Behind her the computer makes a quiet, muted noise, indicating it’s connected to the Interweb, and Lily turns away from the window, and sits down gingerly. One month on and the bruising has gone, but the stitches still hurt. She opens up the
Facebook
page specially created for her, and is unsurprised to find it completely empty. There is no photo tag, no likes or dislikes, no friends.
Of course, no friends.
Lily types,
ARE YOU THERE?
A computer pause; the cursor flashing like fingers tapping on a desk, then:
YES.
The reply font is electric blue.
Lily is unconsciously biting her lip, causing petals of blood to flower as she stares at the screen. There is so much she wants to ask, but knows she can’t. That isn’t how it works.
She types,
HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS?
Pause
YES. WHERE WERE YOU?
Pause
AT HOME WITH MY MUM ALL NIGHT WATCHING TV
Pause
GOOD. ARE WE DONE?
Lily turns to look at the raindrops sliding down her window, then back at the words on the screen. They are so simple.
Are we done
? So simple, but impossible for her to fathom. Lily sucks at the cut on her lip and uses her sleeve to drag the tears away from her eyes.
ARE WE DONE, LILY-ROSE?
Pause
YES. WE’RE DONE. THANK YOU.
OK. FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS, AND THEN HAVE A NICE LIFE. YOUR BODY IS YOURS. MEND IT.
Lily is given directions for her to manipulate her laptop settings, allowing her computer to be accessed remotely. Once done, she watches the ghost hands systematically remove all traces of their correspondence from her laptop. All references of the Pro-Anna forum where they first made contact. All the conversations they have had in the cyber-basements of the Interworld.
Omecle
.
Whisper
. All of them. The
Facebook
account specially set up for their meetings ceases to exist. Everything. Every connection between Lily-Rose and the person remotely-controlling her keyboard. The last thing written on the screen before the computer shuts itself down is:
GOODBYE, LILY-ROSE
Lily-Rose sits in front of her blank laptop, its dead screen, and the
future-girl
stickers with which she’d personalized it in another life, and wonders what is going to happen next. She feels as if there is a door between her and the rest of the world, and the handle has been removed. Even though she has never met the person on the other end of her computer there was a connection: a way of understanding the pain and self-loathing inside. Lily-Rose does not know whether she will ever be able to take the advice and stop being frightened. Whether she’ll be able to take control of her life enough to live it. She wraps her arms around herself and stares past the curtain of rain at the grey world outside, seeing nothing. There is a knock on her bedroom door. She turns round to see her mum standing in the doorway to her bedroom, a mug of Complan in her hand, and her face set in an expression Lily-Rose is unable to read.
‘Mum? Are you all right?’
Lily-Rose sees past her to a tired-looking man in a zero-style suit and a weary-looking woman in an even worse one staring back at her.
‘It’s the police,’ her mother says, her voice tight-leashed. ‘They want to ask us some questions.’
It’s not hard to hack a computer. Anyone who says differently is a liar. It’s like lock-picking, or face-reading: all you need is the right teacher, and the correct motivation. All these films showing nerdy kids sitting around watching
Star Trek
, and
Quantum Geek
, and hacking into NASA or whatever, it’s just bollocks. Just another way to bully the weirdies. Box them in. Make them this. Make them that. Make them sit alone in the dark.
Mind you, I like sitting alone in the dark. It means nobody else is there.
Most of the tube stations have Wi-Fi now, including Holborn, so all I had to do to get a signal was set up a booster along the running tunnel between there and the British Museum Station. It’s not hard. There are so many redundant cables and junction boxes down here that finding a power source was easy, and disguising it unnecessary. The walls look like something out of
Alien
, all rubber-coated armoured cable and danger signs. No one can tell what belongs to what, down here. That’s why they never remove anything. Pull the wrong thing out and a train stops moving. Or all the lights go out. Something awful might happen, so leave it alone; that’s the thought process.
Works for me.
