vee towards him, trying to turn her, to shield her from whatever was coming, but Vee struggled in his arms.

  The first gunshot. Paralysingly loud. The shock of it rooted me to the ground.

  In Tvist’s arms Vee froze, eyes wide. My own eyes flicked towards Elsa, her hands locked around the pistol, then to the rifle in the policewoman’s arms.

  Not a blade of grass moved.

  I seemed to hear Vee inhale, then pause, then inhale. Tvist’s hands clasped her shoulders. Around us everyone was upright. Everything was rigid; every muscle aquiver. My jaw was locked tight, braced for the second shot.

  That same paralysing intensity.

  Elsa’s body barely reacted.

  The gunshot whipcracked across the fjord, reflected off the hills beyond.

  Vee screamed.

  ‘Mum!’

  I was running across the clearing towards my wife.

  Elsa stood, hands raised high, fingers clenched around the pistol.

  The Andersen brothers stared back at her, blank-faced.

  Vee broke free from Tvist and stood, frozen, watching her mother.

  Then the sinews in Elsa’s body seemed to loosen. Paul Andersen took a step towards her.

  ‘Throw down your gun.’ The policewoman, her rifle inches from Elsa’s chest.

  ‘Dad,’ said Vee. ‘Dad, help her.’