CHAPTER 17

Bayswater

RULE NUMBER one of underground exploration is, according to Sergeant Kumar, minimize the number of people actually underground at any one time. That way if things go wrong there are fewer bodies for the rescuers to dig out. That meant the party would consist of me—because of my specialist expertise—and Kumar, because he was experienced exploring underground. I asked him where all this experience came from.

“I do caving in my free time,” he said. “Yorkshire and Dartmoor mostly, but this year I spent a month in Meghalaya.” Which was a state in northeastern India and essentially virgin territory for cavers—very exciting and dangerous.

Since the London Underground had only just got back to normal service after the snow, there was no way they were going to shut down the Circle Line while we explored. So we were going to wait until the official shutdown at one in the morning. Kumar suggested I get some rest and that we reconvene later to get tooled up.

So, leaving Lesley to keep an eye on the house that wasn’t there, I went home to the Folly for a meal and a sleep. I got up at eight, had a hot bath, and took Toby for a walk in Russell Square. It was cold and crisp and the sky was so clear that if not for London’s chronic light pollution I’m sure I would have seen stars. I’d agreed to meet Kumar back in Bayswater around ten, so as soon Toby finished marking his territory, I headed back in to get my gear. As I crossed the atrium Molly emerged suddenly from the shadows. I jumped. I always jump, and that seems to give Molly endless amusement.

“Will you stop doing that,” I said.

Molly gave me a bland look and held out a holdall bag. I recognized it as Lesley’s. I took it and promised faithfully to make sure she got it. I managed to resist the urge to go rummaging around inside it, my willpower bolstered by the fact that you never knew when Molly might be watching you from the shadows.

To my surprise, Nightingale was waiting in the garage by the Jag.

“I’ll drive you over,” he said. He was in his heavy dark blue suit with a matching Aran sweater and his serious plain brown lace-ups. His Crombie greatcoat was hung up in the back of the car.

“Are you supervising tonight?” I asked once we were seated.

He started the Jag and let the engine warm for a bit. “I thought I’d spell Lesley,” he said. “Dr. Walid doesn’t want her getting overtired.”

I often forget how good a driver Nightingale is, especially in the Jag. He insinuates himself through traffic like a tiger padding through a jungle, or at least how I imagine a tiger pads through a jungle. For all I know the damned things swagger through the forest like rottweilers at a poodle show.

While he drove I filled him in on the complex details of that night’s operation.

“Me and Kumar are going to drop down through the hatch, meet up with his patrolman, and see if we can track where the veggies went,” I said.

“Kumar and I,” said Nightingale. “Not ‘me and Kumar.’ ” Nightingale periodically attempted to improve my grammar and was curiously deaf to what I consider a pretty convincing and sophisticated argument that the rules of English grammar are largely an artificial construct with little or no bearing on the language as it is spoke.

“Kumar and I,” I said to keep him happy, “will descend while Lesley and a couple of bods from the Murder Team will hang about on the tracks just in case.”

“Just in case of what?” asked Nightingale. “What are you expecting to find?”

“I don’t know, tramps, trolls, sentient badgers—you tell me.”

“Not trolls,” said Nightingale. “They prefer riverbanks, particularly spots overshadowed by stone or brick.”

“Hence the stories about bridges,” I said.

“Precisely,” said Nightingale. “As far as I’m aware, nothing unusual lives in the tunnels, or the sewers for that matter. Although there are always rumors, colonies of vagrants, tribes of navvies that have become trapped underground and turned cannibal.”

“That was a film,” I said.

“Death Line,” said Nightingale, surprising me. “Starring Donald Pleasance. Don’t look so shocked, Peter. Just because I’ve never owned a television doesn’t mean I never went to the cinema.”

Actually I’d always thought he sat in the library with a slim volume of metaphysical poetry until the commissioner called him on the bat phone and summoned him into action. Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale—to the Jag mobile.

“The cinema of David Lean—yes,” I said. “Low-budget British horror films—no.”

“It was filmed just around the corner from the Folly,” he said. “I was curious.”

“Any rumors that weren’t made into a film?” I asked.

“An old school chum of mine called Walter once tried to convince me that any system, such as an underground railway or indeed the telephone network, could develop a genius loci in the same fashion as the rivers and other sacred sites.” Nightingale paused to negotiate a tricky knot of traffic as we got off the Harrow Road.

“Was he right?” I asked.

“I couldn’t say,” he said. “Once Walter got going I never really understood more than one word in ten, but he really was terribly bright so I’m at least willing to entertain the possibility. Certainly if a Scotsman introduced himself to me as the god of telephones I’d be inclined to take him at his word.”

