Whispers Under Ground

by Ben Aaronovitch

  A dim blue light filled my concrete coffin, which was now half full of water. Reflections rippled across the ceiling in thin twists of green. I tried to maintain it for as long as I could, but the pain in my head got worse and the forma slipped from my mind.

  In my imagination, I began to hear the voices of the dead. At least I hoped it was my imagination. A lot of people have died in the Underground, through accidents, through stupidity, or suicide. All the one-unders whose dying wish had been to make other people late for work.

  I heard all these one-unders as distant wordless cries of despair and anger that cut off with the same sudden bluntness as Macky the luckless graffiti artist.

  ‘I’m not one of them,’ I shouted – although I think it was only in my head.

  And suddenly they were upon me. All the accumulated casualties, from the train crashes and the fires and the victims of the hideous suicide of the Bradford boy who didn’t want to work in Father’s chip shop no more. A lot of them had gone without warning but others had time to realise what was happening and some, the worst of all the cries, had time to build up a head of hope before the darkness swept them up into the stone and concrete memory of the tunnels.

  The rising water was a cold band across my chest.

  I didn’t want to die, but the truth is that the choice isn’t in your hands.

  Sometimes the only thing you can do is wait, endure and hope.

  I heard rattling and scraping above me and for a moment I thought it might be Sir Tyburn back for another chat, but then I heard the unmistakable and beautiful sound of a pneumatic drill.

  I waited for a pause in the drilling and gave panicked screaming one last shot – this time with feeling.

  Dust filled my mouth.

  Then there was light in my eyes which was suddenly obscured by a big black face.

  ‘You all right, mate?’ asked the face. I refocused and caught a flash of yellow helmet and heavy fire-resistant jacket. ‘Are you Peter Grant?’

  I tried to say yes but my throat was clogged with dust.

  ‘Want some water?’ asked the fireman. He didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead he gently pushed a plastic drinking straw between my lips. ‘Just a little bit at first,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry there’s no paramedic for this, but things are a little tricky.’

  Water trickled into my mouth and tasted the way water does when you’ve been thirsty for hours – like life itself. How long had I been buried? I tried to ask, but it just made me cough. I stuck to drinking the beautiful water instead. I sluiced it around my mouth and pulled my head back – the fireman withdrew the straw. I realised that he was lying on the platform floor peering down at me through a hole. Behind him was a portable floodlight on a tripod and behind that, visible in the reflected light, was more rubble. This was confusing me. I was fairly certain I’d only fallen a couple of metres.

  It took them at least another hour to dig me out.

  It’s difficult to describe the serenity of rescue, like a second birth. Only this time you’re secure in the knowledge that you know what you’re going to do with your life – even if it’s just what you were doing before.

  They put me on a stretcher, plugged me into a drip, a heart monitor and gave me a cool breath of oxygen. It’s was all good right up to the moment Lady Ty leaned over and frowned down at me.

  ‘Tyburn,’ I said.

  She smiled thinly. ‘Who were you expecting?’ she asked. ‘International Rescue?’

  I didn’t say Toby the Dog because I don’t have a death wish.

  ‘Did you hear me calling?’ I said, checking to make sure nobody was close enough to hear. ‘I was calling with magic.’

  ‘I smelt you, boy,’ she said. ‘You were stinking up the sewers and, while I had half a mind to leave you, I couldn’t take the risk that you’d smell worse dead.’

  She leant down until her lips were by my ear. Her breath was spiced with nutmeg and saffron. ‘One day,’ she murmured, ‘I will ask you for a favour and do you know what your response will be?’

  ‘Yes ma’am, no ma’am – three bags full, ma’am.’

  ‘You only become my enemy if you get in my way, Peter,’ she said. ‘If you get in my way you should make sure my enemy is what you want to be.’

  She straightened up and before I could think of something clever to say she was gone.

  22

  Warren Street

  I’ve never been one of those people who tell everyone they’re fine and try to climb out of their hospital bed. Feeling as shit as I did is your body’s way of telling you to lie the fuck down and take in fluids – preferably intravenously – so that’s what I did.

