The Island

by Ben McPherson

  That expectant look on Vee’s face, all fired up.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Dad, can I show you a thing?’

  But she was already on her feet and out of the room.

  She returned, carrying a bundle neatly wrapped in a dishcloth. She placed it on the table in front of me, sat down opposite me, watching for my reaction.

  The corners of the cloth were folded into the middle.

  ‘Did you go searching amongst your mother’s things? Because that’s an abuse of trust, Vee.’

  ‘So wake her up and tell her …’

  I lifted a corner, felt fabric drag across the object inside. Something heavy and dark and metallic. I unfolded the cloth, corner by corner.

  The handgrip was textured, the trigger guard square. I leaned in. Engraved into the gunmetal were the words Glock 17 Gen 4 AUSTRIA.

  Vee’s face was flushed, her eyes electric with excitement. ‘Aren’t you even going to pick it up?’

  I shook my head. ‘Vee, I’m sorry.’

  I could feel her disappointment. This was not the response she wanted.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We are not providing the stability you need.’

  ‘Did you know she had this, though?’

  ‘It’s not a complete surprise.’

  I began to fold the corners of the cloth back over the body of the pistol.

  ‘Dad, is Mum having some kind of breakdown?’

  I laughed. ‘Your mother is the sanest person I know.’

  She looked at me, unconvinced. She made to say something. She stopped.

  ‘What is it, Vee?’

  ‘There’s another thing. Only now I don’t know if you’ll be interested.’

  ‘Is this other thing also about Mum?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, then. What sort of a thing is it?’

  ‘A story. One nobody else has.’

  She left the room and returned with an iPad.

  ‘Vee,’ I said, ‘is this what you took from Pavel’s?’

  ‘So many questions.’

  ‘Vee—’

  ‘You can take it to the police if you like, Dad. But please watch what’s on it first.’

  32

  It began like a feature film, though there was no sound. The camera skimmed the glassy fjord, raised up as it came to the island, followed the path from the boat dock up to the clearing. It hung suspended, looking down at the main house, at the bodies that lay strewn on the sun-scorched grass beyond.

  Children. Other people’s children. You could almost imagine they were sleeping.

  I reached across, pressed pause, turned the iPad on its front.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Vee, I want you to go to bed.’

  Vee met my eye. ‘I already watched it, Dad. Twice. It’s not like I’m going to sleep better if I go to bed now. But if that’s what you want …’

  I pushed the tips of my fingers together, tapped both index fingers against the tip of my nose, breathed out heavily. I turned the iPad over. Vee pressed play.

  Even in close-up, the camera held steady. Now it followed a dark-haired boy as he ran along a path, panning and tilting with him. So close. You could see his eyes, read the fear in them, see patches of sweat around the collar of his T-shirt. The camera watched as he left the path, made his way into a wooden cabin.

  The cabin was one of many. The helicopter stayed in position for what must have been about a minute. The shot held wide, staring down. In that time you saw another boy, then two girls, each running to a different cabin. The camera tilted up, zoomed in to a path, found a man in police uniform.

  The tall brother. John Andersen. Carrying a pistol. The merest hint of a smile.

  John Andersen holstered his pistol. A rifle raised into shot. He checked something on the side of the weapon, then looked through the gunsight at the helicopter, taking aim. The helicopter jerked upwards, John Andersen dropped out of shot, and the screen was a blur of faded greens and browns.

  Fleeing.

  I looked at Vee. There was something very adult about the set of her chin, about the determination in her eyes. She looked older than her sister ever had, and I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that I could see sometimes how Licia’s disappearance had robbed her of her childhood.

  ‘Dad,’ said Vee, looking up, ‘you’re not watching.’

  ‘Of course I’m watching.’

  On screen the water was an indistinct grey-black mass.

  The camera steadied. The world fell into focus. There was the slipway on the mainland. At the waterline a red rubber boat, and on the boat four men. Figures around the boat busied themselves with levers and ropes. The boat seemed to be floating free. I had seen that boat before, in the video still that Bror had left for me on Elsa’s seat in the courtroom.

  ‘You see that, Dad? No one’s even holding it.’

  Two more men jumped aboard. The rubber of the boat seemed to swell around them.

  ‘Fucking amateurs,’ said Vee.

  ‘Vee, please,’ I said.

  ‘OK, but do they look to you like they know what they’re doing? It’s way too low in the water.’

  Another two men approached and jumped in. The boat pulled slowly from the slipway. Water plumed out behind the motor.

  ‘This is what they didn’t want us to see.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  ‘No, Dad, it is. That’s the police tactical weapons unit.’

  The helicopter was returning across the sound towards the island.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘That is a little odd.’

  ‘That’s not the end of that story, Dad … But you have to keep watching …’

  Now the helicopter was hovering over a block of flat-roofed buildings at the side of the clearing.

  The shower block.

  At one end of the block a door opened. Two girls appeared on the steps. They waved frantically up at the helicopter. The shot began to close with the ground. Yellow-green grass filled the frame, then the screen turned dark grey. Pavel was landing, I realized, in the clearing by the shower block.

