The Blue Place

by Nicola Griffith

  The lake itself was glacier melt, barely above freezing, and it was so still it seemed to be holding its breath, thick and green and mineral. I touched the surface with a fingertip, very gently, and the water dimpled but didn’t break, only heaved slightly, turning parts of the surface gold in the sun, part almost black in shadow. Grendel might have lived somewhere like this, deep and gelid and secret.

  I sat on a rock and shut my eyes.

  There is nothing like the smell of glacier and fjell in April and May, the fecund earth, rich and dark after a long winter, the warming, papery birch bark, and leaves unfurling new and tender in the depths of the wood. I lost myself, utterly relaxed, until the light began to fade and birdsong changed to evensong.

  The birds stopped singing.

  I opened my eyes and listened harder. Footsteps, crunching up along the glacier behind me and to my left, between me and the setting sun. I turned, preparing to give him or her my I’m just leaving smile, but there was no one there. My breath came fast. No rock, no trees I could use as cover. The footsteps stopped. My heart changed up a gear. He or she had to be on the glacier, but I couldn’t see anything.

  I stood up and waved. “Hei!” Gave a big grin. Stood on tiptoes to stretch my muscles, flexed my hands, turned my face slightly so the fattening, setting sun didn’t blind me. In the heartbeat of silence took two steps toward the glacier—cut his line of sight.

  A slide and scuffle of snow overhead.

  “Hi there!” American voice, male. He came to the edge of the glacier and waved. Medium height, snow on his chest, gloved right hand, bare left. “Wait there, I’m coming down.” He stooped for something but I was already turning, already running the three steps to the lake, when I felt a punch on my back. I heard the phud of a suppressed rifle at the same instant I leapt out along the sunpath on the lake, and the water closed over my head. Blind, I stroked deep.

  Ice water stops your breathing, sends your diaphragm into spasm, and convulses every muscle, but the choice was simple: remain hidden, or die. He would be scrambling down the glacier, rifle in hand, padding to the edge of the water, sights trained, ready. I spasmed downward to avoid thrashing at the surface. I’d been in the water five or six seconds, but could fight to hold my breath another two at most. Think! Sun. Setting sun: dazzled water. It might be enough. I let myself rise gently. A quick fin of my right hand sent me into a roll, and I broke the surface for a split second, like a floater, exposing only my shoulder and lower face, but long enough for one huge suck of air, blessed air, then back down. My eyes stung with the minerals and the cold, but I could see the cloud of blood, brown in the green water, trailing from my shoulder. The cold would soon stop the bleeding. He would think me dead. I dived, but slowly, gently, and stroked towards the shore. He had the gun, but I had the sun: he wouldn’t be able to see beneath the surface reflection, but I would see his shadow. Gloved right hand for the barrel, bare left for the trigger: he was left-handed. I felt along the lake bed until I found a smooth round stone that fit my palm.

  The blood had made him careless. He was standing right at the edge of the water, one foot actually in it, rifle held only loosely to his left shoulder. I finned my way gently to his left, counted to three, and roared up out of the water, stone swinging—

  —only it was more of a stumble than a roar, and the rock that should have slammed into his temple crunched into his left knee instead. He went down with a splash, face first. I was on my knees, heavy and useless with water. I swung the stone at his head, but slipped and thumped him between the shoulder blades. He thrashed and convulsed in the cold. I couldn’t summon any strength; it was as though someone had pulled the plug and everything had just drained away. I dropped the stone and shoved him, boatlike, out into the lake, only just retaining the wit to hang on to his rifle. He spasmed, swallowed water. I pulled out the clip and put it in my pants pocket, jacked out the round he had already chambered, then used the rifle as a crutch and heaved myself to my feet. I was so numb with cold I couldn’t tell where I’d been shot.

  Think. Think fast. I swayed and closed my eyes, opened them again. He was definitely moving more slowly now. Very well, then. I tossed the rifle alongside my pack.

