“The fire. A week ago, now. They didn't tell you?”
“Who around here would tell me anything?”
Steve nodded. “People don't much talk about it.”
“They don't talk about a building fire that's practically still smoldering? What does it take to get anyone's attention around here?”
“It's not that. It's… you know, the people.”
“What people?”
“The people who died.”
Emma took a deep breath.
“I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the Governor General was here when it happened?”
Steve looked down at the rocks and cement dust under his shoes. “I guess he was.”
“Steve, you're not going to understand this, and I probably shouldn't say it out loud, but this entire island can go fuck itself.”
He made no objection. Emma felt her frustration melt into fatigue.
“Why are you out here anyway?”
“I like to walk here at night sometimes. It's peaceful. You know, nobody around.”
“I know what you mean. You like being alone?”
“It's not a matter of like. It's always been that way for me.”
“I can relate.” She felt more comfortable looking into the dark profile of Steve’s face, catching a glimpse of eye or nose in the feeble light.
He turned away, looking in the direction of the concrete rubble. “Mind you, I wouldn’t mind having a dog to keep me company on nights like this. I miss dogs. There’s no kindness in the world like a good dog gives.”
The two of them stared at the ruins of the cannery while the night wind rattled a few pieces of corrugated steel back and forth.
“You know Constable, I’m not from this place, originally. My Mum moved us here when they had a flu outbreak. She was a nurse, and they kept her on for a few years. That was back when there was still a working school on the island, and it really wasn’t so strange growing up here when there was homework to be done and playtime to look forward to. But nobody likes the new kid anywhere you go. Have you met Darren? He used to put dead birds in my bag when I was looking the other way. It wasn’t until years later that I wondered if he had found them dead or not.”
“Having met him once, I wouldn’t bet money on either possibility.”
“But I wanted to fit in because what kid doesn’t? I learned how to tie a tinny up to the dock so it doesn’t float away, and how to talk the same way the other kids talked. I never mentioned England. Never thought about it. Then eventually everyone forgot. I can tell when I talk to them, that they don’t remember I showed up on a boat one day. We were only little, after all. Now Mum’s gone and there’s nobody left who remembers where we came from. Some days I forget too.”
He gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry to babble. It’s just nice to talk to someone from the outside world.”
Emma shuffled her feet. She had to know more, even if it meant bearing another person’s emotional burdens, with its body heat and its smell. She tried to remember what people said in these situations. “It’s alright. It must be difficult for you to live like that.”
“It bothered me for a while, after she died. I wanted someone to say ‘Hey, remember the cinema down the street from our old house?’ I knew I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. It would sound too much like a ghost story, and ghost stories around here are in very bad taste. But after a while I started to feel something else. I didn’t feel like I was alone in that house anymore. And somehow that was worse. There was anger in there with me. I wanted someone else to feel what I was feeling. I don’t know why it had to be Ned. I don’t know why I did anything. And now the feeling is gone.”
“I get it.”
“I’m not sure I do anymore. Why take it out on Ned that I’m miserable with my own life?”
“Direct it outward. It makes perfect sense to me.” She let the silence linger before digging into it. “I take it you don’t remember anything specific that happened between you and Ned? Anything that might have pushed him over the edge?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t do anything. Maybe I killed him. I think I might be capable of something like that. Does that make me a bad person?”
“No.”
“I disagree.”
“I happen to be something of an expert on the subject.” Emma’s voice was lower than she expected.
“You're wrong. I know you're wrong. But for some reason, I can't bring myself to care.” He walked along the other side of a burnt and broken fence. “We had a Yorkie before we moved here. Lady. Had to give her up of course. She would have been too innocent for a place like this anyway. Do you ever think about what your life would be like if you had never come here?”
“I've been here two days.”
“That's long enough to wonder. Why did you come here, anyway?”
“Somebody has to do the job and turns out I'm somebody.”
She fingered the wallet and badge in her coat pocket. The badge was real enough, with the familiar E and R. It was her name on the warrant card. The rest of it might convince some people if they didn’t look too carefully.
Her friend Rebecca had been willing enough to go along with the plan back in London. She wasn’t in a hurry to spend half a year on the other side of the world, so she didn’t ask whether it was legal to switch Emma’s information for her own on the personnel forms. Acharya would never think to check if she was ten thousand miles away doing a job meant for someone from a different district. Emma still couldn’t believe she had gotten away with it. Her plan did not yet have a part two.
Steve turned and she could tell he was looking her in the
