Tuesday Falling

by S Williams

  Loss blinks as he takes in the information. The fact that there are enemy officers outside the tube station. That there are armed police officers working with underworld front-liners coming for them from the tunnels below.

  If he believes her.

  He looks at her. Dying in small ticks of time in front of him. He believes her.

  ‘What are you, our agent?’ says DS Stone, putting down the microphone.

  ‘How well did you study the map of this tube station, detectives?’ Tuesday asks.

  In the silence that follows, Loss watches Tuesday. She has opened her eyes. Although they are fractured by pain, they are clear. He thinks about his daughter, and he thinks about her daughter, and the years she has lived on the street and underground, with nothing to do except grieve, and plan. And then plan again.

  ‘Not as well as you, I’m sure.’

  And Tuesday manages a lop-sided smile.

  ‘Too fucking right,’ she whispers.

  100

  The police from the street, and the police/gang coalition from the tunnels, arrive in the ticket concourse at the same time. From the way they all seem to be working together this is not an accident. All the lights are on and they find Constantine just coming to. Despite searching they turn up no trace of DI Loss, DS Stone, or the girl known as Tuesday. What they do find, however, is that the TV feed is working in the reception foyer, and that it is showing earlier CCTV footage from the tunnels. It is showing the police and criminals next to each other, shouting and waving their weapons about. Although there is no audio, the news channel has helpfully ticker-taped some of the dialogue across the bottom of the screen, courtesy of a lip-reading expert; it reads ‘Kill the girl on sight, no f*****g witnesses’.

  The screen then cuts to Constantine and his murder crew creeping down the escalator, armed to the teeth. Underneath, the scroll-line is now informing the audience of ‘breaking news’. The policemen stare at the screen in dismay.

  101

  DS Stone and DI Loss close the metal access panel quietly, shutting out the noise of the policemen storming down into the ticket hall, and half carry, half drag Tuesday along the maintenance corridor to the basement of the White Bear pub, twenty metres from the Charing Cross Road entrance to Leicester Square tube station.

  When they walk out of its side entrance and look back across the road at where they have come from it is a disaster movie. There are media vans blocking the road. Blocking the already police-blocked road. There are helicopters fracturing the sky, speaker-distorted voices telling the crowd to disperse. There are police unsure whether to arrest the reporters or other officers. There are cordons stopping people going in, cordons stopping people going out. Nobody seems to be in charge. The two detectives and Tuesday limp themselves into the back of a black LTI taxi, and leave the chaos.

  DI Loss instructs the driver to take them to Charing Cross Hospital. Light rain is falling, and the sound of the wipers are breaking his thinking into moments with no order or meaning. Even in the dim light of rainy London he can tell that Tuesday is not doing well. She is propped against DS Stone’s shoulder. Loss cannot believe how fragile she looks. All her bones look as though they want to live on the outside. As if they want to escape into a better body.

  ‘How the hell did they all get here so fast?’ wonders Stone aloud, staring through the ribbons of rain at the media carnage outside.

  ‘Well that was down to the blue-eyed boy who shot me, then stole my tablet,’ says Tuesday, her voice wearied beyond weeping. ‘Once he started pressing keys without the correct code it automatically sent the images I’d downloaded from the station CCTV to the World Service.’

  DI Loss looks at her with consternation. ‘But that’s a radio station!’

  ‘I know. I just thought it would be nice if they had it first. I knew they’d have to pass it on immediately. Are we nearly there?’

  ‘I can see the gates,’ says Stone, staring through the rain.

  ‘Good, cos I can’t. I can’t see a thing.’

  And then Tuesday falls unconscious in the arms of DI Loss.

  The taxi pulls up outside A&E, and the detectives carry Tuesday in, held up between their arms, wave their badges around, and shout for a doctor. It is not lost on Stone, as various medical staff run towards them, that this is where her boss’s daughter worked, and where Tuesday’s daughter was born.

