I wandered the streets of Brixton, head pounding from the virulent speedball of fear, alcohol, drugs, and sheer weirdness I’d absorbed over the last few hours. I needed to find Quinn. But I had only a vague idea as to where Brixton was in relation to the rest of London, and no idea how to find my way to Rotherhithe.
And I had no assurance that Quinn was still in London. He’d fled to Reykjavík decades ago. Now that he’d left Iceland, he was in danger of being extradited to the U.S., and probably several other countries as well. It would be disastrous if the cops found him.
The thought of losing Quinn terrified me. For decades I’d assumed he was dead. I’d found him around the same time I picked up my camera after nearly thirty years, and for a few weeks it seemed like it might be possible for me to have some semblance of a life again. Not a normal life, but I don’t expect miracles.
My shivering got worse, a bad sign. It was cold, but not that cold. I paused in front of a shuttered halal butcher to gulp down more whiskey, kept walking.
The shaking subsided, but not the dread that had gripped me since my encounter with Tindra’s app. Bad enough to have the experience of my assault replaying in my brain like a skip on scratched vinyl. Even more disturbing was the sense that there was something I’d missed all those years ago—a flash of forgotten light or shadow at the corner of my vision that Ludus Mentis had revealed. Every time I thought of it, my stomach knotted, but the image never resolved into anything I could recognize or name.
After about twenty minutes, I reached the high street. The drum of traffic and distant music calmed me, along with the sight of people on the sidewalks, the familiar stink of diesel and cigarette smoke. I ducked into a Starbucks, got a latte, and sat at a table in the back.
I pulled out Gryffin’s mobile, hesitated, then entered Quinn’s number. The call rolled directly into voice mail.
You’ve reached Eskimo Vinyl in Reykjavík. Leave a message, I’ll get back to you.
I disconnected and sipped my coffee. After a few minutes, I googled the two words that were my sole clue as to where Quinn might be:
rotherhithe darwin
A quick Google search told me that Rotherhithe was in East London—not too far from Canary Wharf, which was where I’d last seen Quinn, but a long way from Brixton.
“Darwin” presumably meant…Darwin? My search brought up a brasserie in Southwark, now closed for renovation, and not much else. No other pubs or restaurants, no Darwin memorials, no one by that last name.
I finally gave up. I found an online Tube map, figured out how to get to Rotherhithe, and headed for the Brixton station. On the train, I nodded out till I had to change to the Overground, nodded out again, and didn’t wake until a recorded voice announced we were approaching Whitechapel.
I stared out at the malign pageantry of Canary Wharf. Blindingly lit construction cranes loomed over the city like an army of alien mantids, another marker of the slow apocalypse. Cataclysmic storms and epidemics, mass extinctions, and bizarre viruses, mass entertainment indistinguishable from mass graves. When I was a teenager, I dreamed of dancing at the end of the world. Now it seemed I’d have my chance.
The train pulled out of the station. Several skinheads had boarded, along with three bearded guys who looked like they’d materialized from Sunset Park. The skinheads were a decade or more older than their hirsute companions and wore leather jackets or hoodies emblazoned with Iron Crosses, swastikas, band names heavy on the umlauts. Their hands and necks were tattooed with stylized hammers or severed heads. One guy had the words BURN EM inked above the knuckles of both hands. They spoke animatedly, switching between English and German.
In contrast, their younger companions across the aisle might have stepped out of a craft beer ad: Timberland boots, barn jackets, knit caps. All three sported T-shirts emblazoned with the word SVARLIGHT beneath an S-shaped lightning bolt bisecting a scarlet oak leaf. Pinned to their jackets were large buttons that showed a blue eye, its iris a stylized sun. They pored over a Tube map, consulting one another in what sounded like Swedish.
The symbols on their T-shirts and buttons reminded me unsettlingly of Ludus Mentis, and Svarlight’s lightning bolts resembled those in the Nazi SS symbol. Then again, so did the twinned S’s in the Kiss logo. Maybe Svarlight was a band.
I watched as the few other passengers checked out the newcomers. Two young black women whose faces twisted in disgust, a middle-aged white businessman who glanced up, then quickly returned his attention to a book.
After a minute, the youngest-looking skinhead leaned across the aisle to say something to one of the bearded guys, who laughed. As Canary Wharf’s towers disappeared behind us, a voice rang out from the other end of the car.
“Friends, I have two children and nothing to feed them. If you can help, please…”
A slight brown-skinned man stood at the rear of the train, white plastic bucket in one hand, head bowed as though afraid to look up. Beneath his nylon windbreaker, an oversize Wembley T-shirt hung almost to his knees. His filthy sneakers had no laces and flapped open as he walked down the aisle.
“Please, we have nothing. Anything you can spare, please…”
As in New York, most of the passengers ignored him. A white girl toting a laundry bag dropped some coins into the bucket as the man worked his way down the car. Two of the skinheads nudged each other and stood. Like pit bulls snapping to attention, the others removed their headphones, slid their mobiles into pockets, stood, and headed toward the panhandler.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
A barrel-chested skinhead towered over the slight man and pushed him toward the back of the car. I pulled up my hood, stood, and followed, slipping behind the skinhead.
“Leave him alone,” I said.
The skinhead turned. He did a double take when he saw my face just inches from his own. Few guys ever get the chance to gaze eye to eye with a six-foot androgyne in a bad mood. This one obviously didn’t know how lucky he was.
“You fuck—” he spat. Before he could go on, two of the Swedes marched toward us.
“Hey, man,” one said. He gestured to a woman who’d raised her mobile to record the fracas. “Calm down.”
The train slowed, approaching the next station. The panhandler elbowed past his tormentors, dropping his bucket as he raced toward the doors. The skinheads watched him but didn’t move. Several more people had now whipped out their mobiles.
I quickly turned and headed toward the back of the car. The last thing I wanted was to show up on anyone’s amateur video. The train pulled alongside the platform; the doors opened. The skinheads hopped out, shoved through passengers waiting to board, and disappeared. I saw no sign of the man in the Wembley T-shirt.
But the three Svarlight guys stood on the platform, talking to a transit cop. One held the white plastic bucket: he pointed at the train, then turned to gesture toward the exits. The transit cop nodded, began speaking into his walkie-talkie, and headed in the direction the Swede had indicated. I had no way of knowing what the Svarlight crew had told him, but I suspected it wasn’t a complaint about neo-Nazis.
The train’s doors closed. I sat. The car was now almost empty. The other passengers kept their heads down, and I did the same. After a short time, a recording announced the next stop: Rotherhithe.