Slow River

by Nicola Griffith

  I turned on the heat and lights and made some tea while she started on that. It was going to be a long night.

  When the information began to come through, I kept Magyar’s link in the top left corner while I scrolled through the data.

  The preliminary data from his last listed employer, EnSyTec, checked out. “It says he worked for these people nearly eleven years,” Magyar said as I sipped and read. “It looks kosher to me.”

  “How about the resume he gave them—does it match the one he gave when he applied for this job?”

  “I don’t know. All I could get immediately without bumping up a level was his performance records, which match what he gave us when he arrived.”

  “See if you can get the rest.”

  “It’s three in the morning.”

  “Not in Sarajevo.”

  Her picture box at the top of my screen went blank. I scrolled through the resume that had got Meisener the Hedon Road job: EnSyTec, eleven years; Work, Inc, a placement agency, for three; Piplex, a manufacturing plant, for six years before that. It just didn’t feel right. Meisener did not strike me as the kind of man to stay in one place for eleven years. For all his competence and outward cheer, he struck me as a person who would one day simply not show up for work. Rootless. But he said he was married, with children.

  I went back to the biographical information: Sarah Meisener, a chemist with a local government lab. Number listed. I called Magyar at Hedon Road and left a message. “When you get off the phone to Sarajevo, try calling Sarah Meisener.” I gave her the number, and went back to the list.

  I finished my tea and was debating between soup and toast when Magyar came back. “I wasn’t talking to Sarajevo,” she said. She looked pleased with herself. “It was Athens. Meisener’s ex-supervisor. ‘I didn’t think he would be working anymore,’ he said when I told him we were thinking of promoting Meisener to shift supervisor. ‘Is his heart better now, then?’ ‘Heart?’ I said, ‘are we talking about the same Meisener?’ ‘I know,’ he said, ‘built like a bull, doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with him.’ ‘A bull,’ I said, ‘yes, indeed.’ Apparently he was retired early.

  “Planned to go to Israel. The supervisor in Athens is making sure I get the full record. ‘Old Nathan deserves every chance.’ Best buddies, it seems.” She grinned. “Would you call that bandy-legged little man a bull?”

  “No.”

  “No. I think we’ve got him.”

  I wasn’t so sure. He could have just assumed an ID, the way I had. But I had been aiming for the long term, for something that would stand up for years, forever, if necessary. It could have happened. If I hadn’t met Magyar, if she hadn’t made me take a good look at myself, I could have been trapped at Hedon Road, as a drudge, for the rest of my life. My bones felt as though they were shrinking; the thought was appalling. Meisener, though, would only have been working for the short term. Four or five weeks. You got paid? Kinnis had asked. Nah. Timed it all wrong. But he had timed it perfectly: employers often did not check too rigorously until money had changed hands. Which meant that maybe Meisener, or whoever he was, had taken a shortcut. “Did you try his wife?”

  Magyar snorted. “At four in the morning? What would I say: Did Nathan get home all right?”

  “Just call, and hang up. Tell me what you get.”

  I decided on toast. Easier to eat at the screen. The smell of scorching bread reminded me of being five, the sun hot on the courtyard stones in Amsterdam, Tok shouting, How do you know it’s clean? How did anyone ever know anything was clean? I was no longer hungry, but I forced myself to eat one of the slices, with a thin spread of baba ghanouj. I wondered what Lucas Chen was doing, if he felt clean.

  The screen signaled that Magyar was calling. Her face was smooth; she was not happy. “She answered on the first ring. A cool blonde. Young. And the video pickup was fuzzed around the edges.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  Names on the Platinum list—people who gave more than seventy thousand a year, There, near the end of the list was G. van de Oest.

  Wind whistling along the sand outside the tent. Marley nodding seriously. “Greta is a much more powerful force in this company than most people realize. Your future might be smoother if you bore that in mind. ”

  And Tok, years earlier, telling me: “It was just getting interesting when Greta came on the net and kicked me out… she cut me out of those files clean as a whistle.”

