Exposure (33 page)

Suddenly the most appalling pain sliced through the wires attached to her and Helene screamed. She thought she was having a heart attack as a band of pain wrapped itself around her chest. The lie-detector, unmasked, clearly had another, darker purpose.

“We really need to talk about trust, Ms La Borde,” continued the voice almost conversationally. “We need to be able to trust your answers and right now, I have to say you’re making that difficult.”

Helene was still gasping with pain.

“ ‘The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable’,” said the voice. “Another fucking liberal, just like you, said those words. But this country stays stable because of economics: because of trust in the machinery of government. You’ve been trying to play in a game where you don’t understand the rules. Well, the rules are going to be explained to you very carefully, but for now you’re going to tell me everything you know – and everything you think you know, aren’t you?”

The pain shot through her again and Helene’s scream burst out. Something inside her broke and all her defiance fell away, fell into the chasm she had sensed before her but could not see.

“Alright, I’ll tell you! Please don’t – I can’t take it! I’ll tell you everything,” she cried.

“I know you will,” said the voice.

Helene told the voice about Bill Bailey, about Kazuma and about Hassan Ali. She explained how she’d followed the thread of Wally Manfred to the bunker. But she didn’t mention what she’d found out about Barbara Manfred or that she knew Hank’s name – or what the Gene Genies had been planning.

“And that’s everything, I swear it,” she gasped. “If Charlie has another name, I don’t know what it is: both Bill Bailey and Kazuma knew him as ‘Charlie’ so that’s all I can tell you.”

By now Helene was pleading.

“We’ll see,” said the voice, once more unemotional.

The pain came again, fast and hot.

Helene screamed again. Then she lost control of her bodily functions: she wept as the smell of urine soaking through her jeans filled the room.

“God!” said the voice in a tone of disgust. “Take this bitch away and clean her up.”

Helene’s legs crumbled as she was dragged from the room. Somewhere nearby she was laid down on a sloping table, something like a dentist’s chair, but hard and cold. A piece of cloth was placed over her mouth and water cascaded down, icy cold, making her gag.

Water forced itself into her mouth and nose and lungs. Helene desperately tried to turn her head but she was held too firmly. She was coughing, choking, gasping for air.

You’re drowning, her body said. Fight, you have to fight!

She tried to kick out, to swim free, but she was held down.

Unconsciousness took her brief seconds before her heart broke.

When she came to, she was sitting back in the hard chair: she couldn’t tell if minutes had passed or hours. It was like some cruel game the gods had decided to play on her. Her jeans were still wet and her shirt was soaked through. Liquid was dribbling from her nose and mouth and she could feel wet hair hanging on her forehead. Her ribs ached and every breath reeked of pain.

The voice was still there.

“What else did the man in the bunker tell you?”

Helene tried to speak but spat out water instead. She shook her head weakly. The voice was relentless, a machine programmed to ask questions that she couldn’t answer.

“What else did the man in the bunker tell you?”

“Nothing,” whispered Helene. “He didn’t have time.”

“Don’t lie,” said the voice coldly. “You were in there for at least 24 hours. What did he tell you?”

“Nothing else. I’ve told you everything,” I swear,” said Helene humbly. “He had some crazy story about the US gold reserves. He was checking mining quotas against bullion sold by the US government. It didn’t make much sense. I thought I was wasting my time.”

Helene felt numb. It was hard to know what was real anymore: only this room, this voice.

“Do you know what will happen if your nasty little fiction comes out?” said the voice stiffly. “Well, I’ll tell you: first of all the world markets will collapse; trade will come to a standstill; inflation will soar in every developed country and most of the developing ones; there’ll be war; governments will fall; millions, maybe billions will die. Is that what you want, Ms La Borde? Are you one of those naive end-timers who think that the chaos of resetting the clock to zero will save the world?”

Helene shook her head, still too dazed to speak.

“Well, if that’s your little anarchist’s dream, you’re even more naïve than you pretend, because it won’t happen, Ms La Borde. And I’ll tell you why: because no-one will believe you.”