  I was a little surprised that they took me to UCH, which was not the closest casualty unit, until Dr Walid appeared in my treatment cubicle and proceeded to loom over the shoulder of the junior doctor who was treating me for various cuts, bruises, scrapes and possible exposure. To give him his credit, the junior doctor who – from his accent – had inherited his breezy confidence and a private education from his parents, tried for professional insouciance. But there’s just something uniquely intimidating about a wiry six-foot Scot. Once he’d arranged to have a nurse come and put the actual bandages on, he gave me a professional smile and legged it out of there as fast he could go.

  By day Dr Walid is a world-renowned gastroenterologist, but by night he dons his sinister white coat and becomes England’s foremost expert on crypto-pathology. Anything weird that turns up, living or dead, gets examined by Dr Walid – including me and Lesley.

  ‘Good evening, Peter,’ he said as he advanced on me. ‘I was hoping you’d make it all the way to Christmas intact.’

  He became the fifth person to shine a light in my eyes to check for pupil reactions. Or perhaps he was looking for something different.

  ‘Does this mean you’re going to stick me back in the MRI?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dr Walid with great relish. ‘Between you and Lesley I’m finally beginning to develop some decent data on what happens to your brain when you become a practitioner.’

  ‘Anything I should know about?’

  ‘Early days yet,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to get you booked in as soon as possible. I’m supposed to be on the train to Glasgow tonight.’

  ‘Are you going home for Christmas?’

  Dr Walid perched on the edge of bed and scribbled a few notes on a clipboard. ‘I always go back to Oban for the holidays.’

  ‘So the rest of your family aren’t Muslims then?’

  Dr Walid chuckled. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Loyal sons and daughters of the Kirk each and every one of them. Very dour, serious people except at this time of the year. They celebrate Christmas and I celebrate them. Besides, they’re always pleased to see me since I bring the bird to the feast.’

  ‘You take the turkey?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dr Walid. ‘I have to be sure it’s properly Halal after all.’

  True to his word, I was decanted into a wheelchair and raced up to the imaging department where they stuck my head in the MRI. It’s an expensive piece of kit and has a strict waiting list for tests that Dr Walid seems to ride roughshod over at will. When I asked him where his extraordinary privileges came from he explained that the Folly, through a charity first established in 1872, made a contribution to the hospital finances and in return he got to pre-empt non-emergency cases.

  The techs who ran the MRI had been seeing me and Lesley on a regular basis since the summer – god knows what they thought I had. Some form of rare brain cancer I suppose. I must have been getting used to the machine, because, despite the sledgehammer sound of the magnetic coils, I drifted off to sleep mid-scan.

  Saturday

  23

  Warren Street

  I woke up in a private room, the same one Nightingale had been stashed in when he got shot, I thought, to find Lesley asleep in a chair by my bed. She can’t sleep in the mask so she was barefaced but with her head twisted awkwardly away fro
m the door to make sure nobody could look in and see her face. Her mask was clutched in one hand, ready for instant donning if I woke up.

  In sleep, her face looked just as horrible but weirdly more like a face. I found it easier to look at when I knew she wasn’t looking back at me – judging my reactions. It was dark outside but this time of year that could be late afternoon or early morning. I weighed up not waking Lesley against her probable reaction should she catch me staring at her face without permission.

  I lay back in my bed, closed my eyes and groaned theatrically until Lesley woke up.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got it back on.’

  I had an inkling how long I’d been asleep when I had to rush to the bathroom down the corridor and spend what seemed an inordinate amount of time having a wee. After a shower and a change into a new and clean but otherwise identical open-back hospital gown, I climbed gratefully back into my bed and went back to sleep.

  I woke up to daylight and the smell of McDonald’s – my stomach rumbled.

  Lesley had returned with an unauthorised dinner, the newspapers and reassurances that Kumar and Reynolds had both escaped with minor cuts and bruises.

