Tunnels 03, Freefall

it was about time he came up with something definite. As she reached the phone booth, she flexed the flimsy piece of card with its cheap printing. "Detective Inspector Rob Blakemore," she murmured.
    For a second she thought about the unidentified woman who had come to see her some months before. The woman had pretended to be from social services, but Mrs. Burrows had seen through the deception and worked out who she really was. The woman was Will's biological mother, and she had accused Will of murdering her brother. But this rather far-fetched claim, whether true or not, wasn't Mrs. Burrows' main concern. She was more preoccupied by two other aspects. She couldn't understand why the woman had waited until now to make herself known -- waited until after Will had gone walkabout. And the second aspect was that Mrs. Burrows couldn't help but be impressed by the passion the woman had shown. To describe her as driven would be a rank understatement.
    In the end, this is what had shaken Mrs. Burrows from her safe, lazy world, like a blast of cold wind from an unknown country. In those brief moments with Will's biological mother, she had had a glimpse of something far removed from the second-hand life that the television provided her with... something so real, so immediate, and so irresistible.
    She slotted her credit card into the phone and dialed the number.
    As it was the weekend, DI Blakemore was, predictably enough, not in the office. Despite this, Mrs. Burrows left a long and rambling message with the poor girl unfortunate enough to answer her call.
    "Highfield Police Station. How can I h--?"
    "Yes, this Celia Burrows, and DI Blakemore said he'd get back to me on Friday and he hasn't, so I want him to call me without fail on Monday because he said he was going to review the piece of CCTV footage he took away with him, and try to lift a decent photo of the woman's face, from which he was going to get an artist's impression, which he could distribute on the police intranet in the hope that someone might be able to identify her, and he also wanted to think about some media coverage and how that might help, and by the way, if you didn't catch it the first time, my name is Celia Burrows. Goodbye."
    Having hardly drawn breath or given the girl an opportunity to say a single word, Mrs. Burrows slammed the receiver down. "Good," she congratulated herself, and went to extract her credit card. However, she paused in thought for a second, then dialed her sister's number.
    "It's ringing!" Mrs. Burrows said. That in itself was a breakthrough because the number had been unobtainable for several months, which probably meant that her sister had overlooked her phone bill yet again.
    The phone continued to ring, but there was still no answer.
    "Pick up, Jean, pick up!" Mrs. Burrows could hear a munching sound, as if her sister was eating a piece of toast.
    "Just listen to me, this is C--"
    "I don't know what you're selling, but I don't need none!"
    'Noooooo!" Mrs. Burrows shouted as her sister hung up on her. She held the telephone away from her head and fumed at it. "You silly cow, Jean!" She was just about to redial when she spotted the rake-thin form of the matron bustling down the corridor.
    Mrs. Burrows replaced the receiver, whipped her credit card from the slot, then stepped in front of the grey-haired woman. On the spur of the moment she had decided what she had to do.
    "I'm leaving."
    "Oh, yes? Why's that?" the matron asked. "Because of Mrs. L's death?"
    Uncharacteristically for Mrs. Burrows, she seemed at a loss for words. She opened her mouth but didn't speak as she remembered the patient who had contracted the Ultra Bug, a mystery virus that had swept through the country and then the rest of the world. But whereas most people were laid low for a week or two with chronic eye and mouth infections, the virus had somehow got into Mrs. L's brain and killed her.
    "Yes, I suppose that's probably part of the reason," she admitted. "When she died so abruptly, it did make me realize how valuable life is, and how much I've been missing out on," she said finally.
    The matron inclined her head sympathetically.
    "And after all these months with still no news of my husband or son, I've been forgetting that there's one member of my family left -- my daughter, Rebecca," Mrs. Burrows said. "She's staying at my sister's, you know, and I haven't as much as spoken to her in months. I feel that I should be with her. She probably needs me right