by Peter May
The domed roof of the rotunda was glazed like a conservatory, and in the daylight hours let in light to illuminate the lift shaft and the spiral staircase that led down to the tunnel below. Tonight, the hundreds of panes of glass reflected what little light there was back at the sky, and the interior was mired in the deepest gloom. There were two entrances side by side. One was completely closed off by a heavy, black-painted steel door. The way through the other was barred by a steel gate with a row of tall spikes along the top. There was a gap of about three feet between the spikes and the lintel.
MacNeil surveyed it warily. ‘Supposing I manage to scale the gate and get inside without wrecking my manhood, what guarantee is there we’d be able to get out at the other side?’
‘Because it’s exactly the same,’ said the doctor. ‘They’re like peas in a pod. Twin rotundas. The Victorians were pretty anal about their need for symmetry.’ She paused. ‘Although strictly speaking, I should say Edwardians. Because the tunnel didn’t open until the year after Victoria died. But it was conceived and mostly built during her reign, so I think we could safely say it was Victorian.’
MacNeil regarded her with a mixture of awe and irritation. ‘How the hell do you know all this?’
‘Oh, you know, when I first came to London, I had to do all the tourist stuff. The Greenwich Foot Tunnel was just one of the items on the itinerary.’
‘I suppose you probably know how long it is.’
‘Twelve hundred feet,’ she said without hesitation. ‘It’s nine feet high, and lined with more than two hundred thousand tiles. Ask me another.’
‘I’d ask you to shut up, but I’m too polite.’
MacNeil held the torch and helped the doctor up to a foothold at the bottom of the spikes. She had to draw up her tweed skirt, revealing muscular little legs, in order to straddle the spikes and get a foothold on the other side. ‘No peeking,’ she said.
She dropped down to safety and MacNeil handed the torch through the bars. He pulled himself up and swung himself easily over the top of the spikes to jump down beside her and take back the torch. A white, tiled wall led away to their right, towards the doors of the lift which stood silent and dark behind its glass-panelled shaft. To their left, steel-studded steps spiralled down into blackness. The beam of the torch barely penetrated the thick, damp air, moisture hanging in it like smoke.
A smell of damp earth and rust rose to greet them as they made their way down, the staircase curving around the exterior of the lift shaft. It felt like a very long descent. The air got colder as they went, their breath billowing in white clouds in front of them. Finally, at the foot of the stairs, they turned left into the tunnel itself, reinforced as it dipped beneath the river by huge bolted sections of curved steel. The tunnel stretched away into impenetrable darkness, yellowed white tiles arching around and above them to the rusted trunking that ran overhead carrying power cables for lights that had been extinguished weeks ago.
They could feel the gentle downward slope of the tunnel underfoot as it tilted below the riverbed. Water dripped from the roof and lay in puddles all along the concrete floor. Their footsteps and their breath echoed back at them like the spirits of all those who had gone this way before. The cold was intense now, and the sense of claustrophobia almost unbearable.
‘Jeez,’ Dr Castelli whispered, ‘it wasn’t like this when we did it with the tour guide.’
MacNeil barely heard her. Something about the dark and the cold, and the sense of the river bearing down on them from above, increased his sense of frustration. Somehow everything had got out of control. He was no long running an investigation. He was being swept along by events. Events he could neither predict nor manage. And his sense of frustration increased his sense of urgency. He broke into a run.
‘What are you doing?’ the doctor called after him.
‘I can’t afford the time to walk,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘If you can’t keep up, go back.’
‘I’ll never get out on my own,’ she shouted, and he heard her sensible shoes clatter across the concrete as she chased after him. The fact that he still had her torch was probably an added incentive.
By the time he reached the lift shaft at the far end of the tunnel, he was breathing heavily. Dr Castelli had fallen a good bit behind, but he could hear her still running after him in the dark, and he didn’t have the heart to leave her. Her face swam into the beam of the torch, pink and perspiring, something close to distress in her darting little coal-black eyes.
‘You’re trying to lose me, aren’t you?’ she gasped. She leaned over, her hands on her knees.
‘Not doing a very good job of it, am I?’ He started up the stairs. ‘Come on.’ He heard her groan as she straightened up and drew breath to chase wearily after him.
As they neared the top of the stairs, light from streetlamps along the perimeter of Island Gardens park bled through the gate and down into the dark. MacNeil approached it cautiously and peered out into the park. Twenty yards away across the grass, there was a light in the Island Gardens Café. It was a tiny little brick building next to the fence. In the summer, patrons would sit out on its terrace and sip coffee and cold drinks and gaze out across the Thames towards the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich. Now the terrace was deserted, and through the window MacNeil could see the figure of a man slumped in a chair. The blue light of a television screen flickered in the dark. He could see the barrel of a rifle pointed towards the ceiling, the weapon wedged through the arm of the man’s seat. Clearly, he was there to guard the entrance to the foot tunnel. And he must have thought it a sinecure. For who would want to try to get on to the island through the tunnel? And why? MacNeil put his finger to his lips to warn the doctor to silence, and he watched for several minutes. The man wasn’t moving. There was a good chance he was asleep, but there was no way of telling until they climbed the gate and moved into the open. By which time it would be too late. But MacNeil couldn’t see any alternative, and he tried to gauge how quickly he could cover the distance between the rotunda and the café if the guard became alerted to their presence. Not fast enough, he thought. But if the guard really was sleeping, then he would be groggy, and the few seconds it took him to become fully alert might just be enough to allow MacNeil to reach him. Only one way to find out. He slipped the torch in his pocket and climbed quickly up and over the gate. He dropped down silently on the far side and pressed himself into the shadows, looking anxiously towards the café. Still no sign of movement. He nodded to Dr Castelli, and she struggled to pull herself up to the spikes. There she hesitated.
