Tunnels 03, Freefall Read Online Free PDF

building, echoing and indefinite like sounds heard in a public swimming baths, she suddenly felt so very alone. Here she was in this impersonal building with its professional staff and an assortment of troubled people, but nobody really cared about her. Of course, the staff had a clinical interest in her wellbeing, but they were strangers to her, just as she was to them. She was merely another patient to be sent on her way when they decided she had recovered, another bed to be vacated for the next inmate.
    "No!" She thrust her clenched fist into the air. "I'm better than that!" she proclaimed loudly as an orderly marched briskly past her. He didn't even give her a second glance -- people speaking to themselves were the norm in this place.
    She swiveled on the worn heels of her slippers and scuffed down the corridor, away from the Day Room, as she fished in her dressing-gown pocket for the card the policeman had given her. It had been three days since the last meeting with him, and it was about time he came up with something definite. As she reached the phone booth, she flexed the flimsy piece of card with its cheap printing. "Detective Inspector Rob Blakemore," she murmured.
    For a second she thought about the unidentified woman who had come to see her some months before. The woman had pretended to be from social services, but Mrs. Burrows had seen through the deception and worked out who she really was. The woman was Will's biological mother, and she had accused Will of murdering her brother. But this rather far-fetched claim, whether true or not, wasn't Mrs. Burrows' main concern. She was more preoccupied by two other aspects. She couldn't understand why the woman had waited until now to make herself known -- waited until after Will had gone walkabout. And the second aspect was that Mrs. Burrows couldn't help but be impressed by the passion the woman had shown. To describe her as driven would be a rank understatement.
    In the end, this is what had shaken Mrs. Burrows from her safe, lazy world, like a blast of cold wind from an unknown country. In those brief moments with Will's biological mother, she had had a glimpse of something far removed from the second-hand life that the television provided her with... something so real, so immediate, and so irresistible.
    She slotted her credit card into the phone and dialed the number.
    As it was the weekend, DI Blakemore was, predictably enough, not in the office. Despite this, Mrs. Burrows left a long and rambling message with the poor girl unfortunate enough to answer her call.
    "Highfield Police Station. How can I h--?"
    "Yes, this Celia Burrows, and DI Blakemore said he'd get back to me on Friday and he hasn't, so I want him to call me without fail on Monday because he said he was going to review the piece of CCTV footage he took away with him, and try to lift a decent photo of the woman's face, from which he was going to get an artist's impression, which he could distribute on the police intranet in the hope that someone might be able to identify her, and he also wanted to think about some media coverage and how that might help, and by the way, if you didn't catch it the first time, my name is Celia Burrows. Goodbye."
    Having hardly drawn breath or given the girl an opportunity to say a single word, Mrs. Burrows slammed the receiver down. "Good," she congratulated herself, and went to extract her credit card. However, she paused in thought for a second, then dialed her sister's number.
    "It's ringing!" Mrs. Burrows said. That in itself was a breakthrough because the number had been unobtainable for several months, which probably meant that her sister had overlooked her phone bill yet again.
    The phone continued to ring, but there was still no answer.
    "Pick up, Jean, pick up!" Mrs. Burrows could hear a munching sound, as if her sister was eating a piece of toast.
    "Just listen to me, this is C--"
    "I don't know what you're selling, but I don't need none!"
    'Noooooo!" Mrs.