  ‘And Miss FBI,’ said Lesley. ‘What was all that about?’

  In exchange for a Big Mac and the promise that she’d fetch me some clean clothes I told her all about Peter Grant’s adventures underground. She particularly liked the Holland Park rave and the part where I hallucinated myself back into the fourteenth century.

  ‘I bet he was fit,’ she said. ‘All these supernatural types are fit.’

  I was almost afraid to ask. ‘Did we make the papers?’

  Lesley held up a tabloid with the understated headline TERROR ON THE UNDERGROUND. I pointed out that they’d missed the Christmas angle so Lesley held up another tabloid with XMAS TUBE FEAR covering the whole front page. I was tempted to lie back down and pull the covers over my head.

  The Commissioner had turned up on TV to state categorically that terrorism was not involved and in this he was backed up by Transport for London and the Home Office. It was strongly hinted that a water leak had undermined the platform and caused a localised collapse. The damage was confined to the platform and a resumption of train services was expected in time for the Boxing Day sales.

  There was a noticeable absence of CCTV footage or even stuff caught on phone cameras. I discovered later that whatever my friend the Earthbender had done it had fried every chip within ten metres and degraded cameras and phones out to another twenty.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Lesley. ‘After this, nobody will even remember the Covent Garden fire.’

  ‘Do I get a name check?’ I asked.

  ‘No, amazingly enough,’ said Lesley. ‘Because as they were digging you out a heavily pregnant woman went into labour and gave birth in the casualty triage point practically in front of the cameras.’

  ‘I’ll bet that got their attention,’ I said.

  ‘Gets better,’ said Lesley. ‘She had twins.’

  That couldn’t possibly be a deliberate distraction by Nightingale or whoever it was who was supposed to arrange these things. I mean, you’d have to have teams of pregnant women on standby – it just wasn’t practical. Damn, but the newspaper editors must be banging their heads on their desks trying to cram the words ‘miracle’ and ‘tot’ into their headlines.

  ‘My money’s on Christmas Miracle Twins,’ I said.

  ‘XMAS TWIN TOTS BIRTH JOY,’ said Lesley. ‘The E. coli scare got knocked all the way back to page four.’

  ‘Has anyone else visited?’ I asked. Seawoll and Stephanopoulos were not going to be happy.

  ‘Nightingale turned up,’ she said. ‘He was hoping to shout at you a bit to show his affection in a gruff manly and safely non-gay way but you were asleep so he just sort of milled around for a while and then off he went.’

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘How was your end of the operation?’

  ‘Unlike some people,’ she said. ‘I devoted my time to some actual police work.’

  ‘Somebody has to do it,’ I said.

  Lesley gave me a long look. Sometimes I can tell what she’s thinking even with the mask on. But sometimes I can’t.

  ‘They’re all linked,’ said Lesley. ‘The Beales, Gallaghers and Nolans. Want to guess how?’

  ‘The Unbreakable Empire Pottery?’ I asked.

  ‘Not the Nolans,’ said Lesley, snagging a satsuma from a bowl by my bed. ‘At least not to start with – they came later. The business was started in 1865 by Eugene Beale, Patrick Gallagher and Matthew Carroll – spot the names.’

  ‘And that’s significant because they’re such uncommon names,’ I said.

  Lesley ignored me.

  ‘I checked with Companies House,’ she said. ‘The Beale family business goes all the way back to Empire Pottery which, by the time it went effectively bust in the 1950s, was but a small adjunct of the seriously large property, construction and engineering subcontracting business. Matthew Carroll’s son William is listed as running the Dublin branch of the firm – now I know what you’re thinking, but guess who that kiln belonged to?’

  ‘Ryan Carroll.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Lesley and waved her notebook at me. ‘He’s using that warehouse rent-free, so either he has a direct family connection or the Beales are just sentimental about the name.’

  ‘Maybe we should interview Carroll.’ I said.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Do you have a firm connection with James Gallagher?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re going to like this,’ she said.

