The Island Read online

  THE ISLAND

  Ben McPherson

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  Copyright © Ben McPherson 2020

  Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover photographs © Mary Wethey/Arcangel Images (front cover), Logan Olausen/Arcangel Images (island on back cover)

  Ben McPherson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007569649

  Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780007569663

  Version: 2020-03-13

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Island

  Prologue: Midsummer’s Eve

  Part One: The Foreigner

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two: The Sceptic

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part Three: The Spectator

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part Four: The Assassin

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Part Five: The Hunter

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  Also by Ben McPherson

  About the Publisher

  Imagine a girl.

  Imagine her sleeping alone on a grassy bank at the side of a glistening fjord.

  If you were here beside her you might wonder if the girl is breathing, she’s lying so very still. When at last you see the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest you feel foolish for doubting the everyday miracle of breath.

  Her kingfisher dress glints like the sun on the water. Seventeen, you might guess, though in truth the girl is fifteen and wishes she were older. A peaceful face, strong-jawed and determined. But something about her makes you want to protect her as she sleeps. All that life ahead of her: all those people not yet met, all those choices not yet made.

  And now she’s here, on this island, sleeping in the dappled light beneath this tree, because the thought of all those people – of all those possible lives – has left her nervous and exhausted. And so she sleeps away her fears, and in her dreams she is limitless.

  In the city at the top of the fjord there is a flash. Then a silence. Then a roar like a world ending. Glass drops in sheets from the fronts of buildings, becomes sand under the feet of the people as they flee. Songbirds grow silent, then take to the wing. Even crows.

  Seconds pass.

  In the suburbs people murmur thunder, though the sky is clear and the air pressure low. Dogs do not bark. Cats cower by fences, looking up.

  Again, seconds pass.

  On her bank by the water the girl hears nothing. For a moment the air tightens. The surface of the water grows opaque. Boats rise, then fall. Hawsers thrum against masts; hulls strain against ropes.

  Bare-legged in her sundress of kingfisher blue, the girl does not stir.

  The shockwave from the bomb has passed.

  PROLOGUE

  Midsummer’s Eve

  23 June

  She blinked hard, twice.

  Some change in the sound of the day had woken her. The pattern of waves against the wooden dock. A boat engine idling.

  The engine was thrown into reverse. It whined, then cut.

  She sat up, turned to face the water.

  A policeman was swinging his foot from boat to shore. A look, she thought, as he glanced down at her. Steely. His uniform was neatly pressed, his belt a little tight. Everything about him was sleek: his torch, his nightstick, both shiny and new.

  She rearranged herself on the grass, raised herself up on an elbow.

  Light danced on the fjord; the mainland hazy now and far away. In the policeman’s hand the nylon of the rope shone blistering white. Unused, she thought. Strange. The POLITI decal on the boat was fresh, the aluminium of the hull unscuffed.

  The policeman knelt, tied off the boat at the bow. A second officer leaned out from behind the wheel and dropped a figure-eight loop around a pillar. He cut the engine, pinched sweat from his eyes.

  Beside her the phone vibrated against the warm earth. She turned it over.

  Ropes tightened. Two battered holdalls landed on the dock. The second policeman stepped from the boat, knelt by the first holdall, unzipped it and examined something inside. He stood and handed it to the first.

  Cracked leather, water-stained and scuffed. Also wrong, she thought lazily.

  The two men were nodding at each other. Small eyes, high cheekbones, prominent teeth. Small mouths too. They could almost be brothers.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ said the first. He had noticed her staring. He had spoken in English.

  He flashed her a smile that was anything but a smile.

  She smoothed out her sundress. Why would she be worried?

  The same non-smile from the second policeman. ‘Gather your friends.’ They began to head up the rise.

  Her phone started to ring. She rejected the call with a text.

  Somewhere out of sight an invisible hand was tapping a microphone. Voices reflected back at her from across the fjord, over-amplified, heavily distorted.

  On the rise, the officers were facing each other. They were checking each other’s equipment, tapping each other down.

  She found herself thinking of her father, though she did not know why. She pushed the thought from her mind.

  She looked at the boat, straining at the dock. Further up the coast people were swimming, but here on the island, down by the water, there was no one about. From here you could see only the path that led from the boat dock
up towards the camp. She looked up again towards the rise. She could not see the men.

  Her phone vibrated. A text from Leela.

