“Okay.” He sounded skeptical. “What would the logic be there?”
“I don’t know. Rory requested the name of a man who died by hanging a few days before he was found hanged himself. Neither death makes much sense. But the new pathology report makes it seem likely someone else was involved in whatever happened to Rory.”
Taylor described Glenning’s assessment: the dirt on Rory’s hands, bruising on his back, the sophisticated knot.
“What would you do about Kane?” she said. “Given all this?”
Kudus considered the question. “Has there been anything more to suggest he’s being monitored?”
“Nothing that’s shown up.”
“Let him know what we know. Keep him updated on potential surveillance. Let him know about Moretti. If it’s nothing, then it’s not going to occupy his time. If Moretti connects, Kane’s the one in a position to find out what’s going on there.”
“Better position to get hurt, too. But I agree.”
When Kudus was gone, Taylor messaged Kane. She sent through a summary of the new pathology report with a cover message explaining the conclusions. At least he would be informed, she told herself. Then she briefly outlined her interest in Jack Moretti and wondered how crazy it sounded.
She needed to go to Skinner, tell him about Glenning’s conclusions before they reached him independently. She took a deep breath, preparing herself, then a call preempted her. It was C.
“Kathryn?”
“Yes?”
“Is it true that you worked with Rory Bannatyne in Oman, July 2015?”
Taylor froze, feeling a cold dread spread inside her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Could you come up to my office?” He hung up before she could answer.
14
Kane passed the RAF camp at Travellers Hill. He identified the guards’ hut from which Rory had been seen alive for the last time, then continued along the road in the direction Rory had been driving, slowly now, looking for an explanation as to how the engineer could vanish and then reappear hanging off an antenna. Then Kane saw the turnoff.
It wasn’t clearly marked on the map. This seemed to be because the road was not used much anymore. It had been built to US specifications, with a solid yellow center line, and had evidently been busy enough at one point, because the line had needed repainting, a second ghost line faintly shadowing the first. But the traffic had stopped a while ago, and vegetation had begun to reclaim it.
Kane waited to see if any other cars were nearby, then turned onto the abandoned road. It snaked into the hills, climbing steeply through a series of switchbacks. He passed a huge crater ringed with colored bands of rock so that it looked like a racetrack, then rattled over a dry streambed. The Atlantic Ocean appeared ahead of him, a flash of light between gravel mountains. Then the road twisted inland again, rising into ever-increasing desolation.
Soon he was on little more than a dirt track. The car shook complainingly. He wasn’t confident the suspension could handle it, let alone the wheels. Terry’s words echoed: You won’t be able to take this one off-road. Was he still on the road? The idea of getting stuck on a long-forgotten stretch of tarmac in the blazing heat wasn’t appealing. No reception; no emergency phones here.
Kane pulled over and wondered at the wisdom of continuing on. He had nothing definite to suggest Rory came this way. He climbed out to stretch, and the sun on his head was like a blow. For a bizarre second he thought he heard Rory’s voice. He was somewhere in the center of the island. Peaks surrounded him. Large black birds with narrow bodies and pointed wings circled in the air above him. They soared high and steady, and brought with them a raucous screaming that sounded like machinery grinding. Kane searched for any shade, for a moment’s respite from the heat, then gave up and climbed back into the car. He licked the sweat off his lips, drank the last of his water, and decided to give it five more minutes before turning back.
Three of those minutes had passed when he reached a dead end. The road parted around some abandoned concrete—a crumbling, disused building guarded by the stumps of dead palm trees. On its far side, the ground gave way entirely and a deep crevice opened up with sheer, ridged sides. According to his map, it was known as Devil’s Ashpit.
Kane got out and wandered the ruins. It had once been a compound of some kind, constructed beside a ravine that tumbled away down to a dried-up inlet. Manmade blocks lay scattered about: seven or eight concrete pedestals, and foundations where further buildings had been. Only one survived intact: a single-story sprawl of peeling white paint; the size of a school or headquarters. The front doors were secured with a padlocked bolt. Windows on either side had been covered with black panels. He pulled at the doors and the sound of the bolt rattling startled birds from the nearby rocks.
Kane circled the building and peered down into the ravine. A few hardy bushes clung to the sides. There were traces of whatever had been constructed beside it, bricks and some metalwork tossed down and forgotten. It was too hot now. The long-winged black birds circled above Kane’s head and seemed excited to find him hanging around. They were waiting for his luck to run out, and the cries sounded gleeful. His mouth was dry. It was time to head back. If Rory’s last journey brought him here, Kane had no idea what he’d found.
Two Boats was a blessed relief. The village was situated in a gentle valley ringed by volcanic cones. Originally set up by the BBC, it was one of the few places on the island from which you couldn’t see the ocean but you got a breeze off Green Mountain, and with its boxy white houses and cinder lawns, its school and community center and speed bumps, the place was the closest the island got to suburbia. The name had come from two longboats that had once been sawn in half and set on end to provide shade for people making the day’s hike from Georgetown to Green Mountain to fetch water. A zigzag path still led up the mountain behind the settlement like a jagged fracture.
