Tuesday Falling

Copyright

Killer Reads

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GH

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © S. Williams 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

S. Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780008132743

Version 2015-02-26

Dedication

For Josephine, completely

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

Sometimes, I like to just sit on the tube, travelling from station to station. The station, then the tunnel, then the station. Over and over.

The white. The black.

I never look directly at anyone; I always look at them in the windows. See them reflected in the dark of the machine.

Sometimes, when the noise in my head threatens to make me snowbound, I just travel the tube, tuning everything out. Leaning my head against the connecting door. Feeling the vibration. Feeling the ghosts move through me. Waiting for it all to stop.

1

The boys pile onto the tube, all drop-crotch trousers, and Jafaican whine. Their eyes are hard and shiny from too much speed laced with too little mephedrone. Their clothes scream outsider whilst looking desperate to fit in. They want to be seen separate, but together. Little boys in grown-up bodies, confused and broken by a society they can’t keep up with, and so try to laugh at instead. It’s pathetic really. If they weren’t so dangerous I might try to take them home and mother them.

But me, a mother? I don’t think so. The last time I was a mother I was fourteen, and it worked out just fine for about fifteen minutes.

There are six of them, these boys. The youngest is maybe thirteen, and the oldest about sixteen. If you added up their IQs the total wouldn’t even equal my shoe size, and yet they think they’re so clever.

I love messing with boys like them. They see me sat in the corner of the carriage, a little Gothette. A tiny emo. They look at my army satchel and they think, ‘poetry book’. They don’t think, Columbine.

Actually, I’m giving them too much credit. They don’t think at all. They function on crowd-brain. Follow the leader. Seek out the weak.

The weak. That’s me. Five foot fuck-all and all dressed in black, like I’ve got nothing better to do with my time than watch The Matrix, and make pretty pictures on my arm with a blade. A pretty girl, pretty fucked-up.

Ripe for the plucking.

Come on then, boys.

Pluck me.

2

‘Who is she?’ DI Loss is looking at the CCTV from the tube train. Even though it’s a recording, not a live link, the tension in the room is a physical presence. The air seems razor-thin, and there is a whine at the back of the DI’s thoughts like a broken light-filament. The image on the screen is in black and white and the pixilation is terrible. There’s grey-out everywhere, and all the faces are smudgy, as if they’ve been partially rubbed out.

It doesn’t, however, disguise the blood.

‘Dunno, sir. We’re checking the cameras from the entrance now.’

His DS is not looking at what her boss is looking at. She’s already seen it and is still, several minutes later, having to swallow the copious amounts of saliva her body is producing. It’s either that or throw up on her lap-top.

On-screen there’s blood everywhere. All over the bodies of the young men lying motionless on the floor of the tube carriage. Splashed on the seats and the windows and in long splatter streaks on the tube walls. Even though the image is black and white and the pixilation is terrible the inspector can tell it’s blood. And he knows it’s not the girl’s blood because he just watched her walk out of the tube without a scratch on her. The DI sighs deeply and reaches for his e-cigarette.

‘Roll it again,’ he says.

The screen goes blank for a moment, and then the carriage is back to a time before the carnage. No blood. No bodies. Just a small teenage girl in the corner and six junked-up predators piling in through the sliding door. They mess about for a bit, hitting each other and mouthing off in silent comedy violence, and then they spot the girl. Even with the white-out. Even with the pixels more spaced out than a SkunkMonk, DI Loss can see that the boys think it’s Christmas. Two of them low-five each other, and the pack begin to move down the carriage towards the girl, unstoppable in their gang-power. Completely in control of their environment. Top of the food chain.

Loss stares at the screen. Stares at the animal hunger visible on their smudged-out faces.

‘I wouldn’t count on it, boys’ he whispers.

3

Well whoopy-doo, here they come.