  102

  Constantine is not just hacked off, he’s incandescent with rage. Hate courses through his body in lightning bursts of white-hot fury. In all the confusion he escaped out of the station, and is now in a taxi on his way to Number One, Hyde Park. The fact that he is not alone in his failure, that everybody else also failed to stop Tuesday, is not a consolation to him. He knows that it will be no consolation to his employer, either. His employer is not a man known for his understanding and acceptance of other people’s failures.

  Still, all is not completely hopeless. Clutched in Constantine’s hand is the tablet previously belonging to the girl known as Tuesday. Constantine has been examining its contents. The girl has listed all her actions, and all the observations and data she has uncovered on his employer. On it are all the codes and path-bringers that allowed her access to the tube system, and the security systems of the department stores she broke into. Without it she will be useless.

  Constantine smiles a smile that barely even touches his mouth, let alone his eyes.

  ‘You may have won this time, little girl,’ he says, staring at the scarred and battered device. ‘But without this you’re nothing.’

  Ahead of him, the glass and steel structure of One, Hyde Park comes into view. Constantine breathes slowly, humming tunelessly under his breath.

  103

  ‘Constantine escaped, and the police are all over the place. Nobody knows what the hell’s going on.’ DS Stone shuts off her mobile and looks at the girl lying in the hospital bed. She looks better that she did two days ago, when she was brought in amid the shouting and badge-waving, but she still looks like shit. There are black circles under her eyes. Her shoulder is tightly wrapped in bandages, and there is a needle attached to a drip in her dagger-thin arm. From the time when they carried her into the hospital to now, the detectives’ lives have been up for auction. They have been suspended from active duty pending an investigation by the DPS. They are not alone in this. Their commander is also under investigation, following the recovery of the dead and injured from Leicester Square tube station.

  ‘Who’s Constantine?’ asks Tuesday, her voice butterflying with pain.

  ‘Wow. Something you don’t actually know!’ Stone says in fake amazement. ‘He’s the man who shot you. He was identified by the blood he helpfully left on the bit of metal I hit him with. He’s some sort of gun for hire, and wanted in more territories than exist in the world, apparently. Anyhow, he escaped, and presumably has your tablet with your entire life, such as it is, on it.’

  Tuesday looks as though she’s about to cry. After all that she has done, all she has been through, it seems almost comical that something like this should bring her to tears.

  ‘It had the only picture I have of my daughter on it,’ she says quietly. ‘Apart from the one I left for you.’

  Now DI Loss feels he’s going to weep too. Out of his pocket he takes the picture he removed from the tube station. ‘I made a copy of it. I hope you don’t mind.’ He hands the original over to Tuesday, who gently takes it in her hands. The room is silent while Tuesday looks at the picture of her daughter. Of his daughter. Tears slip slowly down her cheek, in no hurry to be anywhere.

  ‘Tuesday, I’m so sorry. What was done to your baby, to all the babies. Well it’s beyond unforgivable. I’m sure that when the story comes out you’ll, well you’ll …’ He runs out of words. He has no more words. Not for Tuesday. Not to describe this.

  ‘I’ll what? Get off? Live happily ever after?’ Tuesday snorts, her nostrils flaring. ‘Fuck off, DI Loss. You’re just an old man who couldn’t even help his
own daughter. Or Lily-Rose, for that matter. Don’t try to adopt me.’

  He doesn’t look away. He knows Tuesday is just lashing out. Trying to spread her hurt. He watches as she takes her sleeping pill, washing it down with the glass of warm Coke on the bedside table.

  ‘Speaking of Lily-Rose, I don’t suppose you know where she is, do you? Only, she seems to have disappeared without a trace.’

  Tuesday stares at him awhile, and then looks away.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Tuesday.’

  Loss and DS Stone quietly get up and head for the door. Before he leaves, Loss turns back and looks at Tuesday.

  ‘It’s because of the curves,’ he says. Tuesday looks puzzled. Even this action looks as if it causes her pain.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were talking in your sleep’, he explains, ‘about the tiles in the underground.’ He waits for Tuesday to say something, but she is silent. ‘The reason they’re so small is because of the curve of the wall. The tiles are flat, you see. If they made them any bigger they’d crack.’

