Kane took it into the hut and opened it. The pages were crowded with children’s handwriting and drawings, in lead pencil and ballpoint pen and occasional colored pencil. The handwriting was barely legible. The drawings were more eloquent: faces, eyes stabbed or missing entirely, mouths of broken teeth. Sometimes the figures were bleeding, sometimes wearing grotesque smiles. One had been captioned The Dead Astronaut. The dead astronaut appeared repeatedly, with a tortured expression behind their helmet’s visor.

At the back were a couple of separate sheets in Rory Bannatyne’s handwriting: lists of children, with their ages and whereabouts they lived. With these were the pictures torn from the Islander: the scouts, the junior divers, Petra Wade.

Kane returned to his car, threw the file onto the passenger seat, and sat for a moment, staring at the antenna field. Then he began to drive.

A few meters south of the BBC complex, he passed the police car heading in the opposite direction. Kane watched in his mirror as it stopped and turned around behind him. An arm emerged, flagging Kane down.

There was no time to hide the file, so he slid it beneath the seat and prayed.

12

“Edward Pearce.”

“Hi.”

The officer leaned into Kane’s window, gray hair cropped close, face tanned, shades dark so Kane couldn’t see his eyes.

“I’m John. We haven’t met.”

They shook hands through the window.

“I guess it was only a matter of time.”

“Haven’t had a chance to welcome you to Ascension.”

“I still can’t believe I’m actually here.”

“You had some issues with the accommodation, I heard.”

“Yes. It would be nice if the hotel stopped taking bookings, seeing as it doesn’t exist anymore. But people have been very helpful.”

“I see you’ve acquired yourself a car.

“Just now. From Terry, at One Boat. Drives better than it looks.”

The officer straightened, looked around as if the oddness of the landscape had only just struck him.

“What brought you up here?”

“I heard it was a good beach.”

“Not good enough to stick around?”

“Just getting a feel.”

“Where were you planning to go now?”

“I’m not sure. Keep exploring. Get my bearings.”

“Registered the car?”

“Not yet.”

“I know. Because you register it at the police station, and there’s only one person in there this morning and that’s me.” He smiled. With the shades on it was hard to gauge what the smile was meant to communicate. “Want to come in and do your paperwork?”

“Of course.”

“Follow me then.”

Georgetown had woken up by the time they got back. It meant there were plenty of Kane’s new neighbors to watch him tailing the police car to the station. People nodded at Sergeant John Morrogh as he drove past, nodded at Kane, sometimes with a polite but curious smile, squinting to see who he was. They looked up from gardens and magazines.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”