Tuesday Falling

by S Williams

  ‘Well, to stop squatters, or tramps, or gangs or whatever, they employ a kind of security guard, called an angel. They set them up with a refurbished bit of the building, and let them live there for free, and in return, they kind of keep an eye on the property. Ring if anyone breaks in, that sort of thing. Really, are you sure you don’t know about this? I mean it’s not as obscure as the second post.’

  ‘What’s the second post?’ asks Five.

  ‘Don’t.’ Loss glares at Stone. ‘Don’t even go there.’ He turns to Five. ‘Fine. Whatever. You can live here. You can do your art experiments, mess about with our heads. I don’t care. I just want to find Tuesday. Stop what’s happening out there.’ He jerks his finger at the wall, indicating the city beyond the room. ‘Maybe find some answers. Why are we here, Five? Again. I’m fairly certain, no matter what you say, that you know who Tuesday is. What is it you want to say to us?’

  ‘Nothing really, detectives, It’s just that you said if I knew anything, then I should get in touch with you.’

  ‘So what is it? What do you know?’

  Five turns on an award-winning, full-toothed smile, and fires up a cigarette. She sucks the smoke deep into her lungs, then blows it out in a long straight line.

  ‘How about where she lives?’

  76

  In the train window Lily-Rose’s face is half reflected back at her, and half not. It is an exact representation of how she feels.

  Her mother is sitting beside her pretending to read a magazine, but she is not fooling anyone. Her hands are holding the copy so tight it is a wonder she hasn’t ripped it in two. Lily-Rose can’t help her. Not at the moment. It is all she can do just to not go to curl up under the seat and never come out.

  Outside, London slips away like a dream, the train slicing through it at ever-changing heights, changing its perspective in clicks and clacks. Gradually the mobile phones start ringing. From all around her the fear starts to ramp up, as news begins to filter in.

  77

  ‘What do you mean she’s shut down the tube network?’ DS Stone has just come off the phone to the Commander in charge of the Tuesday case. She and DI Loss are back at the British Museum, heading towards the tunnel, which Five has told them leads to Tuesday’s crib. Of course it does.

  ‘Well, somehow she’s hacked into the London Transport system and given instructions that no trains are to stop at Leicester Square, Piccadilly, Covent Garden, Goodge Street, or Tottenham Court Road.’

  Loss can picture the chaos she has caused. Many London streets are already in semi-riot mode. Having the underground shut down will push everything into full-scale meltdown.

  ‘Brilliant. Two square miles of completely buggered London, then.’

  Stone isn’t finished. ‘Also, only the emergency lights are running, and all the announcement boards are saying one word: “Tuesday”.’

  ‘Very arty. Sounds as though it’s something Five would do. When we get back out of here, I want her arrested!’

  ‘On what charge? All she’s said is that when she lived on the street she used to come down to the tunnels for shelter.’

  ‘Bollocks. I don’t care what we arrest her for. How about inappropriate use of Daleks? Or crimes against modern art?’

  ‘I think that’s the nature of modern art, sir,’ says Stone, smiling gently.

  The skeleton lift arrives, and the two detectives step gingerly onto it.

  ‘The Commander said to me that if we find anything down here we’re to report it directly to him. He also told me to keep a quiet eye on you.’ She raises an eyebrow, and Loss is almost certain she has been practising the movement in front of a mirror.

  ‘Nice to have our esteemed boss’s complete faith. Have you found out any more information about my daughter yet?’

  Stone digs out her phone again, and punches up her emails. ‘Well, as you discovered, while Suzanne was working at the hospital, she and a few other doctors also helped out at the St Martin’s Refuge. A place for street kids; children who ran away from home and lived rough. It’s closed down now.’ The image of the burnt-out Refuge they have just left slips behind his eyes, and he blinks it away.

  ‘I didn’t even know Suzanne was working at the Refuge. We’d had an argument a year or so before, and we’d hardly been in contact,’ he murmurs.

  Stone continues, more gently, ‘The reason your daughter got involved, it seems, was because she was getting a lot of referrals to the hospital from the Refuge.’