  He had tried to help. He had been telling the truth about that.

  ‘Keep watching,’ said Vee.

  The shot jerked yellow-green. The camera was in the air again, looking down. There were the two girls looking up at the helicopter, desperate now. And there, at the edge of the frame, a man in police uniform. Paul Andersen looked up, locked eyes with the camera. The helicopter continued to climb.

  The girls disappeared inside the shower block. The door closed.

  The short man unslung his rifle, walked towards the door of the building. From the other side of the screen his brother appeared, walking towards the door at the other end, his rifle held casually in his right hand.

  For a sickening moment nothing happened. There was the red-roofed shower block, there was the yellowed grass, and there, at each end, stood the two men. Avatars, foreshortened, black-clothed, blond-haired, each with rifle in hand.

  Were they hesitating? Were they gathering themselves? Don’t do this, I wanted to say. There is hope. But of course there was no hope, because that story was already written. And so the men entered the shower block at precisely the same time, and in that building out of sight of the camera they would kill nineteen children.

  For two minutes the camera held where it was. It stared dispassionately down at the yellowed grass and the red-rusted roof, observed the length of the shower block and the broken concrete steps at each side. If you saw this shot on its own, you would never know. It was peaceful – boring, almost – while under that cheap rusted roof nineteen young people were executed at close range. Enemy combatants, the men had called them in their psychiatric interviews, tomorrow’s treacherous elite, and for that those children paid with their lives. The oldest of the children in the shower block was fifteen; the youngest thirteen.

  ‘It’s weird what your brain does,’ said Vee. ‘A part of me expects the tactical uni
t to arrive and save them. But we both read the report. We both know that doesn’t happen.’

  The men emerged from the steps at the left of shot. They turned and looked up at the camera. The helicopter rose rapidly and turned, headed out across the fjord, still looking down.

  Halfway across the fjord it stopped. There, in the middle of the frame, facing right to left, was the red rubber boat, with its black-clad special-forces team. Spray was pluming from the engine; the boat was barely moving.

  I looked at Vee. ‘They’ve turned …’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘They’re heading back to the mainland.’

  ‘Fuck,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Fuck.’

  As we watched, the two men at the front took oars and began to paddle.

  ‘It’s sinking,’ said Vee.

  ‘Let’s put this on pause, Vee.’

  Vee touched the screen, freezing the image of the red rubber boat, of the tactical unit pathetically paddling for the mainland. So this was what Bror had wanted me to know.

  ‘They kept this out of evidence,’ I said after a time.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Do you think it’s a story?’

  I didn’t have to answer. We both knew it was.

  We watched the rest of the footage in silence. The helicopter hovered, quietly bearing witness, as the men entered buildings, as they left. If it approached too closely, the men would raise their weapons; the camera would move to a safer distance, then continue to watch the calm exteriors of the buildings while inside the children were cut down: seven dead here, five here, twelve here. Two shots every time, as we knew from the coroner’s report, while the tactical unit foundered uselessly in their too-small rubber boat.

  Suddenly she was there: the girl in the kingfisher dress. Above her a man on a ledge in a torn T-shirt. Both looked up at the same time. Hearing the helicopter, I guessed.

  As I watched, the man threw himself from the ledge into the water and turned towards the shore. He was waving to the camera. You could see him shouting.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Vee very quietly. ‘That’s what he’s saying, right? Thank God. He thinks they’re going to drop a rope or something.’

  The girl on screen raised her hands to shade her eyes. She was smiling. You could feel the relief in her, even at this distance.

  Vee leaned across and pressed pause. She picked up the iPad, stared at it very closely. Then she passed it to me.

  ‘She thinks she’s being rescued.’

  I looked up, nodded. Vee nodded back.

  ‘Can you make this bigger, Vee?’

  ‘You could. It won’t really help, though. There’s no extra detail.’

  I handed the iPad to her. Vee pressed play.

  Four more children on the steps now, waving upwards. The girl who must be Licia at their head, in her kingfisher dress. The shot began to pull away as the helicopter moved upwards. Why was it abandoning them?

  Something in the girl changed. Every muscle in her seemed to slacken. She grasped the handrail at the edge of the steps. Strange how you could read the emotion, even at this distance: the realization that no one was coming to save her.

  The world failed you, Licia, I thought.

  Neither Vee nor I slept. I sat in the kitchen, making phone calls and drinking coffee; Vee sat with me, listening to every word.

  Dan wanted TV pictures.

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘You’re a radio station.’

  ‘We’re that, and we’re whatever else we need to be.’

  Elsa came through from the bedroom at six and I explained to her what I was going to do. I expected her to ask if I was crazy, but she listened, then asked if I needed help.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But thanks.’

  The conversation about the Glock would have to wait.

  PART FOUR

  The Assassin

  33

  At eight I stood on the courtroom steps. The cameraman looked up from the viewfinder, nodded, and looked down. The record light glowed red.

  Ready.

  I heard Carly’s breath in my ear.

