No Stone Tells Where I Lie
Copyright © 2021 Madeline Kalvis
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
The author can be reached at: [email protected]
Cover by Giacomo Scandurra
Chapter 1
– I Am on the Island –
Emma was supposed to be the assisting constable, until word came during transit that she would be the island’s only law enforcement. Ned Sommers would be recovering from his wounds in England, leaving her to do the job alone. When she heard the news, she looked at the thousand miles of uninterrupted ocean off the starboard railing. No one back home understood what “alone” even meant out here. That suited her just fine. She was eager to get some useful work done for a change.
South Alderney, an isolated shield volcano peeking above the water, was a British Overseas Territory in the southern Indian Ocean. The one pier on the island served one regular boat that came every month, weather permitting. On a morning in April Emma Cambourne and her husband David stepped off the RMS Beatrice onto dry land. Such as it was. The ocean battered the shoreline and sent up green sprays of lingering fog. Through the gray and the mist, Emma couldn’t even tell if it was raining.
The welcome most people received on South Alderney was a smack of wet to the face. Emma was lucky in that, in addition to the drizzle and the ever-present smell of herring, she was greeted by a dour young man scrunched up in an orange anorak.
“You’re PC Emma Cambourne?”
“Right. Evan Finch?”
“That’s me. Good to meet you. Mr. Cambourne.” He nodded to the small man hunched against the wind in a thin jacket. “Decent trip I hope?”
Emma braced for pleasantries. “Could have been worse.”
“Think so? Follow me. We’ll get you checked in at The Rock.” Mercifully, he asked no more questions but turned and trudged up the street.
Next to Beatrice was a small fishing boat unloading an early morning haul. Plastic tubs of glittering silver fish were passed onto the men waiting on the shore. A young man picked bycatch out of the slithering mass of fish and tossed it into the water. A sea cucumber missed the water and popped on the stone sea wall like a bag of sick. The man caught Emma staring and waved.
Evan walked ahead. The small harbor was on his left, and a row of houses on his right. Over his head the steep massif in the center of the island emerged from the haze.
Beatrice was not known for her passenger comfort, and the island did little to give her back her land legs. She spent half her time looking down, placing each foot with caution on the uneven street. Mud squished around stones and gravel. She stepped over an upturned cobble and kicked it back into place.
Emma’s husband whispered in her ear. “I never thought I’d be more seasick on land than I was on that bucket.”
“Good behavior, David. We can’t foul this up on day one.” She sighed, took a deep breath, and met the smell.
What South Alderney lacked in color pallet it more than made up for in its rich landscape of aromas. Stepping off the boat, passing a small building selling fish and chips, standing downwind of the sea, sheltering in the eddies of air blowing in from a side street, all brought fresh blooms of aroma.
There was another faint, sour smell over top of the others, like burning chemicals crossed with the greasy, metallic smell of an empty tuna can left under the sink.
Emma had always hated the anonymity of smells. You could ask someone to describe a color or a texture. Mechanics routinely diagnosed a faulty engine from a description of the sound it made when idling. It was logical. It was convenient. But what is more, there was something comforting about it. Anything you saw or heard, you could share.
But ask someone to describe what they smell and half the time you got nowhere. Once in high school she had gotten a strong whiff of some bromine compound that sent her into a coughing fit. Since then, she could always bring it to mind, and she detected hints of it everywhere. Now the sea air brought her back to that incident. But she could never ask “Do you smell that? Commingled with the smell of seaweed and crab shit, that little brown vial in Mrs. Peterson's biology class?”
The irrationality of it nibbled at Emma's mind. It was a problem that could be solved. But mostly people solved the problem by ignoring it, and that bothered her more.
Through hood and stiff wind Evan shouted his way through a half-hearted tour.
“Chippy on the right there. Church up the hill in front of you. Post on the corner across from the church. I’d apologize about the wind, but it’s not going to get any better. You’ll see it only ever blows two ways. In the day, it comes off the ocean.”
The wind whipped past them, ocean fog swirling between the houses and sloshing back and forth like waves. It was the kind of wind that left salt in the streets, scoured the plaster on the corners of buildings, and made the air taste like brine. Up ahead on the higher slopes of the mountain the clouds of mist from the sea piled up at a certain altitude, forming a patchy ceiling. Evan pointed in that direction.
“Station’s further up the hill. That's where Ned used to set up.”
“What time do I need to be at the station?”
“Whenever you want. This isn’t London. Or wherever you’re from originally. America?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Anyway, I mean this isn’t the Met. The worst sort of crime we get around here involves a misplaced cow or a broken fence. Or maybe you get both at once and the mystery solves itself. That road goes around the island, although it’s barely a road. Barely an island, for that matter.”
The side street was lined with small stone houses with a few meager flower boxes under the windows. People with their faces hidden from the wind scuttled in and out of them. One woman carried the dented steel buckets that seemed obligatory in every rural community.
