Ascension

by Oliver Harris

  “Any chance of leaving these leaflets here? Almost turtle season. Need all the volunteers we can get.”

  Kane turned to see Connor’s father in the doorway, holding a stack of leaflets.

  “No, thank you,” the shopkeeper was saying—saying it as soon as Thomas came in so that their voices overlapped. “No, thank you. Not today. Not here.” The man didn’t look at Thomas Lindgren. For a second, Thomas seemed stunned. In that moment he looked around the place as if seeking support, noticed Kane. A rapid sequence of expressions followed: recognition, then blankness. Kane realized Thomas was doing him a favor.

  “Okay.”

  When he’d left, the shopkeeper shook his head. The shelf stacker dropped his empty boxes by the counter.

  “Does he really think ​—?”

  “Either he does or he doesn’t. Or he won’t admit it. Not to himself, maybe.”

  “We’re expected to pretend like it’s not happened?”

  “No.”

  Kane cleared his throat.

  “Isn’t he with the conservation center? I saw him in Georgetown.”

  “That’s right,” the shopkeeper said.

  “What’s the problem?” Kane asked.

  “No problem,” the man said. “No problem at all. Have a good afternoon.”

  Kane walked back to his car, pondering his next move and how to translate this situation into a report for Kathryn Taylor. She would be relieved to have an alternative suspect. He could imagine her leaving the mystery of Rory’s fate intact. Just before he got to the road, he saw Thomas sitting alone in a patch of shade cast by a crossroad signpost, with his box of leaflets beside him. He stared at nothing, wearing a look of emotional exhaustion. Kane stopped. For a moment he couldn’t help watching him. Was that a man whose son had killed someone? Would you feel the crime was in some way your own, that you had brought a killer into existence? At the same time, Kane knew this was his opening. On any mission you sifted the lives around you, feeling for the weak, the vulnerable, those who would give you a way in. Thomas’s nightmare was his window onto the island; the man’s outsider status, his fear and resentment and desperation, made him perfect for cultivation as a source. He was already in Kane’s debt, trusted him implicitly.

  “Hey.”

  Thomas looked up.

  “Hey.” Then the look of concern returned. “I wouldn’t hang around with me. Not here.”

  “Why?”

  “They not tell you in the store?”

  “Not in the store. I heard some stuff in the café. Sounded like a lot of rumors and not much sense. Is that what last night was about?”

  “That’s what I’m assuming.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “A hell of a lot more than some people realize.”

  An engine growled into earshot. Ahead of them, on the road leading away from the village, a van stopped suddenly. It looked like it had been used for refuse collection at one point, with a caged tipper back, but now said Extermination across the front doors. Kane smelled rotting fish, then saw the traps in the back of the vehicle.

  “Stay still,” Thomas said. “They won’t see us.”

  Four men got out, one carrying a bolt action shotgun. They wore the red polo shirts Kane had seen on the attackers last night. He recognized the two men. The gun was mounted with telescopic sight. They all moved to inspect something at the side of the road, their shadows long on the ground, crouching to a patch of sand arranged around an upturned bucket. So these were the cat hunters. One man produced a glass bottle and found a syringe. Another, in thick red gloves, reached into the sack of raw fish. They injected poison into the fish, then placed the fish on top of the bucket. Then they drove on.

  “There you go,” Thomas said. “But who’s going to kill the rats when the cats are gone?” He spat into the dust.

  “Where can we talk?” Kane said.

  “Not here. Let’s get out of the village.”

  “Where?”

  “Have you seen Green Mountain?” Thomas asked.

  “Only from beneath.”

  “Let me show you Green Mountain. We can talk up there.”

  15

  The mountain path rose gently for about six hundred feet, then took off—incredibly steep with hairpin bends and sheer drops on the outside. But the reward was living nature. Slowly the steep slopes beside them became green with ferns, cedar, gorse. It spread upward. The greenery thickened around them until they were beneath a canopy of overhanging trees.

  “Shade,” Thomas said. “When did you last feel that? Shade from a tree. You feel the climate start to change?” The air had become sweeter, cool and moist. Fleshy leaves dangled clusters of red flowers like miniature chandeliers, others like bright purple bells. “This is one of the most ambitious experiments on earth.”

  The trees around them were eucalyptus, with pine in the distance and thick tangles of blackberries and raspberries lower down the slopes. There didn’t seem to be any logic to it, as if a collection had spilled and plants grew up randomly. Pairs of small blue butterflies appeared and disappeared.

  “You know Darwin came here? It was part of his world tour. He said it was one of the most desolate places he’d seen. At that time there was nothing growing whatsoever. But he went back home and talked to his friend, Joseph Hooker, from the Royal Botanic Gardens. They thought if you could kickstart some foliage up here it might trap the moisture from the winds, let it drip down to ground level. Then you had the beginnings of something; a water supply at least. So they shipped plants from Argentina, Europe, South Africa: eucalyptus, bamboo, banana trees, scotch pines. And it worked. The water dripped down. You got soil, you got more plants; life began. You’re in the world’s largest artificial cloud farm.”

