Two islands, p.1
Two Islands, page 1
Ian Kemish AM is a former Australian diplomat who served as ambassador to Germany, high commissioner to Papua New Guinea, international advisor to the Prime Minister, and head of the consular and crisis management service. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of his leadership of the emergency response to the 2002 Bali bombings. An adjunct professor at the University of Queensland, he continues to work as a strategic advisor and as a volunteer director in the homelessness and international humanitarian sectors. Ian’s first book, The Consul (UQP, 2022), offered a personal perspective on Australia’s foreign affairs challenges over two decades – spanning hostage diplomacy, natural disasters and evacuations from war zones. Two Islands is his first work of fiction, drawing on both his diplomatic work in the Balkans in the mid-1990s and his strong family links with the Western Isles of Scotland.
For Roxanna
‘Goodness is adorable, and it is immortal. When it is trodden down into the earth it springs up again, and human beings scrabble in the dust to find the first green seedling of its return.’
— Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
April 1997
Niko gripped the gunwale as the ferry pitched and rolled.
This was a bad decision.
The Scottish mainland was just visible over his shoulder, a shadow on the horizon. Shafts of watery sunshine reached down through the grey clouds that rolled rapidly overhead, leaving puddles of light where they touched the ocean’s surface. There was nothing to be seen from where he stood at the bow, only a wall of mist on a dark sea.
He could hear the cries of seagulls above the noise of the wind, gliding in the updraft of the ferry’s diesel exhaust. His cheap parka offered little protection against the elements.
He turned to find the source of the loud, sporadic flapping behind him. A hatch had come loose.
‘Bože me sačuvaj,’ he said aloud. God save me.
What had he been thinking? He’d never even heard of the boat’s destination before. He’d first seen it on the timetable at the ferry terminal that morning – Skarnsey – and he still wasn’t sure where it was. He only knew he hadn’t felt safe in Oban. The harbour town had been full of people – too many for his liking. This had been the next ferry to leave, so he’d taken it.
He’d tried sitting in the cafeteria below, where his fellow passengers mingled amidst a fug of warm bodies, strong tea and hot chips. Most of them seemed unperturbed by the rough passage, although he’d occasionally heard the bathroom doors bang open and shut with some urgency after the ferry got underway. Then a woman had unnerved him, smiling at him with friendly curiosity as she flicked through a magazine she’d found on her seat, Smash Hits. On the cover was a photograph of a defiant-looking red-haired girl who appeared to be wearing the British flag as a dress.
‘It’s that Geri from the Spice Girls – our Lorna is mad about them!’ This comment was directed to the woman’s elderly father, who absorbed the information without comment. But she’d smiled again at Niko in a way that seemed to invite him to join their conversation.
He’d taken flight at that point, finding his way onto the forward deck just as the ferry met the open sea, passing more prudent passengers heading in the opposite direction.
He was the only person left up here now, his fear overwhelming. He’d thought the cold air might cleanse his mind and help him form a better plan, but his ears felt like they were being torn from his head.
A door opened behind him and a member of the crew ventured out to secure the loose hatch. Niko turned to look. The man was small in stature but obviously strong, his low centre of gravity providing a good sense of balance. His job done, the deckhand made his way back towards the doorway and looked directly at Niko, a puzzled expression on his face. Niko turned to avoid the man’s scrutiny, but didn’t miss the theatrical, mocking grin he flashed up at his crewmates watching from the control deck above, and the exaggerated shoulder shrug that accompanied it.
Unable to settle after the man went back inside, Niko decided to try the rear deck instead. He only just managed to maintain his footing as he made his way back down the length of the vessel, squeezing past a large lifeboat resting on its frame. It felt slightly calmer here – the ferry’s superstructure providing an effective wind barrier as he took refuge on one of the bench seats bolted to the dark green metal deck. He watched the boat’s foamy wake unroll itself like a carpet behind the boat and contemplated a coil of gigantic rope piled neatly by the guardrails.
He looked up after a while and saw seagulls hovering in the spray. Two of them were larger, and slightly darker, than the others. They seemed to move together in the sky. He felt that they were staring down at him, demanding that he give them his full attention. He knew it was a ridiculous thought, but it was hard to shake off once it had formed in his mind.
He rummaged around in his pack and extracted the pocket map of Scotland that he’d bought at the station in Glasgow. He found Skarnsey among the jumble of the Western Isles – an elongated shape out on its own in the middle of the water. The scale was too small to be helpful.
When he looked up again the two birds were still there. He was beginning to feel as if there was something malicious about them – that they were intent on pursuing him to the edge of the world.
Jumping to his feet once more, he completed two restless circuits of the boat, but on each lap the dark seagulls were still visible from the rear deck, still watching. Sometimes they were directly overhead, sometimes trailing behind. But they were always there.
It was only when the low hills of Skarnsey emerged from the clouds off the starboard bow that they gave up, suddenly soaring eastward with the wind, in the direction of a passing trawler.
