The Colony (13 page)

Jane did not really believe in ghosts. But someone had taught her daughter that song in a recurring dream she had. He had said his name was Jacob Parr. And her daughter insisted that the man had important information he would pass on to her as soon as the time was right.

She didn’t think that the dreams put Edith in any danger. Jane couldn’t remember having seen her daughter in a happier or more relaxed frame of mind. But she did think that Parr’s intervention made her own impending trip seem somehow much more ominous than it had seemed prior to her visit to the school.

She wouldn’t discuss the dreams with her ex-husband. Edith had promised to do that herself when the time came, so she had no need. She wanted to tell somebody, however. She needed to. And though it seemed ridiculous to confide in a journalist, she thought that the person she most wanted to discuss this strange development with was that sympathetic features writer from their expedition sponsoring paper, Lucy Church. She thought that her daughter had rightly judged that Lucy liked her. She needed to confide in someone who would not simply laugh in her face.

Lassiter arrived at Alice Lang’s house at lunchtime the following day. He was surprised, really, that she’d agreed to see him with so little apparent reluctance. The David Shanks business had been an ordeal for her. Her attitude towards her gift was a complex one. She chastised herself for the things it made her feel. She interpreted the physical symptoms as weaknesses. If anything, Lassiter saw her willingness to endure them as proof of enormous strength. He had never liked nor admired a woman more.

She’d prepared food, which was a welcome surprise. When he gave in to the urge to drink heavily, he was pretty indifferent to food. But sober, on his own tight leash, he had a healthy appetite and breakfast had been a rushed business interrupted by a surprise call from McIntyre. His butter and Marmite had congealed on his toast as McIntyre thundered on and the bread hardened. He’d ended up sliding it uneaten from his plate into the kitchen bin.

They ate their lunch in the sunshine on her patio, amid spring blooms tended to by industrious bees, with Ellie Goulding playing from inside the open door on her Ipod dock. Lassiter told Alice about his trip to Liverpool. He told her about his elliptical conversation with the museum’s Keeper of Artefacts. He told her what he’d told McIntyre about Ballantyne’s watch. Then he told her what he’d not told McIntyre, about the warning in the pub given him by a woman he was convinced was the ghost of Elizabeth Burrows.

‘Did you come here to ask me to reach into the life of Elizabeth Burrows?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘I’d be disinclined to do it. One suicide is enough in a week, Patrick. I’m not quite over seeing how David Shanks met his end.’

‘That’s not why I’m here. I’m sure enough in my own mind of who the woman in the pub was. She knew my name. And her warning to me was unequivocal.’

‘Are you not frightened by any of this?’

‘Of course I am. But I’m also intrigued. I’d like to discover what happened to the New Hope community, or at least play my part in finding out. If a crime was committed, it ought to be uncovered and solved.’

‘A diabolical crime,’ Alice said, ‘If it was a crime.’

‘An atrocity,’ Lassiter said, ‘on that scale. But the truth should out. The victims deserve it. The perpetrator deserves to be exposed.’

‘A policeman’s instinct.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a while since I’ve had the right to call myself a policeman.’

‘Do you have any theories?’

‘Not really. I tend to avoid theories until I’ve visited the crime scene and I won’t be going on the expedition. I do think Seamus Ballantyne himself is the key to it, though. And I think there’s much more to find out about him and his life and character somewhere. McIntyre’s right about that.’

‘And you’d still look, after the experience with the chest? After the warning you were given in Liverpool?

‘Yes. I would.’ He smiled. ‘Less like an investigator really, than like a dog with a bone.’

‘Why are you here?’

He looked down at the table, to where his hands rested before his now empty plate. ‘I’m here on McIntyre’s behalf. Simon Hawsley-Smith has suffered a massive stroke. The expedition is a spiritual medium under-strength. McIntyre wants to know if you’d consider taking Hawsley-Smith’s place.’

‘I’m not famous.’ It was her turn to smile. ‘I’m not even infamous.’

‘But your psychic gift is genuine. McIntyre knows about my work with you. He appears to trust my judgement. I told him I didn’t think you’d for one moment seriously consider doing it, but I did promise I’d ask.’