Helene’s brain flickered with recognition.

“It was you: you sent me that message to my website. It was you, wasn’t it?”

The voice ignored her.

“Women of your age are often prone to breakdowns, Ms La Borde, did you know that?” The voice was almost conversational again. “It’s not just the hormones – or lack of them – it’s the realisation that you’re superfluous to society – that you have nothing left to offer. You’re extinct as far as procreation is concerned and functionally you’re a washed up has-been with a bitterness brought on by your lack of success in the world. It’s not unusual, it’s almost a stereotype. It’s a shame: the breakdown of what was a fine mind, but these days all sorts of medicines are available to help you. How long have you been bipoloar, Ms La Borde?”

“I… I’m not!”

“Denial is a common symptom, of course. How long have you had voices in your head telling you to bring down the government?”

“W-what?”

“You must recognise that your thought processes are illogical? How long have you been feeling suicidal?”

Helene was silent.

“One of the most common ways for a woman your age to kill herself is an overdose of sleeping pills and anti-depressants,” continued the voice. “Of course coming off Prozac so suddenly was bound to disrupt the balance of your mind.”

“What do you want?” said Helene in a low voice.

“I want to be sure that you’re not holding back information. Where had you arranged to meet your accomplices?”

At last the voice had made a mistake. And the mistake was to give Helene hope: Charlie and Hank hadn’t been captured… unless, of course, the voice was trying to trip her up again.

“We hadn’t arranged anything,” said Helene. “We were taken by surprise – that’s the truth.”

“I don’t think you have any conception of the truth,” said the voice, much nearer to Helene now. “You’re a lying bitch and I’m going to laugh my ass off when I see you sitting in the Warm Creek Nursing Home wallowing in piss and shit.”

The loathing in the voice, coupled with the delight in the punishment it planned, was more terrifying than anything else Helene had ever heard.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” she said, trying and failing to suppress the tremble of fear.

The cell door opened again and Helene felt the voice move away. A mutter of several people talking reached her ears. The voices became louder, clearly disagreeing about something of importance.

“This is fucking ridiculous!” shouted the voice Helene feared the most. Footsteps returned and the voice swore at her once, then used the machine to send a jet of pain through her. Her heart exploded, the agony almost merciful as she blacked out.

No part of her was aware as her carcass was untied and dragged, inert, from the concrete cell.

Chapter 23

The glare was so bright that it hurt her eyes, even though they were still closed; two punctures of needle sharp light pressed their way into her brain. Was she lying in the sun, baking in the Californian desert? Or maybe she was back in Bahrain and the cormorants would start pecking out her eyes…

Helene’s eyelids fluttered open a fraction then. She caught a glimpse of a white room which made her think of Heaven, but nothing in the tales from childhood had ever described Heaven as being so damned painful. Every muscle, joint and bone in her body throbbed. From which Helene concluded that most of her was alive.

She opened her eyes again, blinking rapidly as they began to water, her pupils contracting to pinheads. She tried to speak but her throat had closed up. She licked her lips but her tongue was dry and the skin around her mouth cracked. She tried to clear her throat and, at last, a sound came out: inarticulate, inhuman even, but a sound, nevertheless.

“She’s waking up,” said a distant voice.

It wasn’t
the
voice.

Thank God.

A ghostly face loomed over her: a man in a white coat. “Back in the land of the living?”

What a stupid, bloody question. Not even the doctors could tell if you were alive or dead it seemed.

Helene tried to get the word ‘water’ past her dried lips but failed. Instead she tried to mime picking up a glass of water, but her own hand was too heavy to lift and she lay, blinking like a dying fish.

Then the first person who had spoken returned: a woman with an arid, rasping voice. She lifted up Helene’s head and held a plastic child’s beaker to her mouth.

“Drink this.”

The beaker forced Helene to take small sips, but at least most of the water went into her mouth, not dribbling out to form small pools on her chest.

Exhausted, Helene allowed her head to fall back on the pillow and the light began to spool away from her; further and further until darkness engulfed her.