  You coming?

  It had been a mistake to take the ferry on her own. The people on the way over had seemed sophisticated, long and cool in their shades and their sun hats, though many were younger than she was. She had hung back, embarrassed, let them pass up the rise ahead of her, wishing Leela was there with her. It was getting harder and harder to imagine herself amongst the thronging crowds. More and more tempting to turn and head for home.

  She could hear the applause now. Stirring music played.

  She texted a reply:

  Soon.

  The boat key was in the ignition. Strange, she thought. Tempting fate. She looked at the outboard motor. Evinrude 225 e-tec. Barely used, its white surface completely unscuffed. She looked about her.

  No one was watching as she stepped aboard at the bow on to the aluminium tread-plate deck. The boat barely tipped. She sat cautiously at the wheel. She was breaking some law, she was certain of that. But she was fifteen, and she was alone. If anyone stopped her she would speak English. She would be naturally nervous and hesitant, and that would work in her favour. They would let her off with a warning.

  Sorry, officer.

  She clicked the key into the first position. Lights on the console. A loud chime. She swung the wheel to the left, felt the gentle tamping as behind her the engine turned in its mount. Everything was expensive. Everything was new. She turned, guiltily – a sudden sense of being watched – looked up towards the rise. No sign of the officers. No sign of anyone.

  She slid the key round to position two. The engine thrummed quietly into life.

  Where ARE you?

  She texted back:

  Come down to the dock.

  Of course she wasn’t going to, but something about the idea of taking the boat appealed to her. It wasn’t even tied right. And there was no one here to tell her she couldn’t …

  She stood up, leaving the boat in idle. Everything was showroom-fresh. No oil spills, no salt stains. But the decal on the starboard side was cracked, as if a hand had slipped. Sloppy, she thought, on a police boat. And the hatches … why were there no padlocks on the hatches?

  On the bench seat at the stern was a blue metal box, rusted at the corners, held shut with a combination lock. She looked at the box. It seemed out of place, like the holdalls.

  Her phone vibrated.

  Police want to talk to us. You need to get up here.

  She texted back:

  Sigh …

  She heard the police boat strain against the jetty, leaned out and looked down. The rubber cladding on the dock was marking the hull. Had they forgotten their fenders? A little random.

  The port locker was empty. In the starboard locker there was an anchor, a chain, and a rope. The rope was not tied to the chain, and the chain was not tied to the anchor.

  Also random.

  What police boat would be so unready? Where was the radio? The life vests? The fenders? She dialled Leela, raised the phone to her ear.

  Ringing on the line. Leela’s voice. ‘Finally. Where are you?’

  ‘You know that feeling where you kind of know you’re asleep? Which probably means you’re only dozing?’

  ‘You were asleep?’

  ‘On the grass, by the water. It was nice.’

  Leela didn’t sigh, but she could feel the edge in her friend’s voice. ‘You need to be up here.’

  She put the phone on speaker, laid it on the deck before the aft locker.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But someone left a brand-new boat down here with the key in the ignition.’

  ‘Now,’ said Leela. ‘You need to be here.’

  ‘We actually could take it out. For, I don’t know, twenty minutes or something.’

  ‘Or did you somehow not hear what happened in town today?’

  ‘Literally no one would know. Why? What happened in town?’

  ‘There was this huge explosion. The town hall.’

  She could feel her mind as it refocused. ‘Sounds bad.’

  ‘It’s most probably a bomb,’ said Leela.

  ‘A bomb,’ she echoed.

  She felt bad. She should ring her father, tell him she was OK. But what if her father begged her to come home?

  Of course she would never take the boat. She was processing, or something. An explosion in town. Police here to talk to them. She really should ring her father.

  So far from home.

  She picked up the metal box. It was heavy. She shook it, but whatever was inside it was carefully held in place.

  ‘So,’ said Leela. ‘So, the police have information they need to give us. And the marshals are taking a roll call. I already told them you were here. Don’t make a liar of me.’

  ‘Did I ask you to lie?’

  Leela sighed theatrically. ‘Give me a break …’

  The metal box looked important, but also somehow wrong, like an object kept outside, in the rain.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll be three minutes.’

  ‘Maybe we could go for a ride later?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, this was pretty much our only chance.’