I’ve made my crib in the part of the station that was used as an air-raid shelter, the deepest part of the structure. It’s still got the ‘Dig for Britain’ posters on the walls. I’ve got fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, a camp bed, a laptop with remote speakers, and a rail for my clothes. There’s still a working toilet in the main part of the station, although I have to fill it with water from a stand-pipe in the running tunnel. Really, It’s more home-y than home ever was.
I’ve got other cribs in other stations for other things, scattered all across London … I don’t like to have all my eggs in one basket in case one of them breaks.
There’s three ways out of this crib, so I feel OK. Any less and I start getting jittery. I set the alarms, tune the laptop to the
World Service,
and lie down in my cot. I stare at the fairy lights sparkling above me, their little twinklings reflected in the millions of tiny dust particles that are no doubt poisoning my lungs. The computer is all news speak. Fucked-up country this. Fucked up climate that. All happening in a world I’m so separate from, it might as well be made up. I tune out and just lie here, looking at the tiny porcelain tiles that make up the ceiling. Honestly, it must have taken them years to fit all those bricks in. Why did they do it? Why did they make the bricks so small? And where did they make them? I can’t think of an answer so I stop thinking about it, and just lie here, breathing in and out.
Like I’m alive.
That’s about it really.
Lights out. Night-night.
Even from the doorway where he and DS Stone are standing, DI Loss can tell the girl has been messed over good and proper. She’s got that gaunt look of someone who’s lost weight suddenly: skin too tight and eyes too big. Like a cancer victim, or someone who’s undergone extreme circumstances. War. Famine. Or, he thinks sadly, someone who’s been repeatedly raped and beaten and no longer sees her body as an ally.
They are shown into the living room. It is a rectangular box identical in structure to thousands of other rectangular boxes the DI has been shown into over the years. The mother has tried to personalize it with pictures and paint, furniture and rugs, but to Loss’s mind it’s still a rabbit hutch on a sink estate that might as well be a prison.
The mother is staring hard at them, her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Protecting her. Pouring strength into her. Neither of them wants him here. Or his DS. He can tell that from their faces. He can see that from their posture. Have to be blind not to. What he can’t tell is why. It could be that, after the attack, the police were brutish and unsympathetic. They often are where rape is concerned. In some police circles, rape is just another word for ‘changed her mind’. Not in all. Much better than it used to be, but some. It could be that, mother and daughter have simply had enough, and want to shut themselves away and heal, or try to heal, and they, the police, are just a reminder of past horrors. It could be all these things and more besides. Loss had noticed a strange expression on the daughter’s face when she’d first caught sight of him. Almost guilt. And that furtive look at her laptop? The DI doesn’t know what to make of it, so decides to make nothing of it and get on with why he is here. He leans forward in his chair.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you this morning, Mrs Lorne, Lily, but I’ve got some information possibly relating to your, er …’ He is at a loss what to say. Sitting here in this tidy small flat with its touches of humanity, even using the word ‘rape’ seems to invite an evil that doesn’t belong in this place. He can see the mother’s hand whiten as she squeezes the daughter’s shoulder.
‘We heard it on the radio, Inspector …?’ The mother wants his name again. Even though he’s told her. Wants to keep control. He doesn’t blame her.
‘Loss.’
‘Inspector Loss, all I can say is those animals got everything they deserve.’ The mother’s face is flushed high with anger, and the daughter is staring at her hands. Loss notices she has bitten her nails down to such an extent that the skin has been chewed and the end of each finger is raw and bloody.
‘I’m sorry to have to ask, Mrs Lorne, but because of the nature of the attack on the young men …’
‘Animals!’ Mrs Lorne interjects vehemently. ‘They raped my daughter, beat her up, and then raped her again. Everything that happened to those vermin, it wasn’t enough.’
‘And because it was those
specific
young men,’ Loss continues, lowering his voice, ‘well, I’m afraid I have to ask.’
The seconds tick by, and mother and daughter just stare at him. Finally Mrs Lorne understands what he is saying. Asking. She looks at him with loathing and says, ‘We were in all night. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?’
‘The CCTV shows a young woman at the scene of the crime …’ Loss stops speaking as Mrs Lorne makes a cutting motion with her hand.
