by Tim Weaver
I paused, waiting for an alarm to start beeping and, when nothing came, entered the house and pushed the door shut behind me. Straight away it was clear Pell must have inherited the house. It was like stepping into a 1970s sitcom: an awful beige carpet, worn thin by traffic and scattered with stains, and wallpaper, thick and dirty, bleached yellow with smoke. In the kitchen, dishes were piled up in the sink; burger cartons and chip paper; food dried to a hard crust on the plates and worktops. The house was hot and stuffy from having been closed up, but there was a musty, decrepit smell as well, as if every inch of the house – even the foundations it had been built on – had reached the end of its life.
I headed upstairs. At the top were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The first bedroom was where he slept: a bed had been pushed in among built-in wardrobes and a mattress dumped on top. No sheets. No duvet. Just a sleeping bag. A side table was next to that with an ashtray on it. The room smelled strongly of smoke. To my left was a separate stand-alone wardrobe. I opened it up. There was hardly anything inside: two or three suits, three London Underground uniforms, a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts. At the bottom, lined up, were his boots: all steel-toecapped, all black with red stitching – the same as he’d had on the day I’d first met him at the station – and all polished until they shone.
I headed for the second bedroom. It was the hottest room in the house, sun beating down through the window, forming a square on the carpet. Dust was caught in the light, drifting from one side of the room to the other, and there was a strange smell. Sweet, like air freshener. In the far corner was a wardrobe. It looked old: dark wood, ornate design around its edges, chips dotted along its side and base. I opened it up. There were more clothes inside – more suits – and some cheap rip-off Magic Trees that smelt vaguely of aftershave, which I guessed he was using to combat the musty smell of the old wood.
At the bottom was a bag.
I dragged it out and dumped it on the floor, then unzipped it. On top was a coat, big and puffy and covered with dirt. It looked like he’d been gardening in it. I pulled it out. The sleeves were ripped and chewed at the ends, stained all the way up to the elbows in grease, and the back was filthy: black and torn, like it had been rubbed down with coal. I checked the pockets. One side was empty but the other had a folded piece of paper in it: a flyer. At the top was a black-and-white photocopied picture of a doorway, with a man standing outside it, smiling. He was holding a cup of something. Underneath, all the print had been smudged, as if the flyer had been inside the pocket for a long time. I looked at the coat again and a memory stirred in me. Had I seen it before somewhere? It had a strange smell. Not just dirt and grease and body odour, but something else. A dusty, oily kind of scent. Like the smell of the Tube. Pell had been wearing the standard uniform when I’d talked to him at Gloucester Road, but I started to wonder whether I’d seen the jacket in the booth behind him at some point. Glimpsed it and not even realized. I turned it on to its front and flipped it open. Inside, the insulation was coming through in a couple of places and then I spotted something else. Another stain.
Blood.
Not much, but enough: soaked into the collar of the coat.
I set the coat aside and returned to the bag. It had three other things inside: some cardboard packaging, a leather pouch, and a series of printouts rolled up into a tube and secured with an elastic band. I took out the card first and saw it wasn’t packaging at all – or, at least, not any more – but one side of a brown cardboard box, messily cut out with a blunt pair of scissors. There was nothing on one side but more dirt.
I flipped it over.
More grime. More dirt. And more blood. But the blood wasn’t what caught my attention this time. It was what was written across the middle of the board in black.
Homeless. Please help.
I glanced at the flyer – realizing it was for a shelter – and then at the coat next to it. Now I knew why I recognized it.
It had been Leon Spane’s.
Reaching down into the bag, I took out the leather pouch and then the roll of printed pages. The pouch was soft leather, closed at either end and bound in its centre with a tie. I pulled at the tie and the pouch fell open, like a bird spreading its wings.
Knives, one after the other.
Different lengths, different blades, different edges, different grips. But all of them had one thing in common: blood on them, congealed and dried, sticking to the leather and to each other. I placed them down on the floor next to the coat, next to the flyer, next to the cardboard sign – and I opened up the printouts.
They were maps.
I laid them side by side, but quickly realized it was the same map, reprinted over and over again, just at different magnifications. I brought the one with the closest view of the area towards me. It was Highgate. I could make out Pell’s house. I could see Queen’s Wood, and Highgate Cemetery to the south. And then a trail, running parallel to the Northern line and branching off right. Some kind of footpath. It cut between housing estates as it carved east, and halfway along, as nature became more dense, Pell had marked it with red pen.
And then I realized it wasn’t a footpath.
