The Dark Isle

by Clare Carson

  ‘Anna...’

  ‘Bye.’

  There was nothing she could do. She watched Anna disappear, then returned down the hill to the station, rain hitting harder now, passing cars spraying dirty gutter water, brake lights, traffic lights, street lights, blurring and refracting in the damp night air. Her mind on Anna. It wasn’t the first time they had argued and Anna had disappeared. She was replaying the summer of ’76 in their relationship; she’d thought she could change the ending second time around, but now it seemed she was wrong. She couldn’t.

  CHAPTER 18

  London, September 1976

  SAM HAD BEEN back at school for nearly three weeks and still she hadn’t been able to get hold of Anna. She was fed up with everything. School. Friends. Family. Nothing was any fun. The last weekend in September and she thought she’d give the number Valerie had left them another try. It rang and rang and rang. Where was she? Somebody picked up. Anna. Cool and dismissive. Yeah, they’d been there all along. Maybe they had all been out. Shopping or something. Sam tried not to reveal how pleased she was to hear Anna’s voice. They arranged to meet in Crystal Palace Park – the mid-point on their bus routes. By the dinosaurs. She’d got it all worked out. She had the envelope from Lewisham in the back pocket of her cords. She and Anna were blood sisters, they shared their secrets. They were in an exclusive club of two: the daughters of spies. And she had some very important intelligence to hand over. She’d decided she would tell Anna all about her dangerous escapade in Lewisham with the shouting Czech men, give Anna the envelope and say she thought Pierce was living on Hoy. Thought, she had concluded, meant she wasn’t actually breaking her promise to Jim; she wasn’t telling Anna she knew where Pierce was staying, she was just saying what she thought. And she might have thought that Pierce was in Hoy even if she hadn’t been there with Jim and heard him shouting through the window. She’d pick her moment, though; she didn’t want to waste her precious nuggets of information.

  Anna was sitting on the brontosaurus. She slipped off the strange Victorian beast when she saw Sam approaching, cartwheeled across the brown grass, hugged Sam, said how much she had missed her. Sam was overwhelmed.

  ‘How was Orkney?’ Anna demanded. ‘Did you do anything interesting?’

  Sam stroked the flank of the dinosaur; what was it made of? Clay? Wood?

  ‘It was OK. It’s better in July. More puffins. What have you been doing?’

  ‘I’ve been bored. I don’t have anyone to hang out with. I hope we don’t stay in that house much longer.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll move back to your old house eventually?’

  ‘No. Mum says we can’t go back.’

  Her eyes were teary. Sam searched for a way of distracting her.

  ‘There’s an old underground station buried below Crystal Palace Park.’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘Yes. They built it during the Second World War, but there was a crash, a train ran into the platform and everybody was killed, and they couldn’t get the bodies out. So they buried the train and the station, filled in the tunnel. It’s still down there.’

  ‘Is that a true story?’

  ‘Helen said you can hear voices underground, people in the train screaming. She’s been here at night and she saw a ghost; a girl. A teenager. She was wandering around crying. That’s what Helen said anyway.’

  ‘I’ve got a good story too.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me then.’

  Anna’s eyes glinted. ‘It’s about Jim.’

  ‘Jim?’ She wasn’t expecting that. ‘What do you know about Jim?’

  ‘My mum told me something.’

  ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘I promised not to say anything. It’s a secret.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Sam was furious; the conversation had taken a wrong turn, flipped around. Anna had somehow managed to get an advantage over Sam as she always did, made her feel stupid. Inferior.

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘It’s about my dad. You have to tell me.’ She wondered whether Anna had guessed she knew something about Pierce and was trying to worm it out of her.

  ‘Fools rush in, that’s what my mum said about Jim.’

  ‘What does that mean? Fools rush in?’

  Anna pouted. ‘Don’t shout at me like that.’

  She hadn’t shouted. But she was furious. If Anna wasn’t going to tell her what she knew about Jim, she certainly wasn’t going to tell her about Pierce.

  ‘I’m going to buy an ice cream.’

  ‘I don’t want one.’