  I waited outside the conservatory in Pearson Park. It was eleven in the morning. I had not slept at all. My face, drawn and gray as the clouds scudding overhead, was reflected in wavy lines by the slightly flawed glass. Magyar, when she finally arrived, did not look much better.

  It was warm in the conservatory, bright with bird noise. We were the only people there.

  “She must know as much about rival business families as she knows about the van de Oest operation,” I told Magyar. “Information is power.” Something Greta had learned from Katerine early on, no doubt. “And Greta would need to feel powerful.” Poor Greta, who always looked as though she was expecting something or someone to swoop upon her from around the corner.

  “You have to go to your family and tell them this.”

  I stared at a mynah bird, grooming its wing. Purple highlights reflected from the black feathers. “No.”

  “Yes. Greta has to be stopped.”

  “She knew,” I said, “all that time ago.” The bird’s beak was very orange. “She helped me.”

  “All she did was give you a lock!” Magyar, I realized, was protective of that seven-year-old child who had not been able to look after herself. I loved her for it.

  “But the lock stopped it. Greta stopped it.”

  “She didn’t help Stella.”

  The bird looked at me, cocking its head this way, then that. “Maybe she thought, I don’t know, that Katerine was unstoppable. If it happened to her early enough, and often enough-

  “Who knows what she thought? Who cares! You were hurt! She had you kidnapped, humiliated!”

  The bird, disturbed by the noise, flew up to the roof of its aviary. Greta had given me the lock that had saved me. “Maybe she didn’t know I was the one they’d take, maybe…” Of course she would have known. But they weren’t supposed to try and kill me. What had gone wrong?

  “And what about poor Lucas Chen?” I said nothing. “Lore.” She took me by both arms, above the elbow, tight. “Stop looking at the birds. Listen to yourself. Just listen. You’re making excuses for her. Abuse is never an excuse for tormenting others. Especially a sister. She has to be stopped. You have to talk to your family.”

  “I can’t.”

  Magyar let go of my arms, laid her hand along my cheek. “Lore, love, you can’t hide forever.”

  Why not? The mynah bird was flying this way and that, trying to And a way out. “I can’t go back. They’re too strong.” Katerine’s Lore, Oster’s Lore… They would break me to pieces again. “I’ll be the youngest again, the baby, the pawn…” I trailed off. She was looking at me oddly.

  “It wouldn’t be the same,” she said gently. “It couldn’t. Katerine would go to jail. Greta would go to jail.”

  I stared at her. They were my family.

  “Lore, you’ve had your life stolen away. You have a scar more than a foot long on your back. You think you killed someone—you suffered night after night of believing you took away a man’s life. Lucas Chen is probably scared for his life, right now. Stella is dead. You can’t go back.”

  It was a terrible litany. “No,” I said, and I didn’t know whether I meant No, I can’t go back or No, you’re wrong. I didn’t want to go back, but knowing that it was not there to return to was terrifying.

  “Tok. I could call Tok.” And then it would all be over. I could get rid of the false PIDA, get rid of poor, dead Sal Bird, let her finally rest in peace. I could reclaim my identity. Be Lore again. No more hiding, no more lying; no more dealing with Spanner except to buy
her a drink if she hit hard times. Move away from the tiny flat, the cramped bathroom where I banged my head every morning “What would happen to us?”

  “What would you want to happen?”

  “I wouldn’t see you every day at the plant. I’d be living…” I floundered.

  “Where? Where would you be living that I couldn’t see you if I wanted, or you couldn’t see me?”

  I had been about to say Ratnapida. But I could never live there again.

  “Getting yourself back doesn’t mean going back to everything the way it was. Or would you want to leave me behind like your tired old identity?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? You think I won’t be able to cope with the change? You think that just because I was brought up poor I wouldn’t be able to adjust? No? Good. Because I can. I always knew you weren’t who you said you were. At least now I know who you are. It might take me a while, and there might be some bumpy times, but I can adapt. Don’t throw me away.”

