by S Williams
‘Insignia?’ Stone obviously finds his use of the word amusing, but Drake ignores her, and flips and zooms, his fingers dancing. Loss doubts he even heard her.
‘And here,’ he says, the images reflected in reverse on the lenses of his spectacles. ‘This was taken from the CCTV outside the kebab shop. ‘See how he is looking at the street. Like he owns it.’ On the screen is the image of the boy who Tuesday burned with acid, prior to the attack, looking out across the street. ‘And look how the girls are staring at him? Power structure through body language, you see.’ All that Loss can see is brutality and fear, overlaid with the shroud of his dead daughter. He closes his eyes.
‘Now as to your suspect, the girl.’
Loss opens his eyes again, and stares into the face of Tuesday, repeated and fractured on all the screens in front of him. ‘Yes? What can you tell us about her?’
‘Well she’s not trained in martial arts, for a start. See how she moves? More like a gymnast or a dancer. No set or repeated moves or stances.’ Stone takes out her tablet and starts tapping.
‘Also, look at how she moves the blade? The hand to eye co-ordination is way off.’
‘She seems to be doing all right to me,’ Stone points at the screen.
‘But it’s not due to training. At least not the traditional sort.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look, I’ve studied these types of gang structures on hundreds of hours of CCTV. I’ve profiled them and talked to their parole officers. These boys get crewed up when they’re ten; by the time they’re fifteen they’re hard as nails, stone cold street thugs.’ He gives a nod to the screen. ‘By rights your girl should be lying on a slab in the morgue by now, but for two things.’
‘Which are?’
Drake holds up one finger. Loss gets the feeling he enjoys holding up his finger.
‘Surprise. None of these people saw her coming. They all think she’s just a little girl, or a tramp, or a clubber or something. They don’t see her as a threat. See how they’re standing? None of it is defensive. Jesus, in this one the main guy has even got his hand down his trousers!’
‘Yes. That did rather put him at a tactical disadvantage,’ says Stone dryly; Drake continues as if she hasn’t spoken.
‘As soon as she strikes, they go into shock. And then she simply doesn’t stop. She takes them apart as if they’re toys. It’s like it’s a play that’s already happened in her head.’
‘I thought you said she wasn’t trained?’
‘That’s not training. That’s something else. See how she’s smiling? Also, in the first two, it’s the gang who start it. I mean, she definitely seems to be putting herself up as bait, but it’s they who actually act as predator.’
‘Silly them. What about number two? You said two things.’
Drake turns his face from the screen and looks at them. ‘Borderline Personality Disorder; Schizophrenia; Dissociative Identity Disorder; what used to be called Multiple Personality, or Split Personality: all conditions that could explain the re-enactment movement patterns she’s displaying. To a certain degree it could also explain the discrepancies between the hand and eye co-ordination. Having a psychological condition also makes it hard to read the motivations behind someone’s body stance and facial expressions. Whether they’re frightened, lying, happy, and so on.’
Loss considers the young man in front of him. He is probably about the same age as his daughter was when she died. Was murdered. ‘But you don’t think she has any of those ‘conditions’, do you?’
‘No I don’t. Look at her movements. Look at her eyes. It’s not that she’s hard to read, it’s more as if there’s nothing even there to read. I think something terrible happened to her, or to somebody she loved, which produced a massive trauma in her psyche, and now she thinks she is dead.’
There is a long pause as what the student has said sinks in.
‘Dead. What do you mean, dead? Look at that one, for Christ sake! In that one she’s smiling straight at the camera!’
‘“Dead”. Nothing else to live for, as though she’s walking through a play that she’s written in her head. And yes, she is smiling, isn’t she? I understand, Inspector, that the second, um, incident was sent directly to your police email address, yes?’
‘Yes.’ They all stare again at the stills on the screens, one from the train and one from outside Candy’s. In both of them Tuesday is looking directly at the camera and smiling. Drake brings up all the screens so that they are zoomed in on Tuesday’s face.
‘Well, I think, Inspector, those smiles could be meant just for you.’
43
The Corinthia Hotel takes up almost one whole side of Trafalgar Square. It is one of the most luxurious hotels in London, since the building was sold by the Ministry of Defence in 2007, and then re-opened as an hotel in 2011. Me and the other scummers used to sit in a doorway opposite, watching all the rich people going in and out. We’d be sitting all squashed together for warmth, the place smelling of piss, with our road-kill pizza slices, and we’d try and guess what those rich people all did. Those people who could spend a thousand pounds to borrow a room for the night.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we were jealous, or resented their money or anything. It’s just like we were at a zoo, or in a lab or something. It was just so alien to us.
I know what you’re thinking. What was the Ministry of Defence doing owning such a large property in the centre of London?
What the fuck do you think?