  ‘I wasn’t offering you one.’

  ‘I’m not coming with you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘See you around then.’

  ‘No,’ Anna said. ‘Don’t call me again. You’re not my friend.’

  Anna stormed off, up the hill.

  ‘Anna, come back.’

  She didn’t turn around. Sam started to cry. She didn’t want to argue with Anna. She wanted a friend.

  ‘Anna, wait.’

  Anna shouted, ‘Leave me alone, you bloody traitor.’

  She tramped back to the bus stop, a burning feeling in her chest.

  *

  SAM HAD WAITED for a couple of days after the argument in Crystal Palace Park before she phoned. She was desperate to talk to Anna now, no longer cared about any promises of secrecy she’d made to Jim. She would give Anna the envelope, tell her what she had discovered in Hoy and she hoped, in return, Anna would tell her the story she had heard from Valerie about Jim. Fools rush in. Although, she still wasn’t certain whether the secret really existed or was just something Anna had concocted to annoy her; tit for tat. Bait. Anna was good at baiting Sam. She didn’t care. She dialled the number. Valerie’s friend answered and Sam asked if she could speak to Anna. Valerie and Anna had moved on to a new address, the nameless woman on the other end said warily. She was sorry she couldn’t help but she had no idea where they had gone.

  ‘Oh.’ Sam was desperate to prolong the conversation. ‘If you see her, could you tell her that Jim managed to deliver the white tiles, please?’

  ‘White tiles?’

  ‘The Fisher King’s treasures.’

  ‘Of course. I see. The Fisher King’s treasures.’ She said it in the patronizing voice of an adult who has just twigged that the child they are talking to is playing imaginary games and has decided they’ll join in with the fun. ‘I’ll tell her that.’

  She put the receiver down. She wanted to cry. She was regretting leaving the red tile at the Raven’s Nest in Hoy now; perhaps if she’d kept hold of it she wouldn’t have lost Anna. At least she still had the photo.

  CHAPTER 19

  London, October 1989

  SAM WAS FIDDLING with the icy white tile she’d found on Betty Corrigall’s grave when the phone rang. She grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Sam, it’s Tom.’ He sounded excited. ‘Have you been away again?’

  What was he after?

  ‘I’ve had my head down.’ Vague answer.

  ‘Can we meet?’

  He was after more information, more leads. She could keep her distance, but that wouldn’t stop him if he was on to a story. She knew what he was like; better to humour him, keep him on her side, and anyway, she wanted to know if he’d discovered anything about Reznik.

  ‘Sure. Where and when?’

  ‘This evening.’ He was keen. ‘The usual place.’

  ‘Where’s the usual place?’

  ‘You know.’ God, he was being cryptic, behaving like a spy.

  ‘You mean the place where we met last time?’

  ‘Yep. Eight?’

  ‘Great. See you there.’

  She replaced the receiver. She peeked out the front window. A woman in trackies and headphones was leaning against a lamp post at the end of the road, pulling her foot up and backwards, as if she had cramp. She had seen her before, jogging al
ong the embankment. Yuppies, Harry had said. MI5 was employing loads of yuppies, getting rid of all the saddo cops with their paunches and belief that the most critical intelligence work took place down the pub. The woman fitted the bill: young, female and fit. She drew the curtains, veiled the last dregs of daylight.

  *

  SHE LEFT AN hour early because she didn’t want to take the direct route. Six thirty and already the light had faded from grey to the phosphorescent dusk of south London. She headed east to the Oval; dirty water in the potholes and paving stone cracks, drains clogged with polystyrene burger boxes and Tennent’s cans. Not much traffic; everybody staying at home to watch TV. She checked over her shoulder, spotted a humungous figure in a black windcheater and jeans lumbering some distance behind. Heading to the pub, perhaps. She reached the Oval, jumped on the first double-decker heading the wrong way, sat on the sideways bench by the back platform. The bus was accelerating when the man in the windcheater rounded the corner, sprinted, grabbed the pole, yanked himself aboard; lighter on his feet than his waddle down the road had suggested. He made his way to a seat behind her. She caught him watching her in the window reflection, small eyes and fat cheeks. The bus pulled into a stop, a woman with a toddler got on, sat next to her. The conductor pinged the bell. She leaped to her feet, jumped from the back of the bus, danced across the road, dodging a black taxi and a cyclist and sprinted the short stretch to the bus stop on the other side, grabbed the pole of the bus pulling away, ran up the stairs and sat at the front. The bus stuttered along Kennington Road, past the Mecca Bingo Hall. She laughed at herself, her madness and overreactions and paranoia. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. Actually, she was crying.