  On the way out, he passes the policeman stationed outside the door.

  104

  I squirrel the sleeping pill under my tongue, right at the back where the little hollow is, and drink my Coke from a straw. I learnt that trick by watching the drug-dealing robot kids. That’s where they hide their thrill pills, in case of street searches, before they sell them.

  DI Loss watches me as I pretend to swallow it, and then he leaves. Sorry, detective, but I don’t want you feeling pity for me. I can’t have that. I might just fall apart if that happens, and I’ve still got things to do. Who’d’ve thought it about the tiles, though? Tiny so they don’t break. So they can function.

  Like me.

  Once I’m sure he isn’t coming back, I take the pill out and crush it between my empty glass and the table, put the granules into the glass, and add the powder from the other three pills I’ve smuggled away over the past two days. I lean forward, get another glass from the tray on my table and fill both glasses with Coca-Cola. It’s one of the few luxuries I’ve been allowed, and me and my guard have developed a bit of a routine. Each time before I fall into my pretend drug-induced la-la sleep, we share a glass of Coke, and he tells me what’s happening in London. It’s like I’m the adult and he’s the kid. Nothing this exciting has happened to him, ever. I do a lazy shout-out to him and he comes in. As usual, he’s as animated as a puppy. Maybe it’s the hours of standing outside my room with nothing to do except stare at a wall.

  ‘You’ll never guess, Tuesday, but they’ve just sacked my boss. My boss! He was a right bastard, anyway, but bloody hell, eh?’ He sits down in the chair at the end of the bed and starts drinking his Coke, telling me about how it’s like Operation Yew Tree, Alder Hey, and Die Hard, all rolled into one. I don’t really care what he talks about, as long as he finishes his drink, so I nod and try to look suitably impressed that his life is so exciting.

  Like what? Compared to mine?

  Twenty minutes later he’s snoring like a wino and spark out on the floor. I ease myself out of bed, and wince. The bullet in my thigh didn’t break any bones but it hurts like fuck. All my clothes have been thrown away, so if I want to leave the hospital by any of the street exits I’m going to have to steal a nurse’s uniform.

  How fucking likely is that? Me, in a nurse’s uniform?

  Lucky I’m not going to leave the hospital by any of the street exits, isn’t it?

  105

  Constantine and Slater are once again surveying London from the balcony of the apartment in One, Hyde Park. Some harsh words have been spoken and Constantine has a savage gash down the side of his face from the edge of a broken bottle. He considers he has got off lightly. Both Slater and Constantine are smoking; something Slater has not done for many years.

  ‘So basically, she won’t be able to do anything without it?’ says Slater, turning over Tuesday’s tablet in his hands. It is battered but little lights are still flashing on it.

  ‘Nothing. She’s as good as dead without it. It contains her whole life.’

  ‘And you can open it, decode it or whatever?’ pursues Slater, setting the tablet down and turning back to the London night sky.

  ‘Sure. Give me the right equipment and it’ll be as if it was always yours.’

  Slater’s face is white and shiny, with the hint of blue veins just below the surface. It looks as though his skin has been sprayed on but they ran out of paint. He flicks his cigar out and into the air, watching the embers firework off into the night.

  ‘OK. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go down to that hospital and kill Tuesday. No messing about. Just kill her, photograph her body, and then post it on fucking Facebook. Next, I want you to help me sort out anybody who’s moved in on my business. That girl may have crippled me, but I kid you not, there will be a fucking miracle. Not only will I walk again, but I’ll kick the shit out of anybody who thinks they can push me about.’

  ‘What about the baby thing? There’s no way the business can continue in this climate. Questions have been asked in Parliament.’

  Slater thinks of his high-ranking police monkey, at this moment being questioned internally about his role in the Leicester Square fiasco, among other things. ‘No, that’s been fucked sideways, thanks to her.’ The veins on the man’s neck and head are very prominent, as if his skin has shrunk. ‘There will definitely have to be a reckoning.’ His clockwork mind is already winding, working out the new connections it will require to put his various businesses back together again, including the body-shopping one.