  She was looking at me. Her eyes were steady. I could see things reflected in them, too small to make out. The reflections seemed to be changing shape. Her eyes were wet.

  I held out my arms. She stepped into them. To my surprise, she was an inch or two shorter than me. We stepped back half a pace. I kissed her. She blinked and tears spilled. I kissed her again. Then she held me. We stood like that a long time, my face hidden against her shoulder, while the world changed, while the sodden weight of the last few years evaporated from my head, my shoulders, my calves, until my arms felt light enough to rise into the air of their own accord, as in those childhood games where a friend pins them to your side and you struggle to lift them, then the friend releases you, and the muscles remember the struggle, and the arms move away from your ribs as though floating on a tidal swell.

  “Look at me,” I said. “I am Frances Lorien van de Oest. I have a job. I have a place of my own. I have friends.” I knew who I was. Lore. And when I forgot or became confused, Magyar would know. “I have a future.”

  Magyar squeezed me tight, and released me. She wiped at her face, then grinned. “You also have lots of money.”

  The mynah bird screamed at us, but from close by, like a mother scolding her children.

  We walked around the pond. I was hungry but I didn’t want to leave the park. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone who wasn’t Magyar. And there were too many decisions to make.

  “You’re sure that nothing’s turned up on that body search?”

  “Sure. I checked again before I left to meet you.”

  “The records might be being withheld. Because my family’s involved.”

  “Who would know?”

  “Greta.” But she had given me a lock. We walked in silence, feet hitting the pavement at the same time, hips moving together. “I’ll go ahead anyway. Even without knowing. I can’t hide forever. I’ll call Tok first, and then my father. He could probably find out if the police are holding anything back.”

  “Do you want to tell him everything?”

  “I don’t want to hide anymore.”

  “Privacy isn’t always the same as hiding.”

  “I think it will be hard for me to tell the difference for a while.” We stepped over the gnarled roots that twisted over the pavement. It was the second time we had passed the tree. “Once I’m fairly sure I won’t be arrested for anything, I’ll reclaim my identity.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I don’t know. Depends if I’ve been declared legally dead.” I could have been dead. Because of Greta. Crablegs had tried to kill me with that nasal spray. I could have been a skeleton at the bottom of the river, along with all the tens of thousands who had died here since humankind had been able to swing a rock. But I knew Oster wouldn’t have had me declared dead. He wouldn’t want the publicity. “When Oster is here, when I’m sitting across from him, face-to-face, when I can smell him, see the wrinkles in his shirt, I’ll tell him about his wife, and Greta. I’ll give him time to get used to it before I go to the police.”

  “Not too much time.”

  “There’s Chen, I know.”

  We were going past the tree again. “When, then?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll tape a statement for the police, have it all ready to hand over. We’ll get them all: Katerine, Greta, Meisener, Crablegs. All the others.” I was shaking. “They have no right! Years they’ve been playing with people, as though we were just chess pieces. I don’t even think Greta knows that other people apart from her really exist. Thousands of people have suffered. Tens of thousands.” And she had suffered because of Katerine. As I nearly had. As I had.

  I wanted to see Katerine alone on a chair in a windowless room. I wanted her to weep. I wanted her eyes to turn red and sore. I wanted her to beg, to plead for some water, her contact lens case. “I want to see the color of her eyes.”

  “Who?”

  “My mother. I want to see her suffer.” No, it was more than that. “I want her to see me. I want her to look up at me and see me. I want to be able to look into her eyes and see myself reflected there. I want her to see that I see the world through my own eyes, and not hers. I want her to acknowledge me. See that I’m real, I exist. I’m grown, my own person. That I’m finally free to become who I might be.” I linked my arm through Magyar’s, pulled her to a halt. “Tomorrow. I promise. This time tomorrow.”

  “Tonight. Right now would be better.”

  “But tomorrow I’ll be ready. I’ll-”

  “Lore, if you wait for the right moment, you’ll wait forever. There is no perfect time. You just have to do it anyway. Things won’t be any better tomorrow.”