  Because, according to Lesley, US senators don’t have your common or garden blog pages they have huge fuck-off commercial-quality websites, plural, that tell you everything they need you to know about them. Or at least everything the senator needs you to know.

  ‘Although they don’t have a lot in the way of humorous cats,’ said Lesley.

  But they did have a lot about Senator Gallagher’s family, including the story of Sean Gallagher who emigrated to America in 1864 to seek a new life of freedom, liberty and apple pie.

  ‘And to avoid arrest on suspicion of murder,’ said Lesley. ‘According to the court records. Glassed some guy in an establishment of the type frequented by ruffians, navvies and others of low character.’

  ‘Did he do it?’ I asked.

  ‘This was the old-fashioned coppering,’ said Lesley. ‘He was drunk and Irish and the victim was likewise drunk and Irish, they were known to be arguing but there were no witnesses to the actual killing. Everyone in the establishment having been struck suddenly blind and deaf. Although that might have had something to with the gin they were drinking. Anyway, his bail was stood by his brother Patrick and by Eugene Beale and it was them that paid when he did his flit to the States.’

  Where he and his descendants became pillars of the notorious New York political system. Lesley didn’t know what it was notorious for, except that’s how it was always described – notorious.

  What had we stumbled into in the sewers? A culture, a secret society? Nightingale would have to be told but Detective Chief Inspector Seawoll would want a great deal more ‘real’ evidence before he started bringing in people for questioning.

  ‘We need to check the mundane library,’ I said. ‘See if there’s anything about the tunnels dating back to before the 1940s.’

  ‘You know it’s Christmas Eve, don’t you?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘Really,’ I said. ‘Does this mean you want a present?’

  ‘It means I’m going home to Essex tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Also, I know you have a strange disregard for basic procedure, but Nightingale is the SIO on the Little Crocodiles case and Seawoll is SIO on the James Gallagher murder. Meaning that you need to talk to at least one of those before you do anything. Including getting out of bed.’

  ‘At least bring me my laptop,’ I said.

  ‘Fine,’ said Lesley.

  ‘And some grapes,’ I said. ‘I can’t b
elieve I’ve been in hospital overnight and nobody brought me any grapes.’

  After Lesley had buggered off, I checked in the waste-paper basket and found not one but two flimsy plastic containers with denuded grape stems in them. I then spent a happy half an hour plotting a series of increasingly bizarre revenge pranks on Lesley before Nightingale arrived with a change of clothes. This being Nightingale, he’d brought my fitted M&S navy suit that was, strictly speaking, reserved for funerals and court appearances.

  I told him my theories about the Faceless Man and Crossrail and it started sounding thinner the longer I talked. But Nightingale thought it was worth checking out.

  ‘At the very least,’ he said, ‘we need to eliminate the possibility.’

  We were interrupted by a surprisingly young registrar with stumpy brown fingers and a Brummie accent who took my blood pressure and another blood sample. I asked after Dr Walid and was told that, since I wasn’t in any danger, he’d left for Scotland the night before.

  ‘Amazingly undamaged,’ said the registrar. ‘But he wants you to stay overnight for observation. You’re suffering from exposure so you need to rest, take on fluids and stay warm.’

  I told him that I had no intention of getting out of bed and he wandered off, content. Nightingale said I did look tired and that he was going to leave me alone to get some sleep. When I complained I was bored he left me his copy of the Daily Telegraph and suggested that I try the crossword. He was right – fifteen minutes later I slapped it down on the bed.

  ‘Twelve down,’ said Tyburn. ‘To owe much to others – six letters.’

  She was standing in the doorway wearing brown slacks and a snowy-white lamb’s-wool rollneck jumper.

  ‘Aren’t you going to wait for me to recover before calling it in?’ I asked.

  She entered and sat primly on the end of my bed and looked around the room – frowning.

  ‘Why haven’t you got any grapes?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been asking myself the same question,’ I said. ‘You didn’t bring flowers, either.’