  ‘Over to Cal Curtis in Oslo, Norway. Cal—’

  I didn’t wait for the question. ‘There’s something I’ve never understood about this little country: how could two armed men roam freely across an island near the nation’s capital for the best part of two hours, murdering young people at will, and not be stopped? If this were America or France, an armed unit would have been there in minutes. But last night a video came into my possession. And that video gives an answer, of sorts.’

  Carly’s voice in my ear. ‘Cal, describe the footage that you have exclusively received.’

  ‘It’s taken from a news helicopter, from the day of the Garden Island massacre, and most of what it shows was never broadcast. This video is an important historical document, and records police failings that delayed the arrests of Paul and John Andersen.’

  ‘Cal, how many of the ninety-one murder victims does this new information affect?’

  ‘Roughly half. Plus my own daughter, who is not included in that figure of ninety-one dead. We already know that Police Chief Ephraim Tvist failed to act on information that identified the men responsible. We already know that a police cruiser was directly behind their car as they drove out to Garden Island, but did not have the information needed, because nobody had passed it on. What this video shows is that Mr Tvist’s most highly trained men are badly equipped and under-prepared. Because at 6:48 p.m., forty-five minutes after the first bullet was fired, at a time when we know that fifty-two of the victims were still alive, the police tactical weapons unit arrives at the slipway on the mainland. Yet it takes those same men sixty-three minutes to make the trip across the water to the island. And if you look at the footage—’

  ‘—which is up on our website so that viewers can judge for themselves—’

  ‘—you can clearly see that the rubber boat in which the tactical unit set off is inadequate for the job at hand. The boat is sinking under the weight of the men and their gear. The engine can barely move it. Halfway across the fjord they realize they’re not going to make it over, and the unit turns around and begins limping back towards the slipway on the mainland. It’s utterly pathetic.’

  ‘And at this point, Cal, roughly fifty of the victims were still alive, including, of course, your own daughter.’

  Licia.

  ‘I used to wonder if it was a conspiracy that cost me my daughter. But now I see that it’s simple incompetence.’

  A pause.

  A moment of dead air.

  ‘I … I mean, she was just …’

  The cameraman looking up from the viewfinder.

  The fear that grief might overwhelm me.

  I swallowed the pain and stepped closer, stared straight down the lens. ‘I don’t know which is worse: the cowardice of the first two officers, who were unwilling to lay down their lives – for children, Carly, for our children – or the incompetence of the tactical unit, whose rubber boat sank on the way to rescue those same children’s lives.’

  Anger was coursing through my veins. I heard Carly’s breath in my ear. I felt the cameraman’s eyes on me, as he tightened the shot. I turned away. I blinked the image of Licia’s face from my mind.

  I turned to face the camera. The cameraman sent me a questioning look. I nodded. The cameraman nodded back. He put his eye to his viewfinder.

  Ready.

  ‘It’s the anniversary – a year to the day since the massacre on Garden Island. The police failed our children on that day, and a year later those same police are still failing our children. That this film was kept out of evidence is a national disgrace. They knew the truth. Tvist must be brought to account.’

  Dan rang me immediately. ‘Why were you ever a satirist? You were honestly never that good at it. This is clearly what you were born to do.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I think.’

  ‘This was great work, Brother. Sincere and relatable. You threw a
bomb at the man, Cal. You threw a fucking bomb at him.

  ‘A bomb?’

  ‘Of course, you have to assume he’s going to throw a bomb right back. But that’s the job. Get ahead of these people, or they will screw you.’

  I heard the call waiting tone.

  ‘Dan, I think Elsa’s calling.’

  ‘Love you, Brother. You’re a newsman, Cal. A fucking newsman.’

  I selected Elsa’s call.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘So, I’m kind of dumbfounded.’ The warmth and the love in Elsa’s voice. ‘And on the anniversary too. That was … yeah …’

  I realized with a jolt that Elsa was crying. And God, at that moment, how I longed for the world as it once was.

  ‘Cal? Would you please say something?’

  Tears were smudging my vision. I wanted so badly to believe in my wife, and in her innocence.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anyway, I rang a few people. Because Midsummer’s Eve is our anniversary, and I won’t let it belong to those men. I’m going to buy gin and lemons and olives. And we can toast each other, and we can think about Licia. And then we will go out and meet our friends.’

  I blinked the tears away. ‘Put the gin in the freezer, Elsa. Along with the shaker and a long spoon.’

  People were sharing my report. As I entered the courtroom I could see on their phone screens the red roof and the yellowed grass of the shower block from the helicopter footage, even as the court discussed those same murders.

  And there was Tvist smiling up at me, from the seat beside mine. I smiled as neutrally as I could. I sat down.

  The short brother was speaking. Paul Andersen.

  ‘Hun sa nei. Holdt armen foran ansiktet.’

  She said no. She held her arm up in front of her face.

  Tvist leaned across to me. ‘Did you notice?’ he said. ‘The short one remembers each gunshot with absolute clarity. And the tall one simply watches his brother, and then he watches the family’s reaction. These are men who enjoy the details of suffering.’