Whispers Under Ground

by Ben Aaronovitch

  And that was when I realised that Tyburn was wrong.

  There was no way we could allow the existence of the Quiet People to become general knowledge. If the Health and Safety Executive didn’t close them down then the inhabitants of one of the richest neighbourhoods in London, which the bloody refinery was built under, would. And the HSE would probably be right, because no doubt it had been built with the same concern for worker safety that had made Victorian factories the happy places to work they were.

  That wasn’t counting what the farm welfare people would say about the pigs, or OF WAT about the connections to the sewage system, OFSTED about the children’s education – if they even were educated – or Kensington and Chelsea’s social services or housing. The Quiet People would be swept away as quickly and with as little fuss as a pygmy tribe living in an inconveniently mineral-rich part of a rainforest.

  ‘We’re right proud of this,’ whispered Ten-Tons, mistaking my sudden paralysis for awe.

  ‘I’ll bet,’ I whispered back, and asked him what it was all in aid of.

  The answer turned out to be firing pottery – as if I couldn’t guess.

  Ten-Tons led me to a workshop where Stephen – I was getting better at telling them all apart – was throwing a pot on a wheel. Watching were Agent Reynolds and Lesley, who’d been led there by Elizabeth. Lesley caught my arm, in the manner of our hosts, and pulled me down until she could whisper in my ear.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ she whispered. ‘Even Nightingale’s not going to wait much longer before he comes in.’

  And it would be with as many armed officers as he could muster.

  Even in the dim light Lesley could read my face. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And you should see the arsenal these guys have squirrelled away.’

  ‘You two are going to have to go back,’ I whispered.

  ‘And leave you here on your own?’ she hissed.

  ‘If anything happens,’ I whispered, ‘you can come back and get me.’

  Lesley turned my head so she could stare me in the eyes.

  ‘Is this one of your stupid things?’ she asked.

  ‘Did you get anything from Ten Tons’ daughter?’ I asked.

  ‘Stephen is her fiancé,’ whispered Lesley. ‘Or at least that’s what her dad thinks. But I reckon Stephen wants to go outside the tribe.’

  I glanced over at Stephen, who didn’t, I noticed, wear sunglasses. He didn’t seem worried by bright lights. Less sensitive or just less inhibited?

  Lesley explained that it was a love triangle, or possibly a rectangle, but either way a scandal by the standards of the Quiet People who were living in what Lesley described as Jane Austen’s last bunker. Elizabeth was betrothed to Stephen but in the light of his neglect the young princess’s fancy had been caught by the dashing and debonair cousin from across the sea.

  ‘Ryan Carroll?’ I asked. ‘She obviously likes the artistic type.’

  ‘Oh, she does,’ whispered Lesley. ‘Only further across the sea than Ireland. Handsome, American, son of a senator, slightly dead.’

  James Gallagher.

  ‘Did they ever—?’

  Elizabeth had been far too refined to say it outright but Lesley and Reynolds were pretty certain that some snogging had taken place at the very least. I remembered the way that Zach couldn’t look Elizabeth in the face – unrequited in love. That was a great big square on the Police Bingo Board – I did a quick check to make sure Zach hadn’t sloped off while we were distracted. He was still with us and still gazing at Elizabeth.

  ‘No cuts on his hand,’ I whispered, but maybe he healed fast.

  ‘We’ll know when the DNA results come through,’ whispered Lesley. ‘If it is him, then Special Agent Reynolds is going to be so smug.’

  We checked to make sure Reynolds wasn’t listening on the sly, but she was staring at Stephen in what looked a lot like awe. I looked down at the pot he was working on. It was glowing with a soft luminescence that, if you’re me or Lesley, was a little bit familiar.

  ‘All right,’ said Lesley in a normal speaking voice. ‘That explains a lot.’

  And I found myself unexpectedly looking at a totally complete Bingo card.

  ‘I need you to go back to Nightingale right now,’ I whispered. ‘You can leave Zach with me.’

  ‘This is one of your stupid plans isn’t it?’ she whispered.

