Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) (24 page)

“What the hell is she doing here? Who are you?”

“Einar.” Galdur’s deep rumble echoed beside me. “Einar, you must leave here now.”

“Leave?” Einar kicked the door shut, then stepped over Quinn, clutching a gun with both hands. “No, Jonas—”

Galdur turned swiftly. “Pétur, go—”

“Nei.”
Einar grabbed Pétur and pulled him to his side, jamming the gun against his temple. “Move, Jonas! I will kill him!”

I backed across the dim room until I bumped against the stone altar. Galdur stood his ground, Einar screaming at him in Icelandic until Pétur gasped, “For Christ’s sake, Galdur!”

“What are you doing, Einar?” Galdur spoke quietly as he stepped toward the couch. “Why are you here? Do you need money? You know I have no money.”

“Shut up!” Einar turned to me, his eyes huge. Blood seeped from his mouth; the hand grasping the gun trembled as though palsied. “How are you alive?” He sounded terrified.

“I will kill you,” Galdur said calmly.

“No. No, no, Jonas, no you won’t.” Einar spoke as though comforting a child. He hugged Pétur to him and slid the gun’s barrel into the boy’s ear. “You’ll have a lot of company.”

I crouched beside the cairn and its bizarre offerings—Viking artifacts, antique camera, sunstone, cell phone. Reykjavík CSI would have fun with this one.

“What are you doing?” Einar edged toward me, dragging Pétur with him. I grabbed the cell phone and he laughed. “Yes, please, call 112! Or take a picture!”

I leaned away from the cairn and held the phone at arm’s length. Across the room, I saw Quinn lying on the floor, head turned to stare at me. In the near-darkness he was the only thing I could see clearly, faint light pooling on that broken face with its corpselike grin, his bruised eyes inseparable from the shadows.

It is our gaze that keeps them alive.

I forced myself to look away. I opened the cell phone and pointed it at the violet iris in the center of the Speed Graphic’s silver eye. I turned my head, squeezed my eyes shut, and pressed Call.

Within each of those old flashbulbs is an entire hidden universe. A wire filament coated with priming chemical, surrounded by shreds of magnesium or aluminum foil or wire, all poised within the pure oxygen that replaces air before the bulb is finally sealed. Current flows from the battery to the filament and ignites the foil, causing a miniature combustion, the magnesium or aluminum burning at the white-hot temperature that releases half a million lumens. Another heat source or spark can sometimes set it off, if you’re not careful; even something as innocuous as a cell phone.

And that combustion is powerful enough for the bulb to explode. In an intact bulb, a protective lacquer coating keeps this from happening. Some bulbs were even manufactured so that they’d change color to indicate they’d been damaged and were therefore too dangerous to use.

Like this one.

I heard a click, a thump, Pétur’s strangled cry. The room erupted into a blossoming, blinding radiance magnified by the sunstone. Splintered glass flew everywhere, as though a demonic hive had been disturbed. Shading my eyes, I dove across the cairn and crashed against Einar. He fell with a shout. There was an echoing retort, a second burst of light, as I was thrown aside. I clapped my hand to my neck, felt blood seeping through my fingers, and pried out a tiny shard of glass.

“Are you all right?” I nodded as Pétur helped me to my feet. He pointed at the swinging kerosene lantern behind us. “That was lucky; it didn’t break.”

I looked around for Quinn. He’d managed to pull himself up and leaned against the door, staring, dazed, at the shadowy figure that towered above Einar’s prostrate form.

“I swear, it was a mistake.” Einar tried to stand, and Galdur kicked him. “Please, Jonas, you must listen—Jonas, I am begging you—”

Galdur’s topaz eyes glittered as he stared at his brother, unblinking.

“Jonas is not here,” he said. He turned, and I froze as he fixed that terrible gaze on me. “Strip him, then bind him,” he commanded, indicating Einar, then raised his hand so that I could see he held the gun. “Now.”

I scrabbled around the room, searching for a rope, until Galdur shouted angrily and tossed something at me—the jumper cables. He turned to yell at Pétur. “Help her!”

Pétur blanched. “What?”

“Do as I say.”

I grabbed Pétur. “Better listen to him,” I hissed. Einar fought us, screaming, and Galdur stooped to grab him by the hair.

“You are a craven animal,” he said, and slammed his brother’s head against the floor. “You have shamed your family and your country. You are a coward and a thief who has stolen so that your own people now go hungry.”

“You’re insane,” Einar gasped. “You know I lost everything! I’m your fucking brother.”

“I have no brother.”