It was a disused railway line.
48
They called it Fell Wood. I found it about half a mile south of Highgate Tube station, on the other side of a row of trees shielding the path from the road. I entered through a metal gate that squeaked on its hinges, and passed under a thick covering of oak trees, expecting woodland to unravel around me. Instead, after thirty yards, the trees thinned out and the railway line emerged, gravelled in patches but mostly just overrun by grass.
The tracks and the sleepers had long since been ripped up, but there was still a raised station house ahead of me, its legs straddling the old platforms on the left and right of the path, its old ticket office perched directly above the line. It was derelict. The ground-floor entrance, the windows and the doors were all bricked up; the windows on the second floor were all broken. Either side of me, trees and grass reached up into the clear blue sky. But when the breeze came, foliage shifted and grass swayed, and I saw modern houses beyond the treeline, kids running around in the gardens, dads standing over barbecues. I passed under the station house, its old bones creaking and moaning in the sun, and carried on.
Pell had circled a spot about a mile from the station I’d just passed. As I walked, the trees got thicker on both sides, and after about ten minutes a railway tunnel emerged from behind a weave of oak and ash trees. All around the entrance was graffiti, up to about the eight-foot mark, but mostly it was vines, seas of the stuff, the crumbling facade clawed at by twisted branches and covered in a layer of green moss.
Inside the tunnel, sound faded, like a dial being turned down, and as I stood there, facing into a circle of light at the end of fifty yards of complete darkness, I suddenly felt a strange sensation, as if someone was standing right on my shoulder.
I swivelled. Behind me, the station house was just a blur in the distance, distorted by heat haze and half disguised by trees. Its second-floor windows were like black holes carved into the bricks, and some of the rear of the building had fallen away: about three-quarters of the way up, the roof had caved in and part of the wall was destroyed. In the roof space, I thought I could see movement, a flash of white – like a face – but after a while a bird emerged, flapping its wings, and took flight up and across the treeline.
I turned back and headed into the tunnel.
Halfway along, all noise died. No birds. No wind. No cars. I was struck again by the strange acoustics of the old line, the way volume ebbed and flowed, and when I got to the end, it changed again: gravel and grass became just grass, the distant sounds of the city returned – and two hundred yards ahead of me was the mark on Pell’s map.
Another station.
It was smaller than the first one but perched on a raised island of concrete, which bisected the line. Either side were where the westbound and eastbound tracks had once run, both
now reclaimed by nature. Further down, on the left-hand side of the station, was another building, this one in behind the treeline. It was bigger, more modern, a small chimney-like structure rising out of its roof, its walls mostly hidden behind thick foliage. As I moved up on to the island, I got a better view and could see a series of ventilation shafts adjacent to the chimney.
I turned my attention back to the station. Every window and door was bricked up, but a blanket of glass, gravel and debris still crunched under my shoes as I passed along the eastbound platform. Once I was halfway along, I dropped down on to the line and crossed towards the second building. The closer I got, the more of it I could make out beyond the trees. Seconds later, I spotted a space on its wall where a sign had once hung, age and weather rinsing the colour off and on to the brickwork.
It was the red and blue symbol of the Tube.
Suddenly it made sense: this was a two-part station. The island platform and station house fed the overground line, a track that had once run between Highgate and Finsbury Park. Below ground had been a deep-level station – accessed via the second building – cleaving its way through the belly of the city, now disconnected from the network. A ghost station, shut down, bricked up and forgotten.
But not by Duncan Pell.
The Tube station was surrounded – almost swamped – by trees and foliage, but a path still remained, cutting through the overgrowth to the entrance. I headed in. It was uneven, the concrete broken, but it led all the way through to a narrow passageway and a staircase down. At the bottom, a rusting metal grille should have been pulled shut and padlocked to stop people from entering.
Except the grille wasn’t all the way across.
And the padlock was on the floor.
49
Fifteen feet away, in the gnarled bark of an old ash, I found a fallen branch. I picked it up, broke it in two and gripped it like a baseball bat, the thicker end facing up.
Then I headed down.
When I got to the grille, I stopped. Shapes formed in the dark on the other side and, as I manoeuvred myself into the gap, my eyes adjusted to the light and I could make out an old ticket office. Off to the right, barely visible in the darkness, was a lift: its doors were open, but another grille was pulled across. This one was still padlocked.