  I told her not to worry, and it was all going to be fixed in time for Christmas dinner.

  ‘I’m giving you sixty minutes.’ Her breath tickled my ear. ‘And then I’m coming back in with the SAS.’

  ‘I’ll be out in half an hour,’ I whispered back.

  I had it sorted in less than twenty because I’m just that good.

  Christmas Day

  26

  Sloane Square

  He was the best kind of suspect, the one who thinks he’s got away with it. Not only does it make them easy to find, but you get that great look on their face when they open the door and find you standing outside. He’d been staying in a friend’s semi in Willesden and, as luck would have it, he opened the door himself.

  ‘Ryan Carroll,’ I said. ‘You’re under arrest for the murder of James Gallagher.’

  His eyes flicked from my face to Stephanopoulos’s, then over my shoulder to Reynolds, who we’d brought along as an observer, and to Kittredge, who’d come along to keep an eye on her. For the briefest moment I could see he considered running, but then the sheer futility sank in and his shoulders sagged. Now that is a Christmas present.

  I finished the caution and led him to one of the waiting cars. We didn’t bother to handcuff him, which surprised Agent Reynolds. Kittredge told her it was Metropolitan Police policy to avoid handcuffing suspects unless physical restraint is necessary – thus avoiding the risk of chafing, positional asphyxiation and injury sustained by falling over your own feet and smacking your face into the pavement. It was most assuredly not because I’d forgotten to pick up my handcuffs.

  We sat him down in the interview room, set him up with some plain digestives and a cup of tea, let him settle for five minutes, and then I went in. Seawoll reckoned we had about half an hour before his brief arrived – so no pressure.

  I introduced myself, sat down and asked him if he needed anything.

  His face was pale and drawn and his hair was damp with sweat but his eyes were blue and alert behind his spectacles.

  ‘Did I ask for my lawyer?’ he asked. ‘I’m sure I still have all sorts of human rights.’

  I indicated that he had, and that we expected his solicitor along any minute.

  ‘But in the meantime,’ I said, ‘I thought we’d have a chat about the things that probably won’t make it into court.’

  ‘Such as what, exactly?’ he asked. Obviously he was regaining his balance. I couldn’t be having that.

  ‘The Quiet People,’ I said and he looked genuinely blank, which was a worry. ‘Dark glasses, pale skin, live in the sewers, keep pigs and make pots. Any of this ringing a bell?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You mean the Whisperers.’

  ‘Is that what you call them?’ I asked, and thought that what we needed was some bloody agreement about nomenclature. An EU directive perhaps, looking to harmonize the terminology appropriate to the uncanny on a Europe-wide basis. Maybe not – it would probably end up all being in French.

  ‘Did you not notice all the whispering?’ he asked.

  ‘And the groping,’ I said.

  He gave me a half smile. ‘That was more in the way of a perk,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised that we’re talking about it,’ I said.

  ‘A race of people living under West London like Morlocks,’ he said. ‘Your actual Victorian submerged nation complete with flat caps and steam engines. I’m Irish so I’m not really that surprised to find that the British security apparatus extends even there.’

  ‘You would be if you bloody worked for it,’ I said.

  He smiled thinly. />
  ‘If you know about the Whisperers,’ he said. ‘What exactly is it you want from me?’

  ‘You understand that no matter what, you’re going to get done for the murder of James Gallagher,’ I said.

  ‘I understand nothing of the sort,’ he said, but he unconsciously slipped his right hand, with its fresh bandage, out of sight under the table. He’d worn fingerless gloves at the Tate Modern, not an affectation but a disguise.

  ‘We have the wounds on your hand which match the murder weapon. In twelve hours we’ll have the DNA results which will match the swab you gave ten minutes ago to the blood we found on the aforesaid weapon.’ I paused to let that sink in. ‘As soon as we knew there were other entry points into the system we pulled the CCTV footage from cameras around Bayswater and Notting Hill. Sooner or later we will break your alibi.’

  According to HOLMES, Ryan Carroll had been statemented the day after I’d met him and had been given an alibi by one Siobhán Burke, who claimed to have been sleeping with him on the night in question.

