Chapter 69 Elin

69

Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

Worry is etched in Isaac's eyes as he zips up his pack the next morning. ‘You're sure about this? Carrying on? We've still got time to think about it.'

‘I'm sure.' Elin bends down to lace up her boots. ‘If you reckon what Steed said last night, about keeping his distance, was genuine.'

She doesn't know the nitty-gritty of what happened when Isaac had gone to speak with Steed, but he'd returned flushed and ruffled. From the brief snapshots of the discussion that he'd shared, she'd sensed it had been a tough conversation in every sense of the word.

‘I do.' He lifts his pack up onto his back. ‘He's not going to be a problem.'

‘Then I'm good.' Her words are shot through with more positivity than she feels.

How is it really going to work with him being so close by? There's no way she can make him leave, but his presence is going to be an uneasy one .

‘So,' Isaac pulls open the Airstream door. ‘Ready to test your theory on the clearing?'

‘Yeah. I keep thinking about Bridie's reaction, after she mentioned it … there's got to be something to it.'

After pulling up Kier's map on his phone, Isaac zooms in on the clearing. ‘What do you reckon?' He tips the screen towards her. ‘Hard to say from this exactly how long it's going to take, but I reckon it's a good thirty-minute hike.'

In the end, the thirty minutes became forty, the route up to the clearing a tougher task than they'd initially thought – not just the dried leaves and exposed roots snaking across the forest floor, but the dim light cast by the tree canopy. It's disorientating, green bleeding into green. Trees for miles, wildly overgrown. A mixture of ash and oak and yew.

By the time they reach the edge of the clearing, the sun is high, bright in the sky.

‘It's hotter than I thought it would be.' Elin peels off her fleece as they push through the final line of trees. ‘Should have—' She stops, lost for words, taking in the scene around her.

‘Kier painted it well, didn't she?' Isaac's eyes are roaming the space. ‘The trees, I mean.'

Elin nods, absorbing it. Apart from the breeze ruffling the trees, it's deafeningly quiet. Where they're stood, at the tree line, the forest fires had eaten away any green at floor level, leaving it sooty and blackened. The oaks above have been stripped of their leaves, the trunks black, even white in places, from the extremes of heat.

It's stark. Not faded, ashen sepia tones; this is harsh blacks and whites.

There's something ghoulish about the whole setting, she thinks, chilled. Graveyard feels, the inherent wildness of the park giving way to something still and sombre.

Her gaze slides upwards to the centre of the clearing, where the burnt ground gradually gave way to a grassy open space in the middle, patchy with a mix of scrubby grass and flower.

Elin studies it, confused. The green broke up the bleak monotony of the scene, but none of it tallied with what Kier painted on the map. The skeletal outline of the trees echoes the painting, but she can't see any of the light, the almost celestial atmosphere Kier conjured.

No story to tell here but one of destruction. Nature giving way to a stronger force.

What are they missing?

As her eyes travel right, Elin notices the remains of a wooden structure at the corner of the clearing, almost burnt to the ground. Only a small section of the building is still standing, the wood smoke-damaged and sagging, part of the roof precariously balanced on what's left of the side wall. A gaping hole indicates where a window once was.

Walking over, Elin peers through the void. Huge pockets of ash are sitting inside, studded with glass and broken bits of wood. Outside too, where the remaining section of roof was protecting the ash from the elements. It's littered with a mess of footprints.

‘The ash I saw on Bridie's boots, it's deep enough here to explain it.'

‘Looks like it.' Moving around the side, Isaac crouches to examine what's left of the structure. ‘What do you reckon it was?'

‘Some kind of hikers' hut or shelter. Hard to say,' Elin says, unnerved as she pictures it, someone staying in this shell of a building, so close to where the forest fires had so violently taken hold. ‘I'm going to keep looking around.'

Skirting the edge of the tree line, her eyes scour the ground around her. No green here; the earth is grey, soot and ashes trampled to form a thick blanket that's more or less smothered any wildlife. All fairly monotonous, until she reaches a cluster of boulders at the edge of the grass.

Elin's gaze catches on something half concealed behind the lichen-covered surface of the largest stone.

A scorched circle of earth .

Its shape and colour is a stark contrast to the uniformity of the ground around it.

There are obvious signs of a fire, an intense one at that, the remains of whatever's been burnt reduced to nothing more than powder in the centre.

More ash has been blown around, blurring the edges of where the fire took place, but it's clear that it had gone up hard and fast. The strong chemical odour of an accelerant is lingering in the air.

An unpleasant sensation creeps through her as she absorbs the implication – not only of the fact it had taken place recently, but that someone had taken the effort to make sure there wasn't anything left. The perfect place to light something up, she thinks, the ground already scorched from the forest fires. Given a few more weeks, the right conditions – heavy rain, wind – it would all have blurred into one.

‘Isaac,' Elin beckons him over. ‘Take a look at this.'

As he stops beside her, he takes a sharp pull of breath. ‘Recent.'

‘That's what I thought.'

He bends a little to examine it. ‘Everything's burnt up pretty good,' he says, ‘but there's something here.' Gesturing towards a patch on the periphery, he points. ‘Looks like clothes.'

Elin crouches, careful not to disturb anything with her feet. At first glance, all she can see is ashes, but when she moves forwards, her eyes hook on a piece of blue material. The edges are blackened, curled up from the heat. Her stomach dips. ‘Some kind of blue canvas.'

The same as the bag Ned pulled out of camp after the explosion.

‘You reckon it's … ?' Isaac's face darkens.

Swallowing hard, Elin reaches for a stick, scrapes away some of the surrounding ashes.

It's then she notices it: another scrap of blackened fabric.

Not the thick canvas of the bag, but a jersey material. Most of it is burnt up, but the middle section is more or less clear, so she can see its original colour: white.

Elin flips it over with the stick and uses the end to hook it up, shake some of the ashes loose. As ash flutters to the ground, something becomes visible in the centre of the fabric.

Dark lettering printed on the material.

An A and part of an L .

‘Do you recognise that?' Her voice wavers.

‘Yeah,' Isaac says heavily. ‘I do.'