The Dark Isle

by Clare Carson

  ‘Ah.’ She had figured out her identity, Sam could tell; dragged her face from the blurry memories of the summer of ’76, two girls dogging her around Lewisham. Anna’s sidekick.

  ‘Tom told me he was researching a story about the fall of the Soviet regime and the fate of their spooks. We were just having a casual conversation. I’d had a bit too much to drink. And I told him about my friend Anna – Anna Davenport. She stayed with me in the summer of ’76 with her...’ She stumbled. What should she say about Anna’s parents – their marriage? It didn’t matter what she said because she was lying anyway. ‘Her parents were divorced. She told me she thought her father had gone on the run because some deal with some Czech ex-secret-police arms dealer went wrong.’

  She paused for breath, wondered whether this sounded too much like a prepared story, but she needn’t have worried because Karina was drinking her words, fixated on her mouth. Sam fidgeted on the seat. She had to continue now anyway.

  ‘He had a house in Lewisham.’

  Karina said nothing, just watched. Sam searched for some connection.

  ‘On a street near a restaurant my dad used to take us to when we were kids. Cominetti’s I think it was called.’

  Karina smiled then. ‘Casa Cominetti. Yes, I know it well. Davenport used to take me there sometimes.’

  ‘I used to love the pudding trolley. I always wanted the profiteroles.’

  Karina plucked at a silver chain running across her collar bone.

  ‘Yes, I remember the profiteroles too.’

  ‘They seemed so sophisticated to me when I was ten, profiteroles.’

  ‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘Profiteroles. Very continental for England in the seventies.’ Sam laughed with her, caught by a sudden memory of her childhood and Jim.

  ‘So we went to look at the house one day after Davenport had disappeared, to see if we could find him there. And we saw you, followed you back to your flat. We were mucking about. The front door was open. Anna wanted to see if she could find your flat and talk to you; she guessed you must know something about her dad. She saw an envelope with the name Karina Hersche, and she thought that it might be you. I remembered the address.’

  Did that sound plausible? It was more or less the truth anyway.

  ‘How did you know Anna?’

  ‘Her father knew my dad.’ Christ, that was a slip.

  ‘Did they work together?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe. He said he was a friend.’

  ‘What did your father do?’

  ‘He was a merchant seaman.’ Wild invention; the type of person a Zimbabwean arms dealer might know, she reckoned.

  ‘Is you father still alive?’

  ‘No. He died in 1984.’ She could almost understand, as she fabricated, why spies ended up mixing facts with total fictions.

  ‘I’m sorry about your dad.’

  She sounded as if she meant it. Sam fumbled for a response. ‘Everybody dies eventually.’ What was she doing, extracting sympathy for the death of a non-existent merchant seaman? Tying herself in knots with all these false identities. ‘I wanted to apologize to you, because I was over at Tom’s place last night, and he said something about running with the story. I couldn’t believe it. I mean there can hardly be anything to run with anyway. I was so annoyed with him. I had no idea he would use some tiny piece of information from a casual conversation as a basis for one of his stupid bloody investigations. And then I saw a piece of paper on his desk – and it had your name and this address on it. Or, at least, it had the name of a boat and this mooring. I wanted to come and apologize, and warn you not to say anything else to him.’

  Karina was fiddling with the chain around her neck. ‘Is he going to publish something? He told me he wouldn’t publish anything. He said he might be able to help me locate Davenport.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes, he said he thought he might have a contact who knew where he was living.’

  ‘I think he was making that up.’ She said it vehemently. Bloody Tom. ‘The only information he’s got about Davenport came from me, I’m sure. And I have no idea where he is living now. He was baiting you.’

  Karina’s face dropped. ‘Oh, I probably told him more than I should have done because he said he might be able to help me.’

  ‘That’s the way hacks work. They butter you up, try and make you think they are on the same side as you. But all they’re after is information. It’s always an exploitative relationship.’

