I moved unsteadily, grateful for Quinn’s arm around my shoulders. The fact that I might have died barely registered. I felt detached from the notion, as though it was a pink thought bubble floating away from me. My body felt pretty much the same, something tethered to me that I could do without if the thread snapped.
Still, maybe Quinn was right; maybe I needed to eat. Most of the shops were shuttered until spring, so I was surprised by how many people were in the streets. If the island had only a few hundred year-round residents, most of them seemed to be in Norderby this afternoon. Couples walking dogs; young women carrying children; cyclists with baskets full of shopping bags. We passed a small grocery crowded with people filling net bags with bunches of turnips and carrots, bottles of coconut water and Fruktsoda. In the window of the police station, a marmalade cat watched passersby with impassive yellow eyes. Despite the cold and an occasional urgent flurry of snowflakes, nearly everyone eschewed anoraks or overcoats for cable-knit pullovers or cardigans. Most people ignored us. The few who didn’t stared with suspicion bordering on hostility.
“It’s The Stepford Wives, with sweaters,” I said as Quinn steered me down an alley too narrow for any vehicle larger than a bicycle.
“Those sweaters cost more than our airfare. The restaurant’s over here, I hope it’s open.”
It was: a small half-timbered building with diamond-paned windows and an immense oak door with iron hardware that wouldn’t have been out of place in Helm’s Deep. Inside, it smelled like a bakery. Fragrant steam billowed from an open kitchen; a few dozen people sat at trestle tables, hunched over plates or laptops. Geraniums filled the windows. The temperature differential between here and outside must have been fifty degrees. I immediately started to sweat.
We found a table in back with a view of the kitchen stove, a huge cast-iron antique surrounded by tattooed young cooks wearing yellow aprons. A waitress brought us a basket of flatbread and handed us menus in English. I didn’t look at mine. The smell of food made me sick.
“The kitchen is slow,” she said, apologizing. “One of the cooks is on vacation.”
“This place is famous for its saffron pancakes,” Quinn remarked as she walked off. “Good sausage, too.”
“I’m—”
“Stop.” He pushed the basket of flatbread toward me. “Eat.”
I picked up a piece of flatbread and began to break it into smaller and smaller pieces. Quinn ordered the lunch special for both of us. The place didn’t serve anything but beer or cider. Quinn got a beer. I got a pint of local cider that tasted more like ouzo than apples.
We sat without talking. In the pretty room around us, people chattered and took pictures of their food when it arrived. I set my camera on the table and stared at it, thinking of those cardboard boxes in the shed, skeins of blowflies circling the ceiling. Quinn finished his beer and ordered a second. The waitress returned, apologizing again for the slow kitchen before she hurried to another table.
Quinn took a swallow from his glass and set it down. “I’ll be back in a few.”
“Where you going?”
“Just sit. What’s that girl’s name again?”
“Tindra. Tindra Bergstrand.”
“Tindra Bergstrand,” he repeated. “Right back.”
He shrugged on his leather jacket and left. I finished my cider and ordered another, watched one of the cooks pour brilliant orange batter into a skillet. The stove’s gas flames leaped in their ring burner, a fiery blue eye. After a while, Quinn returned. I picked up a fragment of flatbread and pretended to eat it.
“Okay.” He sat and leaned across the table toward me, his voice dropping. “So I went by the grocery store—the post office is inside. Said I was looking for a guy named Bergstrand. I told the woman I did some carpentry for him ten years ago, I was back in the area for a while and wanted to find out if he needed any more work. Turns out he’s dead.”
“Dead?” I stared at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
“What I said. Four years ago. Dropped dead in the middle of that big supermarket just out of town, she thinks it was a cerebral hemorrhage. Nobody was upset, she said. Turns out he wasn’t very popular.”
“Because he was a neo-Nazi?”
“She didn’t say. Just that he ‘was not a nice man whatsoever.’ Whatsoever that means.”