‘Will it affect your position with him if I turn the offer down?’

‘No. I don’t think it will.’

Alice was silent for a moment then she said, ‘I’ll go if you go.’

‘What did you say?’

She rose to her feet. She smoothed the wrinkles from the sun dress she had on with her hands. ‘Stand up,’ she said.

Lassiter stood.

‘Now kiss me.’

He kissed her. He had not kissed a woman properly for a long time. He cupped her shoulders between his hands. He could feel her lips firm on his and the sun warm on his back. Her hair smelled of scented shampoo from her morning shower. She tasted wonderful.

‘There,’ she said when the kiss broke. ‘Was that so difficult?’

‘No,’ he said, truthfully. ‘No, Alice. It wasn’t difficult at all.’

The communications expert accompanying the construction team sent to build the expedition base was a man named Charlie Brennan. Blake didn’t think that he looked very much like a radio geek. He looked like someone who did fell running or maybe canoeing in his spare time. He was fit and sinewy and had an athlete’s alertness. The weather was closing in by the time he sought out Blake, shortly before dusk.

Blake was in the cottage that had once belonged to David Shanks at the western extremity of the Island. It was becoming his habit to go there for a bit of seclusion, a respite from the lumpen presence of the Seasick Four, whenever he got the opportunity. In the field, routine was deadly because it led to ambush and the best way to safeguard your life was to vary your schedule so that your movements could not be accurately predicted. He was not in the field now, however. New Hope Island was not a combat zone. The trespasser whose presence he had sensed was not an assassin or even an enemy, strictly speaking.

So he sheltered in the cottage whenever he could, where the views out over the sea were the most spectacular on the Island and where the holed roof allowed at least some protection from the rain and the sturdy whitewashed walls formed an efficient windbreak.

Privacy was a strong part of the appeal of the cottage. There, he was out of sight of the Seasick Four and Napier. He thought there should be something kept apart in the character of any commander. You lost authority if the men under your leadership knew too much about you. You had to retain your capacity to surprise them to keep them on their toes. It was Blake’s belief that there was something enigmatic about all the best military leaders. He had never taken part in the game, but he thought that if he did, he’d likely prove to be an excellent poker player.

Brennan knocked on the canted door of the cottage just as Blake was swallowing the last of a brew of sweet tea concocted over his Primus stove. He was seated in an oak rocking chair, one of the few pieces of Shanks’ furniture that had not surrendered to the salt and damp of the Island atmosphere and simply rotted away.Brennan did not salute, but there was a formality about his body language as he stood in the doorway that Blake appreciated. It signalled respect. He stood and snapped off a salute of his own, thinking old habits and all that. It did no harm and it felt good.

‘Captain Blake, right?’

‘At your service,’ Blake said.

Brennan had to raise his voice against the howl of the wind and the crash of the surf on the darkening shore to his rear. He wore a poncho and the waterproof fabric snapped wetly in the strength of the gusts, rippling against his torso and arms. ‘I need to speak with you,’ Captain,’ he said. ‘Would you come back with me now?’

‘Sure.’

Blake followed him. The ground was a wet, uneven slog underfoot. Slippery tussocks of grass concealed boggy patches that would swallow a leg to the kneecap with a sudden plunge. Blake and his team had found it easier to travel the perimeter of the island, where the shingle at the edge of the water thinned and packed sand proved a more certain surface to walk on. But in severe weather the size and strength of the waves made that too hazardous and after nightfall, it was suicidal. And this weather was severe. And it was worsening.

They walked in silence. The wind as the ground rose at the island’s centre was a banshee howl that made speech impossible. But Brennan was as fit as he looked and as Blake routinely kept himself and their progress was steady enough.

The construction crew had built the camp with impressive speed. It comprised a cluster of one-storey rectangular buildings, each with a rigid outer shell and as he saw when he entered one, an inner lining of some insulating material that retained warmth and deadened exterior sound. He assumed that the frames were built from some high-tensile metal such as titanium. As shelters they were state of the art. He could feel the thrum of a nearby generator providing the camp with electric light.

