Nicola Griffith Read Online Free Page A

coffee.”
    “No. I just want to get home.” Her voice was listless. She handed me a thin box. “Her name and details are in there, too. She’s a bit old but otherwise she’s a very good match. From Immingham. Anyway, it’s the best I could do.”
    It was a small box. I rattled it dubiously. “Everything’s there?”
    Ruth nodded. “Though it’s not a full set of fingers. The corpse was missing thumb and index from her right hand, but then I remembered you were left-handed, so it shouldn’t matter too much.” She hesitated. “Lore, this has to be the last time.”
    I understood, of course. Between us, Spanner and I had done some pretty low things. Some of them to Ruth. I tucked the box into an inside pocket. “How have you been?”
    “We’re managing. I go back on days soon. I’ll be glad when I’ve finished with nights. I feel as though I haven’t seen Ellen for weeks. She’s just leaving as I get home.”
    I envied them even that. “When you’re back on the day shift it would be nice if you both came over for an evening.”
    “If you like.” Ruth was too tired to hide her indifference. She turned to go.
    “Ruth. . .” Maybe it was something in my voice, but Ruth stopped. “I mean it. I’d really like you to come. Just to talk. No favors. That other thing, the film. It’s not . . . it won’t. . .” I took a deep breath. “Things are different now. I’m not with Spanner anymore.”
    For the first time since she had walked out of the morgue gates, Ruth looked at me, really looked at me. I don’t know what she saw, but she nodded. “We’ll come. I’ll call you.”
    At the river-taxi wharf, it was too early for the usual tourist hubbub so I took my coffee to a private corner table. The sun was coming up behind me, slicking the black-paned privacy windows and newly pointed brickwork of renovated dockside buildings bloody orange, like overripe fruit. Copters buzzed and alighted like wasps.
    I slid open the box and took out the neatly printed flimsy.
    Bird, Sal. Female. Caucasian. Blood type A positive. DOB
. . . Twenty-five. Four years older than me. It could have been worse. And all the other details could be fixed. In time.
    The tiny black PIDA was in a sealed bag with a note attached in Ruth’s handwriting.
Already sterile.
Next to it was a plaskin pouch the size of a pink cockroach.
Frozen blood for DNA tests.
It did not feel cold. I slid the box open further, wondering if Ruth had forgotten the print molds, and then smiled.
    “Bless you, Ruth.” Inside, instead of the print molds I had expected, there were eight glistening plaskin finger gloves. Ready to wear. I could get started today. If Spanner would help.
             
    Spanner never got up until after noon. I went home and slept for four hours. I had bad dreams: sweating bodies, moving limbs, blood and plasthene. I woke up just before midday and stared at the angle of green-painted rafters over my bed. The room was long and narrow: bed at one end, under the rafter; matting in the middle, underneath the heavy old couch and spindly card table; larger table with gouged veneer at the other end, under the wide window. A ficus tree in a pot by the table. Beyond, sky.
    I had to walk through the tiny kitchenette to get to the bathroom. I almost banged my head on the rafter over the tub. As usual, I felt dislocated. It was odd, to wake up alone and nameless.
    Not for much longer.
    It was midafternoon by the time I got out to look for Spanner.
    Springbank, the road that had once groaned under a thousand rubber tires a minute, was now bobbled with gray vehicle ID sensors and laced with silvery slider rails that glistened like snail tracks in the late-September sunshine. It was the first day in two weeks I had not had to wear a coat. Foot traffic was heavy, and sliders hissed to a stop at almost every pole to pick up or drop off passengers. The occasional smaller, private car hummed and dodged impatiently around the tubelike sliders.
    The