  ‘Whether or not Ms Burke faces charges of aiding and abetting after the fact,’ I said, ‘rather depends on the outcome of this conversation.’ That was an outright lie. Stephanopoulos would be using the threat of a perjury charge to get Siobhán Burke to flip on Carroll but we figured that he’d respond better if we thought he was the centre of attention. We’ll use your ego against you if we can – we’re not proud.

  This approach, trying to roll over your suspect before their lawyer arrives, is high-risk and I could practically hear Seawoll grinding his teeth from next door where he was no doubt monitoring the interview. I suspected that Stephanopoulos was also watching, and definitely Nightingale and probably Agent Reynolds, in which case Kittredge would be there to keep an eye on her. For an interview that wasn’t officially taking place there weren’t half a lot of witnesses.

  ‘That’s low,’ he said. ‘Even for the police, that’s low.’

  ‘My point, Ryan,’ I said, ‘is that we don’t need anything more to send you down. But we do want to know why. So we’re giving you this opportunity to get it off your chest and satisfy our curiosity.’

  ‘You want to keep this secret, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a deal on offer?’

  ‘No such luck.’ I said. Seawoll had made that much clear.

  ‘What if I was to threaten to use it as part of my defence,’ he said. ‘Have it all out in open court. Try keeping your secrets then.’

  ‘You can give that a go if you like,’ I said. ‘Strange little men living in the sewers, keeping pigs and making pots? My money’s on you ending up in Broadmoor with a thorazine drip.’

  ‘Thorazine,’ said Ryan. ‘That’s so last-century. You get Clorozil and Serdolect these days.’ He sighed. ‘No doubt you have it all sewn up, a nod and a wink and it’s like the story never existed.’

  I tried not to show my relief. I mean, we might have been able to keep a lid on it, but the thing about a secret conspiracy is that it never stays secret for long. Tyburn was right about one thing – I didn’t think the status quo was going to be an option much longer.

  ‘What led you down there in the first place?’ I asked.

  ‘To the Whisperers you mean?’ he said. ‘Oh, family tradition. We may have all been a proper bourgeois Catholic family of lawyers and doctors, but we kept alive the memory of my Great-Great-Grandfather Matthew Carroll. Old Farmyard Digger himself.’

  Who, like Eugene Beale and the Gallagher brothers, had headed for England and worked on the canals, tunnels and railways.

  ‘So I was hearing stories about the whispering men from an early age,’ said Ryan. ‘Not that I believed any of it.’

  ‘Is that why you came to London?’ I asked.

  Ryan leant back in his chair and laughed in a way that reminded me of Ten-Tons. ‘I’m sorry, no,’ he said. ‘No offence, but it’s not everyone’s dearest wish to come to London. I had a perfectly serviceable career in Dublin.’

  ‘And yet here you came,’ I said.

  ‘You have to understand what it was like riding the Celtic Tiger,’ said Ryan. ‘For so many years we’d been this joke of a country and suddenly we were it, Dublin was where it was happening. All at once there were coffee shops and galleries and more than one kind of pub. People were immigrating to live in Ireland and not just by accident either.’

  Ryan looked at me and may have detected a distressing lack of sympathy on my part because he leaned forward and said, ‘The thing about the international art market is that the market part of it is essentially dictated by the super-rich and the people that suck their dicks for a living.’ He mimed sucking a dick and it was funny – I laughed.

  ‘But the art part of the international art market is done by yours truly and other people like me – your actual artist,’ he said. ‘And for us it’s all about the expression of the—’ He faltered, waved his hand, and gave up. ‘The expression of the inexpressible. There’s no point asking what a piece of work means, you know? If we could express it in words do you think we would have spent all that time bisecting a cow or pickling a shark? Do you think bisecting a cow is somebody’s idea of a fun fecking afternoon? And then to have stupid people come up to you and say “It’s very interesting, but is it art?” Yes, it’s fecking art. Do you think I’m planning to eat the fecking thing?’