  Tom was the only person sitting outside the National Film Theatre café; everybody else had the sense to go inside because it was cold and damp. He was wearing a dark overcoat over a suit. The lights of the embankment were shining on his scalp, revealing the thinning hair around his forehead. She panicked momentarily, wanted to run; she didn’t want to be with this ageing version of the teenager she had first known when they were young and idealistic and believed they could change the world if they joined arms and shouted loudly enough. Ban the bomb. And now the Cold War and the years of mutually assured destruction were coming to an end, and the free world was triumphing, except it didn’t feel much like a victory. More like succumbing, to what she wasn’t sure. The bloody suits perhaps. He smiled as she approached, but it was a polite smile which made her wonder whether their relationship had finally tipped over the line of friendship into something else – contact. Informer. Any affection that might have existed leeched away leaving only an addiction she couldn’t quite give up: the need to talk about her secret history to somebody who would listen. Somebody who was happy to prod around in the shadowy past of her father. It wasn’t healthy. He didn’t care. He was only interested in himself, his story, his career.

  ‘Let’s walk along the river,’ he suggested.

  She heard a laugh, swivelled. A couple swayed past, his arm wrapped around her waist, her face nuzzling his neck, dragon’s breath in the nippy air.

  ‘God, you’re jumpy. You’re not as fearless as you were when you were a teenager.’

  It irritated her that he was doing mental comparisons to her younger self, even if she had been doing the same to him.

  ‘Is anybody as fearless as they were when they were a teenager?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you’ve got an excuse, what with your dad and all.’

  Blimey, Tom showing signs of empathy. What was that all about? She might as well milk it anyway.

  ‘I suppose his death has made me more cautious. I didn’t take death seriously until Jim copped it. He was always announcing he was about to die and we just laughed it off, assumed he was being maudlin.’

  ‘He told you he was about to die?’

  ‘Yes. Regularly. All through my childhood. Oh, hang on, though... was it all through my childhood?’

  ‘And it didn’t bother you?’

  ‘Like I said, we didn’t take it seriously. None of us did. We joked about it; Jim and his pronouncements of doom. A coping mechanism, I suppose.’

  ‘But why did he say he was about to die?’

  ‘Maybe he thought he was. And eventually he was right. Of course. But then again, eventually he would have been.’

  They strolled upstream. She’d forgotten how tall Tom was: six foot at least. She had to crane her neck to look at his face, which was annoying. He tapped a fag out of a soft-top packet of Kent, offered her one.

  ‘No thanks. You know I don’t smoke fags.’

  ‘Thought I’d offer. Do you still smoke as much dope as you used to?’

  ‘I never smoked that much.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘OK, maybe I did, but I don’t smoke as much as I used to. So what anyway?’

  He didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure why she was going at him; perhaps she was trying to push him away because she knew it was stupid being here in the first place. He lit his fag with a Bic, held it between his thumb and finger, sucked, like an old man in a boozer. The Fleet Street veneer of hard living, tough choices, been there, seen that, don’t believe a word of it. And yet all they did was sit at a bloody typewriter and tap, tap, tap. It wasn’t exactly life-threatening work. The only reason hacks got such a good press was because they were the ones who were doing the fucking write-ups. She was being unfair.

  ‘What did you call me up about then?’

  ‘Arms dealers. Spooks.’

