Flash Fiction

There were more than 500 islands littering the bay. Some of them wooded, some of them barren. Some as large as a kilometre, some just about big enough to take two men and their tent. Inspector Ostermann had searched about 70 of them. 

The islands of Rannoch Bay were notorious, due to their large deposits of iron ore. No compasses or electronic devices would work anywhere in the vicinity of the bay. As a result of that and wildly fluctuating tides the islands remained unmapped. A common place for the wanted to run to, and often never return from. Inspector Ostermann was hunting two such. 

It was deep into the autumn season and the grey, slate skies, heavily bloated with icy, cold rain were ending the day at the earliest opportunity. Ostermann turned the boat’s tiller towards the next smallish island. He found a suitable inlet, jumped ashore and tied the mooring rope around a nearby tree. He hefted his gear ashore but before setting up camp he marked the island on a large piece of graph paper that he had brought with him. It was a system his grandparents had taught him. What was left of the reluctant day soon turn to night and as Ostermann chewed on his ration of dried meat, he clearly spotted the sparks of a fire at some distance. He broke off four branches from the trees behind him and shaped them into stakes. He stuck one in the ground, walked forwards ten meters on the line of the fire and forced the second into the ground. He walked thirty meters to the right and repeated the process. Throughout the night he slept fitfully and every noise caused him to wonder about the legendary creatures rumoured, mostly by his grandparents, to haul up on the islands. Before dawn as the sky was shifting from black to grey Ostermann was up and preparing. He checked the stakes, in the gloom he could make out the shape of the island he needed to head to. He was loaded and gone by dawn. He estimated it would be a four hour sail, by midday he was approaching his target. 

It was a small island rising about four meters out of the sea. He approached as quietly as practical. There was a clear and natural harbour leading to a small shingle beach. To his surprise a small craft was already pulled up onto the beach. He had expected that his two fugitives would be long gone. He checked the safety on his weapon. 

As he reached the level ground up from the beach he scratched his nose, he could smell wood smoke in the air, but there was something else. Something unpleasant. He worked his way carefully to the source of the smell. There were no sound other than that of the sea and his shallow breathing. He came quite quickly to a slight depression where the remains of a fire smouldered and to his revulsion the ripped and gutted remains of two people. The two he had been chasing, he assumed. He gagged as he stiffly searched the remains. Eventually he felt he had bagged enough, he supposed, fingers to get an ID. As quickly as possible what else he thought might be relevant, loaded his boat and left the island. He layed out his graph paper and headed to home, and civilisation, as quickly as he could humanly manage.