  He sipped his tea and frowned. ‘God, I wish I’d asked for some vodka. Is there any chance of a vodka?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Did you ever bisect a cow?’ I asked.

  ‘Only on a dinner plate,’ said Ryan. ‘I don’t mind getting my hands dirty but I draw the line at faeces and dead animals. The hands are important, feeling the medium you’re working with. Did you take art at school?’

  ‘Drama,’ I said.

  ‘But you must have played with Plasticine – right?’

  ‘When I was a kid,’ I said.

  ‘Do you remember the feeling as it squeezed through your fingers?’ he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘And you must have worked with clay at least once in your life.’

  I told him I had and that I remembered the slick texture of the clay beneath my fingers and the excitement I felt when it went into the kiln for firing. I didn’t mention that nothing I made ever seemed to survive the firing process, usually exploding and often taking other people’s work with it. After a while the art teacher, Mr Straploss, just refused to let me do pottery. It was one of the reasons I took drama instead.

  Ryan claimed that it’s the relationship between the artist and his materials which drove the art. ‘It may look like just a collection of random junk to you,’ he said. ‘But there’s always something. When I was about sixteen, I suddenly understood that I wanted to find the meaning in those juxtapositions, to push the way I saw the world out through the aperture of what little talent I had. Can you understand that?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely,’ I said, and before I could stop myself. ‘I wanted to be an architect.’

  Ryan’s mouth actually dropped open. ‘An architect?’ he asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was taking the right A-levels but I was told that my draughtsmanship wasn’t good enough,’ I said.

  ‘I thought it was all done on computers these days,’ said Ryan.

  I shrugged. I’d done my best to bury that bit of my life, and I really wasn’t going to talk about it with half a dozen police listening in.

  ‘It was more complicated than that,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh, me?’ he said. ‘I had the luck of the Irish. I was the right boy in the right place at the right time. I burst upon the scene just as Dublin acquired a scene worth bursting upon. I was mad keen on Japan and China and India. Seeing a theme yet? Anything hot and exotic.’

  Apparently, they ate it up in Dublin in the roaring years of the Celtic Tiger. The Irish had the bit between their teeth and nothing was going to stop them. ‘Not the British, not the Catholic Church and especially not ou
rselves,’ said Ryan. ‘And I was close, almost there, local boy makes good.’

  And then it all went away. There was the credit crunch, the bank bailout, and suddenly it was like it never happened. ‘And the worst thing was,’ said Ryan. ‘I think people were pleased that it had all gone down the crapper. “Ah, well,” they said. “Nothing lasts for ever.” And they put the old Ireland back on like an ancient, worn but comfortable pair of shoes – the bastards.’ He smacked his empty teacup down on the table. ‘Two more years and I’d have been international – one year if I’d known there was a rush.’

  ‘So you came to London to make your fortune?’ I asked.

  ‘You’d like to think that, you English bastard, wouldn’t you?’ said Ryan, but without rancour. ‘Truth is I wanted to go to New York, but you have to have a certain weight, artistically speaking, to make it in the city that never sleeps. So London here I come, and I have to say this about your bloody city – war, depression, peace or whatever – London is always London.’

  This was all very interesting, but I was intensely aware that Ryan’s lawyer was fast approaching and Seawoll had been adamant that once it was all legal no one was ever going to bring up ‘any weird shit whatsoever’. As far as the Murder Team were concerned, they had Ryan Carroll bang to rights and they didn’t need to know anything else.

  But I had to know if I was right – and this was going to be my last chance.

  ‘So you made contact through the Beales?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes, the Anglo-Irish Beales with the emphasis strictly on the Anglo,’ said Ryan. ‘They put me on to the Nolans, who introduced me to Stephen, and down I went into the very bowels of the earth. I watched him make a fruit bowl, a really plain boring fruit bowl. He shaped the clay, he let it dry and in the kiln it went.’ Ryan grinned. ‘You know they run their kilns on pig farts? Very modern, but we’re talking secret subterranean race here so I’m expecting something a little bit more than pig farts.’ He wagged a finger at me.