  The water was just as cold when I waded back in, but I only had to go up to my thighs. He was barely conscious. It affects some people that way. I caught the neck of his jacket—some quilted cotton thing, sodden—and dragged him to the shore. Hauling him up was hard. I got him most of the way out and his eyelids started to flutter. I dropped him, found my stone, and hit him on the forehead, but not too hard. I wouldn’t need long. I dropped the stone back in the water, which rippled heavily, the murky brown cloud of my blood still clearly visible, and finished dragging him out onto dry ground. A quick search gave me his wallet, keys with Volvo logo on the fob, and sodden cigarettes and lighter. I flicked the lighter. Nothing. I held it up to the failing sun—half full of liquid—flicked again. Nothing. His driver’s license said John Turkel; so did the Blue Cross Card. Careless. No rental papers for the car. I pushed the keys into my pocket and everything else back in his.

  My muscles were like lumps of wood stuck haphazardly onto cardboard bones. Nothing worked right. My fingers hung from my hands like thick, stupid bunches of bananas and I kept falling down because I couldn’t feel my feet. It took five tries to strip off my sweater, more for my pants and shoes, and then I half stumbled, half ran to the glacier, where I rolled in what snow I could find to absorb most of the excess water from my bare skin. Patches of bright red stained the snow here and there but it wasn’t too much. I stretched and flexed and staggered in circles until feeling returned to my torso, to thighs and wrist, and then I ran some more while I squeezed as much water as I could from the sweater and undershirt and pants. The trot back to my pack was reasonably steady but the shadows were so long I shied at pebbles, thinking they were boulders.

  When I got to my pack, all I wanted to do was sit down, but I didn’t dare. I fished in it, standing, tilting it this way and that until the slippery plastic compresses slithered out into my clumsy hands. They were cold as eels, but two quick twists started the catalytic reaction and they began to warm. I held one compress against my chest with my right hand and tried to use my left to wrap the other tight inside my wet sweater and pants but my arm wouldn’t work properly, just flopped about. Try again. Slowly. I managed, one inch at a time. The bullet had hit something important. No time to think about that; there were more urgent things to deal with: getting my body temperature back up, warming the wool sweater and pants enough to put back on and trap what heat I could coax my body to produce.

  In the gathering twilight the rocks near the lake looked like comfortable brown cows settling down for the night. I walked from one to another, found one that was still warm from the sun, and spread my undershirt out on it. An inch at a time.

  I put the compress between my teeth and dragged my pack over to another rock, sat down, and dropped the compress across my thighs. I had to balance the plastic thermos cup on the turf to pour the hot, sweet coffee, and it wobbled precariously. I drank a whole cup, poured more, dug out some chocolate, chewed and swallowed, chewed again. My hands ached around the hot cup, the right just with cold, the left with more. Another ache bloomed high up on my back. Later.

  More chocolate, the last of the coffee. Put it all away in the pack. Walk to gunman. Turkel, John Turkel.

  Walking felt strange, as though someone had removed my arms and legs and then reattached them using odd connections. I squatted a few feet from the man, who was shaking convulsively with his eyes closed, and tossed a pebble at him. When he opened his eyes and saw my nakedness, his pupils dilated, then contracted.

  “Talk,” I said in English.

  He stared at me.

  I didn’t have time for this. “I imagine your knee hurts, if you can feel it at all. You’ll need several hours’ surgery before you walk on that leg again. You are soaked through with freezing water and are in the first stages of
hypothermia. Perhaps your thought processes are becoming cloudy. Let me make it clear: you will tell me everything about who sent you to kill me and why, or you will die out here.”

  I watched him gather his pitiful resources—two quick breaths, flare of nostrils, tightening of muscles around his mouth—and when he lunged, I swayed to one side and hit his already bruised forehead with the meaty side of my fist. He went down like a punched-open inflatable doll.

  This was taking too long. I rooted around a bit in the grass until I found another rock.

  While he was still groaning, I smashed his other knee. He screamed. I waited until he had finished. “I’m in a hurry. Can you understand what I’m saying?”

