We picked our way down the ragged slope of Carn Scrija. Above us, the wind shrieked as it tore up from the moor and over the black crags and desiccated vegetation, nearly drowning out the voices of Adrian and Krishna.
“Don’t you fucking talk to me! You’re a fucking pervo liar!”
Sam and I kept a safe distance behind them. She pulled my leather jacket tightly around her against the cold. I grasped the sleeve loosely in one hand and the pistol tightly in the other. I had no intention of using it. But, until I was miles from here, I wasn’t taking any chances.
On the western edge of the world, a ridge of cloud glowed as though a monstrous bonfire burned just below the horizon. Frigid wind wailed down from the tor, sending up vortices of dead bracken and grit. I glanced up, shivering, at Carn Scrija black against the indigo sky, and wondered how long it would keep its secrets.
By the time we reached Kethelwite Farm, dusk had given way to dark. The house was lost in shadow, but I glimpsed a light in the back corner of the barn, where the makeshift editing room was, and I thought I could hear the steady whir of the Steenbeck’s motor.
“She’ll be in there all night,” said Sam. “I told her, we should get a proper mobile or laptop.”
“Maybe she’ll change her mind now,” I said.
I marched the others to the Land Rover. When we reached it, I turned to Adrian. “Give your keys to Sam.”
He hesitated, dug a hand into his pocket, and tossed them to her. I turned to Krishna huddled beside her father in her hoodie, face raw from tears and the relentless wind. She stared at me balefully, and I shook my head.
“Don’t be a victim,” I said. “It’s fucked up, but you’ll get over it. Keep singing—you got a voice in a million.”
I took her by the shoulder. She flinched, and I kissed her cheek.
“That’s for nothing,” I said. “Now go do something.”
I turned to Adrian. “You lied to me about everything else. What about Quinn?”
For a long moment he was silent. Then he pulled out his mobile, tapped the screen, and held it out to me. “He texted me this a few hours before you came to the squat.”
There were two words on the glowing screen: rotherhithe darwin.
My mouth went dry. “‘Rotherhithe darwin’—what does that mean?”
“I don’t know. The three hundred quid was for keeping an eye out for you till he got back. He said he’d let me know if he needed to get a message to you.”
Adrian cocked his head, his deep-set eyes fixed on mine. “Something was up. I think he knew that. There someone in Rotherhithe with a grudge against him?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Probably.”
But all I felt was elated. I looked down at Sam and pointed at the Rover. “Get in.”
She scrambled into the passenger seat as Adrian watched grimly. I closed the door after her and slid into the driver’s seat, rolling down the window so I could at least fire a warning shot into the air if anyone made a move to stop me. No one did.
“What about Sam?” called Adrian.
“Sam will be fine,” I said.
I put the key into the starter and pressed the ignition, praying the starter would turn over. When the engine gave a low rumble I quickly put it into gear, backed up, then shifted into second. The Rover lurched over the ground in a spume of gravel and mud.
Sam rolled down her window and leaned out to stare back at the others. As we jounced down the rutted drive, a clear high voice rang out behind us, no longer plaintive or yearning but defiant: the last verse of Poppy’s song, the verse that played over Thanatrope’s end credits.
“The wind, the wind, the wind blows low
It calls your name, but now you know
There’s no safe house, nowhere to go
There was never a Golden City.”
I looked into the rearview mirror and saw Krishna standing in the middle of the muddy yard, fists raised in anger, or maybe triumph.
“Where we going?” Sam asked as the farmstead disappeared from sight. Her lightning-bolt backpack was in her lap, and I saw how tightly she held it. She looked excited and wistful, and slightly scared.
“I’m going to Penzance.”
“I thought it was London.”
“Gotta get a train first. Or a bus, if the rail lines are still down.”
We drove in silence for several minutes. I continued to glance behind us, but saw no sign of pursuit. When we reached the open moor I hit the gas, and we arrowed toward the main road. As we approached the rickety wooden bridge, I yanked the wheel and followed the stream for a hundred yards, before stopping to let the engine idle.
I removed Mallo’s mobile phone from my camera bag, stomped on it with my boot heel, and threw the remnants into the stream. Then I slipped the pistol into the bag, took out the Swedish passport, and stared at the photo of Dagney Ahlstrand.
With my hair cut short and dyed black, whatever resemblance there had been between us was gone. I dropped the passport back into the overstuffed bag, and for a moment I gazed at my camera, nestled alongside Poppy’s Mortensen book. I set the bag aside, tapped the accelerator, and steered the Rover into a U-turn.