The one in the hoodie spots me first. What am I talking about – they’re all in hoodies. Of course they are. They all want to look the same, as if they’re American gangstas. Don’t they realize it’s all shit? That those people they idolize have the life expectancy of a sparrow? Honestly, if you think it through, what I’m about to do is a mercy. These brothers aren’t really living, they’re simply decomposing in slow motion.

Time to speed up the film.

What I meant to say was, the one at the front in the slightly more hoodie-ish hoodie than the other Marys, spots me first. I’m thinking he’s what passes for the brains of this crew. He can almost walk upright, for a start. He low-fives his drone-clone and starts edging towards me, all the others following as if they’re connected by puppet wire.

Did I tell you I love these guys? All tough stances and thousand-yard stares when they’re in a group. I reckon if I met one of these boys by themselves outside a church on Sunday and gave him a leaflet he’d say thank you very much.

I don’t want you to think I’m part of the God-squad, by the way. Fuck that. I’d rather have my teeth pulled out than get down on my knees in front of a priesty-prick.

No, what I’m saying is without his crew, his structure, he’s nothing but some brain-dead mother’s son with the processing power of a leaking punch-bag.

Doesn’t excuse him, of course.

I observe their approach through the reflection in the carriage window. When they’re a couple of feet away they come to a smug stop, almost in time with each other. Well done, boys.

Here we go. Mega-hoodie grins at me and speaks, his voice dagger-friendly.

‘Hey, Weirdo, how about you come with us, yeah. Do some stuff?’

It’s brilliant. Mega-hoodie is like the Shakespeare of the gang. He’s the Romeo. He’s managed to reduce thousands of years of linguistic evolution to the verbal equivalent of showing me his cock and saying ‘How about it?’.

Really, I’ve got to leave him till last, if I can. He’s just so much fun! I pull my knees up to my chest and carry on staring out of the window. Into the dark tunnel flashing by at a million miles an hour.

They all start to smile and jitter up. They think they’ve scored a hot one here. They think I’m scared and ready to pop.

‘Hey, Emo! I’m talking to you. Nothing to look at out there, girl. Plenty to look at in here, though.’ He starts to laugh, one elbow banging into his mate while he stuffs his right hand down the front of his pre-ripped Diesel combat trousers.

Two things here:

One. There’s plenty to look at because we’re in a tunnel with the lights of the carriage bright and sparkly. That makes the window a mirror. I can see everything they’re doing.

Two. Mr Ape has just stuffed his right hand down his trousers to have a good old jiggle in front of his mates, and so I’m guessing he’s right-handed, and has just about made it impossible for him to attack me.

I mean, you couldn’t make it up, could you? Intimidate the stranger in front of you by handicapping yourself! It’s like being threatened by the Teletubbies.

I can’t be fucked anymore. I turn back round to face them, pull the knife out of my bag, and stab Trouser-boy in the throat.

4

The DI watches the girl on the tube do her thing. Even in the washed-out colour he can tell she’s smiling. Even with the time-stutter visuals and the horror film lighting that starts halfway through, when she pulls the emergency cord, he can tell she’s happy. There is a beauty and fluidity to her movements as she walks back down the carriage that sings of her satisfaction with her work. It is like witnessing a human tsunami as she flows down the carriage. Loss takes a drag from his e-cigarette and continues to watch, the vape obscuring not one grisly moment.

5

It’s not hard to stab someone in the throat. You just pull the knife out of your army satchel and shove it in his neck, cutting into his carotid artery, just a few centimetres to the side of his trachea. Of course it’s not hard; he was going to rape you, and then watch as you were cluster-fucked by his clones. Completely self-defence.

No, the hard thing is not freezing up and stopping there, staring at the boy dying in front of you as he spasms around on the floor. That’s where most people go wrong. You have to stab him in the throat, then immediately pull out the knife, turning his body with your scuffed oxblood DM so that none of the blood hits you. Marks you. Then you’ve got to not freeze as the blood pumps out of Dying-boy in great gushes of red, spraying over his mates and the walls as his body spins away from you.

