Slow River

“He’s done plenty. Ignoring problems isn’t that far from creating them.”

“Yes, it is. Especially if he’s trying to fix things now.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand will not fix anything! And all it would have taken three years ago—three years ago!—was a single sentence. One sentence: ‘I won’t let your mother hurt you again.’ But he didn’t.”

“I don’t know whether he truly tried then or not. But I think he’s trying now. He’s trying to find you.”

“Well, I don’t want to be found.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m ashamed!” Because kittens should be round. Because still sometimes I felt as though I might cast three shadows in a bright light.

From down the corridor came the sound of voices. Some laughter. The sudden slush of a shower.

Magyar gave me a quick, hard hug. It was so fast I hardly realized what she was doing until she let go. “Just think about it. You can always phone in some anonymous information to the police. But you have to do something.”

“We’ll watch Meisener.”

The garden lay fallow. Lore only left the flat when Spa

She was sure she could create a short commercial at least as good as any of the ones she had seen. But she had no idea which were the most effective in terms of bringing in money.

After some thought, she accessed net archives, downloading charity commercials that were two or three years old. She analyzed them for the same trends she had spotted in the later adverts, then brought up the tax records of those organizations that were still alive enough to be filing.

“It will work,” Lore said, but Spa

“True.”

“Then all we need is a false account, and maybe twenty seconds break-in time.”

Spa

“We can get an account set up by getting Ruth’s help. She works at the morgue, remember.”

“I hadn’t forgotten. But she’s not likely to help us, not after the film.”

Lore swallowed. “Maybe if we explained…” And there was always that film, with the right head attached to the right body: there was always blackmail.

“And what about breaking into the net transmission? Ruth can’t help us there.”

“No.” Lore tried to smile. “Actually, I was hoping you would be able to think of a way to manage that.”

Spa

“How expensive?”

“I don’t know. A lot.”

“Five hundred? Ten thousand?”

“More.” Spa

“But we don’t know where-”

“I can always find the old foxes. How much do you think we could make?”

Lore thought about lying. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It depends how good my tape is. If I could count on ten seconds, say, then maybe… thirty thousand?”

Spa

Assuming we don’t get caught after the first, Lore thought, but said nothing. She was feeling odd, almost excited, a little scared. It might work, it might. This might be a way out. She was finding it hard to breathe.

Spa

Spa

Spa

She smiled, but Lore just cried harder. She had seen that half curl of the lip: Spa

After Lore had set out the cat’s food, she sat on the damp earth by the rookery she had made of broken bricks and lumps of concrete with the steel still stuck through it. The worst of winter was over. There were two snowdrops poking bravely from the scraggy grass. It had rained earlier; the earth smelled freshly turned. She felt utterly blank. She watched the sky, a beautiful, cold, clear blue that made her ache. It reminded her of the Netherlands, of being six, of being looked after, protected from the world.

A faint mewling brought her back to the present. It came from under the bushes. She moved her head very slowly. Slight movement. Something—several somethings—small. She stayed very still, trying to breathe quietly, evenly. Heard it again, this time two thin squeaks. Kittens.

Lore thought about the thin, pathetic thing she had buried just a few months ago, the kitten that had died of utter starvation. Nothing, probably, had improved for the feral mother, but she did not know the meaning of giving up. Giving up got you nowhere. Nowhere at all. She would keep trying, keep giving birth, until she had a soft, round kitten.

Meisener came in, talking to Cel, while I was wriggling into my ski

His slate. It would be so simple. If I dealt with Spa

“I don’t need to pretend. There’s a lot to do.”

“Would they notice if you uploaded Meisener’s records to me at home?”

“I could find a way to disguise it. What do you have in mind?”

“A records search. Between your official status and the things I’ve picked up in the last couple of years, we can learn a lot about Nathan Meisener.”

The flat was cold when I got home, but I opened a link to Magyar before I even turned on the heat so that she could start uploading Meisener’s information. I asked her to also call each of the previous employers he had listed, and get from them several things: a picture, a DNA scan if available, biographical data—age, height, family and so on—and the references and employers he had listed.

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.”