The communication centre had a table arrayed the length of one wall, bristling with a variety of receivers, speakers and microphones. Bunched cables were cuffed neatly with nylon ties. Needles wobbled across power metres ranged across displays. The consoles, with their complex arrangements of switches and buttons and dials, seemed like very high-end items of apparatus to Blake.

He knew he was looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gear. When the experts made their definitive findings and this story broke, communications failure was clearly not intended to be a factor in delaying the moment reaching the ears of an inquisitive world.

There was a third person in the hut. He was Troy, the leader of the construction crew, a stocky man with a heavy moustache and someone, to Blake, always characterised by a burly sort of self-confidence. Troy was the can-do type who led by determined and sometimes stubborn example.

Brennan invited Blake to sit in a chair next to that occupied by Troy, facing the comms hardware, where Brennan now sat on a stood pulled up to the table on which all the gear was mounted. Blake nodded a greeting to Troy. To Blake, Brennan said, ‘What kind of call-in system are you guys operating?’

‘We have a VHS two-way in the command tent. There’s no strict call-in time and there’s been nothing so far to call in. McIntyre’s people told us you were coming and then we got a call to say you were on your way. Obviously I check the signal strength each day, and it’s pretty variable. But we haven’t needed to use the rig in anger and I don’t expect that we will.’

Brennan nodded slowly after Blake had finished speaking. He looked at Troy. Then to Blake he said, ‘How do you guys communicate on patrol?’

‘Short-waves,’ Blake said. ‘We use walkie-talkies. They’re a bit sensitive to atmospherics, obviously. But cellular phones are completely useless here. Why are you asking me this stuff?’

Troy answered him. He said, ‘We’re supposed to rely on a hi-spec digital system. It’s a very fancy set-up technologically and on paper, has bags of transmission power. But it seems to be completely fucking useless. We’re dependant for signal strength on a mast outside Inverness. I’m talking third-gen DAB here, but all we’re getting is silence.’

It wasn’t Blake’s field. But he wasn’t totally clueless on the subject. He said, ‘Can’t you get on the FM spectrum? There are millions of tons of shipping in these waters completely reliant on it. You must have some analogue backup, surely?’

‘We do,’ Brennan said. ‘We’ve got quite a strong analogue signal, in theory. But there’s some sort of interference on the waveband. Listen to this.’

He reached over and flicked a switch and a power light glowed green on one of the consoles. Then he twisted a tuning dial delicately as the three of them strained to hear anything except screeches of static. In the relative quiet, Blake had time to appreciate again just how good the build quality of the command centre was. It was in sad contrast with his own Alpine frame tent. That had collapsed twice on him now, in the ferocity of the gale ripping through the Island in the small hours.

He heard something clarify on the analogue set. A sound he could make sense of was emerging from the speaker. It caused him to shake his head and suppress a shudder he didn’t want the other two to see. The sound was an ordeal to listen to and he was grateful after about a minute when Brennan flicked the switch that killed the power and abruptly cut it off.

‘What is that?’ Brennan asked.

‘You’re the expert.’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘They call it squelch, don’t they?’ Blake said. ‘It’s signal echo or localised feedback or rogue interference or something.’

‘What do you think it sounds like?’ Troy said.

Blake shrugged. ‘Like radio distortion.’

‘It sounds human to me,’ Brennan said. ‘I know it can’t be. But that’s what it sounds like. It’s fucking unbearable. It sounds like a child, screaming.’

‘I have to apologise for my colleague,’ Troy said to Blake. ‘It’s this place, if I’m honest. We’re used to catastrophe and rapid deployment and a shitload of corruption meaning bribes to pay if we ever want to get anything built in time to save lives in the locations to which we’re usually sent. My lads are not used to creepy. Not when creepy seems to be intrinsic to the place.’

‘You think the island a sinister location?’

‘It has a pretty sinister history,’ Brennan said.

Troy said, ‘It’s the outdoor equivalent of things that go bump in the night, if you get my drift, Captain Blake. I’ve had the feeling of being watched since I’ve been here. Not at night, because I’m asleep at night, so much as in the daytime. Three or four of my boys have commented on it. And these are guys who’ve worked in some pretty hostile environments, all over the world.’