Evan stopped and threw his arms out in a parody of some grand gesture. “And here we are.”
The metal sign over the door featured a large boulder surrounded by the sea. The Rolling Rock Arms was a tavern with rooms for rent on the top floor. The middle floor had been converted into the Governor General’s office. The pub on the ground floor was exactly as Emma had imagined. She checked off the obligatory dark wood paneling from floor to ceiling, a beaten dart board, and a large fireplace for drunk people to burn themselves with. There was a pervasive smell of damp wood and tobacco smoke. The usual country practice of staring at anyone new like they had daisies growing from their foreheads had been suspended. The regulars muttering over pints of bitter paid her no attention. The blue ensign of South Alderney hung motionless from a rafter.
Evan looked around and shouted into the back room.
“Jessie! Customers!”
A young woman in a greasy apron rushed out.
“Oh, you’re here. Lucky the room is ready a little early. Sarah was just cleaning up, but she’s done now. She works nights, the poor dear, so it’s a miracle she can spare the time to help us. I’ve been double checking everything, since it’s not every day we get a new walloper from England. More than our usual share of excitement.”
“Is it always this busy?” David gestured grandly to the dusty room and earned a sharp elbow to the ribs.
“It’s more hectic since His Excellency moved in. You just missed him, by the way. Stepped out.”
David smiled at his wife. “His Excellency must be very busy.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Very. He wouldn't dream of not meeting you at the dock, only he's out.”
“You said, Love
. We understand, don't we Em? The man can't very well be in when he's out, can he?”
Jessie nodded enthusiastically at David. Emma put a light but threatening hand on his shoulder.
“Don't listen to him. And don't worry about it. There's nothing wrong with being too busy for idle chit-chat.”
“It's just that, well Constable, Ma'am, he's inspecting the cannery right now, so he couldn't-”
Evan put a firm hand on the bar. “Let’s get PC Cambourne to her room, shall we?”
The room had all the amenities of a charming country inn: bright yellow wallpaper peeling in the corners, an electric kettle that promised to raise water above room temperature, and a bed that sank in the middle anytime a particularly heavy mote of dust settled on it. It threatened to split in half when Emma and David flopped down together. David started to reposition himself, heard a creaking like the final moments of a railway bridge, and thought better of it.
He sighed. “Well, we made it.”
“We did. For a given definition of 'it'.”
The room reminded her of the criminally cheap room in Cuba where they had had a trivial fight over who was supposed to have looked up what sort of plug they use in that country. Subsequent conversations determined that David had no memory of the whole thing. If she was the only one who remembered the argument, did it still count that she won?
David interrupted her train of thought. “Shall we?”
“Alright. W hich one is hiding the deep dark secret?”
“One?”
“Yeah, I guess this game doesn’t work as well on the island that time forgot.”
“How about, which of the citizens of this goth beach resort is a werewolf?”
“Ooh, you’re on.”
“I say the fisherman with the squinty eye.”
“That’s cheating.”
“You can’t cheat at a game with no rules, Em.”
“Cheating was invented before rules. And it’s cheating to pick a man with a giant beard that wraps from ear to ear in a werewolf spotting competition. That’s like saying the vampire is the Hungarian fellow in a cape. Takes all the sport out of it.”
“Fine, fine. The girl at the bar.”
“Jessie? Bold choice.”
“She’s got a look about her. I might wave a nice spoon at her and see what she does. Your guess?”
“It’s not a guess. I know.”
“So you do.”
“Go ahead and laugh. The werewolf, is Evan.”
“Right. Famously irritable, those werewolves. Hang about the docks in full… well, in some semblance of daylight.”
“Do you even know what a werewolf is? Anyway, he’s putting on less of a disguise than the rest of them. Some of them looked desperate to hide something.”
“And that makes him somehow more likely to be a flesh-eating monster?”
“Just wait until the full moon. You’ll see. Now what’s the wager?”
“Loser has to spend a night in the abandoned mansion.”
“What abandoned mansion?”
“How should I know? There’s bound to be one. We can ask Squinty where it is.”
“Child’s play. The loser has to admit they are bad at guessing werewolves.”
“You’re mad, woman!”
“Take it or leave it.”
“You realize that’s the loser we’re talking about. What if neither of them is a werewolf?”
“Getting cold feet? You want to back out?”
“Never.”
David reached out a fist and Emma bumped it hard enough to make a smacking sound with their knuckles.
Her eyes wandered over the ceiling. “You should really be better at this game, you know.”
He could hear the smirk in her voice and counterattacked. “Why, because I actually talk to people?”
“No, because your brother is clearly a vampire.”
“He's not either! Just because a bloke works odd hours from home doesn't make him a vampire.”
“And wears nothing but black.”
“Yeah, he's done that since we were kids.”
“Oh, just like in the photo.” Emma cut the last word off too late.
David's tone dropped. “You were watching me?”