  What was it that made her take the key from the ignition? What made her pick up the metal box and stow it in her backpack? Some instinct that she couldn’t yet name, some growing feeling. She slid the key and her phone into the side pocket. She jumped ashore. When she looked back she saw a grey half-footprint on the deck by the aft locker. She frowned. The earth on the island was dry and brown.

  She slung the pack across her shoulder, headed up the hill. She would find the policemen; she would give them the key and the metal box.

  She tightened the straps as she walked. The edges of the metal box chafed at her skin through the backpack. She felt sweat gathering where the pack met her dress, felt it pooling in the small of her back. Hard to believe it could be so hot.

  At the top of the rise she paused. From here she looked down into a clearing a hundred metres across. There were pinewoods on every side, thick with the heat of the afternoon. Vast faces hung from the trees. Posters. Girls of her own age holding stuff: kayak paddles, stethoscopes, ice axes, phones. All in close-up. All with an eye to the camera, one thumb raised. At the bottom of every poster the letters IFF, white on red, and the thumbs-up logo. Near the middle of the clearing, to the left, was a large red-painted stage. To the left of that were seats banked up to meet the pine trees behind. Red banners cascaded from the lighting rig:

  International Future Female:

  Empowering Everyone, Starting With Girls

  To her right she could see the back of the main house. Here too there was a giant banner: two girls, one light-skinned, one dark, right hands crossed at the wrists, thumbs up, left hands across each other’s shoulder. All those eyes, gazing down on you.

  Don’t be racist!

  Take no drugs!

  Recycle, recycle, recycle!

  ‘Bring condoms and whisky,’ Leela had said, laughing. Had she meant it? Hard to be sure. She had brought both, in case Leela wasn’t joking, though she wasn’t expecting to use either.

  At the far end of the clearing were the first of the dormitory cabins. People were trailing from the cabins to the stage; others were already sitting on the banked seats, talking without animation, looking nervously down at the two policemen who stood before them in the middle of the stage.

  The policemen were smoking, letting the ash fall from their cigarettes. Behind them at the edge of the clearing was a vast poster of a girl looking down, crushing a cigarette in her left hand, her right thumb up.

  She knew she should walk across the clearing to the policemen, hand them the key. But that would draw their attention, and she wasn’t sure she wanted their attention. Something about that look they had given her down at the dock, a sense of something out of place.

  There were way too many eyes; there would be too much sta
ring. She would wait until the policemen had finished speaking; she would approach them as people were drifting away. There were a lot of people here. Overwhelming numbers. There were boys dotted around too, in amongst the girls, talking earnestly, nodding a lot, demonstrating they were listening. Boys got extra points for listening to girls.

  One of the policemen, she noticed, had his hand on his service weapon. Which was weird, she thought. He hadn’t been wearing a pistol as he stepped from the boat. She was certain of that.

  She walked forward past the main house and along the rear of the stage until she was standing directly behind the men. Both wore pistols, she could see now, on holsters by their right hip. The shorter of the two was fidgeting the knuckle of his hand against the grip. At his feet were the two cracked leather holdalls.

  Random. Something about this was definitely random. She took out her phone, dialled Leela.

  ‘Hey,’ said Leela.

  ‘Leela, who brings a pistol to speak to a bunch of girls? Like really, what’s the threat?’

  ‘I mean, a bomb went off,’ said Leela. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Yes, but here?’ she said. ‘What’s the threat here?’

  ‘I guess sisterhood is powerful.’

  A loud click on the PA system. The taller policeman cleared his throat. ‘Hello. I would like to ask everyone, whatever their role, to gather in the meeting room of the main house. I have important information to share about the bomb in town. I’m sure you have many questions.’

  Leela laughed. ‘Seriously, where are you? I don’t see you.’

  ‘Leela,’ she said, ‘wait.’

  ‘Wait, why?’

  ‘We could … not go …’

  The policeman was repeating his words in Norwegian. People began to flow from the seating bank around the sides of the stage and towards the main house.

  ‘How come stealing a boat is not a problem for you, but meeting people is?’

  ‘I mean, it’s probably nothing, but I’m getting a vibe …’

  ‘You’re getting a vibe?’

  ‘It’s all a bit too random. I’m going to the cabin. Come with me.’ The words came out wrong. She sounded as if she was pleading.

  ‘Seriously? No.’

  ‘Then tell me what they say. See you later.’

  She began walking against the stream of people and across the clearing towards the trees.