  “Incredible.”

  “People come here to see about terraforming other planets. If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a nightmare from an ecological point of view. It looks like paradise, right, but you scratch the surface and there’s none of the interrelationships you’d expect in a real forest. Meanwhile all of the species that were originally here are vanishing. Turns out it wasn’t desolate at all—it was just fine.”

  They passed a gate set into moss-covered stone walls with an older building beyond it. Kane could just make out the crest of the Royal Marines engraved above the entrance. It stood high above a hillside with great clumps of bananas and bulbous mangoes ripening in the sun. Green Mountain, Kane remembered, was the legacy of the Marines as well. Military energy diverted into the creation of a farm and water supply.

  “It would take thousands of years to get a fully functioning ecosystem here,” Thomas said. “At the moment it’s a completely unmanaged mess of invasive species. The whole island is.”

  “Stunning, though.”

  “Stunning mayhem. Meanwhile we’re killing the cats to protect the birds.”

  “So we saw.”

  “I wasn’t joking with what I said. It’s only going to lead to more problems.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You know the whole place was once crawling with rats? They’ve been here since the first ships arrived. That’s why the cats were introduced in the first place. It’s just a shame that the cats prefer eating the birds. We’ve already lost some species here forever. Anyway, it turned out the rats chewed at the cactus seedlings and once the rats started to die the cactus ran wild—the donkeys spread the seeds. Ideally we’d eradicate the donkeys, but no one wants to do that—they’ve become a part of the place. So now they’re trying to introduce various insects that might want to eat cactus. God knows who brought the cactus over.”

  “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.”

  “Right.”

  They climbed higher. Thomas was in good shape. Kane was glad he’d kept up a habit of long walks while in Oxford.

  “But it is stunning. You’re right. I can never believe the guys on the base who never explore. They haven’t seen
even half the island. Collect their paychecks, enjoy the cheap beer, counting down the days. But they’re younger . . . Maybe they don’t realize how special it is. This is where the boss lives,” Thomas said.

  They passed a colonial-looking building with its standard-issue lawn and flagpole. A signpost beside the entrance directed people to two separate paths: INVALIDS and CONVALESCENTS .

  “The Administrator?”

  “That’s right. Originally a naval sanitarium.”

  Kane looked for signs, but couldn’t see any evidence the Administrator was home. Her Majesty’s representative, Nigel Horsley: career diplomat, ex-ambassador to Gibraltar. Kane tried to imagine the diplomatic trajectory that led him here, and the reason someone would accept the post. In place of global heft you got a kingdom of your own—perhaps that was it. An idyll that was yours to rule.

  The Royal Marines building was far below them now. They’d climbed more than five hundred feet. The path became rougher. Now the mist came down as they continued up the final steep track.

  “Here’s the cloud.”

  Kane had never walked into a cloud before. The dampness appeared like a living presence, wreathing around them. Leaves held beads of moisture. The ground was muddy, with a wall of bamboo on either side, and a rope handrail for the final ascent to a small pond.

  “This is it: the Dew Pond. This is what we were to depend on if everything else went. Our emergency supply of water.”

  The pond was clouded with water lilies supporting delicate blue flowers. Goldfish flashed in the gaps between them. Thomas sat down on a bench.

  “You kept up,” he said, smiling. He caught his breath, then retrieved a flask from his bag and drank. He offered Kane the water.

  “This is my bit of peace, this place. That’s how you make somewhere home: You find your bit of peace. All you can ask for.”

  Kane drank, gave the flask back.

  “How long have you been on the island?”

  “Eight long years.”

  “Miss the States?”

  “Know where I miss? Finland. Haven’t been there for forty years. But I remember the air.”

  “Helsinki?”

  “Much further north. Do you know the country?”

  “No. I’ve always wanted to go.”

  “I’m from a little place called Inari. I’m a country boy.” He stared into the pond. Sweat dripped off the end of his nose. “What were they saying in the café?”

  “Sounded pretty crazy.”

  Thomas laughed gently, as if embarrassed by Kane’s caution.

  “About the girl who went missing,” Kane said.

  “About Connor.”

  “Yes.”

  Thomas nodded, leaned forward so his elbows were on his knees, still gazing into the pond.

  “So people are saying my son’s a murderer.”

  “No one seems to know anything.”

  “People think they know.”

  “They said he was with her that night.”

  “He was. They were friends. They were together that evening, sure. He didn’t kill her. Do you have kids?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Well, it’s not easy for kids here, as you can imagine. As far as Carina’s concerned, it’s all she knows. But Connor remembers the States. Even before all this happened I knew he needed to get off this island, start building a life for himself. The more he developed here, the harder I could see it was going to be for him to adapt anywhere else.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He was with Petra. They were messing about. He says he doesn’t exactly remember what happened, he’d been drinking. At some point they met up with a guy called Rory Bannatyne—a Brit, working over here on installing broadband. He’s not here anymore because the night Petra went missing he hanged himself.” Thomas turned to Kane, spread his hands as if to say Draw your own conclusions. Kane’s heart raced hearing Rory’s name for the first time on the island. He had to check himself, check his cover.