Galdur stepped back. After Pétur and I finally managed to tug off Einar’s clothes, Galdur turned his brother’s pockets inside out. He held up one set of car keys and then another and pocketed both, along with a thick leather wallet and a passport. Einar sprawled naked on the floor between us. His skin was white and slack, creased with red where he’d worn pants a size too small, his toes mashed-looking from the expensive leather shoes that had provided no protection from the snow and sleet.

I glanced at Pétur. He was pale, his expression a grim, younger reflection of Galdur’s, cold and implacable as the stars. I fumbled with the jumper cables, and at last managed to tie a noose around Einar’s hands. I tightened this and got unsteadily to my feet. Galdur picked up his brother’s bespoke dress shirt, pulling the collar taut to read the label.

“How much did this cost?” Einar didn’t respond. Galdur tore the shirt into strips and handed one to me. “This animal has lost the power of speech. Bind his mouth.”

When I was finished, Galdur dragged Einar to his feet and pushed him past Quinn, toward the door. “Pétur. Bring the lantern. You, Cassandra—” He pointed at my camera. “And you, Varsler—”

He turned to Quinn. “I will need you again as well. All of you, come.”

He strode outside, hauling Einar with him. I grabbed my coat, found a parka hanging on the wall and handed it to Quinn, then looked at Pétur. “Varsler—what does that mean?”

“Shrike.” Pétur set down the lantern and pulled on his coat. He no longer looked dazed, more like someone who’d decided maybe the Kool-Aid didn’t taste so bad after all. “The butcher bird, which impales other birds on thorn trees.”

He zipped his parka, following Galdur into the snow. I glanced at Quinn beside me. “Are you okay? Can you do this?”

“Do I have a fucking choice?”

He walked haltingly, the two of us stepping into a trail of footprints that led away from the Quonset hut and into the darkness, toward the eerie columns of steam that rose above the horizon. I saw Quinn’s Cherokee pulled behind the Econoline, its doors hanging open.

“What happened?” I asked in a low voice.

Quinn tugged at his parka’s hood and grabbed my hand. When he spoke, flecks of frozen blood mingled with the snow around his face, silver and black. “I went to Kolaportið, but Baldur never showed up. He didn’t answer his phone. No one there had seen him. I must’ve talked to a hundred people. No one had seen him all day. And you know, he’s not a guy who’s easy to miss.

“Then I got a call that they’d found him. He’d been murdered. Cops found some kind of old whale-oil lantern; whoever did it broke the chimney and just sawed away at his throat with a piece of glass.”

His eyes filled. “No one would hurt Baldur. It makes no fucking sense. I drove to the shop, but you were gone, Brynja was gone. All I could think of was that text message we got from Anton, about Galdur; I thought Galdur must’ve totally gone off the deep end. So I started driving here; I was here once before, years ago. And of course I had no clue what happened to you; I thought you must be with Brynja and the cops. I followed Highway 35 and kept going, turned off onto the track in the highlands. After a couple hours I see headlights coming at me. I thought it was a snowmobile. Car passes me; I don’t get a good look at it in the snow. Next thing I know the car does a one-eighty. I look in my rearview mirror and there’s a fucking Range Rover wailing up behind me, and then it’s ramming me. I’m trying to grab my gun out of the glove box. The Range Rover slams the Jeep and it skids into a ravine. Range Rover comes right after me, only it ends up on its roof. Then someone’s dragging me through the snow, and it’s fucking Einar Broddursson. He’s screaming at me, ‘What are you doing here?’ Like I could ask you the same goddamn thing, asshole.”

He spat, and a clot of blood bloomed on the snow at his feet. “Anton told him about you and those photos, Cassie. In Helsinki, before Einar killed him. I got the whole story. He was still in touch with Anton; they had various investments. Anton let something slip about the photos and some deal with Ilkka. And you. That’s why Einar was dogging you: He saw you at Viva Las Vegas and then Kolaportið; he thought you were tailing him. Which would have been easy. He was so fucking sloppy. If I’d done that job for Anton, he would’ve fired me. Anyway, I’m a little shook up from the accident, so when Einar comes crawling out of his car like a spider, he takes me down in a heartbeat. Grabs my gun, pistol-whips me. Next thing I know, I’m here.” He shook his head in disgust. “A fucking banker. Note that his Range Rover is still in that ravine.”

“Why do they call you Varsler?”

“Because of the work I did for Anton.” He looked away. “It was business, Cass. And it was a long time ago. Anton knew a lot of guys in Moscow. Same syndicate he fixed Einar up with, back when his bank started looking for new investment opportunities. Trust me, none of these were people you’d invite for dinner.”

