raped, searching for her.
This morning she received an email. It had no IP address and seemed to originate from nowhere. She opens it up and reads it.
The words make her break out in a shivering sweat but she reads it to the end.
Once Lily-Rose has finished dressing, covering her hands with a pair of fingerless grey mittens and wrapping a black keffiyeh round her throat, she leaves the house for the first time since her attack, and heads into town.
26
When Loss and Stone leave Mr Brooks’ premises, the sky is a ribbon of boiling black above them, and the busker and street painter have disappeared. Seeing the scythes at close quarters has brought home to the detectives just how much pain and fear must have been in the carriage on the night they were used.
‘I need to sit down.’ Loss lowers himself into a chair at one of the tables opposite the door from which he has just emerged. Stone walks through into the Marquis of Granby, and returns a few minutes later with two Cokes. Loss can feel the moisture in the air, as though the rain has already arrived and is just waiting for somebody to notice. There are glass beads of condensation on the outside of the glass. He takes a sip of the Coke. It is not real Coke, but some glucose-rich variant from a soda-stream.
‘So whoever she is, she probably nicked them from the British Museum – unless she had access to similar weapons elsewhere.’ Stone sits down next to him and sips her drink. Flashes of lightning cross the narrow strip of sky above them. ‘But what I don’t get is why? Why use such a bizarre weapon, one that’s going to be quickly identified? And why leave a calling card, look at the camera, and then go to such extremes as to disappear by walking through walls. It just doesn’t make sense.’
Loss can’t disagree. The whole case is making him feel stupid. He can’t seem to be able to grasp a bigger picture. He knows there must be one. He feels it deep inside him. He just doesn’t know what it could be. He drinks his Coke, examining the pavement in front of him. It takes him a few minutes to register what he is staring at.
‘Fuck!’
The rain starts to fall in large drops on the chalk picture the street artist has left. Although the picture is much the same as when they went into the antique shop, it differs in two main respects. The first is that the central character, the one Loss had assumed was Icarus, is now a tumbling, black-trousered Gothette in an army shirt. She is quite clearly the girl from the CCTV and the video sent to his computer. The second is that the drawing now has a title written beneath it, beginning to blur and run in the rain:
TUESDAY FALLING
‘Take a picture of that before it washes away, for God’s sake!’
Stone gets out her phone, but, before she can utilize the camera facility, it rings.
‘It’s the lab, sir,’ she clocks the ID window, and pushes the button to accept the call, and puts the phone to her ear.
While his DS deals with the call, Loss pulls out his own phone and takes a snap of the chalk drawing on the pavement. All the colours have merged into each other and the image is distorted and surreal; a pictorial representation of how he feels. His phone rings.
And that’s when DI Loss’s world blows apart.
27
Now they know that I’m not just some random fruit shoot, I have to be a bit more inventive. Not too inventive, cos I’m still dealing with empty-headed morons, but a little bit.
I’m not talking about the police here; I’m still playing
Children’s’ Hour
with them. It’s still
Follow the Leader
in that camp, and they haven’t got a clue what’s going on.
Of course, when I say the police, I mean DI Loss. I couldn’t give a fuck about the rest of them.
Poor DI Loss, all at sea and not a boat in sight.
No, I’m talking about the Sparrow Estate boys and girls. The rape merchants and the pain posses.
Really, they think they’re living in some film. They think they’re gangstas, or
This morning she received an email. It had no IP address and seemed to originate from nowhere. She opens it up and reads it.
The words make her break out in a shivering sweat but she reads it to the end.
Once Lily-Rose has finished dressing, covering her hands with a pair of fingerless grey mittens and wrapping a black keffiyeh round her throat, she leaves the house for the first time since her attack, and heads into town.
26
When Loss and Stone leave Mr Brooks’ premises, the sky is a ribbon of boiling black above them, and the busker and street painter have disappeared. Seeing the scythes at close quarters has brought home to the detectives just how much pain and fear must have been in the carriage on the night they were used.
‘I need to sit down.’ Loss lowers himself into a chair at one of the tables opposite the door from which he has just emerged. Stone walks through into the Marquis of Granby, and returns a few minutes later with two Cokes. Loss can feel the moisture in the air, as though the rain has already arrived and is just waiting for somebody to notice. There are glass beads of condensation on the outside of the glass. He takes a sip of the Coke. It is not real Coke, but some glucose-rich variant from a soda-stream.
‘So whoever she is, she probably nicked them from the British Museum – unless she had access to similar weapons elsewhere.’ Stone sits down next to him and sips her drink. Flashes of lightning cross the narrow strip of sky above them. ‘But what I don’t get is why? Why use such a bizarre weapon, one that’s going to be quickly identified? And why leave a calling card, look at the camera, and then go to such extremes as to disappear by walking through walls. It just doesn’t make sense.’
Loss can’t disagree. The whole case is making him feel stupid. He can’t seem to be able to grasp a bigger picture. He knows there must be one. He feels it deep inside him. He just doesn’t know what it could be. He drinks his Coke, examining the pavement in front of him. It takes him a few minutes to register what he is staring at.
‘Fuck!’
The rain starts to fall in large drops on the chalk picture the street artist has left. Although the picture is much the same as when they went into the antique shop, it differs in two main respects. The first is that the central character, the one Loss had assumed was Icarus, is now a tumbling, black-trousered Gothette in an army shirt. She is quite clearly the girl from the CCTV and the video sent to his computer. The second is that the drawing now has a title written beneath it, beginning to blur and run in the rain:
TUESDAY FALLING
‘Take a picture of that before it washes away, for God’s sake!’
Stone gets out her phone, but, before she can utilize the camera facility, it rings.
‘It’s the lab, sir,’ she clocks the ID window, and pushes the button to accept the call, and puts the phone to her ear.
While his DS deals with the call, Loss pulls out his own phone and takes a snap of the chalk drawing on the pavement. All the colours have merged into each other and the image is distorted and surreal; a pictorial representation of how he feels. His phone rings.
And that’s when DI Loss’s world blows apart.
27
Now they know that I’m not just some random fruit shoot, I have to be a bit more inventive. Not too inventive, cos I’m still dealing with empty-headed morons, but a little bit.
I’m not talking about the police here; I’m still playing
Children’s’ Hour
with them. It’s still
Follow the Leader
in that camp, and they haven’t got a clue what’s going on.
Of course, when I say the police, I mean DI Loss. I couldn’t give a fuck about the rest of them.
Poor DI Loss, all at sea and not a boat in sight.
No, I’m talking about the Sparrow Estate boys and girls. The rape merchants and the pain posses.
Really, they think they’re living in some film. They think they’re gangstas, or
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