  ‘Why was that?’ The lift stops with a shudder, and they step out with relief.

  ‘It was one of the few places equipped to deal with pregnant teenagers. In fact it had quite a reputation for it. A lot of these children were in the shadow of the drug gangs, and were used for prostitution. Either openly, or groomed into it.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘When you’re low and unprotected, anything looks up, I guess. Anyhow, that seems to have been the set-up. The girls would come into the refuge, and then be sent to the hospital to be checked out.’ She pauses, then seems to gird herself to go on. ‘Now here’s a weird thing. Your daughter was murdered three years ago. She was coming back from a night at the refuge, and was brutally attacked and killed. Nothing was taken, and it was assumed to be a random killing, as you know. But it seems that same night something strange happened at the refuge. Some girl’s baby was killed, and its body was stolen. I couldn’t find any more information on it, but I’ve got some people digging. Do you know what date your daughter was killed?’

  They arrive at the door to the closed-down tube station. The tech team had strung festoon lighting from the entrance down to the door leading to the connecting tunnel between the museum and the old tube station, but no further. The area is so vast that the force is liaising with the Army. As there is a major incident ongoing in central London, DI Loss guesses they won’t be here any time soon. He turns and looks hard at his DS.

  ‘What a fucking thing to ask, Stone. Of course I know the bloody date. The twenty-third of June. I wish I didn’t. I wish there was no date to know. Why?’

  Stone returns his stare. She looks at him, clear-eyed and unapologetic. ‘She died on the twenty-third, just after midnight, but was attacked on the twenty-second, which was the day that the baby at the refuge was taken.’

  Loss is blank, not comprehending what she is telling him. ‘So what?’

  ‘It was a Tuesday.’

  78

  The expression on Constantine’s face is unreadable as the blinged-up Hummer pulls up at the kerb outside Number One, Hyde Park, and the side door slides open.

  ‘What the fuck are we now, The gangsta A-Team?’ He climbs in and the door slides shut as the van sets off towards the West End. Inside the vehicle is more guns than you’d find in a rap video and the crew have taken enough amphetamines between them to waken a corpse. Constantine sighs inwardly. They have a radio set up in the back, tuned to the central police channel, and he is not at all surprised to hear from it that the thin blue line is to open to allow them through.

  He had explained to his employer how he’d extrapolated all he could find out about Tuesday, and her possible connections to Slater’s business operations, from the recent events. He’d examined all the information he could access, and used several sophisticated algorithms to establish whether there were any correlations.

  ‘Her name isn’t Tuesday, or at least I don’t think it is. The first time we see this name in connection to your boys is three years ago, written on the dude who rubbered the policeman’s daughter. It was written on his palm with a marker pen. Like it was a memo or something.’

  ‘Suzanne Loss,’ says Slater, glaring at a point on the wall.

  ‘Yeah, her. I don’t know what business you had with her, but whatever it was, this girl calling herself Tuesday was in on it too. I’m guessing it has something to do with your Eastern European venture. The next time we see the name ‘Tuesday’ is in a school, but I don’t think it’s connected. I mean it’
s her, for definite, but I don’t believe it’s anything to do with you.’

  His employer rises and walks out onto the balcony. He takes a shallow breath and gazes out, across the London cityscape. He is impressed that Constantine knows so much. In the distance he can see Harrods in all its chocolate-box splendour, and further on, an absence of light marks the Thames snaking its way through the city. His city.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll deal with that.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you will,’ says Constantine. ‘I’m sure with your, ah, special relationship with members of the fine British constabulary you’ll be able to put things back on track, once our business is concluded.’

  ‘What about now? Where is she now?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he smirks, joining him on the balcony, and lighting a cigar. ‘She’s in the Underground. That’s how she can shine her way in and out of your world. She’s very good, actually. She’d put up some smoke-screens in the interzone, but I managed to blow through them. She’s been chatting with some of the girls your people had messed up. Building them up in chat rooms. I chased her footprint back to the IP in the underground. Looks as if she’s been piggy-backing off their Wi-Fi. Quite sophisticated stuff. I reckon she’s an educated girl, your Tuesday.’