  “But what’s the hurry?” I had waited three years. “If it’s Lucas Chen you’re worried-”

  She made an impatient, chopping motion. “I’m sorry for what he’s going through, but it’s you I care about. Tell me honestly—will it be any easier to talk to your father tomorrow than today?”

  Me and Oster. I took a deep breath, let it out again. “No.”

  “Tonight, then.”

  I nodded reluctantly. “Tonight. But I’ll make the tape first. And after tonight’s shift… What?”

  “You’re doing it again. Not facing things. Tell me, why wait until after the shift?”

  “It’s my job…” But, of course, she was right. I would never work there again. There was no more Sal Bird, aged twenty-five. Done with, all done with. Tonight, during winter dark in this part of the world, I would call Ratnapida. A blaze of light, clear water. Limpid reflections. No more obscuring the truth. No more shadows and lies. Tonight.

  “Do you want me to come home with you?”

  “No. Tonight will be soon enough. I need some sleep. And I need to tape that statement. I’ll call you at the plant when… when… I’ll call you.”

  I held her again, for a long time. I could feel the shape of her through her coat and mine, the hard bone, pliant muscles. I wanted her with a hard, deep ache. Tonight.

  Chapter 26

  The next day in the tent passes slowly. Lore gets her breakfast, but long after her internal clock tells her it is early afternoon, there is still no lunch. She begins to worry. Why haven’t they fed her?

  Why feed someone you are going to kill?

  Thirty million. It isn’t much. She has no idea what the family’s total holdings are but she knows it adds up to tens of billions. Thirty million. She had requisitioned more than that herself for the Kirghizi project.

  It must be Oster. He must have found out that she and Tok know about Stella, know what he has done to her. Maybe he has already killed Tok, somehow. Maybe he is deliberately stalling negotiations so that her kidnappers will kill her, then no one will know what he has done. But how is he stopping Katerine from paying? Her mother is smarter than Oster.

  Lore shakes her head. She has to understand, has to work it out, find a way to make them pay.

  The afternoon ticks on. She does stomach crunches, leg lifts, push-ups, and stret
ches. She is hungry. For the first time in nearly two weeks she finds herself longing for one of the pills she has hidden under the tent. She takes out her nail, holds it, puts it back in the sleeping bag, takes it out again.

  The afternoon turns to evening. No supper.

  When her body tells her it is time to sleep, she isn’t tired, but she lies down in her sleeping bag because it makes her feel less naked. She holds the nail tightly and breathes slowly, evenly, trying to relax her muscles one by one, from the feet up.

  Bright light floods the tent from outside as someone rips open the flap. “Up. Now.” It is Fishface, but Lore hardly recognizes him, his voice is so harsh. “I said now.” He steps menacingly toward the sleeping bag and Lore wriggles out hastily, nail tucked in her left fist, out of sight. He grabs her arm. “We’re leaving.”

  “Did they pay?”

  He does not answer.

  Lore looks around her as they head across the old floor-boards she has only been able to feel with her fingertips. It is a barn, very old. Hundreds of years old, probably.

  Outside the night is cool and clear. The smell abruptly changes, and she knows she is in a northern European country—England, perhaps, or Ireland—and that the scents of garlic and sun permeating the inside of the barn are a trick. So much planning…

  She shivers as Fishface marches her across a cobbled yard toward a pair of headlights. Some sort of vehicle. Lore moves slowly, docilely: she is supposed to be drugged, and she needs to think.

  They are now only forty yards from the vehicle. It is an off-track van, the kind with doors that open at the back. The doors are open. She does not want to climb in.

  They are going to kill her, She is sure of it. Old farm equipment lines the stone walls of the yard. She can smell the rusting metal.

  They are almost at the van now. She can see someone inside, programming directions into the instrument panel. Crablegs. The floor of the van is covered in plasthene. To catch the blood? She maneuvers the nail into position in her fist.