Three hours later we were at a chain hotel near Heathrow. Quinn checked us in, using a credit card and Irish driver’s license, both featuring a name other than his own. I waited till we were alone in the elevator to comment.
“Nanker Phelge? Are you kidding me? How many fake IDs do you have?”
He didn’t answer.
Our room came with a view of a freight company garage. I had my overloaded leather bag, Quinn the worn L.L. Bean backpack that held some vinyl records, a change of clothes, and his laptop. He pulled out the computer as soon as we arrived and settled on the bed to book our tickets.
I went into the bathroom with the supplies I’d bought at Sainsbury’s: a large box of baking soda, a bottle of the strongest dish detergent I could find, and some expensive hair conditioner. I made a paste out of the baking soda and dish detergent, then spent the next forty-five minutes working it through my hair and rinsing it out, a trick a stylist friend had taught me on the Lower East Side back when Limelight was in its prime. By the time I was done, my hair was the color and consistency of shredded October leaves. I went through all of the conditioner before I could stand to touch my scalp.
But I was blond again. I showered, dressed in clean drainpipe jeans and a boatneck shirt, and went to sit on the bed beside Quinn. I pulled out Dagney Ahlstrand’s passport and stared at her photo, compared it with my own pallid face in the wall mirror.
“What do you think?” I asked Quinn.
He glanced up. “Better. You look like you.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good, if it keeps you from getting stopped at border control.” He swiveled to look at me properly. “No, it’s good.”
I turned away, pulled the stolen Nikon from my bag, and raised it to my face, adjusting the lens.
“That your new camera?” I nodded. “Nice. What is it?”
“A Nikon.” I stared at him through the viewfinder. “It’s a good rig. Expensive.”
I flicked the shutter release and Quinn stiffened. I lowered the camera. “Don’t worry. It’s not loaded.”
I set the Nikon on the bed and went through the rest of my stuff. I sorted my few remaining pills into prescription bottles with my name on them, doling out three Percocets for later. I’d need something to offset the crank if I was going to get any sleep.
Last of all I opened the cosmetics case I’d nabbed in the hair salon and removed the little enameled compact. I pried open the empty compartment designed to hold face powder, tipped most of the contents of the ziplock bag of crank into it, and snapped the compact shut.
“Okay, I’m good,” I announced.
Quinn put his hand around my bare ankle and squeezed. “You sure you want to do this, Cassie?”
“What else are we going to do?”
“Jesus, I dunno. Act like normal people?”
“Normal people don’t do what we do.” I peered over his shoulder at the laptop. “What’re you looking at?”
“Trying to track down your friends in Kalkö. Svarlight has a post-office address in Norderby, but I think they may live by Slythamn. Norderby’s the tourist deal, it was some kind of trading post for thousands of years. Baltic amber, stuff like that. The northern part of the island is more industrial. There’s a big quarry and a cement plant. That’s where Slythamn is.”
“What makes you think they’re there?”
“Not too many other places they could be on Kalkö. Plus, there’s an old listing for a Bergstrand in Slythamn.”
“Have you been there?”
“I drove through once. It’s pretty grim.”
He gestured at his laptop: a photo of dun-colored factory towers and dark clouds billowing from smokestacks, with a row of small, barn-red buildings in the foreground. “The main cement plant cut back its workforce a few years ago. There’s a lot of unemployment, even though officially no one in Sweden is unemployed.”
“Why would Tindra’s father live there?”
“Why do people live anywhere? Maybe he has family. Maybe he works in the cement factory. I don’t even know for sure that’s where he lives. If they’re there, we’ll find them.”
“So will Lyla and Tommy.” It was the first time I’d thought of them in hours. “There’s no way they won’t have figured this out, too.”
“I thought he was MIA. You think his sister would go there without him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would he go without her?”
“I told you, I don’t know.” I rubbed my eyes, my thoughts colliding like pinballs.
“‘Don’t know,’ ‘don’t know.’ What do you know, Cass?”
He stood and started pacing. I slid over to his laptop and clicked on another photo. It showed a group of protesters with the cement plant in the background. Winter—everyone wore heavy clothing and held handwritten signs with gloved hands.
I pointed at one of the signs. “What’s this mean?”
“‘Sweden first.’”
“What about this one?”
“Blott Sverige svenska krusbär har. It’s a saying—‘Only Sweden has Swedish gooseberries.’ Meaning keep your dark-skinned fruits to yourself.”
“What about this?”
He shook his head. “No clue. I don’t know that much Swedish—‘where’s the bathroom,’ ‘how much is this,’ ‘I think you’re hot.’ Beyond that you’re on your own.”
I clicked to translate the article. Employees and concerned locals were protesting the fact that the cement factory had recently hired a dozen immigrants. The dateline for the piece was not even two months ago:
We have a housing shortage on the island and not enough jobs. Why are they going to foreigners and not to genuine Swedes?
A related article was a year older and more disturbing. Someone had set fire to refugee housing outside Slythamn. No one died, but a thirteen-year-old refugee girl had gone missing in the confusion. There was a blurry accompanying photo of a skinny kid, dark hair, braces, no head scarf. A phone number to call if you had information.
I lost interest and searched for news about the rally in Victoria Park. The more liberal sites appeared to be downplaying it. They cited fewer than a thousand participants; online tabloids and nationalist sites represented the gathering as having been more heavily attended. HNN called it “a triumph.”
Today’s event was a rousing show of support on the part of citizens who wish to preserve our way of life. Representatives from the U.S., Sweden, Germany, Denmark, and France underscored that this is an international problem, with repercussions that extend beyond our own shores to those of other nations that share our core values.
I clicked through news photos, looking for anyone who resembled Tindra or Lyla, Tommy or Gryffin. Or me. Finally I yawned and gave up.
Quinn had turned on the flat-screen TV and was sprawled on the bed, watching a soccer match. I lay beside him. When a commercial came on he switched channels, clicking through news, weather, another commercial, more soccer, more news…
“Hey.” I sat up, pointing at the screen. “Go back.”
“What?”
“The station you just passed, go back to it.”
He pointed the remote at the screen. A Sky News newscaster read from a teleprompter while footage of the rally played behind her. The video switched to an enlarged photo image. Cops stood around the body of a dark-skinned man as two hooded figures in white coveralls approached from a police van.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. “That’s Tommy.”