6

The exterior of the Saarinen-designed train station was flanked by ominous colossi that looked like they’d really do a number on your head if you were tripping for the first time. The wind was freezing and smelled like the sea. I shivered and pulled up the collar of my leather jacket, dodging thin, silent people in black on their way to work, and looked for a cab in the stream of buses and cars whipping past.

After a few minutes a battered Audi with a taxi sign pulled over. The door opened and a man tumbled onto the sidewalk. He landed on his hands and knees and lifted his head to stare at me, dazed.

I stepped over him and ducked inside. The cab jolted off before I closed the door. Music shrieked from a tinny speaker, some kind of opera. The driver yelled something at me. I shook my head and pointed vehemently at the radio. He made a face, but turned it down.

“Mihin mennään?”

“I don’t speak Finnish. I’m going here.”

I handed him the piece of paper with Ilkka Kaltunnen’s address on it. He glanced at it, then at me.

“You could walk, you know. It’s not far.”

“Or you could just drive me.”

The car shot forward then jerked to a halt at a stoplight. My head slammed the seat behind me, but before I could steady myself, we were off again. I grabbed the door handle and felt a stab of sympathy for the guy kneeling back in front of the train station.

The driver gave me a suspicious look in the rearview mirror. “You don’t like Wagner?”

“Yeah, sure, I love Wagner. Just not so loud.”

“Das Rheingold. Good for the drive to work. You American?” I gave him a curt nod. “I’ve been to Disneyland five times. I love America. You been to Disneyland?”

“No.”

“You should go.”

“It’s on my life list.” I read the name on his ID—William Lindblad. “You Swedish?”

“Swedish Finn. Like Tove Jansson. Who do you know in Ullanlinna?”

“Friend of a friend.”

“You have rich friends.”

I stared out at a stretch of high-end stores and restaurants, sleek Art Nouveau buildings alongside blocky Soviet-style housing. A metallic-blue sheen clung to everything, toxic by-product of the nearly sunless morning. It all looked familiar in an odd way, like a northern American city that had been Photoshopped. Yet the light seemed unworldly, as though I viewed the streets through a lens that filtered out the sun and tinted the world gunmetal blue.

The car made a sharp turn, dodging an old woman in layers of bright clothing and a long knitted cap. The smell of the sea grew stronger. Beyond the Tinkertoy mashup of Jugend houses and high-rises, I saw another skyline, bristling with cruise vessels, tour boats, cranes, trawlers, vast container ships. The driver glanced back at me.

“Ever been to Finland before?”

“No.”

“What do you think?” Before I could answer, we careened into a maze of narrow side streets. “A lot quieter here. Finns don’t talk so much.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh, yeah. Know how you tell which Finn’s the extrovert? He’s the one staring at someone else’s shoes. Here you are.”

The car halted abruptly in front of a three-story house. A mid-century take on Jugend style, reinforced white concrete with carefully chosen Art Nouveau details—cedar shakes on the roof, small square windows, a hammered bronze door. A neatly laid-out garden, now all rattling stalks and desiccated leaves. The place didn’t scream “rich fashion photographer” at the viewer: It was more like a polite nod before you were shown the way out.

Lindblad handed me a card.

W. Lindblad

HELSINGIN TAKSI 24 HOURS

9-363-9714

I stuck it in my pocket, paid the fare, and hopped out before the Audi disappeared in a haze of exhaust. I stood and tried to get my bearings. The Vicodin’s fuzzy glow had faded hours ago. I raked a hand through my hair and wished I’d had a shower or some coffee, and started to dig around in my satchel for the Focalin when a harsh croaking echoed through the empty street. I looked up and saw a huge crow, the biggest I’d ever seen, perched on a narrow sill above the front door. It cocked its head and stared at me, clacked its beak, then made a strangled sound.

“Hyvää iltaa.”

Startled, I dropped my bag. The bronze door swung open, and a tall man in a faded work shirt and white cargo pants stepped out.

“Are you Cassandra?”

