Surtsey stumbled out of her seat and grabbed the remote from the corner of the bar, punched the volume up. A police spokeswoman was explaining that Tom was an earth science professor who carried out research on the Inch. She used the phrase ‘unexplained circumstances’ and asked for witnesses. She went on to explain that there was no CCTV on the island, but that someone might have seen a boat embarking or landing sometime the previous evening along the coast. Surtsey thought of her boat in the shed. Could forensics tell anything from that? A trace of black sand on the hull could’ve been from any time in the past. There was no digital navigation tool to geolocate where she’d been, nothing else to tie her to the scene. As far as she could think.
‘Maybe they’ll want to interview us,’ Halima said.
‘They already have,’ Surtsey said.
‘Not the police, the news people.’
‘How would they find us?’
Halima stared at her. ‘They’re called journalists, you might’ve heard of them. They look into events, find out stuff, track people down.’
‘Yeah, OK.’
‘They’re got Tom’s name so I presume they’ll be at the department tomorrow sniffing around.’
Surtsey tried to imagine sitting there tomorrow, looking at Tom’s empty office, the picture of Alice and the girls on his desk, the huge map of the Inch on the wall behind, every nook and cranny of the island there to be discovered.
The reporter on the news was now standing in front of a handful of protestors on Portobello beach. There were eight of them, some holding hands and chanting. Two of them held a banner that read: ‘Leave New Thule in Peace’. Someone else had his hands aloft, cupped together with a gap in between. It was supposed to represent the teardrop shape of the Inch, but Surtsey thought it looked like a vagina.
‘Oh shit,’ Halima said. ‘I’d forgotten about these guys.’
They were the Children of New Thule, a cult that sprang up once the clouds of steam and ash settled back in 1990 and it was clear that the Inch was here to stay. They were led by some guy called Bastian in square glasses and a neck scarf, an outdoor activist who claimed to have visions that the Inch was spiritual ground never to be desecrated by human feet. They didn’t call it the Inch, they called it New Thule, a mythical northern land, somewhere beyond the borders of the known world.
They’d been active in the first few years, protesting against scientific trips to the island, petitioning the public and lobbying government in an attempt to make the Inch protected land. It did end up protected, but by UNESCO as a Site of Special Scientific Significance, not some earthly shrine to a higher power. Bastian and his band of enthusiastic followers took the huff, and spent a couple of years protesting more aggressively, sabotaging boats, vandalising the geophysics department at King’s Buildings. It got them noticed in the media but things moved on, most people accepted the Inch was fair game for scientists, and the Children of New Thule slunk back into their hole.
Surtsey hadn’t heard from them in ages and had presumed they had disbanded. But now here they were on the national news, Bastian decrying Tom and the department, the entire scientific community, local and national government, anyone who disagreed with his vision. This, he said, was payback from nature, a warning to stay away.
‘Surely this dick must be a suspect,’ Halima said.
Brendan frowned. ‘Then why go on national television with his cronies?’
‘Double bluff, it’s the last thing anyone would expect.’
Surtsey squinted at the television. Bastion was in his forties, the same generation as her mum. Louise had faced some of the brunt of those early protests, paint splattered across office windows, the department boat filled with fish guts at the lock up. For a while, Bastian had popped up in another guise, a figurehead for the anti-fracking movement. The government had placed a moratorium on fracking across Scotland but hadn’t banned it outright. Plenty of companies still ran research and testing voyages in the Forth, hoping one day they’d be able to beat the government and swoop in, start making money. To his credit Bastian had marshalled public support against them, no one wanted toxic sludge and poisoned water supplies on their doorsteps. But the oil companies were still out there collecting data and running feasibility studies.
Then there was the added complication of the Inch. There’s no way any company would be allowed to drill for shale anywhere near a UNESCO site. And since Scotland already had earthquakes from the new fault line, it seemed insane to compound that with the possibility of more seismic disturbance from fracking.
With fracking on the backburner, the Inch was clearly back on the agenda for Bastian. He was a charismatic figure, slim, grey beard, sparkling eyes. He was articulate, even if what he said was rubbish. Maybe that’s how he’d managed to keep his band of followers for so long. And this was perfect for them, an unfortunate occurrence on the Inch played into their hands, gave them a new lease of life. Or maybe it was more than that, maybe Hal was right, and they had something to do with it. Hiding in plain sight, protesting angrily. Surtsey thought about the text message on her phone.
She dropped the remote control and strode out the pub towards the beach.
12
The dry sand sucked at her trainers as she picked up speed.
‘Sur, wait.’ Halima’s voice, some way behind.
She didn’t look back, kept focussed on her target. She noticed over to her right that the BBC outside broadcast van was parked at the bottom of Bellfield Street, across three disabled parking spaces. The reporter from earlier was chatting to her cameraman and a guy wearing headphones and carrying a boom mic. They were clearly off air at the moment, maybe working on
