#tuesdayclash

Loss and Stone walk onto the Sparrow estate. The sun is brutal, bleaching the air and turning up the contrast on the day to white-out. All the d-boys are out on their pedal bikes, delivering their little packages of poison to whomever has stolen enough or sold themselves enough to afford it. Half the windows in the identi-flats are cateracted with metal shutters to stop the squatters or pop up crack houses. There are clotheslines on balconies and hard looking men with dead eyes and multi-phones smoking outside the estate pub. They look at Loss and Stone as if they are nothing. Less than nothing. Antibodies to a disease that doesn’t exist. The detectives walk up the stairs to the first floor landing. There are bits of foil everywhere, and the remains of cheap plastic lighters. The whole place smells of piss and hate and failure, and the walls are graffiti’d with messages of loathing and pain. It is a relief for them to come out onto the landing; to be blinded again by the day. From across the war-zone patch of grass below them masquerading as a park comes the sound of an old punk tune. Something from a past that never went away, just became more relevant. A reminder that history just gets richer with age.