I nodded. The bird hopped from its perch onto the man’s shoulder as I stammered, “That crow talks.”

The man tossed something into the patch of skeletal plants. The bird flapped over and began to search among the dead leaves, clacking softly. The man said, “He’s a raven. Apu. Short for ‘thief.’ Come inside.”

I followed him into a living room where nearly everything was white—walls, ceiling, bleached hardwood floor. A mix of Saarinen and Ikea furniture; photos in simple black frames on the walls. Above the fireplace hung an oversize Jenny Saville painting of an emaciated runway model in a beaded gown that had been torn to shreds.

“Ilkka Kaltunnen.” The tall man extended his hand. He was in his late thirties, with close-cropped brown hair, gray-flecked, and a lean face that might have been handsome if he ever smiled. Small, deep-set black eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses; skin so pale his face looked like it had been chipped from milky ice. He smelled of expensive cologne, vetiver and fig, and wood smoke. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yeah. That would be great.”

“Please.” He gestured at a chair. “I’ll be right back.”

I couldn’t bring myself to sit: The room felt like a set from THX 1138. Instead I dropped my bag and checked out the photos. A black-and-white homage to an Eadweard Muybridge stop-motion sequence, it featured a corpse posed upright, arms and legs extended as though in motion. In each photo the body was in a more advanced state of decay, until nothing remained but a skeleton. There was also a beautiful archival photo of a girl’s mummified body. She was blindfolded, a broken spear in the crook of one slender arm, and what remained of her long blond hair was coiled around her neck.

“That’s the Windeby Boy.” I turned to see Ilkka, accompanied by a black-haired young woman in loose white trousers and a black T-shirt. “The Windeby Girl, they thought, but when they did DNA testing they learned it was a fourteen-year-old boy. He is one of the bog people from Schleswig-Holstein, they found him weighted down by logs and a great stone. A sacrifice. And this is my assistant, Suri.”

The young woman smiled. She had broad shoulders, muscular arms that looked as though they could get you in a hammerlock, and surprisingly small hands, the nails squared off and lacquered indigo.

“Nice to meet you,” she said. She set down a tray laden with pastries and poured our coffee, flashed me another smile, and left.

I settled cautiously into a chair with a mug, wondering if guests who spilled coffee in the white room ended up as dead photo subjects. I inclined my head toward the picture sequence. “Charles-François Jeandel?”

“Yes. They have never been published or exhibited. Except here, of course.” He sank onto the couch across from me. “I have always heard this, but it’s true: You have a remarkably good eye.”

“It’s better when I get a good night’s sleep.”

“Of course. Where are you staying?”

I frowned. Somewhere in the back of my mind I must have assumed it would be here. Before I could reply, Ilkka added, “Before I forget—a courier left this for you, early this morning.”

He handed me a thick white envelope. No name or return address. I muttered thanks and stuck it in my bag.

Ilkka wasn’t much for small talk. We sat in silence and drank our coffee. I ate one of the pastries and did my best to keep raspberry jam from oozing onto the pristine upholstery. From outside I heard a low croaking, and a moment later the raven hopped onto the windowsill and tapped its beak against the glass.

Ilkka stood and went to stare at the raven. He said something I couldn’t understand, rapping his knuckles on the pane. The bird flew off.

“Did you train it to talk?”

“No.” He smiled, showing very white teeth. “But I encouraged it.”

“What does it say?”

“Hyvää iltaa. ‘Good evening.’ It will say that till spring. Then it will say hyvää huomenta.”

“Meaning?”

“‘Good morning.’”

“How does it know the difference?”

“When the nights are eighteen hours long, everyone knows the difference.”

We sat for a few minutes in silence. Ilkka continued to stare at the window. It was an effort to keep my hands from shaking. Finally I asked where the bathroom was, and Ilkka pointed down the hall.

“That way, on the left. If you reach the kitchen you’ve gone too far.”

I mumbled thanks, retrieved my bag, and stumbled into the hall.