  A black cab zooming across Westminster Bridge clipped the gutter, sprayed black water. He’d been following up on the story she’d given him about the Czech. Reznik the Butcher. She had given him the lead after all. Why did she do this? Why did she leak information to Tom of all people? Because she knew he’d be good at following the trail. Tom the gutter crawler, the gongfermor, as Jim would have said. Perhaps she had been hoping he would prove her wrong, show her friendship meant more to him than her information, that he simply wanted to see her. At least she now knew the game she was playing, couldn’t kid herself he was after anything other than a story. Somewhere deep inside she discerned the spark of disappointment, rejection. She smothered it. She had to deal with the reality; they were in a mutually exploitative relationship.

  ‘So. Karina Hersche,’ Tom said.

  They had reached her home stretch, the embankment path between Westminster and Vauxhall. The Houses of Parliament on the north bank and behind them a wall separating the path from St Thomas’ Hospital.

  ‘What about her?’

  She headed for a bench, parked herself on the wet slats between the Victorian wrought-iron swan heads that served as arm rests. He sat down beside her.

  ‘OK then. Tell me what you found out.’

  ‘It’s an interesting story.’

  ‘Oh god.’

  ‘Although, I’m not sure it’s going anywhere. It’s all old stuff. No juice. I need some more details. Other sources.’

  Which was why he had phoned her.

  ‘Don’t tell me you found Karina at the address in Lewisham?’

  ‘Not quite. She’d moved. But only once. It wasn’t too difficult to trace her.’

  ‘Where does she live now then?’

  He lit another fag, dragged. ‘I can’t reveal her address.’

  ‘Oh come on, Tom.’

  ‘Confidentiality. A basic rule of journalism. Protect your source. It would be unethical to tell you.’

  ‘Since when were you so big on ethics?’

  He ignored her question.

  ‘I have to say, though, the place she’s moved to is pretty cool.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Not your usual bricks and mortar.’

  Cool. Not bricks and mortar. What did that mean? She lived in an igloo? A tent? He sucked hard on his fag, avoided eye contact. A starling sidled along the embankment wall, probed the cracked concrete with its yellow bill, jabbed at some unseen insect, realized Sam was watching and
fluttered away across the river. Water. Perhaps Karina lived on the Thames.

  ‘Was she scared when you contacted her?’

  ‘Surprised perhaps. Not scared. In fact, when I told her I was after info about a Czech ex-StB agent turned arms dealer, she seemed quite eager to talk.’

  ‘I hope you told her you were a hack.’

  ‘I’m not a spook. I’m not like your dad. There’s no trickery involved. It’s all done in good faith.’

  Good faith? What did that mean? Why should anybody have faith in a hack?

  ‘Did you tell her how you’d found her?’

  ‘No. Like I said, I always protect my sources.’

  He smiled at her expectantly, as if he was waiting for him to thank her. Well, he could get stuffed if he expected her to be grateful he hadn’t given her name away.

  ‘Although I did, er, mention your friend’s name.’

  ‘What? Which friend?’ Panic. She couldn’t remember whose name she had given him. Pierce? Harry?

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Anna?’ Of course, she’d let Anna’s name slip, didn’t think it mattered; she couldn’t have been on her guard.

  ‘Yes, Anna. I had to tell her something. I had to gain her trust.’

  ‘I thought you said there was no trickery involved?’

  ‘That’s not trickery, it’s... All I said was that I’d heard something via a friend who was a friend of a girl called Anna.’

  ‘And did the name mean anything to her?’

  ‘Funnily enough, it did.’

  ‘Really? How come?’

  She was perturbed.

  ‘She said Anna was the name of the daughter of her one-time boyfriend.’

  Boyfriend. She pictured the young, pretty, blonde woman Anna and she had trailed across Lewisham that sticky day in August 1976. Anna had been convinced that this woman, Karina, who had turned up at Pierce’s safehouse, was one of his contacts. Not her father’s bloody girlfriend. Perhaps Karina was lying to Tom, making up a story to cover her own back. Perhaps she wasn’t. Pierce was a spook. And that’s what spooks did after all – shagged their way to secrets.

  ‘What did Karina say about this boyfriend of hers then?’