I read up about it in a book I found lying abandoned one day; damaged goods at the back of a library skip I was sleeping in. At the outbreak of the First World War, the hotel was called The Metropole, and the government bagged it for the war effort. They did the same thing again during the Second World War, where they set up the SOE; a secret spook-y strand of M19 whose sole purpose was to develop dirty warfare: guns and bombs, and tactics no proper army would ever use. The thinking was, if the Nazis or fascists or whoever didn’t follow the conventions of war and committed atrocities, then the British government needed a secret branch that could do the same. Unbelievable, isn’t it? You don’t even have to delve in hidden offices for secrets to find this stuff out. You can look it up on ‘Quickapedia’, unless it’s been taken down or revised or whatever. Rather handily, the hotel is right above the tunnel that connects Whitehall to the Trafalgar Square tube station that was. What a surprise.
There’s all sorts of stuff down here.
When I first started exploring I thought I’d just find the odd relic. Old phones. Gas masks. Medical kits. Harmless stuff from a forgotten time that I could sell at Bermondsey Market. But underneath the Metropole I found all sorts of scary shit. The basement exits to the hotel are sealed up with lime cement so I guess not even the Ministry of Defence has a clue what’s down here. Stuff they were using in the trenches. Rifles. Swords. Cannons.
Cannons!
And all of it useless. The Trafalgar Square fountains were originally supplied by a natural spring, and the air down here is heavy and moist, and everything is mainly rusted. I guess it was all stored down here in case the country was invaded, and the capital needed to be protected. Nowadays there are loads of citadels under the city that do that, but I stay away from them. Those places are rammed full of hardware and they’d clock me if I got within fifteen metres of them.
It’s beautiful down here. Most of the tunnels are from the 1800s and the bricks that make them up are covered in a pale moss that glows gently when I turn off my torch.
Tiny bricks, made by waist-coated midgets, probably.
It was on my third or fourth visit, not long after I’d started living underground, that I found them. The things I’m going to use. They’d been walled away, and whoever had put them there had completely forgotten about them. Or maybe they were so secret that no one was ever told they were there. Maybe they were just put there by the dirty service, and then, when they were disbanded after the War, no one was left aliv
e who knew anything about them. Who cares? The important thing is I found them and they are exactly what I need now. It was when I’d turned my torch off that I saw where the door had been walled up. The moss had grown into the seam, so I could see the outline of the door-frame.
It took me a while to break through. I had to go back under Oxford Street to get a pick-axe from the store, but when I finally smashed my way in and saw what was there, it was completely worth the effort.
Because it had been so thoroughly sealed the air inside the room was dry. The room itself was really not much bigger than a cupboard, and the only thing inside it was a wooden crate with skull and crossbones on it. You know, like there’s deadly poison or something inside.
Obviously I opened the crate. Who’s not going to open a crate with a skull and crossbones on it?
As I said, inside was exactly what I need now. Even then, way back before all of this got rolling, I think I must have had an inkling that I would use them. Alongside the pain, when my head never stopped humming and my brain only worked in stutters, I think I must have had this plan, under the surface.
A wreck under the ocean. A ghost inside me.
I took a picture of the contents on one of my phones, and then I went about packing them up in my army bag, and taking them back to my crib.
44
DI Loss is sitting with DS Stone at a table drinking Coke again, proper Coke this time, from glass bottles rather than soda-stream. They are back outside the Marquis of Granby, in Brydges Place. Since the very public explosion of the case, the incident room has been taken over by top-notch investigators from the drugs squad, the anti-terrorist unit, the young offenders division, the serious sexual crime unit and any other department that could possibly have a shout in what the girl Tuesday had brought to the authorities’ doorstep. Although the whole thing was being overseen by their boss, the detectives were beginning to feel sidelined. Little people hanging around the edges of the in-crowd.
‘They’ve even convened a meeting of COBRA.’ Stone shakes her head and stares at the entrance to Brooks’ antique shop. The last time the government called a meeting of COBRA was when the capital was under an imminent terrorist threat. Loss sips his drink, which he has poured into a glass that already contains ice and a slice of lemon. The pavement painting of Tuesday has completely disappeared.
‘Do you know, Charles Dickens used to drink here?’ he says, his gaze drifting over the steam leaking out of the walls.
‘What, the Charles Dickens?’
‘The very one. He used to come here with his mistress. Not his proper mistress, mind, but his other mistress, his secretary, who incidentally was his sister-in-law.’
‘What a bastard.’
‘Oh, his wife knew. She just weighed up the pros and cons, and then decided to turn a blind eye. Or at least, that’s the theory. On the plus side, Dickens helped set up the first home for homeless women. What did the lab say?’
Stone takes a sip of her full fat, four-star Coke. When it comes to Coca Cola she doesn’t give a damn. It’s full fat or nothing. ‘Well, it’s definitely your daughter.’
‘Dead daughter.’ Loss’s voice is tight.
‘Your dead daughter, yes … The prints and DNA from the cigarette and knives all match. Also from the specimen slide she kindly left. Also from the cabinet, and from the handle of the door to the British Museum Secret Station that I, for one, had never even heard about. All the physical evidence points to the conclusion that the girl who calls herself Tuesday is your daughter Suzanne, who was murdered three years ago, and is now walking around London taking out pointy vengeance on evil gang-bangers.’
They sip their drinks. Above them the river of sky that can be seen running between the two buildings that shape the street is murky and the colour of a two-day-old bruise.