He sipped his beer. I crumbled a bit of flatbread between my fingers. “But then what about his Herla podcast?”
“What about it?”
“Their site said he does a podcast every week—they had a picture of him, he looks just like Tindra.”
“They could be running old programs, or someone else could be doing it now.”
“Then why didn’t they change the photo?”
“Who knows? Maybe he has a big following and they want to capitalize on that. The show doesn’t use his name—it’s Valî’s Hour. Maybe it’s a rotating thing. Maybe there’s always a new Valî, like there’s always a new Doctor Who. Or maybe they just never bothered to take the photo down. Do we even know the show still exists?”
“It does. Those guys Erik was talking to, they listen to it. One of them asked him about a book that was mentioned on it last week.”
“So maybe Erik’s the new Valî.”
“But then why wouldn’t he have his own photo on the website?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want his employer to find out he’s a white supremacist. It could be anything. The deal is, the guy you’re looking for ain’t here.”
I glanced up as the waitress set a steaming plate in front of each of us. She smiled and left, and I turned back to Quinn. “So now what?”
“Now we eat.” He picked up his fork and pointed it at me. “Mangia.”
I managed a few bites of pancake, rearranging what was left so it looked like I’d eaten more. Quinn glared at me, but when he’d finished his own food he finally sighed, defeated, and reached across the table for my plate. As he scarfed down my lunch, I asked, “Did you find out anything about the other guy? Erik?”
“Like what?”
“Like his relationship to Tindra. Like whether he was the guy who raped her.”
Quinn chewed a mouthful of pancake and swallowed it. “No, Cass. I didn’t ask the postmistress if she knew anything about the local rapist.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Who’s laughing?” Quinn dropped his fork onto his plate. “This is a wild-goose chase, Cass.”
“I told you, I don’t care. I’m going back there. If there’s a farm and outbuildings, there has to be a house, too.”
“And what? You’re going to ask them if they’ve kidnapped someone?”
“I’m going to get inside and see what I can find.”
Quinn laughed. “Really? How?”
“I don’t know. Cause a diversion. You lure them outside and I’ll go in. You could garrote one of their sheep.”
“Now you’re being an idiot.”
“Well, something to distract them.”
“Forget it.” He wiped a line of sweat from his forehead. “Let’s call it a day.”
“No. I’m going back.”
“I’m not driving you.”
“Then I’ll walk.”
I got up, pulled on my leather jacket, and headed outside.
Overhead the sky had deepened to violet, turning the cobblestoned alley into a shadowy passage lit by glowing windows. I started back toward the main street, my head down. Several people passed me, talking eagerly in Swedish. A young woman laughed and I looked up quickly. She had dark hair, a wide mouth, sly intelligent eyes.
But of course it wasn’t Tindra. Would I have even known if it had been? I’d never heard her laugh. I’d spent barely a quarter hour with her in a dimly lit garage, listening to her ravings about a smartphone app and the rare book that had been stolen from her, a book I knew I’d never track down, a book I was finding it increasingly hard to believe even existed. Maybe I really had imagined it, strung out on basement crank. Maybe
Quinn hadn’t pounded my heart hard enough. If Tindra was dead, maybe I was, too.
And even if she wasn’t dead, even if I wasn’t dead, I’d still never find her. And why should that matter so much? I swiped the hair from my eyes and thought of her hunched on the floor of the garage, hugging her dog, her desolation so powerful that even now I could taste it, bitter as the residue on my lips and tongue.
What must it have been like, to be a child assaulted by a family friend, to be betrayed by your own father, to strike out on your own when you were only fourteen? How did someone come back from that? Because, damaged as she was, and young as she’d been, Tindra had come back. I stared at the ground, my steel-tipped boots clacking against the cobblestones, and kept walking.
Chapter 53
Hey, wait up.”
Someone tapped my shoulder and I spun around, foot poised to kick. It was Quinn.