“Why a Scotsman?”

“Because of Alexander Graham Bell,” said Nightingale, who was obviously in a whimsical mood that night.

We did the strange Bayswater one-way system and turned up Queensway, which had opted for Christmas lights that year. Many of the shops were open late and the pavement crowded with shoppers. The weather had obviously concentrated the pre-Christmas rush into a mad panic.

“Have you found time to buy your presents yet?” asked Nightingale.

“Already sorted,” I said. “Got my mum’s.” An envelope full of cash, because my mum is definitely not of the thought that counts school of Christmas giving. “And I found a mint 1955 original Easy Geary LP for my dad.”

“On Hathor?” asked Nightingale. I was impressed; this was some seriously obscure West Coast jazz we were talking about. I complimented him on his jazz erudition. Buying for Lesley had been a pain, and in the end I wimped out and got her some expensive moisturizing cream. It could have been worse—it could have been scented candles. Nightingale didn’t ask me what I’d got him, and I didn’t ask what he’d got me.

THE NIGHT was still and cold as we pulled up outside the fake houses that conveniently served as staging area and changing room. Kumar had brought me a wet suit and bright orange overalls with yellow reflector patches to go over it. The neoprene was thinner and the fit looser than I was expecting; I wasn’t going to be making any kind of fashion statement.

“I don’t expect us to get that wet unless we end up in the drains,” said Kumar. “You want it loose for movement—and you definitely don’t want to overheat.” He handed me a set of boots that looked like the unfortunate love child of a pair of Doc Martens and a pair of Wellingtons but were surprisingly comfy. We were changing in what everyone had started calling the trapdoor room, with the hatch closed to prevent me from falling down it while I hopped about trying to get my boots on.

“Do we wear our vests?” I asked.

“What do you expect to find down there?” asked Kumar.

“I honestly don’t know,” I said.

The stab vest was especially developed for the Met to be both stab- and bullet-resistant—with emphasis on the word “resistant,” you notice, not “proof.” I’d worn one for two years while in uniform but had got out of the habit in the last year. Still, a stab vest was a comfort in a tight spot, so on they went.

Our helmets were the same high-visibility orange as our overalls and supported state-of-the-art LED headlamps. We divvied up the remainder of the essentials, Kumar getting the rope and rescue tools while I took the first aid kit, the emergency food, and the water.

“Damn,” I said. “This is worse than riot training.”

Lesley, who’d been waiting in the next room while we changed, walked in.

“Nightingale wants to know when you’re going,” she said.

“We’re just waiting for the patrolman,” said Kumar, then opened the hatch and stuck his head down to have a look.

“Are we going to have the place to ourselves?” I asked.

Kumar climbed to his feet.

“It’s actually going to be quite crowded down in the tunnels,” he said. “TfL has every work gang that would take overtime down there tonight. Tomorrow is the last full shopping day before Christmas and it’ll be the first full service day this week—it’s going to be brutal.”

“Your engineers,” I said. “Are they roughnecks?”

“The roughest of the rough,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “We know where to run for help, then.”

The flaring beam from a torch flashed suddenly up through the open hatch, followed by a piercing shepherd’s whistle.

“That’ll be the patrolman,” said Kumar, and then called down into the dark, “David. Up here.”

As Kumar exchanged shouts with the patrolman, Lesley fetched Nightingale. The idea was that he’d keep an eye out on the world aboveground and be ready to rush to the rescue or, more likely, pick us up if we surfaced far away.

“We might as well lower the stairs, then,” I said.

“If they are stairs,” said Lesley.

I lay down on the floorboards and put my head through the hatch, looking for the brass handle to operate the folding staircase. From below a light shone in my face.

“You might want to stand back a bit,” I shouted down, and the light retreated. I was just reaching for the handle when Lesley spoke in my ear.

“Are you sure that’s safe?”

I looked to find that she’d lain down beside me and had hung her head out the hatch as well.

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“We don’t know what it does,” said Lesley, looking at the handle. “It might swing ’round and snick your arm right off.”

When we were doing our probation at the Charing Cross nick I’d learned to listen to Lesley’s suggestions—especially after the thing with the dwarf, the showgirl, and the fur coat.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll use a line.” And scrambled up to find one.

Nightingale waved me aside and muttered something quietly. I felt the forma lining up, a fourth-order spell, I thought, with that economy of style and the abrupt twist of strength that I was beginning to recognize as his signáre. I heard a creak and a clank, which I guessed was the lever pulling itself, and then a surprisingly quiet but prolonged rattle of metal as the stairs unfolded and dropped.