  ‘What, so she’s living down there?’

  ‘Yes. From what I’ve found she’s been breaking into the big department stores on Oxford Street for her food and equipment, and according to the police report she got the blades from the British Museum and the antique guns from some arms fair. Apparently she tunnelled her way up and just stole them from under their noses.’

  Slater is silent but his jaw tightens.

  Constantine laughs. ‘Fabulous, isn’t it? She, my friend, has been tearing holes in your operation using weapons from the British Museum. Priceless! I can’t wait to meet this girl.’

  ‘And put her down, yes?’

  The assassin nods. ‘As you say.’

  Slater’s mobile rings discreetly. He answers it and listens for a moment, and then hangs up.

  ‘It looks as if you’ll get your chance now. She’s just shut down a major section of the tube system. There’ll be a car downstairs for you in two minutes.’

  79

  DI Loss and DS Stone walk down the tunnel which connects the British Museum to its old station. They have passed beyond where the festoon lighting vines from the ceiling, and their way is now lit by the powerful halogen torches they are carrying. The beams cross and re-cross each other as they stumble forward. Loss feels as if he’s underwater.

  ‘So how come you were out of touch with your daughter?’

  ‘The Commander told you to watch me, Stone, not to quiz me about my life story. Do you think that’s an appropriate question to be asking a senior officer?’

  ‘Yes’

  He smiles to himself in the dark behind his torch. The new information about what happened three years ago has made him feel closer to his daughter.

  He shrugs. ‘Fair enough. When she went away to college, I was working with the drug squad. It was fucking horrible. Horrible policemen. Horrible gangsters. Horrible drug addicts. There was nothing nice about the job. Not for me anyhow. Then one day I got a phone call from Brighton, where Suzanne was studying.’

  ‘I can see where this is going.’ A small amount of water is dripping from the ceiling, and pooling around their boots as they walk. Stone guesses that this tunnel must be beneath one of the hidden rivers. The Fleet, maybe, or the Tyburn.

  ‘Yeah. Suzanne, and a few of her medical student mates, had been arrested at a house party. Public nuisance. It seems that everybody there was on some smiley drug or other. Ecstasy, GBH, Ketamine. Bubble. Anyhow, once she’d been ID’d, the duty sergeant gave me a call, and I drove down and collected her. I got rid of the charge sheet for her and her mates, otherwise they’d never have been able to qualify, and took her back to her place.’

  The detectives come to a set of stairs, which Loss assumes lead down into the old tube station. As they descend, Stone says, ‘She was only partying, sir. Everyone gets into trouble when they’re young.’

  ‘Yeah I know, and I know I over-reacted, but I’d been walking through so much shit that all I could see when I looked at Suzanne was the drugs. The lies about what they do to you. Anyhow, I lost it. We had a blazing row; I told her she was wasting her life, throwing her career away, and treating me like dirt, and she’d better change her ways or she was going to end up in a serious mess.’

  ‘Very subtle, sir. Let me guess; she threw herself upon your mercy?’

  Loss smiles. ‘No. She threw my cigarettes out of the window to make a point, said that I was a hypocrite, and told me to fuck off.’

  ‘Ah, so she took your loving intervention well, then.’

  Loss sighs heavily, happy he no longer smokes, but wishing once again that he had a cigarette. ‘I just cocked it up, basically. The only excuse I have is I did so with good intentions.’

  ‘But it worked. She graduated.’ The stairs come to an end and they start walking cautiously forward into an access tunnel.

  ‘Without me going to the graduation ceremony. Then she got a job at Charing Cross Hospital, and we’d just started building bridges again, when I got the phone call telling me she’d been attacked. By the time I got there she was dead. All I could do was hold her dead body and tell her I was sorry.’ Loss is glad that it is dark, that the only illumination is the beams from their torches bleeding on the walls. He is crying, letting out the pressure that has built up over three years. It is just a little hole in his shell, but it feels good, nonetheless. They walk on in silence, their footsteps echoing around them. Loss feels her hand on his shoulder. He halts at once.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ she whispers.