‘I don’t know if I can make it,’ she whispered.
He sighed and looked to the heavens. Why on earth had he let her talk him into bringing her along? He moved into the lamplight and reached up towards her. ‘Come on, grab my hand.’
She grasped it, and he winced from the pressure on his burns. She used his strength to steady herself as she straddled the spikes, and then she lost her balance, toppling forward, the sound of her skirt tearing behind her. She cried out as MacNeil caught her and cushioned her fall. It was a small sound she made, little more than a gasp. But it seemed to ring around the silence of the park. MacNeil let go of her, and she sprawled on her knees. He spun around in time to see the guard getting to his feet.
‘Shit!’ No time to think. Nowhere to run. MacNeil sprinted towards the café as fast as his legs would carry him, fists punching the air like pistons. He could see the startled look on the man’s face, bleary and not fully awake, as MacNeil came hurtling towards him. There was incomprehension there, too. And those moments of confusion were enough to allow MacNeil to cover the distance. He stepped sideways to smash through the door and propel himself, full weight, into the bewildered guard. Both men crashed to the floor. The portable television went spinning away across the room in a splintering of glass, and sound and vision went dead.
He heard the man grunt as he lan
ded on top of him, all the air expelled from his lungs in a single, debilitating breath. His rifle clattered to the floor beside them. MacNeil grabbed his collar and turned him on to his back and punched him twice, big fists like Belfast hams. The first one split the man’s lip. The second one rendered him unconscious.
MacNeil remained crouching over the prone figure, fighting to recapture his breath, hands hurting almost as badly as when he had first burned them. He looked around as he heard Dr Castelli approach. She stood in the broken doorway looking at him.
‘Ruined my goddamned skirt,’ she said. He glared at her, and she added, ‘You certainly seem to make a habit of sitting on people, Mr MacNeil.’
They pulled off the guard’s shirt and trousers and tore them into lengths to bind and gag him. MacNeil lifted his rifle, and they set off across the park into Saunders Ness Road. The street was deserted, overlooked by semi-detached houses and blocks of flats, and MacNeil felt very exposed out here in the full glare of the street lights. But there was no movement anywhere, no light in any of the houses. He wondered if the people who lived here slept better knowing that men with guns were out there keeping them safe from the flu.
At the end of the street they passed the Poplar Rowing Club and turned into Ferry Street.
III.
From St. Davids Square, they could see back across the river from where they had come. The masts and rigging of the Cutty Sark, the Old Royal Naval College, the cranes lined up along the opposite shore brought in to build new luxury apartments, but idle since the declaration of the emergency. On the mud banks below the quay, the carcasses of three bicycles lay rusting, half-buried in the sludge.
They found Consort House at the south-east corner of the square and took the stairs to the top floor. Just as Pinkie had done nearly twenty-four hours before, they found number 42A at the end of the corridor, next to a window looking out over the river. Her name was on the door plate. Dr Samantha Looker. MacNeil tested the door with his fingertips, and it swung open. Someone had left it on the latch. The hall beyond was in darkness. MacNeil indicated to Dr Castelli that she should remain where she was. He held the rifle across his chest and moved cautiously into the apartment. He had been good on the ranges, consistently hitting the target as often as nineteen times out of twenty. But he had never fired a weapon in anger, and never pointed one at another human being. Ahead, he could see street lights laying the shape of windows across the carpet of the living room. He passed an open door to a bedroom. He looked in. The bed was empty. It hadn’t been slept in. On his left, the bathroom door, and then a door to the kitchen. The apartment was warm, but there was no sense of occupation. He did not, by now, expect to find anyone in the living room at the end of the hall. But still, he proceeded with caution.
As he stepped into the room, something moved under his feet, and a screeching filled the air.
‘Jesus!’ he said, and he jumped back and saw the fleeting shape of something small and black streaking away across the carpet. He fumbled for the light switch, and as cold yellow light flooded the room, he turned quickly into it swinging his rifle through a ninety-degree arc.
Dr Samantha Looker lay face first in her own blood, where Pinkie had left her. Her computer was still on, its screen saver taking it on an endlessly repeating journey to the planets of the solar system. A small black cat with white bib and socks glared at MacNeil from across the room. He had stood on its tail or its paw, and it was watching him warily.
