Norderby felt like a medieval-themed LARP where all the players had gone home. The walled city would have fit inside a football stadium. Timbered buildings with stone foundations, cobblestoned streets, a warren of arched passageways that led to shops selling tea, coffee, souvenirs, upscale housewares, designer clothing, blown glass, woolens. Lots and lots of woolens, all from Kalkö sheep, a heritage breed supposedly dating back to the island’s first settlers and known for producing wool that had a remarkable ability to resist water and cold. Their wool had its own advertising campaign. Nearly every shopwindow featured a beautifully composed photo of someone facing blizzard conditions—atop a cliff, on an empty beach, in the shadow of a pine forest—their only protection from the elements a bulky, neutral-tone knit sweater and knit cap.
I moved unsteadily, grateful for Quinn’s arm around my shoulders. The fact that I might have died barely registered. I felt detached from the notion, as though it was a pink thought bubble floating away from me. My body felt pretty much the same, something tethered to me that I could do without if the thread snapped.
Still, maybe Quinn was right; maybe I needed to eat. Most of the shops were shuttered until spring, so I was surprised by how many people were in the streets. If the island had only a few hundred year-round residents, most of them seemed to be in Norderby this afternoon. Couples walking dogs; young women carrying children; cyclists with baskets full of shopping bags. We passed a small grocery crowded with people filling net bags with bunches of turnips and carrots, bottles of coconut water and Fruktsoda. In the window of the police station, a marmalade cat watched passersby with impassive yellow eyes. Despite the cold and an occasional urgent flurry of snowflakes, nearly everyone eschewed anoraks or overcoats for cable-knit pullovers or cardigans. Most people ignored us. The few who didn’t stared with suspicion bordering on hostility.
“It’s The Stepford Wives, with sweaters,” I said as Quinn steered me down an alley too narrow for any vehicle larger than a bicycle.
“Those sweaters cost more than our airfare. The restaurant’s over here, I hope it’s open.”
It was: a small half-timbered building with diamond-paned windows and an immense oak door with iron hardware that wouldn’t have been out of place in Helm’s Deep. Inside, it smelled like a bakery. Fragrant steam billowed from an open kitchen; a few dozen people sat at trestle tables, hunched over plates or laptops. Geraniums filled the windows. The temperature differential between here and outside must have been fifty degrees. I immediately started to sweat.
We found a table in back with a view of the kitchen stove, a huge cast-iron antique surrounded by tattooed young cooks wearing yellow aprons. A waitress brought us a basket of flatbread and handed us menus in English. I didn’t look at mine. The smell of food made me sick.
“The kitchen is slow,” she said, apologizing. “One of the cooks is on vacation.”
“This place is famous for its saffron pancakes,” Quinn remarked as she walked off. “Good sausage, too.”
“I’m—”
“Stop.” He pushed the basket of flatbread toward me. “Eat.”
I picked up a piece of flatbread and began to break it into smaller and smaller pieces. Quinn ordered the lunch special for both of us. The place didn’t serve anything but beer or cider. Quinn got a beer. I got a pint of local cider that tasted more like ouzo than apples.
We sat without talking. In the pretty room around us, people chattered and took pictures of their food when it arrived. I set my camera on the table and stared at it, thinking of those cardboard boxes in the shed, skeins of blowflies circling the ceiling. Quinn finished his beer and ordered a second. The waitress returned, apologizing again for the slow kitchen before she hurried to another table.
Quinn took a swallow from his glass and set it down. “I’ll be back in a few.”
“Where you going?”
“Just sit. What’s that girl’s name again?”
“Tindra. Tindra Bergstrand.”
“Tindra Bergstrand,” he repeated. “Right back.”
He shrugged on his leather jacket and left. I finished my cider and ordered another, watched one of the cooks pour brilliant orange batter into a skillet. The stove’s gas flames leaped in their ring burner, a fiery blue eye. After a while, Quinn returned. I picked up a fragment of flatbread and pretended to eat it.
“Okay.” He sat and leaned across the table toward me, his voice dropping. “So I went by the grocery store—the post office is inside. Said I was looking for a guy named Bergstrand. I told the woman I did some carpentry for him ten years ago, I was back in the area for a while and wanted to find out if he needed any more work. Turns out he’s dead.”
