Reef

A story that might become a novel:

"Reef"

The entire island looks like it is made of cracked concrete. Bushes sprout from crevices but are laid flat by the salty wind. They soon die from lack of moisture and are bleached white by a merciless sun. It resembles a black-and-white photo of a war zone, complete with the scattered corroded remains of a twin-engined aircraft. 

A laughing gull is behaving like a yo-yo on a string. It keeps picking up a crab or some kind of shellfish and then dropping it in the hope that it will smash open on the coral-rubble shore. It does not break because it is an expensive pair of lightweight rubberised waterproof binoculars.

A black lizard darts forward and swallows a smaller lizard tail first so that the victim is still alive with it’s head gazing out helplessly from the open mouth the victor.

The missing ornithologist’s name was Graeme Douglas but he was known as “Birdy” on the island. Nobody thought that he might be missing until the Governor’s Office noticed that messages for him were not being collected. Even then, nobody was too worried. Bigger things were happening on the island.

It was cricket season. The modern airport terminal was crammed with men watching a huge TV screen above the bar. It was supposed to give flight information, but had been detached from the computer and plugged into a satellite TV box instead. 

The connecting flight from Antigua was two hours late, which was perfectly normal. For the exhausted passengers who had flown from London to Antigua and then island-hopped on the local airlines, it had been a long day that was nowhere near being over yet. The taxi drivers were all watching the big screen and it would be the same with hotel staff.

Iain Douglas had been travelling for four days. The Foreign Office had booked him into a family-run bed-and-breakfast near a pretty beach. Fortunately, it was also a short walk from the air-strip so he walked there. His mission was simply to find his son.

After midnight, in his bedroom, he took out the letter that had brought him all this way.

It was from the UK Overseas Territories Department. Graeme had worked on the Falklands, Tristan, South Georgia, St Helena and Ascension Island, all of them UKOTs - British Islands that were governed from London. He read on:

“Dear Mr Douglas, It is with the deepest regret that we write to inform you that your son, Dr. Graeme Douglas, has been reported missing and that, despite every effort being made by our staff and the local police, we are at a loss to know what happened to him. 

I would appreciate a visit from you as soon as you can come. We will, of course reimburse you for your trouble.

Yours faithfully

John Hunter”

_______________

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is a Portland stone palace between the Treasury and Downing Street. Visitors are asked to present themselves at one of two entrances. The front entrance is in Whitehall, but a policemen directed Iain under a grand arch to enter through a gate from King Charles Street where he joined a queue of obviously foreign visitors at a turnstile where his bags were checked. A sandwich board announced the current security level to be “Bikini Black”.

Soon Iain was shown into a gatehouse where he was photographed and given a visitors’ badge. John Hunter came for him within five minutes and gave him a firm handshake.

Most of the staff looked like Graeme’s lot at University. Hard working, “bright young things” with a gym membership. Hunter was old-school, a soft-looking man in his fifties wearing the regulation grey suit but with incongruous brown brogues and a tweed tie. He guided Iain by his elbow, out across the cobbles and into a grand hall with a sweeping marble stairway. He asked Iain if he had been to the FCO before. Iain shook his head and said that he would rather be spared a guided tour.

Hunter’s office was a cubicle, not unlike Iain’s old office at Perth Academy where he had been deputy head. Books and bound reports filled every shelf. As his host went to get coffees from a machine, Iain was left to take in his surroundings. There was order here, but the shelves were too full with extra books piled on every surface. There were maps all over the walls and more were rolled up in a wicker waste basket. One map caught his eye. It showed an almost round island, densely engraved with contours. 

“Tristan.” Iain said aloud, remembering the same map from the front of one of Graeme’s reports; a perfect, conical volcano in the middle of no-where, way south of the Falklands. Graeme had nearly been blown out to sea by high winds while albatrosses flew about as normal. The photos had been stunning.

“Please tell me about my son”.

“That was going to be my first question for you! We have no idea why he disappeared. He went out to survey Faro Island for the Cambridge people and we lost contact. C’est tout! I was hoping you could help us find him.”

“You don’t think he is dead then?”

“Hell no! Do you think so? I can’t think of a more competent person in the field.”

When Hunter had told Iain all he appeared to know about the work Graeme was doing, it was clear that only one course of action lay open to him. He had to visit the islands himself. 

As they parted, Hunter handed Iain a small, battered old book called “Birds of the West Indies” and said “Good Luck”. 

_____________

Protocol demanded that he call at Government House first and the obvious next step would be the police, after that he had no idea.

The Governor was out, so Iain asked for directions to the police station. It was a hundred yards away.

Sergeant Don Petty took Iain to a back office where a police-woman was working at a computer. He introduced her as WPC Mary Carty and she immediately dropped her work to smile at Iain and say “Welcome to the Island”. 

He was obviously expected but he did not know if he was being given the red-carpet treatment or if this was the way they did things here.

“Who reported Graeme missing?”

“No-one really. It dawned on the Governor’s Office that they should have heard from him and so they asked us to check out where he was. We started with Faro Island and then searched the smaller reefs offshore. The islands are so flat you can do most of your work from the boat. We also did an aerial search in the Islander.”

“So what was the next move?”

“Well, there are more islands out there but they belong to St Maarten or to the Virgin Islands. You have British, American, French and Dutch colonies in sight of each other. I guess the birds treat them all the same, and so did Graeme.”

“So you knew him then?” 

WPC Carty spoke; “He spent a week on the mainland and got to know quite a few of us. He was interested in everything and everyone. One night he would be with the fishermen at Sandy Bay, another with the SCUBA people or the Yacht Club, but he always finished up at the Coral Bar, which is where we would meet.” 