Niko gave up, too, and went inside.
1
Anita
Anita walked slowly along the pavement on the sunlit side of the street, her eyes alive to every detail. And not just her eyes. The strong Australian sun on her skin felt like an embrace from an old friend. The warble of magpies in the trees above, unexpected among the traffic noise, made her heart swell. It was so good to be back.
It was her first visit home to Sydney in three years. She’d flown in from Amsterdam via Singapore the previous evening, but a good night’s sleep at Mickey’s had helped banish her jet lag, at least for now.
She passed underneath the Tooheys Red sign outside the Oxford Tavern on King Street. It was just after ten on Thursday, and the first patrons of the morning were already inside – two gaunt men in their own separate worlds, each nursing a schooner of beer and gazing impassively out through the windows.
She paused at the traffic lights opposite Newtown Station, a long line of cars snaking slowly towards her, windscreens reflecting the hot mid-morning glare. An impatient driver occasionally honked when the car in front failed to respond immediately to an opportunity to inch forward.
Two men in suits walked past, one of them casting an appraising look in her direction. She was used to getting this kind of attention – she was taller than average with a well-proportioned athletic frame – but she didn’t like it. Irritated, she ran a hand through her black hair and hooked it behind her ear. But her sense of discomfort didn’t last long. As she stopped outside the Eastern Flair department store to check out the homeware display in the windows, she couldn’t help but smile. It was good to be surrounded by people who were innocent of her world. People who went to work, listened to music and watched movies, who took the security and abundance of their lives for granted. She felt the ever-present, tight feeling in her chest ease a little.
She recalled the immigration officer at Sydney airport saying, ‘Welcome home, Anita,’ when he’d stamped her passport. She loved how Australians went straight to the first name. And even better to see Mickey waiting for her in the arrivals area, her younger brother’s boofy blond head standing out amidst the multicultural throng of expectant families, lovers and other well-wishers.
They’d exchanged a few joke postcards while she’d been away, but phone calls were expensive, so they hadn’t spoken until he rang unexpectedly six weeks ago to tell her that their father had pancreatic cancer. It was the reason she was home.
They’d slipped easily into their old affectionate banter in the car from the airport – and, as usual, politics was the main theme. Anita had begun by making out that Mickey was personally responsible for the change in government while she’d been away – they were both Labor Party supporters like their father, and their mutual hero Paul Keating had been rejected by voters the previous year.
‘Really, Mickey?’ she’d said reproachfully as soon as she shut the car door. ‘Little Johnny Howard? That’s your vision for this country’s future? What were you all thinking?’
He’d looked pained. ‘Blame those bloody Queenslanders, not me. Look at that Hanson woman they elected! And did you bother to vote over there, by the way?’
And so it continued on the drive to his place in Newtown. It was only a twenty-minute journey, but they stopped at Red Rooster on the way to collect dinner.
Mickey clocked the look on Anita’s face as she climbed out of his car and sized up his tiny terrace cottage with its rusty drainpipe and the graffiti on the neighbour’s wall.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, looking across at her defensively, ‘but they reckon this’ll be the next area to pop – I’d buy it myself if I had the cash. The Olympics are coming, and some merchant banker will buy it for a m illion soon, you just wait.’
She hadn’t asked about their dad until they were having a drink together later in the evening.
‘You’ll see,’ was all he said, shaking his head and avoiding her eyes.
She was beginning to flag by then, so she’d just frowned at him and dropped it. Mickey insisted that he take the couch, arguing that he’d changed the sheets for the first time since Christmas, just for her.
* * *
She was eager to see her father now, but they’d told her over the phone that it would be best to wait until the afternoon. He was still asleep and could do with some rest after the surgery. In the meantime, she had an errand to run.
Savage Garden’s ‘Truly Madly Deeply’ emerged from a car stuck in the King Street traffic, and Anita rolled her eyes. Talk about high rotation – some things were the same the world over.
She walked on for several more blocks through a no-man’s-land of empty lots and warehouses, until she reached the Australian Federal Police office in Redfern. She paused outside for a moment. So many memories, and very few of them good.
It had been three years since she’d set off to the Netherlands to take up a secondment in The Hague with the organisation that she and her colleagues called ‘the Tribunal’. Its full name was a mouthful – the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. She’d joined its investigation and enforcement team back in 1994, less than a year after it had been established to investigate war crimes committed during the violent conflict that accompanied Yugoslavia’s disintegration.
Anita was not the only Australian working for the Tribunal. Far from it. Several Australian federal and state police officers were seconded to The Hague as investigators, and Australian forensic pathologists were working on exhumations and autopsies at mass graves across the Balkans. An Australian was even serving as deputy prosecutor. He’d joined just before Anita.
Today’s visit to her old workplace was not about catching up with old friends.
