The Island

by Ben McPherson

  I felt bile rising in my throat.

  Our civilization must survive. The unthinkable must be thought. Children are both our greatest threat, and our most underused resource. Great men must step forward to prevent indoctrination, and when it is too late, when the child is too far gone, great men must eliminate that child as we crush the tiny flies that infest the fruit in our kitchens.

  My brother and I face a stark choice – Killer or victim: which is it to be? The question is horrific to us in its cruelty, yet we ask it with love in our hearts and an easy spirit, for the answer is clear. And so it is that today we fire the first shots in a war for the emancipation of our people.

  This is our gift to the nation, and to the entire European race.

  Commanders John and Paul Andersen

  Tactical Brigades of the Knights Templar

  I looked up. Vee was watching me intently.

  ‘Brilliant, right?’ she said.

  ‘Brilliant?’

  ‘Everybody here trusts the police. These guys are first on the scene. I mean, you see the cleverness, don’t you, Dad? It’s using people’s naivety against them. And literally no one is discussing that.’

  ‘How did you find this?’

  ‘Not BBC or CNN or NRK, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Cal. A word?’ Elsa’s voice from the doorway, flat and affectless. How long had she been standing, arms around Franklin, watching us?

  ‘Sure.’ I got up. Vee looked at me. ‘Dad, they killed ninety people. And not one of the mainstream channels is telling us why. It’s like someone deleted Licia.’

  I stood, staring at my daughter. Did she really believe there was some sort of cover-up?

  ‘Now would be good, Cal.’ Elsa’s voice again.

  ‘Coming,’ I said.

  I turned towards Vee.

  The intensity of her stare. ‘So go,’ she said.

  Elsa waited in the middle of the kitchen floor, arms still folded around our son, who began kicking excitedly as I approached.

  ‘The police window for finding Licia alive is closing,’ she said, ‘and you’re trading conspiracy theories with Vee?’

  ‘That’s not—’

  ‘They should be camped out here, asking us everything we know. And you should be as worried as I am.’ Every line in Elsa’s face was etched a little deeper today.

  ‘I want to be sure Vee’s OK,’ I said.

  ‘All right, then, sorry.’ She stepped forwards and we embraced. Franklin kicked enthusiastically in Elsa’s arms. ‘I keep calling the police,’ she said quietly. ‘Because the first twenty-four hours are meant to be … I mean, they say that if you don’t … Fuck, Cal, it’s been what? Sixteen hours? How exact is the twenty-four-hour thing?’

  I really had no idea.

  Franklin was lying on his cushion in front of the TV, staring up at his fingers, entranced. Vee was on the sofa.

  Ninety-one were now confirmed dead, the majority of them children.

  ‘A tragedy.’ A man’s voice, warm and deep, yet full of melody. ‘And an outrage that they should attach our name to their racialist agenda.’

  Vee put down the remote.

  The man wore a grey shirt with a neat grey collar. He was forty, I guessed. His hair was wild and black and had not been combed. The gold bands on the shoulder of his shirt looked almost military; the vertical creases were ironed straight.

  A voice from off-screen. ‘Do you distance yourself from the actions of these men?’

  ‘We try to further God’s work. What these men have done is very far from that, no?’

  I heard Elsa swear under her breath.

  A caption on screen:

  Father Bror

  Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight

  A concerned smile was playing at the corners of Father Bror’s mouth. There was something familiar about the kindness that radiated from him. I remembered the coffee he had passed into my hands as we waited for news of Licia.

  ‘That man,’ I said. ‘He was on the shore by the slipway …’

  ‘No, Cal,’ said Elsa. ‘No, that isn’t possible.’

  ‘Elsa, I swear. He handed me a coffee. Told me all would be well.’

  ‘Father Bror …’

  ‘It’s Bror,’ he was saying. ‘No need for the Father.’

  ‘Mr Bror, your organization describes itself as “furthering the chivalric aims of the crusader knight”. As do the Andersen brothers.’