  The two men stand in silence side by side. Then Slater takes a slip of paper out of his pocket containing a name and address, and hands it to Constantine.

  106

  Lily-Rose sits down on the beach. Small pebbles dig into her bony frame. The sun has died in the sky, and is bleeding into the sea. The red glow of the twilight sits like an oil slick on the little waves, and the sound they make as they stroke the beach echoes in her head.

  Every night since Lily-Rose and her mother arrived in Brighton she has been coming to the beach to sit under the pier and gaze out to sea. Although not a great distance out of London, it is a world away from The Sparrow Estate. Sometimes there are people around her, and sometimes not. It doesn’t matter. Lily-Rose never sees them. All she sees is the shimmer in the water, and all she hears is the sound of the waves as they drag the pebbles up and down the beach.

  Lily-Rose and her mother have rented a flat overlooking the promenade, paid for with money transferred from the bitcoin wallet. The only person who knows where they are is Tuesday.

  Lily-Rose can’t stop thinking about her. She looks out across the sea and thinks about what Tuesday has done. What she is doing. Even in Brighton, she is all over the news.

  Her exposure of the drug culture.

  The rape culture.

  The powerlessness and abuse of the runaways.

  The one-stop body-shop brutalism of the London gang-scape.

  Her murders.

  Her never justifying or explaining.

  And finally, her disappearance.

  Where is she?

  Who is she?

  Lily-Rose is not asking these questions, as she sits, wrapped in an old army parka she bought in The Shambles, the collection of antique and second-hand shops near the seafront. She knows what Tuesday has done for her and for all the other people fucked over by the torture-boys who ruled her world for the last three years. She lived in a world where sexual, mental, and physical violence was just a way of marking time.

  When she and her mother left London, she knew, deep down, that she could never go back. The bad people knew she had a connection to Tuesday. Knew she could be a lever.

  The only questions Lily-Rose is asking, right at the back of her head where only her heart can see, are: Will she call? Will she reach out to me again?

  Lily-Rose takes out her pay-as-you-go smartphone. It has no apps on
it. All it has is the ability to make calls, send texts, and connect to the Interzone. A half-smart phone. She bought it off a girl outside a pub for twice as much as it is worth. It is not registered to her and so cannot be traced back to her. Each night she logs into the Pro-Anna Forum where she first met Tuesday, leaving a message for her.

  Sending out her love.

  Not expecting a reply.

  Lily-Rose stares out to sea, a thin layer of fat on her ghost-body, hoping.

  107

  Detectives Loss and Stone are drinking lemonade outside of the Marquis of Granby. It is the first time they have seen each other in civilian clothes. Nearby, a man sits reading a newspaper while a busker serenades the pub customers.

  Detective Loss sips a little of the fizzy drink through his straw and then places the glass on the table. He inspects his colleague. ‘Really?’ he says, looking at what Stone is wearing. ‘That’s how you want to present yourself to the world? Don’t you want us to get any clients? You look like a hippy who accidentally wandered into a noir film.’ The detective is wearing a dark paisley skirt with Mary Poppins boots, a black shirt and waistcoat, many silver bangles, and a leather beret, worn Rasta-style at the back of her head.

  ‘That may be true,’ says Stone, biting into and swallowing her lemon slice. ‘But I look like a cool hippy who accidentally wandered into a noir film. You, on the other hand, look like you’ve been beaten up by your own suit. If that is a suit, and not some form of punishment.’

  They continue to drink in companionable silence. It is a hot, sunny London day and the light is coming down into the narrow alley between the two buildings as though it has been sifted there. The violinist is back, playing a version of a tune that Loss recognizes, but cannot place.

  ‘So, what did you find out?’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t believe the crap that erupted after one of London’s finest was found tanked to the eyeballs at the foot of Tuesday’s hospital bed, while the girl herself spirited right off the face of the earth.’