Free Tuesday Falling by S Williams Page B

‘and explain to them that the last thing we want is the riot police, but due to some soon–to-be-fucked-off drug dealers, we have to leave them here for their protection.’ Officer Swallow looks scared stiff, but nods and moves towards the armoured vans. He turns to DS Stone, a disconnected look in his eye. ‘And I want
you
to get back on to the lab and find out what the hell’s going on with my daughter’s records. I will not have her dragged into this.’ He points at the unmarked police car that had brought them here. ‘Right now I’m going to go to that car and get some sleep. I want you to wake me up in two hours, and I want you to make us an appointment with someone at the British Museum who can show me those knives. Is that understood?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Fine.’ Stone watches as her boss dead-walks to the car and gets in. She signals to the driver leaning against the bonnet smoking a cigarette. He flicks it away and walks over to her. ‘Once he’s asleep, drive him home, and don’t let him come back to me until morning, OK?’ The driver nods, walks back to the car, gets in and drives away. DS Stone watches the car go, white plumes of diesel smoke snaking out of the exhaust, and drifting behind it, clear and distinct in the ionised air. Then she looks back at Lily-Rose and the other girls sitting in the courtyard.
    Then she feels a drop of rain hit her forehead, and the sky opens up.

35
    I wake up to the shipping forecast running out of the speakers like honey. I love the way I have absolutely, one hundred per cent, no idea what they’re talking about, yet everything they say makes perfect sense. The voice echoes around the station like a ghost, filling the space with names and places from a shadow world. I stare at the tiny tiles in the ceiling, letting my body tick back into focus. When the forecast is over I get up and set the laptop to scan for any mention of me on media networks, both on the Interzone and in the physical world.
    It doesn’t take long.
    I’m all over it. I practically
am
it.
    I drink a protein shake, and do my business. I try not to eat any real food. I need to keep my body fat index under twenty-two, or I’ll start having periods, and there’s no way I’m going to let that happen. No chance. I’ve still got to stay healthy, though. Well, functioning healthy, anyway.
    When I lived upstairs, on the street, it was all about scavenging.
    Scraping off Mcwrappers. Kebab boxes from bins. Turned fruit left behind from Soho market. Endless chips and pizzas bought with beggar money.
    Now, compared to then, I’m tip top. I drink nutritionally balanced health shakes designed for people recovering from illness. I don’t smoke, drink, take drugs, or eat shit fast food. I don’t sleep on cold pavements where you can actually see your life expectancy shedding off you, and fuck knows what living in a city with four million fume-spewing cars and buses does to you.
    Then again, my lungs are probably full of micro-particles of metal from the tunnel dust and the nearest thing I get to a vegetable tends to wear a hood.
    Still, it’s not like I’m planning a long future, is it?
    When I’m done, I strip and sponge myself down and catch up with what’s happening on the ground.
    The news footage looks like Ukraine. Fires all over East London. It seems that there was a riot in Docklands last night.
    Well who’d’ve thought?
    There’s an interview with a girl from the Sparrow Estate on an internet radio station, where the programme plays an audio clip of her rapists bragging about what they had done, then laughing about it. The girl names the boys, shouting their street tags down the microphone, and challenging them to get her arrested for slander.
    There are pictures on the BBC, taken from a helicopter, of fires all over the estate, lock-ups being broken into and the contents doused in petrol and set alight. Mothers and grandmothers are in front of the burning buildings, their eyes