‘What about Damien Stokes? Remember him? He complained of having a tummy bug in that last week, too. Did he come to see you?’
‘Stokes?’
I described him. ‘Black hair, beard, my height, science/law student. He arrived halfway through their month on the island.’
‘Oh yes, I remember. Pru took a fancy to him, as I remember.’
‘That’d be right,’ Anna muttered.
The doctor had got to his feet and was searching through a row of large desk diaries in his bookshelves until he found the year. He turned to late September, scanning the pages. ‘Yes, I saw him on the Tuesday, but not because of a stomach upset. He came to see me that evening to dress a scrape on his knee he’d got while climbing with the rest of them that day. Nothing serious.’
‘May I?’ I asked, and reached for the book in his hand. He released it reluctantly. I checked the pages for that last week. Damien’s was the only name from the university group that was mentioned. ‘Thanks.’
When we got back into the car, Anna said, ‘Passlow’s right. We’re going to have to go to the island.’
I felt queasy. ‘I think we should consider this a bit more, Anna. I’m not sure it’ll do any good going there. In fact it could do a lot of harm.’
‘I need you there, Josh.’
‘Why?’
‘I was never one for solo climbing.’
14
Nor was I. One of Luce’s heroes was an American climber, Lynn Hill, whom she had met once when Lynn visited Australia. Lynn was the first person to free climb, without artificial aids, the Nose route up El Capitan at Yosemite, an almost impossible thousand-metre ascent, in just twenty-three hours, much of it in darkness. Luce had shown me photographs of the epic climb, to me unimaginable. I remembered that as I was poking about in the boxes I’d left with Mary four years before, pulling out my old climbing shoes from one, my helmet and chalk bag from another. They looked worn and tired, someone else’s possessions, not mine. How had Luce ever come to love that other person, that other me I could hardly recognise now?
Even my nylon rope looked worn out. I put the stuff down with a flutter of anxiety. I was different in other ways now, out of shape and out of practice, hands soft from office work. I couldn’t see myself scaling the cliffs below Mount Gower any more. Not without Luce. But this was for Luce, Anna insisted; one last climb for Luce.
My phone rang. I returned abruptly to the present, recognising Damien’s voice.
‘Josh, hi. How’s it going?’
‘Good, thanks. You? Lauren okay?’
‘Fighting fit. You been to see my friend yet?’
The merchant banker. I’d forgotten about it. ‘Um, no, not yet, Damien. Been a bit tied up. Maybe when I get back.’
‘Back?’
‘Yes. Anna and I are going away for a short trip. To Lord Howe.’
‘What?’ I heard his breathing, heavy against the mouthpiece. ‘What exactly do you hope to achieve there?’
‘I don’t know. Talk to some of the locals. Listen, that last week on the island, the week of the accident, you mentioned that you were pretty much out of it in the days after the party, not feeling well.’
‘Yes?’
‘So you didn’t go climbing on the Friday, the day following the party?’
‘I … I can’t remember now. Is that what I said? Why are you interested?’
‘Just trying to place everybody at the scene.’
‘Jesus, Josh, listen to yourself. Who do you think you are, Ed McBain? Where are you going to stay?’
‘We booked on the internet. It’s one of the Kelsos’ cottages.’
‘Well … I really don’t see the point, but if it helps you get over this, good luck.’
‘Thanks.’
He rang off. I hadn’t mentioned our big discovery. The thought of him knowing-of anyone knowing-that Luce had been pregnant when she died just made me feel sick.
I didn’t tell Mary either, but I did have to discuss our trip with her. She thought it was a good idea, but I didn’t let her see the climbing gear I’d packed. That evening I roamed around the hotel, apprehensively checking the locks and light bulbs, as if I might not be coming back.
15
Luce had told me something about Lord Howe Island. It was the remains of an ancient volcano, the only island in the Pacific that the Polynesians missed as they hopped across the ocean. When HMS Supply came upon it in 1788, it was one of the last places left on earth on which no human foot had ever trod, a true Eden burgeoning with unique species. The sailors managed to eat a good few of them to extinction as well as introduce some feral predators, and the arrival of the black rat, Rattus rattus, from a grounded ship later didn’t help, but still, a great deal of its natural state had survived and was now being nurtured and restored.
For my benefit, hoping to tickle my interest, Luce spoke of the island’s economic history too; of how the early settlers survived by selling fresh meat and vegetables to passing American whaling ships; of how they were almost wiped out by the collapse of the whaling industry in the 1870s, and were saved by the discovery of the kentia palm, uniquely adapted to a cooler climate and so ideally suited to the Victorian drawing rooms of the northern hemisphere; of how the black rat took a fancy to kentia seeds as well as everything else, and had to be hunted on a bounty system, a rat’s tail being worth one penny in 1920, rising to sixpence by 1928.
She tried hard, but I was determined not to be interested. I was going to London. What could I possibly want with a place whose whole history could be told in a couple of paragraphs? Now, belatedly, I was on my way.
We met up at Central and took the train together out to the airport. I thought Anna looked younger, with her backpack and holiday gear, and there was a blush of colour in her cheeks. I still had that hollow apprehensive feeling in my stomach you get before a journey or a climb, and we talked with a forced cheerfulness. Neither of us referred to Pru Passlow’s revelation.
An hour out from Sydney, as I watched the shadows of puffy clouds glide across the rippled surface of the ocean far below the little plane, I told her I bet I could guess what she was thinking.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Islands,’ I said. ‘In books. Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, The Lord of the Flies …’
‘And Then There Were None,’ she replied. ‘The Executioners, The Skull Beneath the Skin …’
‘Er, The Magus, Lost …’ That was about the lot as far as I was concerned, but she had plenty more, all mysteries of course.
‘The Singing Sands, Evil Under the Sun, Five on a Treasure Island, The Lighthouse …’
‘You win,’ I conceded. ‘Is there a common theme?’
‘Oh yes; the presence of evil in the Great Good Place. It’s the very first story of all, the serpent in the Garden of Eden.’ She cast me a sideways look, and I wondered if that’s how she saw me now, Luce’s serpent.
‘Rattus rattus,’ I muttered. ‘Do we have a plan? I imagine all your island detectives had some kind of plan.’
‘To have a close look at the place of the accident, and to check out the Kelsos.’
‘Do we tell them we were friends of Luce’s?’
‘We may have to later, but let’s wait until we’ve had a chance to look around. There’s no reason they should know who we are.’
‘Right, stealth-good thinking.’
I turned back to the window. The view was unchanged and the hollow feeling returned to my stomach; such a vast ocean to absorb one tiny human being. One and a bit tiny human beings.
As we banked in, we got a fine view of the island, a dark crescent in the gleaming ocean, embracing a long narrow lagoon contained by the most southerly coral reef on the planet. The sun glinted off tin roofs among foliage in the low-lying land in the centre of the island, flanked by the two high peaks of Mount Lidgbird and Mount Gower to the south, and by lower hills to the north. The airstrip lay in a narrow sandy waist in the middle, and as we began our approach the pilot warned us to expect a bumpy landing. We descended, losing speed, and the plane was buffeted by surface winds channelling around the mountains. Our wheels touched the runway with a squeal, then lifted again as a gust threw the plane sideways. It corrected, skewing around, then dropped abruptly onto the deck, bounced and skidded to a halt. Everyone clapped.