He turned sharply as Dr Castelli came into the room. ‘Oh, good God,’ she said when she saw the body on the floor, and she immediately knelt at Sam’s side to feel for a pulse. She looked up and shook her head. ‘Stone cold.’ She felt the muscles of the arms. ‘Rigor mortis is fully developed. So she’s been dead at least twelve hours.’ She looked back down at the corpse. MacNeil supposed there was probably not a great age difference between the two doctors. They were similar, too, in build, and both had short-cut grey hair. Perhaps all of those things gave Dr Castelli a greater sense of her own mortality. She seemed shaken. For once there were no wisecracks. ‘I suppose this is Sam,’ she said.
‘I suppose it must be.’
‘So who was Amy talking to all day?’
But MacNeil just shook his head. It could have been anyone. Text on a screen. How could you ever know? He stepped over the body and moved the computer mouse to clear away the screen saver. And there, on the screen, was the same dialogue box he had seen on Amy’s computer. Dr Castelli got to her feet and looked at it.
‘It must have been like a three-way chat,’ she said. ‘A conference call. Only, Amy never knew there was a third party.’ She took the mouse from MacNeil and clicked to see the participants. ‘It only shows Sam and Amy. So the other person must also have been logged in as Sam, from another computer somewhere else. Amy had no idea she wasn’t talking to her mentor.’
The cursor was blinking steadily at the end of Amy’s last message. Sam, are you still there? Hello? Sam? Talk to me!
It was a dead end. Literally. ‘So there’s no way of ever knowing for sure who it was she was talking to,’ MacNeil said.
‘Unless he’s still there.’
He looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, the chat’s still open. Maybe our phantom “Sam” is still online.’
‘How can we tell?’
‘Ask him.’ The doctor looked at MacNeil, one eyebrow raised, and he realised what she meant. He pulled up the chair and sat down at the keyboard, and then realised that his banana fingers were never going to type anything very accurately.
‘Here, you’d better do it,’ he said, and stood up to let her in.
‘What’ll I say?’
MacNeil thought about it. Who had Amy been talking to? Logic said it could only have been Smith. And they knew now that Smith was Roger Blume. ‘Hello, Dr Blume,’ he said.
Dr Castelli looked at him, and then nodded, understanding why. Her fingers rattled across the keyboard.
– Hello, Dr Blume.
The cursor blinked silently for a long time. ‘He’s not there,’ MacNeil said. Then a wwwooo-oop sound alerted them to an incoming message.
– Mr MacNeil, I presume.
MacNeil carefully peeled off his gloves and nudged the doctor aside. He needed direct contact, no matter how painful. He typed carefully.
– Yes.
– What took you so long?
– You’re not an easy man to find.
– And now that you’ve found me?
– Where’s Amy?
– Ah, straight to the point.
– It’s over, Blume.
– Not until the fat lady sings.
– We have blood from the house in Routh Road. We have a photograph of you from a reflection in Choy’s glasses in one of her passport pics. We know that Stein-Francks owns the house. And you have been identified by one of your neighbours.
– And I have everything else, Mr MacNeil. The bones, the head, the marrow, all the samples and tests. Without which you have nothing.
MacNeil sat staring at the screen. If that was true, then Blume was right. They did have nothing. With no body, there was no murder. No way to prove anything. And any evidence they did have had been obtained illegally.
‘Smug bastard!’ Dr Castelli muttered at the computer.
– What’s wrong, MacNeil? Cat got your tongue?
MacNeil looked at the cat still watching them from across the room. Had they been face to face, he might have found words to throw back at Blume. But the keyboard defeated him.
– Oh, and one other thing. I also have Tom. And Amy. So perhaps we can trade.
– Trade what?
– Whatever residual evidence you might have, in exchange for your girlfriend.
‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ Dr Castelli said. ‘He’s a lying little shit.’
MacNeil thought for a moment before typing.
– Where and when?
– The London Eye. But you’d better be quick, Mr MacNeil. It’s after five, and it would be best to have business completed before the curfew is lifted, and you become just another private citizen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I.
The London Eye was a Ferris wheel for grown-ups on the South Bank of the Thames. Like the wheel of a giant’s bicycle, it stood one hundred and thirty-five metres high, comprising seventeen thousand tonnes of steel and cable, and had been built in an age of optimism to celebrate the millennium. More than thirty glass capsules turned around its outside edge on circular mounting rings as it revolved. The unrestricted views of London from its highest point were unparalleled. Before the emergency, fifteen thousand tourists a day flocked to fill its capsules. But since the arrival of the flu, it had stood silent and still, a constant daily reminder to the people of London that things had changed. Perhaps irrevocably.
Pinkie sat in the wooden control hut, amongst the broken glass, and surveyed the command panel with its green and red push lights. It was all quite simple, really. No great mystique. It was the sort of thing you dreamt of as a child, to have that kind of power at your fingertips. Press this button to make it go, press that button to make it stop. This one opens the door, this one locks it again, each pod individually controlled.
He looked across the landing and departure deck and saw Tom and Amy locked away in their glass pod. He had made Tom carry her in and prop her up on the slatted oval bench at its centre. Now it was a prison without bars. Just glass. Could there be any worse kind of prison than one from which you could always see out? One from which freedom was ever visible, a constant reminder of your own lack of it?