But you’re not looking as the body falls. No you’re not. You’re already slashing the eyes of drone number two as you run along the length of the bench-seating to the other end of the carriage. Between the blood fountain and the screaming you’ve gained yourself three or four seconds of shock before the adrenalin kicks in and they come for you as a pack. Of course, if they do that, you’re fucked. Beyond fucked. But by the time they’ve got it together you’ve already got your back pressed against the wall and big loony smile on your face.

It’s important which wall you’re pressed against. The tube train is travelling at 56 mph and when the emergency cord is pulled, which is what is about to happen, the momentum placed on the standing body of a drugged-up rape-junkie will be enough to make him face-dive the floor. It would also be enough to make a little Gothette sail through the air and crumple herself against a window, so it’s important that she is against the wall that will immediately arrest her momentum, and they are at the end that will give them the furthest to travel, thereby – one can only hope – breaking every bone in their rape-mongering bodies.

Smile. Pull. The scream of the brakes barely registers in my head, cos it’s full of snow and ice, but the boys in front of me are looking a little bit not so fucking clever now.

Oh, and rather helpfully, once the cord is pulled, the overhead lights go out, leaving the carriage lit by the stutter of the emergency fluorescent trace bulbs in the walls and floor.

Have a nice day, boys. I open up the satchel and pull out two curved scythes. I stand up and walk towards them.

Swish swash.

It doesn’t take long. It never takes long. If it takes long you’re in trouble. If it takes long you’re dead. The carriage is silent. I walk back up the train and put the scythes away. I won’t use them again but I don’t want to leave them for the police, either.

I mean, I don’t want it to be too easy, do I? Where’s the fun in that? There is, however, something I do want to leave for the police, and I take it out of my vintage American army shirt pocket and place it on Trouser-boy. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t object.

Then I look up at the camera so the boys and girls in blue get a good shot of me.

Then I leave.

Job done.

6

The DS taps at her keyboard and the scene backs up a few frames, and then freezes at the place where the girl is smiling up at the camera. Loss can feel a pressure building in his stomach and quietly belches; his hand in front of his mouth. The room fills with the smell of bacon fat. It makes him feel nauseous. More nauseous.

‘The cameras outside the station?’ he asks, reaching inside his jacket for some antacid tablets. His DS indicates the split-screen on her laptop, showing the CCTV views of the entrance to Embankment tube station, where all the passengers had to disembark after the emergency cord was pulled on the train.

‘Nothing, sir. According to the cameras she never left the station. She walked through those boys as if she was some sort of ghost ninja and then …’, she makes a throwing away gesture with her hands, ‘puff, disappeared.’

The DI continues looking at the girl on the screen. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. ‘And how many of those fine young men did she kill?’

‘Amazingly, only one. The leader.’ The DS taps a few keys. ‘One Jason Dunne from Sparrow Close, Crossquays.’

‘Lovely.’ Sparrow Close was well known to DI Loss. If one took a sink estate, an estate so deprived of government investment, but so rich in monies from drugs and stolen goods, and then dumped a load of stone-cold bastards in it, you’d have Sparrow Close.

‘Although none of the others will walk again,’ continues his DS. ‘She sliced their Achilles tendons and cut through the hamstrings behind the knee.’

The DS stops looking at her laptop and turns to face him. ‘Actually, she did more than that but I don’t want to think about it.’

Loss doesn’t blame her. All the blood in front of him on the screen is starting to make him light-headed. Even though on the monitor it’s not in colour, it’s in colour in his head, and it’s turned up to full-tilt. ‘And what was it she put on his body?’ he asks

She turns back to her laptop and starts tapping, her fingers hammering at the keys, and the screen is filled with a close-up of the body of Jason Dunne. Lying on his jeans, stuck onto them with blood, is a piece of white card, like a business card. Typed in Ariel font is one word: Tuesday. The DI sighs heavily.