  The man Bror smiled a patient smile. ‘The Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight practises the chivalric virtues,’ he said. ‘The so-called Tactical Brigades of the Knights Templar copy and paste our texts. We farm vegetables. They murder children. We seek enlightenment. They spread dark lies. You see the difference, perhaps?’

  ‘But, Mr Bror—’

  ‘Bror means brother,’ he said. ‘So it really is just Bror.’

  ‘In their press release the Andersen brothers link prominently to this film.’

  A blocky internet video filled the screen. Bror as a younger man, in jeans and a fisherman’s jumper. ‘These little flies,’ he was saying. ‘On our fruit. Began to enter Norway in the 1970s. And at first the cold winters killed them. Now though they have learned to adapt and they are everywhere.’

  In the studio Bror gathered himself. ‘As I have explained on countless occasions, I am talking, in that clip, purely about fruit flies. This is not a veiled reference to something else, no matter how others may wish to exploit it.’

  ‘Yet you have described yourself as sceptical towards immigration …’

  ‘And I think perhaps you are confusing scepticism, which is part of our religious praxis, with acts of violence, which do not form any part of our praxis. The peaceful Muslim is our brother, our sister, our friend. No? And this video is not a racist dog whistle, no matter what you in the media might wish.’

  Elsa’s fingers played across her lower lip. Her wolf eyes glowed.

  ‘So you are not,’ the presenter was saying, ‘an anti-Islamic organization? And you condemn the actions of the Andersens?’

  ‘Would you hold me responsible for the misuse others make of our good name?’

  The interviewer was not letting go. ‘But you, like they, are immigration sceptics.’

  ‘And now you too are twisting our words. We teach scepticism in all things; it is the bedrock of our praxis. We insist that our recruits question every orthodoxy. Especially political orthodoxies. We demand that they speak with radical honesty about their innermost feelings. We are no more against immigration than we are against life itself. About which our recruits also have many sceptical questions.’

  Elsa was staring at the screen, as if entranced. Vee was watching her mother intently.

  ‘Mum,’ said Vee. ‘Mum, how do you know that guy?’

  Elsa’s hand curled around Vee’s. ‘Wow, Vee. You are good.’

  ‘You got this secretive smile.’

  They looked at each other, Elsa’s eyes shining. ‘He was a friend once.’

  No, I thought. No, he’s more to you than that. Because the way my wife was looking at the man on screen, you would swear she knew him well.

  ‘He seems OK,’ said Vee.

  ‘Yes,’ Elsa said. ‘He is OK.’

  Vee made to say something more. Elsa’s phone rang. She got up off the sofa.

  ‘But Mum,’ said Vee.

  Elsa picked up her phone. ‘Just a minute.’ She answered the call, listened, nodded. ‘Finally.’ She turned to me. ‘Police. Can we meet them in an hour?’

  7

  We should not have let the police divide us up. It created the sense that we were not in this together. It was the beginning of a fracture between Elsa and me, though it was tiny at first and I did not see where it would lead.

  A policewoman showed me to a brightly lit room. The windows were obscured by heavy black drapes. In front was a low table. There were two blue pens, and two red pens. There was a stack of paper. There were two empty coffee cups, and a carton of chewing
tobacco.

  The policewoman motioned for me to sit.

  Three low armchairs faced each other across the table. The chairs were mid-blue, the carpet mid-blue, the walls cream. On the wall opposite, a pair of red checked curtains.

  ‘What are the checked curtains?’

  ‘The curtains are not relevant.’

  I walked to the wall, drew back the curtain on the left.

  A plate-glass window, so dark that it was almost black.

  I looked about me. The room was entirely bare, save for the chairs and the table.

  ‘What kind of room is this?’

  ‘Please sit down.’

  She walked out through the door and shut it.

  I chose a chair and sat down.

  Two gobbets of chewing tobacco on the carpet by the table, still slick.

  Those men.

  Here.

  In this room.

  I could hear computer keys clacking in the office beyond. The door must have opened. I looked up to find eyes appraising me. A bald man, dark skinned and powerfully built, in a pressed white shirt. He crossed the floor at a brisk pace, stood facing me, a shade too close.

