I was still staring at the piece of paper when Quinn walked out of the shower. He sank onto the bed, naked, toweling his head. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere. Just downstairs.”
I handed him the coffee I’d brought him, now lukewarm. I poured some whiskey into my mug, sipping it as I sat on the bed behind him. If I told him about the valknut and Tindra, he’d think I was crazy. I was crazy.
“Shit.” I crumpled the paper and tossed it across the room.
Quinn looked over at me, set aside his towel, and took a sip of coffee. “What is it, baby?”
“Just thinking.”
“You think too much.”
I trailed my fingers across his thigh, then buried my face in his shoulder. He put his mug aside and turned to wrap his arms around me. I stripped and lay next to him, breathing in his heat as we fucked, the scents of burnt coffee and sugar. The stubble on his face and scalp hid some of the scarifications, but not the ones between his eyes. I could feel them beneath my fingertips.
They mean I killed a man. I’d never asked how many.
We lay together after, Quinn snoring softly. I got up to take another shower. Despite the heat blasting from the radiator, I couldn’t get warm. When I returned to the bedroom, I found Quinn dressed and standing by the window, cracked open so he could smoke. His laptop sat on the table behind him.
I finished drying myself and pulled on my clothes. “Any news?”
“See for yourself,” he said without looking at me.
On the Daily Mirror home page was a photo of Tommy in uniform, dun-colored hills towering behind him. A red scarf was wrapped around his head in a loose turban.
POSSIBLE ISIS AGENT “WENT ON RAMPAGE” AT PEACEFUL RALLY
“ISIS?” I snorted. “This is a damn tabloid.”
“Keep reading,” said Quinn.
Thomas Lewis, 29, Brixton, died of injuries sustained after he attacked unarmed demonstrators at a peaceful rally organized by Saint George Heritage Foundation founder and Conservative MP Ronald Morton.
“I saw him get into an argument with a woman about a mobile. Then he charged a man out of nowhere,” recounted Angeline Bow of Beckton Park. Onlookers wrestled Lewis to the ground, but he escaped and fled into the crowd, where he was subdued by Metro Police. While the authorities have offered no motivation, Morton has stated that “this is clearly a terror incident, possibly linked to ISIS.” Lewis was employed as a private security guard for Swedish software magnate Tindra Bergstrand, who could not be reached for comment at this time.
I gazed at the picture, Tommy’s dark skin contrasting with the red scarf wrapped around his head. The Arabic letters tattooed on his neck were clearly visible. “He’s from the East End. He was in the military, for Christ’s sake! They don’t even mention he was a British soldier who served in Afghanistan.”
“Of course not. But this might buy us some time. The police will want to question his sister, especially if they can’t locate Tindra. They’ll advise her not to leave the country for a bit, which means she won’t show up here in the next twenty-four hours. Not that she’d want to.”
“Why?”
“Because of the funeral arrangements. She’s his sister, right? Any other family that you know of?” I shook my head. “So she’ll have to manage that before she goes anywhere. And if they run toxicology tests, which I’m sure they will, that can take a while, too.”
“Will the cops hold her?”
“Why would they? More likely she’ll start legal action against the police. She didn’t kill her brother—the cops did.”
“I meant because of Harold. Once they look at their cell-phone records, it’ll all be linked. Tindra buys the book from Harold, Harold’s murdered. Tindra’s bodyguard freaks out and dies. Tindra disappears.”
“I know. It’s a mess.” Quinn opened the window wider and leaned out, letting a blast of cold air into the stuffy room. “At some point your name is going to come up. When they question his sister, and when they question your boy Gryffin. Not if: when. And those two will have a physical description of me, even if they don’t have a name.”
He rubbed his scalp. I started pacing the cramped room, trying to think my way out of this.
“No one knows we left the UK,” I said at last. “No one knows we both have stolen passports. I can’t see Gryffin lying to the cops about me. But he wants that book, and I don’t think he’ll say anything that might screw up his chances of finding it. He’ll do what Lyla tells him to do, which will probably be to keep his mouth shut.”
“That’s good. It still means they both might end up on Kalkö. The bodyguard, anyway. She’ll figure out this guy Erik lives on the island. How long it takes for her to get here depends on how long the police detain her, and what arrangements she makes for her brother. I give us forty-eight hours, tops.”
He withdrew from the window, closed it, and leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
“I’ll wait till tomorrow night,” he said after a long silence. “I booked this place and the car for two days. After that I’m going back to Reykjavík. I want you to come with me,” he added, fixing me with that green-glass stare.
I bit down on a retort and looked away.