Free London Falling by Paul Cornell Page B

the time code confirmed was the morning of New Year’s Day, two and a half minutes before Toshack’s death, the video showed the pile of soil not to be there one second . . . and to be there the next. Ross got the IT staff on the line, and they sounded as if they’d been expecting her call. With their help, she narrowed it down to two individual frames. ‘No soil . . . then soil. It just appeared. And the time code hasn’t been messed with. To do this so seamlessly would need serious expertise.’
    ‘Then we’re dealing with someone who’s got it,’ said Quill. ‘It’s Occam’s thingamabob, innit?’
    Sefton spent a fun afternoon that Saturday in the Boleyn pub on the corner of Green Street, close to the West Ham ground. It wasn’t quite UC work – all he was pretending to be was a West Ham fan – but it was close enough for him to feel more comfortable than he had been lately. It got him away from Costain and that bloody Portakabin, where Sefton found himself swallowing more and more frustration every day. The pub contained a vast display of Irons memorabilia, and a reputation for being peaceful, but committed enough to ask away fans to refrain from coming in on match days. Ideal.
    ‘The curse?’ said a bloke with the castle and crossed hammers tattooed on his neck. ‘Sometimes I think that’s all we’ve got left to make the opposition fear us.’
    ‘That’s why Ryan Scotley put two in against us – this is twenty years back – and then got himself taken off the field,’ agreed his mate. Sefton bought a few pints and heard lots of names that tallied with his mental list of those Ross had already discovered. The most recent, a decade ago, right at the start of Rob Toshack’s reign, was a Liverpool player called Matt Howarth.
    ‘It’s a long time for them to have remembered this stuff,’ he said, on his return to the Portakabin, ‘but that means it was always a big deal. There’s a few anecdotes worth checking out, and a specific threat of a surreal nature directed at Howarth by a West Ham season-ticket holder. The bloke who told me remembers it ’cos it was on the same day that Howarth died.’
    ‘Who made this threat?’ asked Quill.
    ‘She’s commemorated in the following terrace chant.’ He cleared his throat, then spread his hands theatrically. ‘We went one up for Mor-a! She’s going to shag the scor-er! Come on you Irons, come on you Irons!’
    He waited for the applause. None was forthcoming.
    ‘Her name’s Mora Losley,’ he said. ‘Bit of a terrace legend.’
    ‘Description?’ said Ross, already scribbling in one of her notebooks.
    ‘Little old lady . . . but nobody agrees on the details.’
    ‘How long ago was she a season-ticket holder?’
    ‘She’s still attending.’
    Ross ran the name ‘Mora Losley’ – as well as all the others – through CRIMINT, the Police National Computer, the Police National Database and the Met’s own systems. She found that the same name, Mora Losley, kept popping up regarding quite a few formal warnings but nothing beyond that: no arrests. This was what made something inside Ross relax, that feeling of uncovering something hidden, and of showing it to the world. It was all that could make her feel okay these days. It was as if she was feeling a message forming out of noise.
    ‘She’s got a history of abusive behaviour,’ she told Quill, ‘a lot of complaints against her by fellow fans. But what I’m getting from the West Ham fan chatter online is that, as she’s a terrace icon, a lot of them are willing to forgive her anything.’
    ‘That’s the feeling I got from the lads,’ agreed Sefton. ‘She’s everyone’s barmy auntie.’
    Costain looked uneasy. ‘Who heaves the soil about, then? Maybe she’s got some big nephews?’
    Ross was surprised to hear Costain express a useful thought. ‘Maybe she’s got a son, some relatives, some followers. She’s been a West Ham season-ticket holder since 1955.’ Ross handed Quill the