  ‘Oh my god, I wasn’t thinking.’ Her eyes were watering, losing any hardness they might have had, and Sam suddenly felt appalled; with herself, with Tom, with Pierce. All of them manipulating this woman. ‘I shouldn’t have told him anything. I really only did it because I was desperate to find out what had happened to Davenport. Now I’m worried that I might have endangered him.’

  She wasn’t bluffing. Definitely not. She was a woman who had been duped, fallen in love with a spy. Sam felt gutted; she hadn’t expected this, didn’t know quite how to respond, found herself looking for an explanation which could make Pierce’s behaviour seem more reasonable. It was what spies did after all, betray people. For the greater good. Collective security. People sleeping soundly in their beds at night.

  ‘Please don’t worry, I’m sure you haven’t done any harm at all. I doubt whether Tom has enough information to publish anything. I just wanted to warn you, in case he came back to talk to you again. If he does, tell him to shove off.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. That’s what I should do.’

  She looked doubtful, vulnerable, and Sam was reminded of the young woman she and Anna had trailed in 1976: distraught, searching for her lost boyfriend.

  ‘Here. Can I give you my address in case you want to contact me for any reason? If Tom comes back, let me know. I’ll sort him out.’

  She’d knee him in the bollocks if she had to, incapacitate him for a couple of weeks.

  ‘Yes, that would be very kind. It would be great if I could have your address, it’s nice for me to be in contact with somebody who knew Davenport, even if only indirectly. Perhaps one day you might bump into his daughter again; I’d like to meet her.’

  Oh god, she was so stupid. She swung from cunning trickster to dope in the flit of a moth’s wing; she shouldn’t have offered to give Karina her address. A step too far – taken because she felt sorry for her, falling for a ghost. It didn’t do to allow your emotions to enter into these kind of exchanges – she should remain more distant. She would have to lie again and give Karina a completely false address, because she couldn’t reveal where she actually lived. She wasn’t sure she could face lying again. She’d try diversion instead.

  ‘That’s all I wanted to do. Apologize and warn you.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’ Karina was still fiddling with the chain, held it up, revealed a small white object that twisted and caught the light in a peculiar way. Sam leaned forward, couldn’t help herself, reached across. The Fisher King’s treasure, crystalline surface glittering in the lantern light.

  ‘That’s an unusual pendant.’

  ‘The tile was a present from Davenport.’

  Pierce had given the second white tile to Karina and she still wore it around her neck. Jesus. She really was smitten. First love. Or maybe it was the sudden disappearance that kept her dangling, unable to let him go.

  ‘He posted it to me after he vanished. He went to Harare. He sent me a postcard, and then a week later, this tile in an envelope. There was a note inside that said it was an ancient magic object that would keep me safe from harm.’

  He’d used the Fisher King treasure line on Karina.

  ‘I knew a silversmith and I asked her to make it into a pendant.’

  What was Pierce doing, sending Karina, his girlfriend-contact, one of the tiles that Anna had given him? Maybe it was an indication that he had genuine feelings for her, that she really meant something to him. But he had lied to her, told her he was divorced, pretended he was somebody else. Sa
m couldn’t work it out, confused, not entirely sure with whom she felt angry and why, which side she was on. She was overwhelmed by a sudden surge of rage. A blast of wind swung the paraffin lamp, thwacked a wave against the barge, rocked it sideways, brought her attention back to Karina.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Karina had been watching her with some concern, she realized.

  ‘I thought you were going to faint.’

  ‘I’m fine. Sorry. It’s the motion of the boat.’

  ‘Yes, it does roll quite a bit.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Especially when the wind whips the water.’

  Sam nodded at the tile dangling around Karina’s neck.

  ‘It’s a lovely pendant. It does have a magical glitter.’

  ‘I used to believe it felt colder when I was in danger – a warning – but I’m sure I just imagined it.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sam said. ‘Maybe some objects do have magical powers to protect us.’

  ‘It felt cold when you called out just now. That’s why I hesitated to answer the door.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She couldn’t think of anything else to say, how to extricate herself from the awkward turn of the conversation.

  ‘But obviously it was nothing. You couldn’t possibly be harmful to me, a young woman like you. You have such an open face.’