She couldn’t tell how many hours later it was when she awoke again. Maybe days. This time her memory had been reconnected and woken up with her; she began to recall details from before: the cell,
the
voice, the interrogation, the pain binding her chest.

The room was silent. Helene lay quietly trying to put all the pieces into place, sorting events in her mind. She wondered what had happened to Charlie, to Hank. She hoped they’d escaped. She thought they might have. Didn’t the voice say they had? She hoped that they weren’t in a hospital ward with needles stuck in their arms.

Thinking of Charlie was painful, too. She closed her eyes against the memory but it flickered like an old cine film in her brain: the way his eyes sparkled when he was amused; the graceful way he moved; how terrifying he’d been when she thought he’d murder Bill.

She wondered what was going to happen next, but whatever it was couldn’t be worse than the room with the voice.

Helene’s brain skittered away from such raw memories: it was too soon to think about that… but the fear of that room continued to gnaw at her.
The
voice in that room. The silence stretched intolerably and Helene’s wild mind filled the vacuum with fear.

Beyond the hospital ward was silence: no voices, no footsteps, no nurses looking harassed, no doctors on their rounds.

Finally, Helene tried to sit up but the effort was beyond her. She could see a fresh beaker of water just out of reach. It was only inches from her outstretched fingers but it may as well have been on the moon.

She let her body relax but her mind was now wide awake. What if no-one came? What if she was left here to die? What if nobody noticed? What if she wasn’t missed? How long would Mr Jenkin mow her lawn, tend her roses, collect her post? Would any of her friends notice the absence of her usual, hasty Christmas missives? Then she thought of Frank: he damn well would notice because he’d want his damn money back. My God, she thought, Frank might be the one person who ends up saving me!

The thought was absurd: fat Frank squeezing himself into chainmail and charging in on an old nag to demand her release.

Helene began to laugh: a hollow, breathless cackle.

Footsteps. A door opened and Helene heard someone enter.

“Awake again?” said the rasping voice.

The woman came nearer, lifted Helene’s head and helped her to water once more.

“Where am I?” Helene struggled to get out the words.

“Prison ward,” replied the woman.

“Where?” repeated Helene, confused.

“Chowchilla, honey… Valley State Prison.”

“Never… never heard of it,” said Helene, feeling more and more confused. “A prison hospital?”

The woman looked at Helene curiously. “Hey! Where are you from? That’s one daisy of an accent you got yourself.”

“I’m English,” said Helene weakly. “From England.”

“Wow!” said the woman excitedly. “Did ja ever meet the Queen? She’s one helluva dame.”

“No,” said Helene, trying to smile, despite the pain encircling her ribs.

She forced herself upright and the woman’s brawny arms lifted her like a child, plumping up her pillows comfortably behind her.

Helene looked around her: there were a dozen empty beds and windows high above her, barred. She tried to move her arms but found that the left one was handcuffed to the bed and the right one attached to a drip. She had been immobilised.

The woman in front of her looked as tough as cowhide, her hair a harsh shade of yellow; long creases down her cheeks told of an equally harsh life. Her eyes were grey like tiny pebbles, but she didn’t look cruel.

“My mother was invited to a tea party at Buckingham Palace once,” murmured Helene, “for services to the community.”

It was the longest sentence she’d spoken in…what… days?

“Wow!” said the woman again. “You wait till I tell the other gals in here: we’re all big fans of Queen Kate. She’s awesome.”

Helene tried to focus on what she needed to know. “I need to speak to someone in charge,” she said. “I’m being held against my will.”

“Honey,” said the woman sympathetically, “we’re all being held against our will. No-one signs up for stir: well, maybe a few crazies, but I ain’t one o’ them.”

Helene closed her eyes. The throb between her eyes made it hard to think clearly.

“How’d you get here anyway?” said the woman thoughtfully. “I ain’t never heard of no British broad being in here.”

“I… I don’t know,” said Helene. “I was being questioned. They had a machine and… and”

Helene’s voice faltered.

“That’s okay, honey,” said the woman, almost kindly. “I…”

At that moment the man in the white coat came back.