Before us, the moor fell away into yet another ancient field system, stone walls and hedgerows black against the gray sweep of pastures and, beyond, a ribbon of tarmac that gleamed faintly beneath the stars. I downshifted, and the Rover abruptly jolted to a halt. I looked at Sam.
“That the road to Penzance?” She nodded. “Which way?”
She pointed, and I sighed. “This is where we part company, kid.”
Sam stared at me, uncomprehending. “You said—”
“I didn’t say anything. Now listen.”
I reached for my bag, opened it once more, and pulled out my Konica. For a whole minute I held it, turning it over to feel its familiar weight, the chrome hardware cool beneath my fingertips. I drew it to my face, pressed it against my forehead. Then I turned and handed it to Sam.
“I want you to keep this for me. It’s heavy, and I need to travel light.”
She looked at the camera, her eyes like saucers, then at me. “But it’s yours! I don’t even know how to use it.”
“Do you want to know how to use it?”
“Yes!” She clutched the camera to her bony chest, a wing of black hair slashing across her cheek. I smiled.
“Okay. You’re real smart, right? Well, there’re books and all kinds of stuff online that’ll teach you how that Konica works. Your grandfather, he was a great cameraman. Probably he should’ve stuck with that. But there’s plenty of space in Tamsin’s barn for a darkroom. Here’s a roll of film—Tri-X. That’s black-and-white film. Very forgiving—you can trust me on that.”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t trust myself to look at the camera again, so I gazed into Sam’s uptilted black eyes. “You want to be a shaman? Work magic and shit like that?” I tapped the Konica’s lens cap. “All in here. And wait—”
I pulled out the copy of Mortensen’s Monsters and Madonnas. “This belonged to the person who gave me that thaumatrope. You’ve still got that, right?”
Sam nodded eagerly, stuck her hand down her shirt, and pulled out the bone disc on its rawhide cord. “Yeah, it’s right here.”
“Good. Hang onto that. It’ll bring you luck.” I pulled out my own thaumatrope, holding it up so that the eye was fixed on Sam. “Me, too, maybe. And one last thing.”
I pointed at my leather jacket. “I need that back.”
Reluctantly, Sam pulled it off and handed it to me. I gave her Bruno’s overcoat, which swallowed her in its folds.
“Wait,” I said. “This, too—”
I reached into the pocket of my jeans, and handed her two business cards: Ellen Connor’s, and the one for the curator at the British Museum. “Someday, you might want to get in touch with somebody about what you showed me back there in the fogou. The one for the British Museum’s legit. The other one, not so much. But there might be money in it for you, so keep them to yourself. Now…”
I leaned over to open her door. “This is your stop. I assume you know your way home?”
“Yeah, what d’you think?” I saw a glimmer of annoyance in her dark gaze, but it melted away immediately as she looked at the Konica. “What will you do without your camera?”
“A guy named Weegee used to say that a camera’s like a gun. Well, now I have a gun. This, too.” I pulled out Poppy’s mobile. “Every idiot on the planet uses one of these. I’m gonna give it a try—how hard could it be?”
I waited as she stuffed the camera and the Mortensen book into her pack, then pointed at the open door of the Land Rover. “Okay, kid—gotta fade to black. Tell your dad I’ll leave his car in the parking lot by the train station.”
“Where are you going?” she asked as she hopped out into the night.
“To find an old friend.” I waited for her to step away from the Rover, then gunned the engine. “See you on the flip side, Sam. Everything that rises must converge. When you’re ready to use that camera, don’t forget to remove the lens cap.”
I rolled down my window and stuck my hand out in farewell as I pulled off. When I looked into the rearview mirror, I saw her gangly figure black against the star-scattered sky, one arm raised high as she waved frantically and called after me. But the wind took her voice, tossing it back into the night, and I didn’t hear what she said.
When I reached the main road, I slowed the Rover so that I could fish the bottle of Vyvanse from my bag. I took four pills and turned south. Behind me reared the moor and ragged tors of West Penwith, dark and endless as the sky itself. Before me the road wound past ancient fields and sleeping farmsteads, standing stones and abandoned mines, toward the coast and Penzance and, eventually, London. I had no idea where Quinn was, or even if he was still alive. Based on everything I knew about him, the odds weren’t good.
But for once in my life, I wanted to bet against the odds. Night fell fast here: I shifted into high gear, kept my eyes on the dark road, and headed east to meet the sun.