“Jesus!” He did a little dance step back, hands raised in surrender. “Why’d you run off? I had to pay the check.”
I didn’t reply, just walked on fast. Quinn followed. When we reached the street, we headed to the car, got in, and joined the line of vehicles creeping toward the stone gate that opened onto the real world. I shoved the camera into my satchel and threw the bag onto the floor.
Neither of us spoke. Quinn seemed subdued. I waited for him to say something, to rail at me for an entire laundry list of failings: drinking, drugs, my refusal to face what I’d done to him, done to myself and my art.
You’re like heroin to him.
But he only stared at the vehicles ahead of us as our car made its way through a roundabout. We drove past the sign pointing toward Slythamn, circled round a second, then a third time. I looked at Quinn.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t reply. We drove by the big-box stores we’d stopped at the day before, past a strip mall and a cul-de-sac of red-and-white modular houses, until the island’s compressed sprawl gave way to farmland. After a few minutes, a large low-slung structure loomed up alongside the road. In front of it, a plastic sign flapped in the wind, some of its letters missing.
JÄRNH DEL
JO DBRUK
TRÄ Å D
Brand-new farm machinery shone beneath floodlights, excavators and tractors. A garage bay held pallets piled with oversize poly-wrapped sacks containing grain and fertilizer and gravel. We pulled alongside the few cars and pickups in the parking lot.
The building was old, its metal siding buckled and rusted. Beside the door, a constellation of bullet holes circled a faded ad for a riding lawn mower. When Quinn turned off the ignition, I opened my door. He leaned over and pulled it closed before I could get out.
“No. You stay here.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but his expression shut me up. I watched as he went inside, giving a nod to two men who stood talking by the entrance. Once he was gone, the men glanced over to where I sat in the car, staring at me with open curiosity. I stared back, and they turned to resume their conversation.
It grew cold. Quinn had taken the car keys with him, so I couldn’t turn on the heat. The sun had long disappeared. After a few more minutes, Quinn returned. He hopped into the car, tossing a plastic bag into my lap, backed up into the road, and drove toward Norderby. I looked inside the bag. It contained a pair of deerskin work gloves.
“What’s this?”
“Your hands are freezing.”
I rubbed them together, my fingers like icy twigs. He was right.
“Thanks,” I said. I set the bag between us and leaned against him. “Do you ever miss New York?”
“That’s like missing being young.”
We returned to Slagghögen. It was close to full dark now. In the sky, a few stars glowed like holes punched in worn fabric. Quinn parked out back, left the car, and headed across the lot and into the hotel without looking at me.
I turned to stare at the annex. No lights shone in any of its porthole windows. I opened the car door and listened for voices, a computer game, television, but heard nothing. The rusted Saab was gone. Apart from our rental, the parking lot was deserted. Bleak as the place had appeared the night before, this felt different. It felt utterly empty, the desolation not of human misery but abandonment.
I sat in the car, studying the annex windows for any sign of life. Finally I gave up and went inside. The girl at the desk gave me a curt nod. I nodded back, opened the door to head upstairs, then stopped.
“The people who were staying in that other building. Did they leave?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t handle it.”
“Who does?”
“Refugee services from Stockholm. They let us know when someone’s coming in, but not when they leave.” The girl frowned. “Was there a problem?”
“No,” I said, and continued upstairs. Quinn was lying on the bed, laptop on his chest.
“Any news?” I asked.
“Freiburg won, two–zero.”
“I mean about the rest. Tommy or Harold.”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.” He closed the laptop and set it on the nightstand. “I changed our flight.”
“What?”
“To tomorrow morning. We leave at ten-thirty for Arlanda. The flight to Reykjavík’s at two.”
“You said we have till tomorrow night!”
“I changed my mind.” He stared at me, green eyes clouded with despair. “I can’t do this, Cass. I can’t watch you do this. You’re killing yourself.”