Emma shifted and pretended to be interested in the zipper of her suitcase. “I was just in the hallway, packing up the last of the dishes.”
“You don't want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what, David? Lots of people cry over old photos in shoe boxes. It's a little cliché, but perfectly normal.”
“You know that's not what happened.”
She stood up, launching David to the edge of the bed, and threw down a suitcase in her place.
“I have a confession to make, Em.”
“You left the cat in the apartment.”
“No, no. Safe with the neighbors.”
“No socks?”
“Not a one.”
“God damn it, David.”
“I'll find a sheep with a generous disposition, and a pair of knitting needles.” David pleaded at her with his eyes. “Em, come on. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Am I the only one who listens to the doctors? The memory loss is only going to get worse. And then what exactly do you think-” She stopped herself and inhaled. “Can we talk about it later?”
“Em…”
“It’s fine. Just… It’s fine.”
The only sound between them was a zipper that wouldn't pull. After wrestling with it for several seconds, Emma raised her eyes almost high enough to make eye contact.
“Don’t forget to eat lunch while I'm out.”
“I won’t forget. But where are you going to be?”
“I have to get to the station as soon as possible.”
“Why?”
“It’s my job.”
“No one’s expecting you to call in until tomorrow.”
“It’s still my job when no one’s looking.”
“I don’t think that’s how jobs work.”
“That’s how everything works.”
The ritual of showering and unpacking proceeded without incident, except for a head moderately bashed against a non-Euclidean door frame. Out of the corner of her eye Emma caught David sneaking a chocolate bar into her bag and realized she hadn't eaten in almost a day. He took his medication and went to sleep. How did he manage it, the total state of relaxation with no idea where his next pair of socks was coming from?
Emma pulled back two layers of threadbare curtains from the one small window to look out on the village. The blue metal roofs and squat stone chimneys marked each house. A few pine trees carefully tended in back gardens sprayed tufts of green onto the buildings. Everything was washed clean by the rain. This could be a fresh start for an untroubled conscience.
Nobody back home knew much about this place. No one cared what happened here. The few people in the know about her assignment joked that she was going to catch that thieving kestrel if it took half a year. One got halfway through his teasing before he realized she wasn’t going to Antarctica. Nowhere on Earth was as forgotten as South Alderney. That made it an opportunity. Here things could be made right. Things could go the way they ought to go. They had to. She took the chocolate out and ripped the purple wrapper off like an insane woman.
Within an hour of landing, she was back on the pock-marked street, making her way to Broken Ridge Station. The noise of seagulls never abated. Even along the brief strip of road that passed for a high street, she could still hear the roar of the sea and the clatter of small boats against the storm wall. On a fence a row of petrels turned their heads to follow her all the way up the street. She paused to see if they would lose interest, but they never did.
A seagull landed in her path. It cocked its head and screeched.
“I've got nothing for you, little guy.”
Emma walked straight forward, but the bird didn't budge. Instead, it squawked again and ruffled its feathers. It was gray on t
he sides with lighter feathers underneath, and down its back was a pattern of almost blue-gray speckles. She made a semi-circle around it.
“You hear me? No food. Shoo.”
A few people left the Post, the main shop on the island. She tried to get a good look at their faces without being too obvious about it. If they noticed her staring, they would try to talk to her. These were the people she would serve for the next few months, maybe longer, and she would get to know all of them sooner or later, whether she liked it or not. At least there weren’t very many of them.
The houses on South Alderney were made of dark local stone with metal roofs brought over from Australia. Huddled together, the little buildings merged into a single façade down either side of the street. Nothing indicated separate dwellings except the doors set at odd intervals. The small windows were unprotected by eaves but painted bright colors and a few had flower boxes. These boxes held wispy white clumps of flowers or were empty. Moss and rising damp reclaimed the houses that looked empty.
The local practice apparently was to always keep the curtains shut tight, or a shade pulled down. Some windows appeared to be permanently papered over. Flanked by rows of blind windows Emma had the sensation of total anonymity, and of being scrutinized by unseen eyes.
A sign reading “Broken Ridge Station – British Antarctic Survey” stood in front of a corrugated metal building on a small rise overlooking the town. The moss and tussock grass around it was littered with broken equipment. The generator humming under a shed roof was the one thing kept immaculately clean. Inside Evan had both feet on a table, watching an old episode of Neighbors on a CRT television. Emma rolled her eyes.
“What, literally?”
“Don’t judge. I’ve watched every other thing on this island, and there’s no internet. You’re early.”
“It’s like on time, but better. I thought there were supposed to be two personnel here at all times.” The faint smell of bleach and the hospital white walls gave an illusion of sterility, shattered by the trails of filthy boot prints across the floor.
“Zoe's on the mainland. That’s Zoe Hall. She'll be back in a couple of days. Have a seat. This one's got Russel Crowe in a mullet.”
“Did Sergeant Sommers not leave any pressing business behind?”
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