It was still dark when we woke to the sound of Quinn’s phone alarm. He stumbled around, cursing as he made his way to the bathroom. I sat up groggily, hoping I wouldn’t be sick, switched on the light, and confronted my reflection in the mirror across the room. Four a.m. hangover: never a good look. I drank some water from a glass on the nightstand, found the compact in my bag, dug out two tiny scoops with my pinkie nail, and snorted them. It was so caustic, I felt like I’d shot the stuff directly into my eyes.
By the time Quinn returned from showering, I’d dressed and done my best to clean up. He stared at my eyes and tossed his towel onto the bed.
“What the hell, you don’t even want coffee first? That shit’s gonna ruin your pretty teeth.”
“Now there’s that much less if they search my bag.”
“Not funny, Cass.”
“It’s mostly B12 and Epsom salts. No one’s going to search my carry-on. I’m more worried that I have a Swedish passport and don’t speak Swedish.”
“No one’s going to care on this end. Over there, just speak English. Anyone asks, tell them you’ve been living in the U.S. for a long time. Tack means ‘thank you,’ snälla means ‘please.’ Hej means ‘hi.’ You ready? I need a smoke.”
Outside, Quinn wandered in circles, chain-smoking until the airport shuttle arrived. There hadn’t been time to go online and check for more news about Tommy or Harold. When the shuttle van arrived, I collapsed into a plastic seat and stared out at the wasteland of loading docks and service ramps, lines of cabs and black hire cars already choking the access roads. Quinn elbowed me. “Stop grinding your teeth.”
I chewed my thumbnail instead.
At security, my stomach clenched as I watched two guards pull an elderly woman in a hijab from the line, ignoring the protests of her daughter, a young woman carrying a Vuitton bag, her dark hair pulled into a neat chignon. The old woman said nothing, only walked with the guards down a long corridor.
We got through security with no trouble.
“You hungry?” Quinn asked.
I shook my head, staring at that long, now-empty corridor. Quinn pulled me after him.
“Come on,” he said. “Nothing you can do.”
We found a Boots so Quinn could stock up on nicotine gum for the flight, then a place for me to buy a coffee, hoping it would dissolve the bitter film that coated my tongue. It didn’t.
In the crowded terminal, we sat and watched the infinite news cycle on TV. The sound was turned off, so I read the news crawl. Mass shootings in a Wisconsin Walmart and a Reno parking lot, another UK politician faking his own death. A machete attack in Finland. In Chile, an eight-year-old girl had survived an avalanche that buried her village. In Greenland, a melting glacier had revealed the intact skeleton of an immense pliosaur. There was more info about the new virus that had emerged in China.
Then up popped footage of yesterday’s demonstration. Quick montage of Morton delivering his speech to rapt onlookers, token shot of a skinhead with a swastika tattooed on his neck, a few seconds of the melee that brought the rally to its end. A scene of uniformed figures moving around an area marked off with police tape, which quickly segued to a police news conference. I followed the news crawl:
VICTIM IDENTIFIED AS AFGHAN SPECIAL FORCES VETERAN THOMAS LEWIS OF BRIXTON.
WE HAVE NO SUSPECTS IN CUSTODY AT THIS TIME.
ANYONE WITH INFORMATION IS ENCOURAGED TO CONTACT THE METROPOLITAN POLICE.
I turned to Quinn. “You think they know more than they’re saying?”
“Hell yeah. But my guess is they don’t know much more than we do, except how he died.”
“Like this.”
I made a gun of my hand and pointed it at my eye. Quinn turned away in annoyance. We didn’t talk again until our flight was called.