  “Really?”

  “What do you make of that?”

  “It would put him pretty high on my list of suspects.”

  “Right.”

  “Was he . . . dodgy? Why was he meeting with teenagers?”

  “Dodgy? Is anything here not dodgy? This is the thing—this is what I’m trying to tell you, Edward. Do people ever call you Ed?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay. Something’s gone wrong on this island. I appreciate you need to write your book and I’m sure you’ll get some good local color for it, but don’t try understanding more. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do people in the UK know about this place?”

  “Hardly at all.”

  “It’s not like the Falklands, right?”

  “No. I don’t think many people know it exists.”

  “You see, we’re living on a secret. It’s not healthy. This whole place is a dirty secret. Officially, nobody is a citizen of Ascension. Even if you’ve been here for decades, you’re a temporary visitor. You’re a job, that’s all. And if you have kids here, as soon as they leave school they have to find work on the island or leave. And they take their silence with them. You can’t belong here—you can’t choose to grow old and die here.”

  “Why?”

  “Ask your government. They don’t want attachment. A few years ago there was talk of changing things up a bit; Ascension was trying to be democratic. Then that all stopped. Now they only let people bring their families if it’s essential. Mostly, everyone’s being replaced by contract workers. People come and go. And without attachment, you have no principles. A lot of men here get bored, start to look for distractions. Teenagers, too. Anyone tell you details about Petra?”

  “What kind of details?”

  “Petra got herself a bit of a reputation. She was a good kid but she’d gone wild, as teenagers do. She was fifteen, you know, and always was a precocious kid, always liked attention. It was normal teenage stuff but this isn’t a normal place, and people knew her, knew a bunch of those girls who were looking for opportunities to party and express themselves, shall we say. They’d get alcohol off the bases—I’m not sure exactly how. One time I know Petra was found on the UK base and various reprimands followed, although it doesn’t seem like she did anything apart from use the pool there. But she was still technically a kid. You’d see her and her friends getting rides from adults all the time. First time I saw Petra in the front of the police car, I thought the obvious. But she was laughing, having a great time.”

  “When was that?”

  “End of last year maybe. I said to Connor: Is this normal? He told me there were invite-only parties on the island, out away from the main centers. Usually it was just the girls who’d get invited but one night he was there and they got the girls drunk. This is the tragedy: The only place they can go wild is with a bunch of middle-aged men who’ve been alone on an island for a year. That’s fucked up. Connor said he saw a maroon Land Rover parked up by this party, at one or two in the morning. Now, the only person on this island who drives a maroon Land Rover is the Administrator. So what the fuck do you do with that?”

  Kane wondered. He could see how the Land Rover made a very different situation out of the whole thing. That and the police being close to Petra. Very different, very deep.

  “Was the British engineer involved in all this?”

  “I think he’d been sucked in.”

  “To what, exactly?”

  “To that. To the culture here. I only met him a couple of times. He struck me as someone who was here to escape something, willing to throw himself into whatever escapism offered itself.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, he was pleasant enough, intelligent. Quite charming. He certainly charmed the local kids.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kids loved him. He’d mess around, giving them medals and tasks. Like he was running a scouts club. But a lot of the adult
s loved him too. He played the ukulele and sometimes he’d sing. Any entertainment’s going to win you points around here. I was never quite so sure, but then I was never in the bars at three a.m.”

  “And you think he killed Petra Wade? That’s why he killed himself?”

  “I’m not saying he did or didn’t do either. I’m saying whatever happened, he might not have been alone.”

  This was a new option. More complex than solitary innocence or guilt. Rory had got involved in something.

  “What would he do with her body?”

  “It could be anywhere: taken by sharks, taken by birds, taken by rats. I don’t see how anyone could have successfully buried anything here—it’s rock all the way down, but there are places you could hide a body, perhaps. It’s not a big island, but there wasn’t a big search team. We get rollers. You heard about them?”

  “No.”

  “They’re coming in again now. Giant waves, nothing to do with the trade winds—they appear without warning, from the northwest. Huge. Ships can’t dock. The whole island’s locked down. In the past there’s been people swept out by them. And the sides of the island plunge straight under the water, totally sheer, which means there’s a vicious undertow. That’s why the rocks and beaches are all picked clean. Everything’s sucked away, nothing’s left: There’s no flotsam. A body in the water isn’t necessarily going to be washed up, not necessarily seen again at all.”

  He stood up, walked to the pond’s edge, hands in his pockets.

  “That’s where I think she went, but I don’t think that’s how she ended up there.”

  “Did Connor tell the police all this?”

  “I told the police. Connor won’t go near the police now, for obvious reasons. John Morrogh’s done his fair share of ill-advised socializing. He knew Rory. I don’t know what else he knows, but I imagine a scapegoat would always come in handy. I told him all this and he said he’d look into it, but has he?”

  “I don’t know.”