  Sam flushed. ‘Look. I’d better leave you now. I don’t want to take up any more of your evening.’

  ‘It’s fine. You were helpful. Thank you for coming.’

  Karina held the cabin door open. The Chinese lantern hung motionless; the gust that had rocked the boat an aberration in the calmness of the night. ‘Oh, your address, wait please.’ She dug in her pocket, pulled out a receipt from Sainsbury’s and a pen. ‘Write it on the back of this.’

  Sam’s brain blanked; caught off guard, she couldn’t think of an address that wouldn’t look obviously false to somebody who knew London, as Karina must. She didn’t want to deceive her any more than she had already. Sod it. She wrote her real address. And immediately had second thoughts. How stupid was she?

  ‘Please do contact me if you like.’ She’d really messed that up. Given away more than she had intended. ‘There’s one more thing...’ She shouldn’t be asking this, but she couldn’t help it. She needed to know and she had concluded it was safer to ask out here in the open, where the noises of the river might mask their conversation, than in the confines of the cabin. ‘Do you have any idea how this Czech arms dealer...’

  ‘Pavel.’

  ‘Pavel,’ Sam repeated.

  Her neck prickled, goose bumps forming on her skin; she glanced around the barge, along the river, a sudden feeling that she was being watched. But there was nothing to see apart from the lights of the traffic crossing Tower Bridge.

  ‘Do you have any idea what made Pavel turn on Davenport?’

  Karina clasped the pendant at her neck, gripped the tile in her fingers, her face drawn in pain, and Sam thought for a moment she was about to shriek at her and accuse her of being a traitor. ‘I never entirely understood what happened.’ She glanced around the deck. ‘I grew up in that world. That’s how I met Davenport; I was at a grand party at Pavel’s house. Before we came to London, we lived in Prague and my father worked for Omnipol – they make guns. I always assumed he was employed by the Czech secret police.’

  She frowned, peered east along the far riverbank, focused on the dark warehouses of Wapping, shook her head, turned to face Sam again.

  ‘That trade – arms dealing – it’s full of informers and spies and double dealers. I always suspected Pavel was one of these men. He was known to be, as you said, an ex-member of the StB. There was something cruel about him, sadistic.’

  The Butcher; everybody was wary of Reznik, even if they didn’t know his real name.

  ‘Davenport was the only dealer I ever trusted. He didn’t really want to sell guns, but he turned to it when the visitors stopped going to Zimbabwe because of the unrest there. He was brave and honest.’

  Sam held her features steady, willed herself not to react in any way.

  ‘I tried to warn him about Pavel, but he judged other people by himself. He had high moral standards, and he assumed others did too.’

  High moral standards. She was standing face to face with one of the victims of Pierce’s deceptions, a woman who believed he was called Davenport and had once been a big game hunter in Zimbabwe. And yet, she could understand why Karina had fallen for him. Pierce oozed old-fashioned decency and charm; he lied for a living, but when you were with him it was hard to doubt his conscience, he weighed the damage carefully against the outcomes of his actions. He suffered guilt for his deceptions.

  ‘But there was one name he did mention a couple of times, shortly before he disappeared, and I wouldn’t have remembered the name if there wasn’t something odd in the way Davenport talked about him.’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘As if... I don’t know... he was worried about him. He told me once that the problem with Pavel was that he had too many deals going on and the more deals he was doing, the less able he was to check their backgrounds, and that made everybody vulnerable. And then he said the name of a man who unnerved him in some way. Maybe he was worried he couldn’t trust him.’

  She didn’t know why she was pursuing this; unearthing the truth in order to rebury it. She had to be careful she wasn’t digging her own grave at the same time.

  ‘What was the name?’

  ‘Oh, it was a passing mention. Jim.’

  She was ready for it, able to brush it off lightly.

  ‘Jim,’ Sam repeated. ‘That’s a common name.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well thank you for telling me all this.’ Thanking Karina seemed completely inappropriate, but she couldn’t think of any other way of ending the conversation and leaving quickly. ‘I’d better go now.’

