call, and a teenager on a pedal bike comes up and goes in the meat shop. After a little time they come out, get on their bike and ride off. They never have a kebab with them, though. I don’t blame them.
I’ve got my tablet resting on my lap, hidden by the sleeping bag, and I’ve got it connected to the Interzone with a cascade IP router so I can’t be traced. I used to use TOR before it got rebooted. TOR stands for The Onion Router, a way of transferring data that has so many layers of relays as to make it untraceable. Really, I don’t know why they bother. If someone doesn’t want anyone to know where they’ve been on the interlanes there are a million programs out there that will help them. Shutting one down is like trying to jail a planet.
Or just buy a pre-jacked SIM. They cost about the same as a packet of crisps.
As Bullet Eyes makes his phone calls and takes his IMS’s, I get an instant copy of it on my screen. I’ve also got a program running that converts speech to text, so I don’t have to worry about any audio leakage or spook-y ear-pieces. The conversations are so boring it’s unreal. Two grams of this. One wrap of that. Twenty pills of zip-a-dee-doo-dah. Crack, Special K, Bubble, cheese and crackers, blah blah blah. Drugs are so dull.
Occasionally he takes a different kind of call, and a car comes and picks up one of the girls. Before she gets in the car, Bullet Eyes slips a little something into her tiny girl hand to make the night ahead more bearable. All bleeding heart; I’m surprised he doesn’t give her a rose as well.
Those girls think they’re so big and grown up, with their micro-clothes and their trowel make-up, but they’re just broken children getting serial-raped in slow motion; their brains so groomed and loomed that they don’t even know what’s being done to them is wrong. Except when they’re alone and can’t find any drugs to numb themselves, of course.
If I wasn’t so full of snow, and black, and pain I’d probably feel something for them.
I wish I did.
But then I couldn’t do what I do. So I don’t.
This goes on for fifteen minutes before he gets a call on a different phone. I look at my screen and see that the caller’s ID is withheld. Double withheld, as even I can’t trace it.
Of course it is. That’s why I’m here.
28
The email that Lily-Rose received painted her soul red. It contained the names of the boys who had raped her, and the name of the girl who had filmed it on her camera phone and then distributed it around the estate. Around the school. Around the dark corners of the Interweb. It told her who was there when she was assaulted, and where everybody lived.
It gave her a list of other victims who had also been abused by the same people, cross-referencing with times and places.
Then it listed an address of a youth centre situated next to the Docklands Light Railway, along with a set of directions and a time.
Underneath was written:
Lily-Rose
I understand if you want to hide away forever, but it’s your body, and you shouldn’t have to turn your gaze from it. A life with a black hole at the centre of it allows nothing out, and everything in. It is a vessel for pain
Set yourself free.
As she makes her way off the estate, there’s a hard wire inside her, tingling with electricity. It is keeping her upright and stopping her screaming at shadows. Inside her pockets her hands are clamped so tight that if she’d had any nails left they would have pierced her skin.
When she finally reaches the Youth Centre she is drenched in sweat, and there is a buzzing in her head like a time-shifted scream. The scream she hasn’t let out yet. And then she sees, spray painted across the front of the building
TUESDAY
She takes a deep breath, crosses the road, and walks inside.
29
The phone call to Bullet Eyes is from his boss, and it’s to do with what’s happening on the estate. There’s quite a lot of colourful language being used. The girls
Bob Rosenthal
Richard Yaxley
Tami Hoag
Toni Sheridan
Sarah McCarty
Stuart Pawson
Henry Winkler
Allyson Young
Kevin Emerson
Kris Norris