‘And you went back and checked outside Candy’s?’
‘Yes, sir. You were right. Underneath the bins there’s a manhole leading to the sewer system, which leads to an amount of tunnels, and bunkers, and God knows what else that I also never knew existed.’
‘And some of those lead to the underground train network?’
‘Possibly. No one seems to know. And incidentally which underground network? The network we’re using now, or the miles and miles of redundant underground that I was also completely unaware of? Frankly, I’m horrified by my lack of knowledge of the city I live and work in.’
A waiter comes out and clears away the empty glasses from the table next to them. Loss sighs and closes his eyes. He is seriously thinking of retiring; possibly from life, his heart hurts so much.
Eventually he forces himself to ask: ‘Could the DNA have been faked?’
‘Apparently impossible. The NKNAD …’
‘English, please.’ Loss interrupts her.
‘Sorry. The national DNA data storage facility for the UK took a sample of your daughter’s DNA when she worked at the hospital. They say it might be possible to plant a cigarette butt with her DNA on it, but not on the knives and slide and everything. Plus the fingerprints are a match.’
‘Right. So how did she do it? How did this girl steal my daughter’s identity?’
‘According to everyone, she didn’t. Even the tech guys are saying it’s impossible to hack into the database and falsify the results. As far as the evidence goes, sir, your dead daughter is going around messing up gang boys and creating the biggest civil unrest in London since the riots of 2011. Possibly since Cromwell.’
Loss misses his daughter so much; he can only look at what is happening sideways. He misses his daughter so much, with such guilt, that he doesn’t even have enough room to miss his wife. Stone puts her drink down and looks at her boss. He is un-stitching in front of her eyes.
‘You know what they’re saying, don’t you, sir?’
Yes, he knew what they were saying. He’d seen the TV. He’d read the papers. One of the rumours was that Tuesday was the daughter of a policeman. That she was a ghost on a haunting mission. Just one of the stories that were scurrying around the city, yes, but considering the DNA samples, one that was hitting Loss like a night terror.
‘What a fucking mess. Half of London believing in ghosts. Teenage rapists running scared. Victim posses roaming the streets with spray cans and the police can’t do anything because they’re victims, for Christ’s sake! And God knows what’s happening with the drug lords. They must be pissing in their Jacuzzis wondering what’s going to happen next.’
Like a child, Loss takes several breaths before asking his next question. ‘You know it can’t be her, Stone, don’t you?’
Stone stares at the brick wall in front of her. The mortar is old, and beginning to crumble. Since the DNA sample result she has looked into her boss’s personal history. Asked around about what happened three years ago. ‘Of course it can’t be her, sir. Your daughter died in horrible circumstances, and that’s awful. But ghosts don’t steal weapons or show up on film. Don’t send emails or spray-paint walls. Don’t create puzzles to mess with lowly police officers.’
Loss smiles a little. Stone drains the last of her Coke, chewing the lemon and swallowing the rind.
‘No,’ she continues, ‘nothing supernatural here. What we have here is some whacked-out ninja super emo, roaming the streets, killing bad guys, and fucking with our heads.’
45
Next to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, to the south of Knightsbridge tube station, is Number One, Hyde Park – one of the most exclusive apartment blocks in the world. On its lower floors are the accoutrements of the super-rich: the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, the premier retail venue for Rolex, and the central London showroom where Formula One racing giants, McLaren, sell their supercars. Above this, behind tinted glass, are eighty-seven apartments that are among the most expensive anywhere on the planet. The apartments are reached by a glass elevator, and the security is beyond compare.
CCTV cameras are everywhere, including the lifts. Each apartment has its own video security link t
o the entrance, the lift, and outside its own door. The cameras are not linked to a police station, however, but to the management’s own security personnel. The security staff are immaculately dressed in £1,000 suits, complete with bowler hats. Each of them carries a side-arm, and all of them are ex-Special Forces. Each of the apartments have bullet-proof glass windows. Many of them have balconies with pools. All of them have safe rooms; rooms designed to keep the occupant free from harm in case of a full assault.
The cheapest one-bedroom apartment costs £3.6 million. The most expensive, with five bedrooms, is £140 million.
Residents are rumoured to include a pop star, a Russian oligarch, a Korean ex-president, and a Japanese software developer who may or may not work for a foreign government. Although all the apartments are sold, most have been sold to corporations registered in different countries, and it is almost impossible to find out who owns them.
The man’s apartment is on the west of the building and overlooks the Thames, as opposed to Hyde Park, and among the obscenely expensive furniture on his balcony is a Jacuzzi with fairy lights. No matter how rich the gangster becomes, how re-educated, how far away from his roots, he still needs a Jacuzzi.
He came originally from Brentwood, in Essex, but there was no way he was staying there. He had an extortion racket going on at his primary school when he was eight, and by the time he went to comprehensive school at eleven he was a runner for a local gang. In a few short years he had ripped through the crew until he had runners of his own, and had consolidated the local gang landscape into a new, lethal machine that cut out of Essex and into the city.