“Were they the same people Ilkka photographed?”

“No. That was Galdur’s thing, and Ilkka’s. Another one of their private rituals. I know nothing about any of that shit.”

He fell silent. A golden blister bulged above the serrated ridge of mountains to the east, moonrise above the waste of ice and charred stone. Vortices of snow leapt from the frozen ground to accompany us, uncanny escorts that would suddenly collapse into glittering clouds blown away by the wind. In the near distance, two black figures materialized from the smoke, a third shadow suspended between them.

“Why would Einar kill Baldur?”

“I have no fucking idea. Maybe he wanted to frame me.”

“‘Help Galdur,’” I said. “It meant we should help him. It wasn’t a warning.”

“No.” Quinn stared at the three forms silhouetted in the moonlight, his expression bleak. “But I gotta tell you, right now I don’t think Galdur needs a lot of help.”

A ledge of cloud obscured the moon, save for a shining rift that ran parallel with the horizon and glowed astral white. Below this, columns of steam jetted into the air. We were now close enough that I could see a variegated network of pools within rocky clefts, some big enough to swallow a house, others so small I could have jumped across them.

Not that I’d want to try. Huge bubbles and glistening froth broke the surface, which simmered as though something vast and angry breathed beneath. The falling snow evaporated into wisps of steam sucked into the boiling columns that erupted from the largest pools. It all had a rich mineral smell that, weirdly, made my mouth water—not just sulfur but charcoal, copper, salt, the hot reek of the Earth’s own blood spurting up everywhere around us.

I stopped to crouch beside a trickle of water that emerged from a thumb-size cleft in the rock. Iridescent mud surrounded it, slicks of acid green and cobalt and cadmium yellow, colors I’d never seen before in the natural world. But of course this is where pigments come from, disgorged from the center of the planet to cool into vermilion and lapis lazuli. I held my hand above the fuming vent, gingerly dipped my finger into the water, and snatched it back.

“Shit.” I straightened, sucking on my fingertip, and held it out to Quinn. It had already blistered.

“You never learn,” he said.

He looked to where the others had stopped at the edge of a pool, its far shore lost in the biochemical haze. Einar was on his knees, head weaving blindly back and forth as Galdur stared into the mist. Pétur glanced at us furtively. I suspected that, in the future, Reykjavík’s nightlife was going to seem very dull to him.

“Quinn.” Galdur’s voice echoed above the susurrus of boiling springs. “Come here. And you, Cassandra.”

Beneath my boots the soft ground gave off heat: It was like walking across a giant body. Galdur was speaking to Pétur in a low voice. As we drew alongside them he glanced at us and nodded, then reached down to grasp Einar by the arm.

“Stand up,” he commanded. He looked at Pétur. “Remember, unlike this one, you are a man,” he said, and turned to me. “I am not certain what you are. But—” He pointed at my eyes, then at the Konica slung around my neck. “Use them.”

I nodded, grabbed my flash from my pocket, and screwed it on; I took a step back, praying the steam wouldn’t cloud my lens, and popped the lens cap. Pétur stepped beside Einar and grabbed one end of the jumper cable, pulling it until Einar stood upright. Galdur reached into his pocket and withdrew a bright coil—the broken guitar string. He unwound it, several feet of 11-gauge stainless steel.

You need big hands to control a string that size. Galdur had them. So did Quinn. Galdur bowed his head slightly at Quinn, his long hair falling forward to expose a tattoo on the back of his neck: three skeletal hands, a Möbius loop where past, present, future clutched one another in a death grip. He handed the guitar string to Quinn.

“When I tell you,” said Galdur.

He removed his anorak and flannel shirt, tossed them a safe distance from the boiling pool. He let his head fall back and gazed up into the sky, an opening in the roil of steam and cloud where a swath of stars appeared, at their center the brilliant triad of Orion’s belt.

“Baldur Enriksson. Anton Bredahl. Suri Kulmala…” Galdur turned, his tear-streaked face still lifted to the sky, and shouted a final name. “Ilkka Kaltunnen.”

He raised his clenched fist and grasped it with his right hand and began to sing, the words unrecognizable but their meaning clear: a litany of grief and rage and longing, his deep voice rising to a wail of despair and fading to a hoarse rattle, before it swelled once more to join the echoes that rang from the mountain peaks, an unseen host of voices mourning, then shouting in triumph as Galdur drew his hands apart and raised them to the sky.