“If he was known by so many people, why did it take so long to realise he was gone?”

“He just oozed competence. He had been all over the place on his own, mostly on tiny islands and he obviously loved it. He didn’t want to get in the way. He more or less said as much. He told us a lot of stories.”

The Sergeant cut back in: “So, we spread the search to the neighbouring territories. He could have thumbed a lift on any passing yacht.”

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

“Actually, I don’t, because he was a professional. He would have made contact if he could. I’m sorry to say this to you, but I believe in telling things how I see them.”

He asked the sergeant what sort of misadventure could possibly have overtaken his son in such a benign place.

“Look, it’s no-man’s-land out there. You get drug runners and smugglers and all sorts. Graeme could have stumbled onto something he should not have seen. The bigger fish deal in real estate, tax evasion and money laundering. A few years ago we even had an American millionaire who wanted to build his own rocket base on Faro. You wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of those powerful people.”

“How would you investigate that?”

“We wouldn’t. Not unless we had a body.”

“You make it sound as though justice might be compromised if powerful people were involved.”

“I don’t know if you know it or not, but you have landed here in the middle of a purge. The level of corruption among our officials has become too embarrassing for London. The Americans want the UK to stamp out tax evasion and even the Russians would like us to tighten up. The Island Council has been dismissed and the Governor has taken charge. It’s direct rule from London. So, to answer your question, we would have the full support of the Governor, if we had a case to investigate.”

“And the press?”

“Well, if you want to go down that route, and I think you should, the person to see is Miriam. She runs the radio station and she knows everything and everyone.”

_________________

As he opened the door to the radio station, a wave of bass-heavy reggae music brushed past him onto the street. 

Miriam turned out to be a larger than life Rastafarian lady aged somewhere between 40 and 60. Iain could not tell, but what he did know was that he liked her immensely.

She held out her bare arms and gave him a huge hug. “Mister Douglas, how sad to meet you under these circumstances.” She intoned “cir-cum-stance-es” like a song. He soon found out that Miriam was indeed a musician’ poet, journalist, priestess and a social worker, among other things. 

“How come everyone knows who I am before I call on them?”

“This radio station. The Governor put out that you was coming and I told everyone on last night’s programme. I also played a bit of my interview with Graeme.”

“You interviewed Graeme? What did he talk about? Did you record it?”

“I can make you a CD but basically, I asked him “Why our islands? What makes us so special?” 

“He told me that the more remote and hostile an island is, the more interesting it becomes. On small islands, the fight for the survival of the fittest can be seen at its most lethal. Animals have to adapt to the harshest of conditions and natural selection quickly rejects the failures. Soon you have an endemic species on the island that is quite different from its close relatives on the mainland.”

“And you know Iain, it’s true for wildlife and people. It’s called “King of the Island syndrome.” On really tiny islands you might have a king of cooking, a king of boats and a king of fishermen. Every man has to be king of something!”

“Graeme told me, “If I came along and started fishing for myself, I would be challenging the King of Fish for his throne. Competition on small islands can get very unpleasant.” 

Iain thanked Miriam and she asked him what he was going to do next.

“You should go and see Peter Henshaw. He came here in the ’70’s to manage the airport and never left. He’s got a big house, a boat and his own plane. He could get you out to Faro Island and he is the local bird expert. He wrote the book that the tourist shops sell.” 

________________

They had arranged to meet over “sun-downers” at Henshaw’s bungalow. A heavy shower was passing so a maid brought their drinks into the lounge. Two walls were lined with books, mostly about birds and aeroplanes but there was still space for a huge nautical chart and some valuable looking paintings. A brass telescope stood on a tripod by the window.

Iain had bought a copy of Henshaw’s bird book on the way over and he had also brought his battered copy of “The Birds of the West Indies”.

Peter Henshaws signed his book with a flourish and then peered over his reading glasses at the little field guide in Iain’s hand.

“I see you have a first edition of James Bond”.

Iain looked blank.

“The book in your hand is by James Bond. He was an American ornithologist. It’s a classic.”

“I had no idea. Was he also a spy?”

Henshaw held the book and explained that Ian Fleming wrote Casino Royale while liviing in Jamaica. Flemming was a birdwatcher himself and spotted the name “James Bond” on the spine of his book.

“So the fictional spy became far more famous than the real ornithologist.” 

“I don’t think the original Bond was a spy. Being a birder would have made a good cover though. Actually, I wondered if your son was a spy when I met him.” 

“What on earth made you think that?”

“He spent a lot of time socialising with all sorts of people and was always asking questions. If you add to that the places he has worked and the fact that he was brought here as a guest of the Governor, he was obviously more than just a biologist. He was also very fit. He didn’t walk anywhere; he ran. If they had just wanted a bird survey they could have asked me.”

Iain said nothing for a minute while he took a long cool look at his host. 

Henshaw had a perfect tan that contrasted with his cream suit and white shirt. He had kept his white Panama hat on his head which made him look like Wilbur Smith; everyone’s idea of a retired ex-pat author. He was sharp eyed and precise but Ian had noted the slight sideways curl of his upper lip. This man was jealous of Graeme, the successful professional ornithologist who was popular with the locals, while he was demoted to the rank of gifted amateur. 

“How did Graeme get to Faro Island? Did you take him?”

“I flew him around for quick look and then arranged for him to be dropped off from a visiting yacht. I didn’t hear anything from him after that.”

“What was the plan for getting him back?” 

Henshaw shrugged.