Tuesday Falling by S Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

of them, mixed with the shadows they create from the enormous amount of light streaming into the room through the glass roof and walls, gives the feeling of a tropical forest. Loss wouldn’t be surprised if a Pigmy reached up and grabbed the blowpipe off the wall. The room is divided by glass exhibit tables. Loss stands up and peers into the one nearest him. The proprietor comes to stand beside him and looks into the case. Resting on red felt, and neatly labelled, are two wicked looking axes, about thirty centimetres long.
    ‘Those are Egyptian quarter axes, popular around 1500 BC,’ the man beside him says. ‘The first ones were made out of bronze, of course, but they were so useful in combat that they lasted right up to the Iron Age. I’m Kavenagh Brooks, by the way,’ he grabs Loss’s hand and gives it a single, dry pump. ‘I understand you’ve been looking for information concerning these.’
    From out of another case the antiquarian produces a slim box and places it on the display glass in front of the detectives. When he opens it Loss feels a slick of saliva flood his mouth. Inside are two scythes, identical to the ones he’d last seen separating flesh from bone on a tube train, not very far from here. Beside him his DS gives a sharp intake of breath. Loss sways slightly.
    ‘Steady on, old chap.’ Mr Brooks places a concerned hand on the DI’s arm.
    ‘Where did you get them?’
    ‘These are one of two sets I brought back with me from Burma. Actually, it’s quite remarkable to find one pair in such good condition, let alone two.’
    Loss can’t take his eyes off the knives, at the wicked curve of them, and the way they seem to sliver the light into flat silver snakes.
    ‘And who did you sell the other set to?’
    Mr Brooks strokes the knives gently, as if he is putting them to sleep.
    ‘Why, the British Museum.’

25
    Lily-Rose is getting dressed. Her clothes are too big for her now, and when she wears them, the impact of her recent experiences comes into sharp relief. She is a ghost inside her own skin. She puts on a pair of scuzzy old jeans, and uses a dressing gown cord threaded through the belt loops to keep them up. She doesn’t need a bra beneath her ripped black Joy Division tee shirt – since she stopped eating her breasts have almost completely disappeared. This is one of the reasons she still eats so little. She does not want her breasts to return. She does not want to be a sexual being. Over the tee shirt she wears a Russian army jacket with the collar cut off, and on her feet, a pair of Doc Martins. She does not look at herself in the mirror. She has broken all the mirrors.
    When the police returned Lily-Rose’s computer she did not touch it. She was not sure if, when she started it up, knowing that everything on it had been examined, she would feel violated again. She wasn’t worried about them finding anything incriminating; the girl she met in the Pollyanna chat room was obviously very good at covering her tracks. But just the fact that strangers had electronically thumbed through her hard-drive. Her photos. Her texts. Her life.
    Herself.
    She wasn’t sure she could cope with it all.
    In the end, she decided she couldn’t and, instead, used her iPad to re-connect to the Interzone. She created a new email address, which she gave to no one. Of course she didn’t. There was no one to give it to. Since her assault she has systematically shut down all her contacts with the school and the estate. It wasn’t hard. Most of her friends have abandoned her, seeing her as broken: damaged goods. Or worse, blaming her for bringing down trouble onto the estate. Her rape was in some way a difficulty that reflected badly on them. An inconvenience; rocking the boat, and allowing the corpse of fear to surface.
    She collected all the information on the web concerning the girl the media were now calling Tuesday. She re-entered the anorexia/self-harm forums, the scar-bars she haunted after she was