  A groan. I slapped his knee lightly. Another scream.

  “John, answer me. Can you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Listen carefully. Both your knees are smashed. It’ll be dark in a few minutes. The only way you will survive tonight is with my help. I will only help you if you help me. Where is your car?”

  His shaking had changed to long, rolling shudders and he didn’t seem to care about his car. I lifted my hand. “No! It’s…it’s…” He had to clench his jaw to stop his teeth from clacking together. “Miles, three maybe, valley.”

  “In the Nigard Valley?” There was still enough light reflecting from the water to see his nod, or what seemed to be a nod amid all the jerking and shaking. “North or south?”

  “North.”

  The compress was cooling. My muscles began a light, internal tremble and the pain high up on my back grew, sending out shoots, twining like a liana down my left side, up my shoulder and down my arm. I backed away, looked around in the dark for a cow with a white coat. Found it. Lovely, lovely almost dry silk. “Tell me where you got the car.” Cautiously, I reached around my ribs with my right hand and touched my waist with my fingertips. Dried blood but whole skin. I worked my way up slowly, had to fight to silence a hiss when my fingers met the ragged furrow along my shoulder blade.

  “Gothenburg,” the man said, and it took me a moment to remember what I’d asked him.

  “Who told you to get the car in Sweden?” I felt along the bony top of my shoulder, nothing; around the back of the top of my arm. Ah. So the bullet had hit the bone at just the right angle and ploughed along skin and bone and along the top of my arm as I dived. Felt as though it had chipped the elbow. The nerves would be damaged, but perhaps not irreparably. Lucky. But I had lost blood, and the pain was going to get worse. “John, who told you to get the car in Sweden?” I plunked my left hand like a piece of meat on the cuff of one sleeve and used my right to wind the other sleeve over the first into a knot. I had to use my teeth to pull the knot tight. As soon as I dropped the improvised sling over my head I realized my mistake and took it off again.

  “John?” No sound. No movement. He had passed out. I hurried.

  My sweater was still damp but it was warm, and warmth was more important now than avoiding pain. I rested my left arm on my left thigh, spread the sweater over my right thigh, then threaded my left arm through the sleeve as though it were a stick, nothing to do with me. Pain is just a message. It was easy to get my right arm in the sleeve. I felt the wool dragging over the open furrow, sticking to clotting blood. Deep breath, just a message, pull sweater over head and down. Breathe. Just breathe. I didn’t even pause with the sling: over my head, pick up left arm, shove it through. Pants next; socks, boots; check car keys and clip in pocket, tuck compresses inside waistband. Good for another few minutes. Moonlight seeped from behind heavy cloud.

  Back to John. His cheek felt cool and solid, like clay. I slapped it. He whimpered. I slapped him again. Faint glimmer as he opened his eyes.

  “You’re not shivering anymore. You’ve entered the next stage of hypothermia. Unless you get warm very soon, John, you’ll die. I’m all that stands between you and death. Tell me what I need to know. Who sent you?”

  “Man.” He looked surprised: talking was easier without the shivering. “Man in Atlanta.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know. Really don’t. Just sent us money, wired it to the bank.”

  “Us? How many?”

  “Three.”

  Julia. I had to get to Oslo. But even if I could protect her there, what then? I needed information to stop this at the source. “How did you find me here?”

  “Edvard Borlaug. Called him from Gothenburg. He said other woman, Julia? Julia.” The sound of her name in his mouth made my fingers stiffen with the need to punch through his eye to his brain. “Said that Julia was coming in. That you probably coming too, but not sure. So. I drove here. Asked at…at farm. They drove…Oslo. Kill her.”

  Three. “What do they look like?”

  “Ugly.” He thought that was funny and laughed, hoarse and high.

  “Describe them. Tell me their names.” Hurting him would not help at this point.

  “McCall’s tall. McCall’s tall.” He seemed quite taken with his little rhyme. Typical hypothermia confusion.

  “How old?”

  “Forty?”

  “Tell me about the other one.”