‘And is it?’

‘Is it what, sir?’

‘Tuesday.’

Stone smiles tightly, staring at the image on the screen.

‘No, sir. It’s Friday.’

7

It‘s all over the news, screaming out on every media platform going.

One murdered and five crippled for life!

Jason Dunne, 16, and five other teenagers, all excluded pupils of Sparrow Secondary School, were brutally attacked in a Tube train late last night. Mr Dunne died at the scene. At present the police are asking for witnesses of the crime to come forward, and say they will shortly be giving a statement. They are particularly keen to speak to a young woman whom they believe to be at the centre of the incident.

When Lily sees the report she feels faint; she thinks she’s the young woman the police want to question. After a moment reality slams back in, and she breathes a shaky sigh of relief.

Of course it isn’t. It can’t possibly be her.

She was in all night.

Just as she’d been instructed.

Lily kills the image on her laptop and climbs out of bed. Without the noise of the news report filling the room, the rain can be heard plainly, tip-tapping at the window, behind the curtains. Lily is dressed in her favourite M&S brushed-cotton blue PJs. She has to roll the top of the pyjama bottoms over a few times to stop them falling off her. Lily has lost weight fast, and now weighs just under five and a half stone. Her bones hold up her skin in the same way a hanger does a hand-me-down dress. They look like they’ve borrowed a smaller girl’s body. Putting on her dressing-gown, she goes slowly to her bedroom door and presses her head against the wood, listening for sounds that shouldn’t be there. All she can hear is the noise of the radio in the kitchen, and her mother systematically beating breakfast into submission.

No sounds of doors being smashed. And people stumbling in.

No reek of drugs, and booze, and hate.

No jackal laughter. No violence and ripping and body greed.

Well, there wouldn’t be, would there?

Lily pulls back the bolt on the lock that she had fitted three weeks ago and walks through the flat into the kitchen. She doesn’t walk much these days, and she is slightly unsteady on her painfully thin legs. Her mother is standing over the cooker, a look of complete incomprehension on her face. Lily smiles. It feels good. Lily doesn’t smile much anymore.

Before it all, her mother rarely cooked for her; too busy working three jobs just to make sure there was food in the fridge and credit on her phone. Lily had repaid her by working hard at school and trying not to get in too much trouble. On Lily’s estate that wasn’t easy, but she had tried really hard. Now her mother doesn’t leave Lily alone in the flat. Lily no longer goes to school and rarely leaves her room. There is no longer any need for the cooker.

You don’t eat when you want your body to die.

Lily’s mum looks up from the cooker and stares at her daughter. Lily sees her own eyes in her mother’s face. Bruised from too much crying. Dry from too little tears.

‘Have you heard?’

Lily nods and stares back at her. Outside, the rain speaks a language all of its own as it lashes at the window. Lily’s mum looks at the radio; the quiet, measured radio-voice is talking about the attack on the six boys on the tube train. Lily’s mum nods her head sharply. Just once.

‘Bastards deserved everything they got.’

Lily smiles again. Hearing her mother swear, however mildly, makes her feel grounded. Not like she is walking through a cotton-wool dream world in her head where nothing matters and everything’s all right.

Lily goes over and gives her mum a hug, but only gently so that she doesn’t feel how sharply her bones are pushing at her thin skin. Lily knows her mum blames herself for what happened to her. When she was at work.

‘I tell you what, Mum. You mix me a Complan while I check my messages, and then we’ll swear at the radio together.’

It isn’t much, but it’s the best she can do. Interaction is a skill that has become lost to her. Weaving words to make a shield used to be part of her structure. Now words are a maze that confounds her. Lily leaves her mum crying in the kitchen, staring after her as she walks back to her bedroom. The last time she saw her daughter eating was two days ago, and that was a carrot sliced so thinly it looked as if it had been shaved.