‘Enough. We were here
all night
. People called round. Unlike those animals who attacked my daughter, we have witnesses apart from ourselves.’ Mrs Lorne curls her lip in disgust. For a second Loss thinks she’s going to spit on her own floor. ‘
They
just back each other up. Cover each other’s tracks and sneer at us as if we’re nothing.’ Loss can see that Mrs Lorne is only just holding her rage in check. ‘Not that we’d need witnesses if those bastards had been locked up. The last month I’ve not been able to leave the flat without one of them hanging around, laughing into their phones. Even when I go to the shop downstairs I have to get a neighbour to sit in or else Lily starts screaming, or worse,’ Both Mrs Lorne and Lily-Rose seem to be falling apart in front of him, and Loss has a deep sense of self-loathing within himself. All these people want to do is heal, and here he is twisting a screwdriver into the wound, opening it up for inspection. Making things worse. So he twists it again.
‘Does the word “Tuesday” have any special meaning to either of you?’
‘Get out.’ The mother is striding to the door, barging past the DS. ‘I’d like you to leave now. My daughter needs to rest.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Loss stands up and follows her to the front door. As he passes Lily-Rose he has an urge to touch her shoulder, seeing his own daughter in her, but resists. ‘Even with the incident on the tube we’ll continue trying to corroborate your statement. The officers who were assigned to your case have handed over transcripts of all the interviews. It might be that given the new, ah, circumstances they have something more to add.’
Lily-Rose looks up at him, staring. And then she smiles, and it’s like the last rays of the sun before it sinks into the sea.
‘They’ll have difficulty raping anyone else from a wheelchair, yeah?’ And then she turns away from him and stares at the floor, leaving him cold and empty.
Outside on the concrete walkway in front of the closed flat, the detectives look out at the rain-soaked estate. Although the rain is coming down in sheets, they can still see the boys on their bikes with their rucksacks full of consumables. Commerce doesn’t stop because of the weather. Loss takes his e-cigarette out of his pocket, taps it a few times to charge the atomizer, and pulls a breath of nicotine down into his lungs. The DS sniffs, places her hands on the walkway balustrade, and looks down at the concrete playground beneath them.
‘Definite reaction when you said ‘Tuesday’, sir.’
After I’ve finished wiping everything from Lily-Rose’s computer I pull the hard-drive out of mine and put it and the console in my satchel for throwing in the sewer later. It’s not so much that I’m worried about getting caught, I couldn’t give a fuck about that, it’s more that I don’t want my clients to have to deal with any shit. No hard-drive, no record.
New client, new laptop.
I keep the speakers, though.
Clients. That’s what I call them. Girls and boys who have no one else to turn to when everything gets fucked up and they end up in the nowhere world of self harm and suicide …
Anyway, I won’t be getting any more clients, will I?
Before I get rid of the hardware I have a Red Bull and write down the names of the boys from the train on my wall. Later on, once I’ve hacked the CCTV footage from the underground, I’ll attach a QR code next to their names. I’ve already pre-linked the code to the site where they’ve put up video footage of Lily-Rose. If anybody tries to watch ‘the Lily-Rose rape show’ they’ll find themselves watching ‘the tube train gang boys getting completely outclassed and fucked up show’ instead.
I grab the hardware and my MagLite and enter the stairwell. The stairs aren’t in as good nick as the main areas, so I have to do a little scrambling. I go up a couple of levels to where there’s a tunnel that connects to the sewer system. The walls are made up of the same Victorian brickwork as in some of the stations. Really, what is it about Victorians and tiny bricks? The whole of the sewer network is full of them too. I know a lot of the sewers and the early Tube tunnels were built at the same time, but were all the bricks being made by midgets, or something? Was it some sort of work-house orphanage scheme?
I dump the laptop in the slow-moving effluence. There’s a kind of walkway by the side of the channel and I go along there for about half a mile and then dump the hard-drive. You’ve got to be quite alert in the sewers. There’s a lot of noise around, and workmen are often down here, doing something work-y …