Two Boats was where Petra was last seen alive.
Kane stopped the car at the edge of the village and walked in, past rows of greenhouses and a fenced sports court. The day was finally softening into a more manageable late afternoon. He found the island’s only other grocery store, Jam’s Convenience, which contained the same tins as Solomon’s, and the same crumbs from absent bread. One man sat behind the counter with a handheld electric fan and a book of crosswords, a younger man stacking shelves. Kane bought a liter bottle of water and drank half of it gratefully in the shade of the shop’s veranda. The community center next door advertised Zumba and aerobics and Bridge Night. Beside it was Ladybirds Preschool. The sound of children playing floated from the windows.
There was a strong possibility that the men from last night were based around here. Kane could feel his muscles tense as he walked, keeping an eye out for the red polo shirts. But he wasn’t going to achieve much trying to avoid people, and the heat had emptied the place anyway.
The island’s school had been built at the southern edge of the village. It had whitewashed buildings arranged around a lawn like a bowling green overlooked by a small clocktower, all of which lent the place some degree of formality. The entrance was open. Kane checked he was still alone, then walked in, past a framed photograph of the queen circa 1970, into a large hall with gymnasium markings on its polished floor. One teacher’s voice escaped a classroom in the far corner of the building—a man talking mathematics. It was quarter past three and Kane figured the class wouldn’t be finishing in the next five minutes, so he explored. Most of the rooms were open, empty, with whiteboards and maps of the world, dogeared British textbooks on shelves. There was something about the place that made him uneasy. The relative coolness felt unnerving. Kane studied the class photos on the wall until he saw Petra Wade. She sat beside Connor in the front row of last year’s photo. Kane took a photo of his own using his phone, then encrypted it.
Artwork had been displayed along the walls of the central hall. A lot of the more accomplished pictures were by the same individual. Kane recogni
zed the style from the exercise book Rory had hidden. They were signed Connor. These images were less horrific—mountains, wildlife, portraits: several of Petra Wade. Kane tried to read obsession in the fine pencil lines. An obsessive eye, for sure. A talent. Somewhere, deeper within the building, a door opened and closed, and Kane made his way swiftly back outside. This wasn’t where he wanted to be found loitering.
The most eye-catching thing in Two Boats was the blue of a swimming pool visible through the entrance to a small bar that styled itself the Two Boats Club. The club had a yellow sloping roof and a board outside advertising lunches, snacks, and dinners. A poster promised live bands and discos with “mixed music.” The menu offered what it called Saint dishes: tuna fish cakes or “Plo” curry.
The woman managing the place was fifty or so, wearing flip-flops and a pink T-shirt that said Saint Helena. The only other customer sat nursing a Coke at the bar, holding a fan, wearing a billowing white dress and sun hat and large shades. Both smiled at him, and both smiles faltered as he came closer. They’d heard something, he could tell by the reaction. But it was too late to back out.
“Do you do coffee?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“What do you recommend to eat?”
“Fish cakes are the specialty.” The woman spoke politely but not warmly. Kane ordered fish cakes and an iced coffee, took a seat far enough from the bar to let the women continue talking, close enough to hear them. A message came in to his phone as he waited, via its satellite function: the code that meant Taylor had uploaded information. Kane logged in and saw Taylor’s messages. He read through the details of the second pathology report and Taylor’s terse conclusion: I don’t think Rory killed himself. That lent a sharpened edge to the day. More puzzling was her subsequent message. Kane skimmed through it quickly. Rory had been interested in someone called Jack Moretti, a man who had hung himself in similarly mysterious circumstances a decade ago. Kane stared at Taylor’s notes, trying to figure out what he was meant to do with this information. Part of him wondered at Taylor’s state of mind, and what the implications were for himself if she was losing the plot. His instinctive response was that this wasn’t the input he needed from HQ.
Let me know if you come across any reference or connection to Moretti.
That was profoundly vague tasking. He closed the message down as the manager came over. She looked at him again as she set the coffee down.
“New here?”
“Yes. Flew in yesterday. I’m Edward. Pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you, Edward,” she said, without conviction or an introduction of her own.
The coffee was good. He’d read that Saint Helena produced some of the most expensive coffee in the world, and wondered if he was sampling it. The fish cakes were spicy and fresh. Kane was thinking of spending the last of the afternoon assessing the state of play, avoiding heat exhaustion and maybe reading a bit more history on the pretext of living his cover. The woman fanning herself at the bar didn’t take her eyes off him. Eventually, under the pressure of her stare, he looked up and nodded.
“It was you, last night,” she said.
“Me?”
“In the fight.”
“In Georgetown, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“I tried to help some kid who was getting beaten up. I wouldn’t call it a fight. I’d only been on the island about an hour. What was it about?”
“That boy’s no good. That’s all you need to know. I’m not saying it was okay what the men did, but you should know: That boy’s not a victim.”
“Really? What’s he done?”
The women exchanged glances.
“Heard of Petra Wade?” the manager said.
“I saw the posters at Georgetown.”