  The door hissed shut.

  ‘Ephraim Tvist. Chief of police.’ He grasped my hand.

  ‘Cal Curtis.’

  ‘And you are a …’ he looked down into the corner as if trying to remember a complex detail, snapped his fingers ‘… a satirist?’

  ‘I try to be.’

  Ephraim Tvist smiled. ‘The world needs laughter. No?’

  ‘Laughter is a by-product of satire,’ I said. ‘It isn’t really the point of it.’

  ‘So if the point is not laughter …’ he let go of my hand ‘… then what?’

  ‘It holds people in authority to account.’

  ‘Ah.’

  He turned away, sat in one of the chairs, waited for me to join him. I sat down. He turned on a recording device, satisfied himself that it was working. His lively dark eyes came to rest on mine. ‘A man who uses humour as a way of dealing with the most horrific aspects of human existence. Our greatest fears. My own greatest fear is an armed man walking into my daughter’s kindergarten. I have some idea of what you must be feeling.’

  I laughed.

  ‘I wonder, Mr Curtis, is that a satirical laughter? Or is it an angry laughter? Perhaps a satirical laughter is an angry laughter?’

  ‘This is an interrogation room.’

  A shrewd look from Tvist. ‘An explanation for your anger.’ He looked very deliberately at my hands, then at my face, as if making an assessment. ‘Yes. This is an interrogation room.’ He got up, opened a window blind. He turned to me and smiled. His voice was quieter now, more intimate. ‘The idea is that the architecture is open, and that instead of facing each other across a desk, we sit as if we are having a nice coffee, and our suspects – and I really want to stress that you are not a suspect, and that you are not being “interrogated” – our suspects know all this, because we explain the internal geography of the room to them. It’s all so very open and Scandinavian.’

  ‘You provide them with chewing tobacco?’

  ‘Worthy of satire, I’m sure. And yet they feel inclined to share their guilt.’

  ‘So what have the Andersens told you?’

  He made a noncommittal gesture. ‘These are early days. We are analysing the attack cycle. They are not being cooperative.’

  I laughed.

  Tvist smiled. ‘I appreciate the irony. These people work in loose networks that have no organizational structure. But I am hopeful.’

  ‘Why would the chief of police be interesting himself in our case?’

  ‘You’re right to be sceptical, of course. Normally my role would be purely strategic, but this is a very extreme case and I want to know we are doing it right. Now …’ He arranged himself, relaxed his shoulders, made his posture open and receptive. ‘There’s a troubling fact that has come to light. One with which I need your help. Because we have discovered your daughter’s telephone.’ He reached into a drawer in the desk, produced an evidence bag with a white iPhone in it, and another with Elsa’s bangle. He handed the bags to me.

  ‘You’re asking me if these are hers?’

  ‘That is not the question. We know that this is Licia Curtis’s phone. Your wife confirmed that this was her bangle. “To Elsa, all my love, Cal”.’

  He was smiling: a studied, sympathetic smile. ‘The phone was found on Garden Island near the boat dock, without a SIM card. The bangle was found in some underbrush near a box full of ammunition. The question is, can you explain these facts?’

  A horrible thought was growing, a sense that I was being walked into a trap. Behind Ephraim Tvist’s smile there was a keen intelligence, and something that felt increasingly like an accusation.

  ‘What are you actually doing to find Licia?’ I said. ‘We are seventeen hours into the twenty-four-hour window.’

  ‘I’m sorry if you feel let down. But twenty-four hours is for cases of kidnap, and we have no reason to think Alicia Curtis has been kidnapped. Unless you know something that would affect our assessment?’

  He was looking at me levelly. Nothing about his demeanour said he was sorry. ‘And there’s another question that arises from this, because although this phone was found on the island, simultaneously your daughter’s SIM card was being used to send encrypted text messages to phones that we cannot trace. From the mainland.’