“Or we could do that,” I said.

“Was that magic?” asked Kumar.

“Can we please get on with it,” said Nightingale.

I cautiously put my weight onto the steps, which bounced gently underfoot. When it didn’t collapse I walked all the way down. The last step hovered a third of a meter above the Underground rails. A safety measure, I assumed, against electrocution when the track was live. Once they saw that I’d made it safely, the others followed me down. Kumar introduced us to a cheerful Welsh geezer called David Lambert—the patrolman. It was his job to walk the line each night checking for faults.

“I’ve been doing this stretch for six years,” he said. “I always wondered what all that ironwork was for.”

“You never thought to ask?”

“Well, no,” he said. “It’s not TfL equipment, see, and it’s not like I don’t have enough to worry about down here already.”

Even after we stepped out from under the fake houses, the bottom of the cut was pitch-black. Fifty odd meters to the east were the lights of Bayswater Station, where gangs of men in high visibility jackets were manhandling heavy equipment onto the tracks.

We knew there had to be a secret door. Even if whoever it was had delivered the pottery overnight, they’d still taken the fresh produce away in the middle of the day while the trains were running. You couldn’t count on more than five minutes without a train on the track, and the time window was smaller because you didn’t want to be seen by the drivers. Since there wasn’t an obvious entrance within fifty meters in either direction, we had to be talking about a concealed entry.

“There’s always a secret door,” I said. “That’s why you always need a thief in your party.”

“You never said you used to play Dungeon and Dragons,” Lesley had said when I explained my reasoning. I’d been tempted to tell her that I was thirteen at the time, and anyway it was Call of Cthulhu, but I’ve learned from bitter experience that such remarks generally only make things worse.

“Don’t you have to make a perception roll?” she asked as I walked slowly along the dusty brick wall that lined the cut.

“You know a suspicious amount about gaming,” I said.

“Yeah well,” said Lesley. “Brightlingsea’s not exactly the entertainment capital of the Essex coast.”

I felt something and paused to trace my fingers along the course of bricks. The surface was gritty beneath my fingers and suddenly there it was—the hot sand smell of the furnace and a whispered muttering sound on the cusp of hearing. Even as vestigium went, it was faint. I doubted I would have spotted it as recently as this summer but I was improving with practice.

“Got it,” I said.

I checked the position. On the north side of the cut, underneath the road on which the false houses fronted—in the shadows and hidden from any of the nearby buildings that overlooked the tracks. Less the five meters from the base of the extendable staircase.

I extended my baton and gave the wall a rap. It wasn’t hollow but it was definitely a different pitch from the adjacent section. For extra strength, the walls of the cut had been built with a line of arched alcoves that looked for all the world like bricked-up windows. The easiest way to hide a door, I figured, would be to give it the same dimensions as an alcove. In a film you would be able to open the door by pushing in a false brick. I picked a brick at a convenient waist height and pushed it, just to get that stupid notion out of the way.

The brick slid smoothly in, there was a click, and the door cracked open.

“Shit,” said Lesley. “A secret door.”

The door was well balanced and definitely oiled and maintained because, despite being really heavy, it opened easily enough when I pulled on it. The back was made out of steel, which explained the weight, with a thick ceramic veneer fused—I have no idea how—onto the front as camouflage.

“Speak, friend, and enter,” said Kumar.

I stepped inside and looked around. It was a brick-lined passageway wide enough for two people, with an arched ceiling sufficiently high that I had to stretch to touch it. It ran parallel to the cut in both directions, right toward Bayswater and left toward Notting Hill, in which direction I found a crushed bean sprout on the floor.

“They went thataway,” I said. The air was still and tasted flat, like water that had been boiled more than once.

“You follow the bread crumbs,” said Nightingale. “And I’ll take David here for a quick recce in the opposite direction. See how far the tunnel runs that way.”

“Do you think it runs as far as Baker Street?” asked Lesley.

“That would certainly explain how James Gallagher got where he did,” said Nightingale.

David the Patroller looked dubious. “That would involve passing through Paddington and that’s a big station with open platforms,” he said.

“It’s worth a look anyway,” said Nightingale. “Perhaps the tunnel ducks under Paddington.”

“And what about me?” asked Lesley.

“You can guard this secret door and act as communications relay,” said Nightingale. “And in the event that you hear us screaming, you can come rescue us.”

“Great,” said Lesley without enthusiasm.

So me and Kumar headed off down the passageway with Lesley glaring at my back. As we went I couldn’t help thinking our little party was short a rogue and a cleric.