The arctic color scheme extended throughout the house. Alcoves held delicately carved bone figurines, a whale’s tooth etched with a scene of a beheading. Some fashionably transgressive work by Deborah Turbeville, as well as more macabre photos, including a nineteenth-century cyanotype of a string quartet of skeletons in evening dress, and images from an archeological dig—piles of human skulls, skeletons missing skulls or limbs.

Other than the Turbevilles, none of them reflected the sort of blingy taste I associated with the fashion photographers I’d known, especially those who’d made their money in the Go-Go ’90s. I didn’t recognize any of Ilkka’s own work on the walls. There was no indication he’d ever done commercial photography, except for that Jenny Saville deconstruction of a couture model. It all seemed coldly ascetic, almost monastic, save for the faint scent of wood smoke and vetiver. I passed an office where Suri sat staring at a laptop, and finally reached the bathroom.

I locked the door, took a long pull at the Jack Daniel’s, and checked out the medicine cabinet. Nothing but soaps wrapped in black tissue, the same autumnal scent as Ilkka’s cologne. I stuck one in my bag, washed my face, and exchanged my frayed turtleneck for my striped shirt; popped a couple of Focalin and opened the envelope Ilkka had given me. Inside was a vinyl wallet containing three thousand euros. Anton had kept his side of the deal. I counted out half the notes and slipped them into my own tattered wallet, shoved the rest into my pocket, and returned to the living room.

Ilkka stood by the window, talking on a cell phone. He shot me an apologetic look, spoke for another minute, and signed off.

“Sorry. That was my wife; one of our children is not feeling well at school. She may come back early with him if the nurse thinks he should come home.”

“You’ve got kids?” I could no more imagine children here than in my own apartment.

“Two. A boy and a girl.” He gazed at the frozen garden, then turned and gestured toward the hall. “Come. I’ll show you what you’ve come to see. Tell me, how do you know Anton?”

“I don’t. He asked me to look at some photos he’s interested in buying. Yours. I never heard of him before two days ago.”

“You might want to keep it that way.”

“Why?”

“We have a saying: Kun paholaiselle antaa pikkusormen, se perkele vie koko käden. ‘If you give your little finger to the Devil, it will take your whole hand.’”

We turned down a passageway, and he continued. “I was delighted when Anton told me he had retained you to authenticate my photos. Dead Girls was a very important book for me; I found it in a used bookstore when I was at university. I hadn’t realized there were other people doing the kind of photography that I wanted to do. I felt as though I suddenly had permission to create my own work. All those photos of yours, they aged well. Better than your punks did.” He gave a barking laugh. “Iggy Pop and Johnny Rotten, dinosaurs selling insurance and butter on TV. So much for anarchy. And I saw your Stern photograph online, the Kamestos death mask. Everything has a price, yes?”

“I don’t care who’s buying the round, long as he pays.”

“I hope Anton has paid you well, then. He can afford to.”

I shrugged. The truth was, I was caught off guard by the fact that both Anton and Ilkka knew my work. I’d spent thirty years living under the world’s radar, scraping by on booze and whatever drugs I could scrounge from Phil Cohen. It was unsettling to think I had a second life, courtesy of some old black-and-white photos of dead people. Ilkka looked at me curiously.

“You’re a cult figure,” he said. “Didn’t you know that?”

“Must be a very small cult.”

“It is,” said Ilkka, and laughed.

The hall ended in a room with wood-paneled walls and a staircase. Ilkka stopped me before I could start upstairs. “Not that way. Here—”

He slid aside a panel to reveal an alarm box, punched in a code, and slid open a section of wall. Last time I’d heard of something like this was in a Nancy Drew book. Ilkka stepped inside. He switched on a light and beckoned me to follow, closing the door behind us.

“Watch your head.” He ducked down a narrow flight of stairs. “This was the original servants’ quarters: The kitchen and pantry were down here. I had it made into my darkroom.”

I followed him until we reached the bottom. Ilkka held the door for me and bowed. “Welcome to Valhalla,” he said.