  ‘Maybe if you took the time to ask us about Licia …’

  ‘Teenage girls lead complicated lives. They shout and slam doors, and you have to remind yourself that they’re crying out for your love, because that’s the very last thing they will express to you. Sometimes they lead many parallel lives. Perhaps Alicia Curtis lost her bracelet and somebody else picked it up?’ He smiled, as if daring me to say it; as if we both knew the idea was absurd. ‘Perhaps your daughter has more than one phone? Or more than one SIM card? Did she confirm to you that she was on the island?’

  ‘To my wife.’

  ‘Is there a reason she didn’t speak to you?’

  ‘No. We’re very close.’

  ‘All right.’ He brought his hands together, tapped his forefingers on his upper lip, waiting for me to fill the silence.

  ‘They spoke at around ten,’ I said.

  ‘Which is two hours before the boat to the island began to run.’ He sniffed, rubbed his nose with the side of his thumbnail. Any trace of a smile was gone.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I can see, on what you’ve got, that you might think we were connected to this.’

  ‘Have I said anything of the sort?’

  ‘It’s always the parents. Right?’

  ‘I’m surprised that you would satirize what you perceive to be my attitude, in a case where the stakes are so high. Perhaps you feel I need to be “held to account”?’

  I saw the warning in his look. Tread carefully.

  The door opened. The detective in the crumpled suit, eyes red and painful from lack of sleep.

  ‘Detective Mikkel Hansen,’ said Tvist. ‘You already met, yes?’

  Mikkel Hansen ignored me. He slouched across the floor, leaned close to Tvist, said something in Norwegian that I did not catch. Tvist passed him the evidence bag with the bracelet. Detective Hansen slouched out.

  ‘What questions is that man asking my wife?’ I said.

  A shrewd look from Tvist. ‘Complementary questions.’ He was watching me, studying my reaction.

  ‘I’d like to go home,’ I said.

  ‘And soon you will. I do still need to know something from you though. As I’m sure you’re aware, much of the white extremist movement is gathering around the idea of crusader knights.’ The same smile, the same careful, watchful look.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Going on crusade? Crushing the dark-skinned man? These ideas are their stock in trade.’ Again that keen, appraising gaze. ‘Please understand that this is not an accusation.’

 
; ‘So …?’

  ‘Someone in your apartment has accessed these extremist Knights Templar websites.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Not good.’

  ‘No, really not good.’

  ‘I’m mortified. Vee’s fourteen, though, and she has a lively mind, and I guess after what just happened …’

  He cut me off. ‘And if someone were researching these people in the wake of these horrible attacks, that would not be noteworthy.’ He sat down across from me again. ‘But here we have some serious red flags against your family. For months, there have been regular contacts between a computer on your network and these frankly repulsive websites. Most evenings.’

  ‘You’re spying on us?’

  ‘This is not spying. This is information we requested from your service provider this morning. Though contact ended a week ago. All three of the computers from your apartment have been scrubbed by someone who knows enough to write new data over the old. There is nothing on any of your telephones. So I wondered if you might have an explanation for any of this? Because cleaning up is good internet practice, yes, but it’s unusual for a family to be so thorough.’

  Those unblinking eyes of his, so endlessly dark that the pupil and the iris seemed to merge.

  ‘I have no explanation,’ I said. ‘We are not extremists.’

  ‘But you have a political alignment, surely?’

  I shook my head. ‘We teach our daughters to think for themselves.’

  He considered this. Something about my answer did not satisfy him. His mouth twisted one way, then the other. Then he smiled.

  ‘I have one final question, after which you may go. You received a link by SMS at three a.m. yesterday morning. You downloaded a file. You received a second such file while you were waiting on the shore for news of your daughter. You deleted both files. My colleague Mikkel Hansen was wondering …’

  ‘Unknown number,’ I said. ‘Blank files. I assumed they were spam.’

  ‘All right. OK. Though the files were not in fact completely blank. Mikkel Hansen undeleted them. Here is the first of them.’ He turned his screen so it faced me, then clicked an icon on the desktop. The screen turned black.

  He pressed play. The merest hint of something else, tiny patches of grey against the black. Tvist stopped the clip. He adjusted first the brightness, then the contrast, his eyes flicking to me all the while. ‘You really didn’t try this?’