Tuesday Falling Read Online Free PDF Page A

the dark caves of their hoodies.
    They look so cool; I’m surprised none of them are wearing sunglasses.
    The alley is a dead end, with the opening to the main street at the front of the club, past the drug-boys, and me and the bins at the back, smack against the office wall. I take out a soft-pack of cigarettes from the top pocket of my Chinese army shirt. I can’t stand here all night waiting for one of them to notice me. I shake the pack, spilling a single smoke into my fingers.
    ‘Hey, boys! Got a light?’
    All three of them stop what they’re doing and look up, squinting through the smoke to where I am.
    Now they’ve noticed me.

15
    Loss stares at the images unfolding on the screen. Without taking his eyes off the laptop, he reaches over and buzzes Stone to come in. The footage has no sound. It has been filmed on an expensive camera with night vision. The colours are various shades of green. When one of the boys lights the girl’s cigarette, it looks as if he’s using a roman candle.
Some sort of thermal imaging
, he thinks, reaching into his pocket for his e-cigarette. In the corner of the screen is a frame counter, chronicling the seconds as they tick by; cutting time into slices of violence and pain. There’s a knock on the door and Stone comes into the room.
    ‘Sir?’ she says.
    Loss can’t drag his eyes away from the screen. He beckons the DS over. Raising her eyebrows, she comes around the desk and stands next to him. After a moment she registers what she is looking at on the computer.
    ‘Fuck.’

16
    I walk up to the boys, letting them drink me in. I’ve got on a pair of black pilot trousers over black leggings, ripped at the knees, and my green Chinese red army shirt with the collar torn off. I can see them watching me come towards them, slightly addled by their drugs, but not so far gone that I’m freaking them out. One of them pulls back his hood and stares at me. His skin is speed-tight, with crack-burns around his nostrils. And he’s got cold eyes; eyes like weighing scales. He’s not judging me; he’s just trying to work out the odds. He’s a z-channel hurt-merchant with no future past this alley, but he’s trying to work out the chances of doing me. He cups his hands and sparks up his Zippo. Of course it’s a Zippo. With them it’s always a fucking Zippo. I lean in and light my cigarette.
    ‘Cheers,’ I say, and walk back towards the fire escape. Towards my satchel. Well, I’ve got to give them a chance to do the right thing, haven’t I?
    I can feel their eyes on my back, working out the risk. Little Goth-girl like me, long night ahead, no witnesses. Really, for them, it’s a no-brainer. There’s a pause as the rusted cogs in what passes for their brains kicks in, then:
    ‘Hey,
Nirvana,
where d’you think you’re going? Why don’t you come back here and have a little fun, yeah?’
    Nirvana. Jesus, they can’t even get their sub-cultures right.
    I smile and reach into my bag.
    Fun. Why not?

17
    DI Loss and DS Stone watch as the girl walks towards the camera. Even in the strange green light of the thermal imaging they can tell it’s her: the girl from the tube. She’s not wearing the same clothes, but the hair is the same, and the face, and the smile. The detectives know that something awful is going to happen next, but they can’t look away. The timer continues to count the scene. The smallest numbers, the hundredths of a second, are just a blur. The girl stops in front of the camera, looks right at them, and throws the cigarette to her left. Even though Loss knows that the image isn’t live, he can’t help feeling that she is looking directly at him.
    The boys behind her grin at each other and begin to walk forward: leopards approaching a deer. The one with the hood down is saying something to her. Loss can guess what it is.
Stay with us. Play a while. Don’t make any long-term plans
. The girl bends down out of shot, and then straightens. The detectives can see that