  ‘It was nice meeting you. Let’s stay in touch.’

  Sam nodded, glanced over her shoulder as she stepped on to the walkway, waved at Karina standing against the doorframe, the warm glow of the cabin behind, and she reckoned she’d dealt with that situation quite well. She looked down. The water churned beneath her feet and a wave of terror surged through her mind.

  CHAPTER 22

  London, October 1989

  SHE PACED THE cobbles of Rotherhithe Street, keeping close to the walls, hands in pockets to keep them warm. The conversation with Karina had put her on edge. She had trampled on Tom’s investigation, but she had given away her first name and address and had come close to revealing the identity of her own father. She decided to return to Vauxhall by a different route. She cut down to grotty Tooley Street, turned left beyond London Bridge Station, clambered aboard a double-decker heading south along Borough High Street, sat and stared out the window. Two boozers taking swings at each other outside a pub. A swaggering dealer, shoulders hunched, sweatshirt hood up, heading north with his faithful Staffie trotting at his heel. The bus pulled into a stop; a briefcase clutcher in a grey suit and homburg climbed on and parked himself in front of her. She examined the back of his neck, the neat line where hair met flesh, decided he looked too much like a spy to actually be one. Although he was glancing at the window, watching her reflection in the glass. The bus reached Westminster Bridge. Nobody got on. Nobody got off. The conductor pinged the bell. Snap decision; she stood, skipped and leaped for the pavement before the double-decker had time to pick up speed. She glanced back at the departing bus and caught the man in the suit swivelling to watch her. A black Merc speeding too close to the kerb made her step back. A late-night runner paced the pavement, checked her up and down, crossed the traffic lanes, jogged north across Westminster Bridge. What was he after? She looked left and right. The streets were empty. Too empty. Perhaps she’d made the wrong call, jumping off in this no-man’s land of deserted offices and shuttered greasy spoons. She decided to head down Westminster Bridge Road, and catch a bus back to Vauxhall from there.

&
nbsp; Under the iron girders of the railway bridge, the wheels of a train grinding on the track overhead. In the corner of her eye she caught the runner who had passed her earlier on the other side of the road. Damn. She had been stupid. Too cocky in her home territory, wandering around in the middle of the night in the dark and deserted streets of south London. She quickened her pace. The jogger matched her speed. Neck and neck, heading south. She wanted to lose him. She glanced right; she was passing the gaping mouth of the old Necropolis Station, the hellish entrance to the railway line that once carried corpses to the suburbs. She could dart in there, wait for the jogger to pass. She sidestepped into the shadows of the walled yard, looked back, caught the jogger standing and gawping, felt a fleshy hand over her mouth, hardly had time to react before her right arm was grabbed and twisted painfully behind her back and she was forced forward towards a black saloon with the backseat door open, parked out of sight from the road at the rear of the yard. The Merc that had passed her five minutes earlier. Shit, she had walked into this one.

  ‘Move.’

  She tried to squirm around, resist, shout for help, but his hand was still muzzling her mouth. She bit his thumb.

  ‘You bitch.’

  He shoved her neck down, forcing her towards the rear of the car.

  ‘Get the fuck in.’

  He grabbed her legs. She kicked him. He caught her monkey boots, tipped her on to the backseat. She kicked again, caught him in the balls.

  ‘You little fucking...’

  He slammed the door. His accent wasn’t English – European she guessed, but not eastern European. He lumbered into the driver’s seat. The engine revved.

  ‘Let me out.’ She pulled at the handle. ‘Let me out now.’

  ‘Central locking.’

  She twisted in the direction of the whiny mosquito voice. A skinny man in a badly fitting suit was hunched on the other side of the passenger seat, hair combed over, trousers shiny as if he spent too much time stroking his thighs.

  ‘Let me out.’

  He ignored her, lit a fag.

  Tyres squealed as the Merc left the cover of Necropolis Station and swerved into Westminster Bridge Road. She looked back through the darkened rear window; the runner was staring at the car’s number plate, scribbling on his palm. She banged on the window.