Slow River

And breathing it in, sucking it down, tumbling backward out of, the van while it’s still moving is a rite of passage. She could have died. She should have died. She moves from one life, from Frances Lorien van de Oest, to another, arriving—as all newborns do—naked and covered in blood.

Chapter 27

I set the Hammex 20 up on its tripod and sat opposite, in the chair beneath the window. The camera lens was like a cold fish eye, unblinking. I stared at it, forgetting what I was supposed to say. The reflection of a bird flying past my window flashed in the glass eye and made me jump.

I cleared my throat. “When I was seven, someone tried to sexually abuse me. I think it was my mother…”

I talked for hours, occasionally sipping water from the glass next to me. I told the camera about Greta helping with the lock, about Stella killing herself, about Tok calling me in Uruguay. I told the camera everything I could remember about my kidnap; about Fishface and Crablegs and the tent; how they had known I was allergic to spray-injector drugs; what they had said and how they had said it. I talked about the nail.

When I found I was talking at great length about the qualities of the nail—how it smelled, how it felt in my hand, how big it was—I turned the camera off, used the bathroom, made myself some tea.

When I resumed, I was much more terse. “So when they took me outside, I thought they were going to kill me. I tried to escape. In the course of that escape attempt, one—the one I called Fishface—was seriously hurt. Then I was bundled up into a van.” I described the van as well as I could. “Crablegs threatened to kill me. He tried, with some kind of nasal spray. I got away. I was hurt, naked, alone. I was helped by a stranger.”

That’s what Spanner still was: a stranger. One with a dangerous smile and skillful hands. I wondered what she was doing, right now. I wondered if someone was hurting her for money. It was getting dark outside. The sun went down early on winter afternoons.

“I illegally took the PIDA from the corpse of a woman called Sal Bird, who had died, I was told, in a swimming accident in Immingham. I worked at Hedon Road Waste-water Treatment Plant.” I gave my address and phone number. I explained about the sabotage; about Meisener; about Montex and the van de Oest corporation and Greta. “I think Lucas Chen has been abducted by the same persons as myself three years ago.”

I thought about saying more, but there wasn’t any point. This was only to give them enough to start with while I was. dealing with my family and dodging the glare of publicity. No doubt I would spend hours closeted in some grim-looking police station while being politely interviewed by the officer or officers in charge. For all that I had done, I had never seen the inside of a police station. The idea frightened me.

On the other side of the window, neon in shopwindows and the sodium of streetlights were blinking on. The flat was gray and shadowy beyond the camera flood. I should really stand up and make some calls: tell Ruth and Ellen the truth before the net caught the story; let Tom know that the building would be swarming by this time tomorrow. Maybe he had a relative he could stay with for a day or two.

I just sat there, hands and feet getting cold, watching the camera light grow more sharp-edged as the shadows in the flat turned from gray to black.

* * *

It was spring again. Lore had been prostituting her body for more than a year. All that money. She lay there for a long time, stroking the quilt, dunking, finally admitting to herself what she had known, on some level, all along. That evening, as they were preparing to go out to meet more customers, Lore sat down on the rim of the bathtub.

“How much does it cost?”

“Hmm?” Spanner was facing the mirror. She continued to brush her hair, but Lore knew Spanner was watching her.

“The drug. How much does it cost?” Spanner paused in midstroke, then shrugged. “What does it matter? We have enough money.”

“We’ve been earning an average of six thousand a week for more than a year. That’s more than three hundred thousand-”

“I can count.”

“-and where has it gone?” Lore stood up, took the hairbrush from Spanner’s hand, and shook it in her face. “I want your attention, and I want the truth. Why, exactly, have we been selling our bodies for the last year?”

“To earn-”

“The truth!”

“That is the-”