Jens, her boss at the Tribunal, had said all the right things when she told him that her father was seriously ill. ‘Of course, you must go home Anita,’ he’d insisted in his impeccable Dutch-accented English. ‘Your family must be the priority.’ But he sounded conflicted. And Anita certainly was. She felt guilty about leaving her team when things were so busy and was worried about being away from the action when some of the key perpetrators were finally in the Tribunal’s sights.
To her brother’s great frustration, she’d delayed telling Jens about her father for several weeks and had only got around to it when the surgery date was fixed. She’d convinced herself that she could be no real help before the operation, and that it was better to be present for her father’s recovery.
It was a relief, in a way, when Jens suggested that she spend some of her time in Sydney following up on complaints from the Croatian community that a Serbian war criminal was hiding in the city in plain sight. The AFP was conducting an initial investigation into the matter on the Tribunal’s behalf, and Inspector Russell Davis was expecting her to drop in for an update this morning.
Anita doubted if Davis had changed much. She had reported to him herself a few years back, and she expected lots of talk about resources and priorities and plenty of undisguised misogyny. He’d made some crass and unwelcome suggestions in the past about how they might spend some private time together.
And Davis would still regard himself as her superior. It would be meaningless to him that she was now working as a senior investigator at the Tribunal, with responsibility for a large team and a wide range of international casework. She knew she was working at inspector-level at least. But she still held the substantive rank of detective sergeant within the AFP, and that’s all that he would understand.
But it wasn’t just about rank. She was so much more experienced than she had been three years ago. She’d interviewed the victims of horrendous crimes in that time and confronted hard men from across the Balkans. She’d pulled off some important investigative breakthroughs, and her latest assessment report described her as ‘one of the top performers’ in her team. Even as a young constable no one would ever have called Anita a shrinking violet, but the past few years had taught her to hide the lapses in self-confidence that seemed to encourage men like Davis.
She walked into the reception area of the AFP offices. The constable behind the counter had no idea who she was, but before Anita could say anything, the door to the inner secure area opened and there was Davis, lurking in the doorframe and grinning at her like a fool.
Anita looked across at him squarely, preparing for one of his lame wisecracks. By the look of him he’d clearly prepared some gem of a greeting, but he seemed to change his mind when he saw the challenge in her face. His grin gave way to a frown. ‘We’ve got an urgent fax for you.’
Just that. No good morning, no welcome back.
A few moments later, Anita was standing by the fax machine staring at the single sheet of paper that had chugged out of it a couple of hours earlier. It was a brief typewritten memo on Tribunal letterhead over Jens’ signature. It was marked for the immediate attention of Senior UNCTY Investigator Anita Costello and stamped with the word Urgent. The message was simple and devastating.
UK liaison advised at 1900 Zulu today (Wed. 9 April) that Witness SD004 has absconded. Current whereabouts unknown. Please call immediately on receipt.
Jens had scrawled his home phone number under his signature.
Anita stood there, stock still, for a few seconds longer.
Oh Jesus, Niko – please, no.
She tossed the piece of paper on a nearby table and massaged her temples with her hands. Davis stood watching her, a sceptical almost mocking look on his face. She wanted to smash his head in.
She picked up the fax again and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was well past midnight in the Netherlands, but within minutes she was sitting in Davis’s cramped and messy office dialling Jens’ number. Davis had vacated it reluctantly after giving her some advice about international access and country codes that was both redundant and inaccurate. It was left to Anita to shut the door.
Anita knew that Davis was probably lurking within earshot in the adjacent kitchen area, but she was in no mood to speak quietly. When her boss answered the phone, she skipped the niceties and cut straight to the point. ‘What the fuck, Jens?’
Jens was used to her. ‘Well, Anita,’ he answered calmly, ‘it’s just as I said in my message – the British police let us know yesterday that our witness has ab—’
‘He’s got a name, Jens, and I don’t think abscond is the right word – he’s not a bloody criminal! What does the Met have to say for themselves, for Christ’s sake? They were supposed to be looking out for him. And what about his family – do they know where he is?’
‘I’m seeking more details from our colleagues at the Metropolitan Police, Anita,’ Jens continued. ‘Niko’s family are as confused as everyone else. I wanted to let you know quickly, and to ask if you have any ideas about where he might have gone – you know him better than the rest of us.’
Anita let out a slow breath, her jaw tense. ‘No, Jens, I have no idea where he might be. I’ll need some time to think and, as you know, I’ve got a few other things going on right now. My dad might be dying, my brother is struggling, and I’ve only just got off the frigging plane!’
They spoke for a little longer, and at the end of the call Anita sat alone in Davis’s office. It isn’t the dead bodies that get to you, she reflected. It’s the survivors who get under your skin.
You’re not supposed to get too close, she knew that. Every boss she’d ever had, had drummed that point home. Open yourself up just enough to get their confidence, take their statement, and move on. Those were the rules. She hadn’t always stuck to them, but she’d mostly managed to maintain a professional emotional distance. Niko had been different from the start.