  “Ginger. Because of his hair. Don’t know his real name. Medium. Thin. Young.” Not the ones from Honeycutt’s house.

  According to his license, John Turkel was thirty-two.

  “Early twenties?”

  “Younger.”

  “Tell me again who sent you.”

  “Don’t know. Man. From Atlanta.”

  “How do you know he was from Atlanta?”

  “I feel real bad.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Asked him…how know where to find you. He said. Call us from here, from where he was. Then he yelled…someone. In his office. ‘What’s time difference between Atlanta and Sweden.’ Something like that. Atlanta.”

  “What did he say? What did he sound like?”

  “Said: kill art bitch. Julia. Kill her. Kill you.”

  “Did he want it to look like an accident?”

  “Didn’t care. Just make them dead. That’s what he said. I feel real bad. Weird.”

  “And that’s all? Do McCall and Ginger know where Julia is staying in Oslo?”

  “Didn’t. Might now. Help me.” He tried to lift his hand but the hypothermia had him now and only a couple of fingers twitched. The air smelt like rain.

  “Help me,” he said again.

  I ran through events in my head: all my possessions, anything to link me to a body, were in my pack, and the bootprints would wash away in the rain. Just my prints on the rifle, then.

  “I’ll need your jacket.”

  It was sodden, and he couldn’t even move an arm to help me. In the end, I just tore off the collar and took that over to my pack. I had to grope around for the rifle. I wiped it free of prints and used the collar to carry it to the water. It made a thin, flat splash.

  “What?” he said.

  The clip followed. I knelt by John Turkel and put the torn collar in his hand. I don’t think he even felt it.

  “Please. Help me.” Barely a whisper.

  I picked up my pack. “There isn’t time.”

  The clouds parted and I stood up into a suddenly monochrome world: water sleek and black; sedge leached lithium grey; moonlight lying like pools of mercury on the upturned faces of graphite flowers. Nature, thinking there was no one to observe, was letting slide the greens and blues, the honey yellows, and showing her other face: flat, indifferent, anonymous.

  Only trolls, fools and desperate people walk the fjell at night when all is shadow and deeper shadow. I knew that I could not walk down a mountain along a trail I didn’t know with muscles already cold and screaming with toxins and fatigue after the icewater of the lake, expecting my foot to twist on an unseen stone or skitter down scree, to any minute tumble into a gully or thump into a tree; knew I could not carefully place one foot in front of another for three or four miles with a hole punched in my back and a slow
leak. So I ran.

  Cloud closed over the moon and the rain came down, gentle and light, almost like mist. I ran like a deer, snuffing the scents lifted by the rain, veering away from the pine or wet stone that warned of danger and towards the safety of wet grass and opening flowers, relying on the tiny sound of a pebble rattling under my boot and tumbling away down to my left to warn me of a gully, ran like a deer that ignores a bullet through the shoulder because the wound is not the urgent thing, the urgent thing is the adrenalin stride, the run, covering the ground, the need to keep going, to never stop, to leap brooks and low-lying branches, to crash through brush, to weave through trees and skitter and fall on loose stone and get up without pausing, without thinking, without missing a beat. The branch whipping across the face, the slow hot leak of blood down the back and deeper tear of skin where the pack pulled open the wound, did not matter, because pain is just a message. I ignored it, washed it away with adrenalin and endorphins and the rhythm of breath and blood and bone.

  Three miles, Turkel had said, but that was in daylight with map in hand, when you could plot the perfect diagonal. I was going to have to run farther; to get down into the valley, then run north. Five miles, perhaps. More. The rain came down harder, the underbrush thickened. My boots began to slide in mud. I shortened my stride a little and ran on.

  Breath whistling in and out through nostrils and mouth, thigh muscles pumping—contract, relax, contract, relax—toes gripping inside boots and wearing raw against wet wool. Sweat running down my belly.

  It was when each stride started coming shorter than the last and the pressure was on calves, not quadriceps, that I realized I had reached the floor of the valley and was starting up the other side. I turned left and ran north.