“Dead?” I stared at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
“What I said. Four years ago. Dropped dead in the middle of that big supermarket just out of town, she thinks it was a cerebral hemorrhage. Nobody was upset, she said. Turns out he wasn’t very popular.”
“Because he was a neo-Nazi?”
“She didn’t say. Just that he ‘was not a nice man whatsoever.’ Whatsoever that means.”
He sipped his beer. I crumbled a bit of flatbread between my fingers. “But then what about his Herla podcast?”
“What about it?”
“Their site said he does a podcast every week—they had a picture of him, he looks just like Tindra.”
“They could be running old programs, or someone else could be doing it now.”
“Then why didn’t they change the photo?”
“Who knows? Maybe he has a big following and they want to capitalize on that. The show doesn’t use his name—it’s Valî’s Hour. Maybe it’s a rotating thing. Maybe there’s always a new Valî, like there’s always a new Doctor Who. Or maybe they just never bothered to take the photo down. Do we even know the show still exists?”
“It does. Those guys Erik was talking to, they listen to it. One of them asked him about a book that was mentioned on it last week.”
“So maybe Erik’s the new Valî.”
“But then why wouldn’t he have his own photo on the website?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want his employer to find out he’s a white supremacist. It could be anything. The deal is, the guy you’re looking for ain’t here.”
I glanced up as the waitress set a steaming plate in front of each of us. She smiled and left, and I turned back to Quinn. “So now what?”
“Now we eat.” He picked up his fork and pointed it at me. “Mangia.”
I managed a few bites of pancake, rearranging what was left so it looked like I’d eaten more. Quinn glared at me, but when he’d finished his own food he finally sighed, defeated, and reached across the table for my plate. As he scarfed down my lunch, I asked, “Did you find out anything about the other guy? Erik?”
“Like what?”
“Like his relationship to Tindra. Like whether he was the guy who raped her.”
Quinn chewed a mouthful of pancake and swallowed it. “No, Cass. I didn’t ask the postmistress if she knew anything about the local rapist.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Who’s laughing?” Quinn dropped his fork onto his plate. “This is a wild-goose chase, Cass.”
“I told you, I don’t care. I’m going back there. If there’s a farm and outbuildings, there has to be a house, too.”
“And what? You’re going to ask them if they’ve kidnapped someone?”
“I’m going to get inside and see what I can find.”
Quinn laughed. “Really? How?”
“I don’t know. Cause a diversion. You lure them outside and I’ll go in. You could garrote one of their sheep.”
“Now you’re being an idiot.”
“Well, something to distract them.”
“Forget it.” He wiped a line of sweat from his forehead. “Let’s call it a day.”
“No. I’m going back.”
“I’m not driving you.”
“Then I’ll walk.”
I got up, pulled on my leather jacket, and headed outside.
Overhead the sky had deepened to violet, turning the cobblestoned alley into a shadowy passage lit by glowing windows. I started back toward the main street, my head down. Several people passed me, talking eagerly in Swedish. A young woman laughed and I looked up quickly. She had dark hair, a wide mouth, sly intelligent eyes.
But of course it wasn’t Tindra. Would I have even known if it had been? I’d never heard her laugh. I’d spent barely a quarter hour with her in a dimly lit garage, listening to her ravings about a smartphone app and the rare book that had been stolen from her, a book I knew I’d never track down, a book I was finding it increasingly hard to believe even existed. Maybe I really had imagined it, strung out on basement crank. Maybe Quinn hadn’t pounded my heart hard enough. If Tindra was dead, maybe I was, too.
And even if she wasn’t dead, even if I wasn’t dead, I’d still never find her. And why should that matter so much? I swiped the hair from my eyes and thought of her hunched on the floor of the garage, hugging her dog, her desolation so powerful that even now I could taste it, bitter as the residue on my lips and tongue.
What must it have been like, to be a child assaulted by a family friend, to be betrayed by your own father, to strike out on your own when you were only fourteen? How did someone come back from that? Because, damaged as she was, and young as she’d been, Tindra had come back. I stared at the ground, my steel-tipped boots clacking against the cobblestones, and kept walking.