“I’m not—”
He raised a hand wearily. “I’m not listening. The only reason I got you that crank was I was afraid of what would happen if you got it yourself—you’d get arrested, or OD, and I wouldn’t be there. I thought it’d be better this way. I fucked up, I know I fucked up…”
His voice broke, and I felt as I had years before, when I learned he’d taken off with a girl he’d met in Harlem one night. A spike in my heart, love and desire bleeding out with nothing but grief and fury to replace them.
“Don’t.” I tried to touch him, but he pushed me away. “Quinn, don’t…”
“I’m going back to Iceland. You can come or not. But if you don’t get clean, I’m done.”
“I’m not—”
“Shut up!” His despair twisted into rage. He stumbled to his feet, and I saw that the bottle of rum on the nightstand was empty. “I thought it might be different this time, but it’s not. You’re not. I went to prison—I had to change, Cass. You never did. I’m too old for this. So are you. You’re out of control and deluding yourself.”
He walked to the window, pressed his palms and forehead against the glass. “We need to drop off the car and get to the airport by nine. If you don’t want to come to Reykjavík, you can go back to New York. Actually, I think that’s what you should do. I can’t deal with your shit anymore, Cass. Get clean, then we can talk.”
I went to his side and started to argue. He whirled around and again pushed me away, hard enough that I fell against the bed, and stormed out of the room.
I listened to his footsteps as he hurried downstairs, dug my fingers into my thighs as I waited for him to return. A minute later I heard the sound of a car engine. I went to the window and looked down in time to see the Jetta peel off, spewing gravel and mud in its wake. I listened as the engine’s roar grew fainter, then died away entirely. I remained by the window, willing him to return. But he didn’t.
Chapter 54
That might have been a good time to quit drinking. There was no booze left in the room, and I wasn’t going to go out looking for more, not yet, anyway. It might have been a good time to flush my tiny stash of crank down the toilet—enough remained for only a few more hits.
But I didn’t. Instead I paced the room, from window to bed to bathroom, then back again, slapping my hand against the walls as though testing to see if they’d give.
Quinn was wrong. I wasn’t deluding myself. I knew what I was doing, knew that I was sustaining a decades-long p
rocess of metabolizing grief and fear and fury. Calibrating my tolerance for alcohol and speed and whatever else I could pump into my bloodstream, so that I’d be able to stumble out of bed and do the bare minimum of whatever was necessary to keep myself alive.
I knew that if I lost Quinn again, it would be for good, and I would die. Not immediately, maybe, but soon. My life had closed like a camera’s aperture: the only light that found its way in was Quinn. It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough.
I gathered the loose pages from Skalltrolleri and piled them onto the desk beside the laptop, picked up my satchel and pulled out the stolen Nikon, removed the lens cap, and stared at the circle of black glass.
A skull stared back at me. I gazed at it until my eyes ached, until the distorted reflection of my own face shrank to a white dot and disappeared.
I replaced the camera and sorted through my drugs. The Vyvanse was gone. The only speed I had left was the cheap crank Quinn had given me. As for the rest, I had one Percocet, some ibuprofen, a single Vicodin, three Xanax. Enough to get me onto a plane back to New York in a semiconscious state. Once there, I’d contact Phil and spend what remained of my money on one last bash.
I dumped everything back into my bag, took a shower, and once more began to pace.
Hours passed. I knew Quinn would return, probably when the local bar closed, unless he got so wasted that he went home with someone else. I took another shower, hoping the cold water would extinguish the fire burning up my nerve ends, got out, and dressed and lay down on the bed. My thoughts pinwheeled from Quinn to Tindra to Harold to Tommy to the app to The Book of Lamps and Banners to Gryffin to a dying dog to Quinn. A photo of a tattooed man holding a ram’s skull. Darts and a human eye that was also a target. Boxes crawling with maggots. An alley at 3:00 a.m., broken glass and blood on my hands. Tindra. Quinn. Me.
The Book of Lamps and Banners Page 24