“Well, maybe that tells you.”
Kane frowned.
“You think that boy . . . ?”
Silence fell. Finally the woman in shades said: “Everyone who’s been on this island for more than a week knows it was him.” She turned back to her drink.
“Why hasn’t he been arrested?”
“That’s a good question.” She looked meaningfully at the manager, who raised an eyebrow.
“Seriously,” Kane said. “I don’t understand.”
The customer turned again on her stool.
“His mum’s an American general. He lives on the US base. So he’s protected.”
“Though maybe not forever,” the manager said.
“Why not?”
“There’s only so much evidence they can ignore.”
More people came in before Kane could get her to expand on that. It took Kane a second to recognize the man who’d given him a lift from the airfield the previous night. He was accompanied by a woman of a similar age in loose cotton clothes and sandals. The man looked at Kane. Kane raised his hand in greeting and the man nodded back hesitantly, removed his cap and wiped the back of his arm across his brow.
The four islanders spoke together quietly. Kane heard the name Lauren being repeated. Will she? . . . Could she? . . . A Lauren Carter came up in police reports as the girl Petra had been intending to visit the night she went missing, a “best friend.” Her father worked as an RAF vehicle technician, Mum helping as a teaching assistant at the school. Lauren was the second girl in Rory’s photographs, Kane felt sure.
When eventually the postal worker and his companion left, Kane gave it a minute, then went up and paid.
“Seemed like they had news.”
“Maybe.”
“You said there was only so much evidence they could ignore.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone might have seen what happened. Another girl.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Question is if she has the courage to say.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
The woman in white fanned herself violently.
“Because the murderer is still on this island with her. Still at her school. Because last night he was out looking for her. You saw him. You see what’s going on?”
Kane stopped in the doorway before stepping into the white heat, put his shades on, heard the women behind him.
“Of course they were together. They always were.”
“Inseparable.”
“The three of them. Always.”
Lauren Carter, Kane thought, walking back through the village. The police had been confident that Petra never made it to Lauren Carter’s house, because it would have meant her passing the community center, which had an exercise class outdoors between five and six p.m., and no one saw her.
Kane went back to the community center. He tried to establish the route Petra would have been expected to take, and therefore the location of Lauren Carter’s home. A narrow path ran alongside the center toward the northern edge of the village. He followed it, past more attempts at cultivating growth, until a residential property came into view. It stood alone, with a lot of rusting machinery in the front yard—a washing machine, a Kawasaki motorbike—all in the process of being assembled or disassembled or both. Kane stepped past the repair work to an open window and stopped. A girl sat just inside the window, staring vacantly into space.
Kane recognized Lauren from Rory’s Polaroids. He hadn’t expected her to be there, but there she was, sitting alone in the front room. Now he felt overly hasty and conspicuous. Her fair hair was plaited. She wore a pink hoodie though even in the shade it must have been hot. She sat very still.
Kane listened for sounds of anyone else in the house. He tried to think of some pretext on which to speak to her. For the first time in his operational career, he came up blank.
He stumbled on the loose ground and she turned sharply. Her lips parted and he saw the train-track braces on her teeth.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he said. The girl watched him. He stepped closer. “My name’s Edward. I just arrived on the island. Got myself a bit lost.”
“Is there a garage near here?” Kane continued. “Somewhere I can get petrol?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But this is Two Boats.”
“Yes.”
Kane took his map from his bag and unfolded it.
“Could you show me exactly where we are?”
She got up. As she approached the window, he saw her expression change. Kane turned and saw a man with shopping bags approaching through the front garden.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“He’s lost, Dad.”
“What do you want?” Lauren’s father stared at Kane, red-faced and breathless.
“I just drove here from Georgetown but I need petrol, and I wasn’t sure where you’re meant to fill up. First day on the island. Someone said One Boat, but I’m not sure where that is.”
“One Boat’s that way, back past the store.”
“Okay. I must have missed it. Thank you. And thank you, too.” Kane turned to the girl, who had stepped back deeper into the shadows of her home.
He felt the man staring at him as he walked away, through the village, through blinding sunlight. Felt the heat of the father’s stare and an irrational guilt, entwined.
What had Lauren Carter seen?
Inseparable. The three of them.
Quite a place to grow up. Eternal summer. Kane thought of the exercise book and imagined children trying to make a world out of the stark landscape—a world of adventure in which you were explorers navigating your way out; a team, shipwrecked here together, learning how to survive. And the island, becoming smaller by the day, would eventually banish you. Everyone is ejected from childhood, but few with such geographical finality. How did it feel, knowing this fate was on the horizon? People think they are returning you to a larger world, but they haven’t felt the trade winds in their hair as they cycle down volcanic slopes. Kane thought of Connor, with all his awkward adolescence, coming of age here, the volcanic peaks sharpened with new desire.
Kane ducked into the store again, grateful for the cooler air. The two men, old and young, remained as they had been, one with his crossword, one beside the shelves. Kane picked up more water and some snack bars. As he was paying he heard a familiar voice.
Ascension Page 14