  He sniffs hard, pulling back the past inside himself, and listens.

  ‘It sounds like someone talking,’ he whispers back, switching off the past as he kills the light from his torch. He motions to Stone to do the same. They can make out a dim light ahead of them. There is a corner in the tunnel, and the spectral reflection of colours plays on the wall. As they inch round the voice gets louder. It is a man’s voice, but because of the acoustics in the tunnel they can’t work out what he is saying. When they turn the corner, it opens up into a tube platform.

  ‘This must be the old station,’ Stone is still whispering. Tentatively, they step out onto the platform. Hundreds of strands of fairy lights hang from the ceiling. Loss feels as if he’s underwater. Submerged.

  ‘Wow. It’s an emo Narnia.’ Stone steps onto the station platform. He follows her. A warm airflow, which makes the bulbs sway slightly, is creating patterns on the tiled walls. He nudges his partner, pointing out a camp bed against the wall, and a crate of protein drinks on the floor next to it. The crate is embossed with a skull and crossbones symbol. The voices are coming out of speakers attached to the walls. The talking stops and is replaced with a soft tune.

  ‘Is that the World Service?’ Stone asks, snatching at a memory of a camping holiday in Greece, with a transistor radio clamped to her ear. The tune is the station tag. On the curved, tiled tube wall, next to an information poster left over from the Second World War warning people that walls have ears, is a massive poster of the old punk band, The Clash. The guitarist is smashing his instrument against the ground, the words ‘London Calling’ are written above him.

  ‘This must be where she lives,’ whispers Stone.

  ‘Lived,’ Loss corrects her, looking around them. ‘This place has been wrapped up and left for us as a present. Look.’ He points to a table against the station wall, with a milk bottle containing a single yellow rose, and next to it, a framed photograph. He walks along the platform, his footsteps loud in the silence, and picks up the frame. It is a picture of Suzanne. She is smiling, and has her arm around a young girl, maybe fourteen years old. The girl is also smiling. She is as street-thin as if a blown kiss would snap her, but she is smiling.

  ‘That’s her,
isn’t it?’ Stone joins him. ‘That’s Tuesday.’ The picture was taken in what appears to be a hospital room. Loss supposes it must be Charing Cross Hospital. Where Suzanne worked.

  And in the girl’s arms, held as if the world depended on it, is a tiny new-born baby. The baby who, a few hours after the photograph is taken, will be stolen, and possibly killed. Along with his daughter. Loss stares at the picture. Two daughters, murdered. He feels as though he is being rocked. Above him, the fairy lights sway gently.

  ‘Yeah, that’s her. No ghost. Just a girl holding a baby.’

  Stone moves away from her colleague and starts examining the station. Loss examines the photograph more closely. There is obviously a great deal of trust between Suzanne and Tuesday. He can’t stand up any longer, so he sits on the cot and tries to breathe. To keep breathing.

  Stone is focusing on the station wall. ‘What are these?’ she asks.

  Loss takes the picture of his daughter and Tuesday out of the frame, folds it, and pushes it carefully into his pocket, before turning his attention to his partner.

  ‘What?’

  ‘These.’

  He joins her in front of the wall. It is covered with tiny porcelain tiles, just as in many of the old tube stations, but on this wall the tiles have writing on them.

  ‘It looks like a list.’ On each tile is a name, a date, and a QR code, the type of code a smartphone can read to connect to a web page.

  ‘There must be thirty names here,’ says Stone, counting the tiles. Loss reads the name at the bottom of the wall, presumably the last one written. It is no surprise to him that he recognizes the name of the boy who was tasered and had acid poured on him outside of the kebab shop. On the tile above, is the name of the boy who was shot through the eye. Loss lets his gaze wander up the wall. Some of the names he has read before, in social workers’ reports and offenders’ photo-shots. Some he has seen in morgues.

  ‘Hey. Weren’t they the gang who tried to do over that boy at the school?’