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Authors: S Williams
Tags: thriller
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daughter was murdered three years ago.’
31
‘Sir? Sir, can you hear me?’
DI Loss is sitting in the chair outside the Marquis of Granby, but he is three years away, his mind wrapped in the shadows of his past. He’s standing in the entrance to Bleeding Heart Yard. The police strobes from the patrol cars blocking it from the main road are nightmaring the brick walls, and the rain running down the mortar lines is black.
Uniformed officers are taking measurements on the ground; running tape, and sticking down coloured markers, but Loss barely registers them. All he can focus on is the light-fractured body of his daughter lying; a thrown-away toy. One metre away from her is another body, but the Inspector doesn’t look at it, doesn’t give space in his brain to acknowledge it as he stares at Suzanne. The London rain is lit up in sheets by the strobes. He is hot and cold at the same time and completely indifferent to the scene in front of him. The Victorian yard smells of death, and pain, and broken promises, shattered futures, and failure.
Loss falls to his knees next to his daughter, not feeling his trousers tear or his skin rip open as he slams to the ground. Not feeling the rain slicking his hair, sticking to his skull. The blood running out of her means she is not long dead; the blood is thick and slow-moving, but not yet congealed. It leaves her body in ribbons and rags, and mixes with the blood trickling from his knees. He cannot quite believe that it is his daughter. He feels he is in several places at once: here in front of the body of this girl who was his daughter; sitting at his desk and answering the phone, receiving the call; a rabbit punch of pain that brought him over to this yard. The dead man who has been walking around for the last five minutes, a mapped-out non-future of a non-life without a daughter who had stopped talking to him months ago.
All the things he cannot say to her.
All the hugs and holding he cannot give to her.
All the crying and healing he will not do with her.
DI Loss kneels beside his dead daughter and feels his own life drain out of him.
Leaving him empty
Alone.
Lost.
32
There are six tube tunnels running under Earl’s Court, and in my opinion the whole bloody structure could collapse at any minute. This is why the Mayor of London has given his consent for the thing to be torn down. What they’re thinking of doing is getting rid of the flyover, digging up the tunnels, and having one massive underpass for all the cars.
A fly-under.
Like that’s going to work. What with the super sewer, the new cross-London underground, and the trillion-tonne skyscrapers, they haven’t got a fucking prayer.
Still, all that’s in the future, so it won’t affect me. What I’m concerned about is the Antique Arms Fair that’s held there every year. All the antique dealers specialising in military artefacts go there and display their prize pieces. Sometimes it’s held at the Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre itself, and sometimes at one of the workbot hotels just outside it.
I heard about it when I was pavement-surfing in Soho. All the street children get to hear about the big events in London. That’s where there would be surplus food thrown out at the end of the day. Where there might be casual work where you don’t need a pimp or a gang-hand. Where people are where they want to be, seeing something they want to see, so might be kinder.
Me, I never went there. After the hospital, I went somewhere else instead. Somewhere snowbound and hidden where I couldn’t be touched. Underground and in my head at the same time.
Later on, when I couldn’t find a safe way into the Imperial War Museum, when I was looking for a weapon fit for purpose, I remembered.
Of course, it’s not just Transport for London who have a stake in the ground beneath Earl’s Court. The National Grid recently put in more tunnelling for new power supplies as well. If they keep going on like this they’ll have
31
‘Sir? Sir, can you hear me?’
DI Loss is sitting in the chair outside the Marquis of Granby, but he is three years away, his mind wrapped in the shadows of his past. He’s standing in the entrance to Bleeding Heart Yard. The police strobes from the patrol cars blocking it from the main road are nightmaring the brick walls, and the rain running down the mortar lines is black.
Uniformed officers are taking measurements on the ground; running tape, and sticking down coloured markers, but Loss barely registers them. All he can focus on is the light-fractured body of his daughter lying; a thrown-away toy. One metre away from her is another body, but the Inspector doesn’t look at it, doesn’t give space in his brain to acknowledge it as he stares at Suzanne. The London rain is lit up in sheets by the strobes. He is hot and cold at the same time and completely indifferent to the scene in front of him. The Victorian yard smells of death, and pain, and broken promises, shattered futures, and failure.
Loss falls to his knees next to his daughter, not feeling his trousers tear or his skin rip open as he slams to the ground. Not feeling the rain slicking his hair, sticking to his skull. The blood running out of her means she is not long dead; the blood is thick and slow-moving, but not yet congealed. It leaves her body in ribbons and rags, and mixes with the blood trickling from his knees. He cannot quite believe that it is his daughter. He feels he is in several places at once: here in front of the body of this girl who was his daughter; sitting at his desk and answering the phone, receiving the call; a rabbit punch of pain that brought him over to this yard. The dead man who has been walking around for the last five minutes, a mapped-out non-future of a non-life without a daughter who had stopped talking to him months ago.
All the things he cannot say to her.
All the hugs and holding he cannot give to her.
All the crying and healing he will not do with her.
DI Loss kneels beside his dead daughter and feels his own life drain out of him.
Leaving him empty
Alone.
Lost.
32
There are six tube tunnels running under Earl’s Court, and in my opinion the whole bloody structure could collapse at any minute. This is why the Mayor of London has given his consent for the thing to be torn down. What they’re thinking of doing is getting rid of the flyover, digging up the tunnels, and having one massive underpass for all the cars.
A fly-under.
Like that’s going to work. What with the super sewer, the new cross-London underground, and the trillion-tonne skyscrapers, they haven’t got a fucking prayer.
Still, all that’s in the future, so it won’t affect me. What I’m concerned about is the Antique Arms Fair that’s held there every year. All the antique dealers specialising in military artefacts go there and display their prize pieces. Sometimes it’s held at the Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre itself, and sometimes at one of the workbot hotels just outside it.
I heard about it when I was pavement-surfing in Soho. All the street children get to hear about the big events in London. That’s where there would be surplus food thrown out at the end of the day. Where there might be casual work where you don’t need a pimp or a gang-hand. Where people are where they want to be, seeing something they want to see, so might be kinder.
Me, I never went there. After the hospital, I went somewhere else instead. Somewhere snowbound and hidden where I couldn’t be touched. Underground and in my head at the same time.
Later on, when I couldn’t find a safe way into the Imperial War Museum, when I was looking for a weapon fit for purpose, I remembered.
Of course, it’s not just Transport for London who have a stake in the ground beneath Earl’s Court. The National Grid recently put in more tunnelling for new power supplies as well. If they keep going on like this they’ll have
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