I got out my mobile, and used a light app to illuminate the area beyond the lift. It was a corridor, about thirty feet long, old-fashioned wooden phone booths on the left and then a door at the far end. Another sign, more difficult to read, was screwed to the wall above. STAIRS. They must have led down to the platform. Except there was no way to get down there now: the lift was padlocked and the door was bricked over.
A noise behind me.
I turned quickly and looked back across the ticket hall. My phone only reached so far into the darkness. Six feet. Maybe less. Something shifted in the shadows above my eyeline, right up in the corner of the room. I lifted the mobile higher. At the very limit of its glow, grey-blue in the light, I could see what it was. Bats. There were eight of them, hanging from a support beam in the roof. One of them was moving, its wings twitching.
I took a couple of steps back towards the office and, as I did, felt a faint draught at ankle level. Not much, but enough. When I stopped again I could hear it moving past me: a whisper, soft and unrefined, like a child’s voice. Eventually it faded out, as if sensing I was listening, and then I realized something else: it was freezing cold. The whole place – the whole building – was like a refrigerator. Turning the phone in the direction of the draught, I felt goosebumps scatter up my arms.
And then I found two further doors.
One was bricked up.
The other was ajar.
The darkness seemed to close in as I moved towards the open door. In front of me, there was no break in the shadows. No sliver of daylight. In the silence, all that came back was the thump of my heart in my chest, over and over, pounding in my ears.
Two feet short of the door, I smelled something.
Beyond was more darkness, thick and impervious, and when I raised the phone I saw it was another staircase down, this time bending around and out of sight. On either side were black wrought-iron handrails. Glazed tiles were on the walls, some broken and on the steps. The same smell drifted past me and out into the room I was in. A stench of decay.
I started the descent.
Before the bend in the staircase, there was a moment where I felt the same breeze as before, felt it pass my face and cling to me, thick and gluey, as if trying to warn me not to go any further. But I carried on. At the bottom was an old staffroom. It was about forty feet long but narrow. There were no windows. On one side, attached to the wall, was a counter. It was a big slab of wood, topped with small white tiles, but the tiles were mostly broken or on the floor in front. On top were a couple of animal traps, big and rusting, a series of knives and some rope. There was no other furniture. The smell was horrendous; a stench of death and suffering that stuck to the back of my throat.
Yet the room was empty.
Further into the darkness were more tools: a saw propped against the counter, a knife, rolls of duct tape. And something else: specks of blood on the white tiles, dotted all along the counter top like a trail on a map.
Then, in front of me, something shifted.
The phone’s glow didn’t reach the far wall, but something in me – some small voice – said not to go any further. I stood there for a moment, heart thumping in my chest, the smell, almost unbearable now, clawing its way into my nose and mouth and staying there like dust. Then – finally – I stepped forward and, on the edge of the glow, two blobs of light came back. At first I couldn’t see what they were. Then, too late, I realized.
Boots. Black, with steel toecaps and red stitching.
Just like Duncan Pell’s.
He’s in the room with me.
50
He launched himself out of the darkness, hood up, leading with his fists. I was barely ready for him, almost side on, but instead of trying to cut me down, he went past me. My body had been prepared for the impact, ready to absorb the blow. Instead, I felt the dead air move, an arm brush mine, and then he was already on the stairs, heading up into the ticket hall above us.
A second later, I followed.
As I came out of the bend on the stairs, I saw him exit through the metal grille and head up the stairs to the line. I tried to close the gap but he was fast. Ex-army. Fit. At the stairs I slowed. Up ahead, it was a blind turn back on to the line, so I came up on the left-hand side to avoid being hit or surprised. But there was no one waiting.
The line was silent.
I took a couple of steps through the trees to where the old eastbound line met the station house. Nothing now. No sound. No movement. The ground was hard, dried and compact. I moved along it, the platform about five feet above me on the island, glass and dust and brick scattered all over it. Halfway down, I placed both hands on the island and hauled myself up. Next to me, the station creaked in the hot sun. I didn’t move. Just stood there and listened. No sound but the station house, baking in the heat.
Crack.
A sound from the other side.
Glass beneath boots.
I moved quickly around the front, watching where my feet fell, and stopped at the edge of the building. Then I peered around the corner, along the westbound side.
No one on the platform.
No one on the line.
I came out from behind the station house. About two hundred feet further along, the island became a ramp and dropped down to meet the path. Fifty feet beyond that, the trees began to close in, swallowing the old line whole. There was nothing now. No breeze at all. The only thing that came back were my footsteps, moving across the thin layer of glass and dust. As the island dropped down, the two lines merging into a single path, I saw a flash of movement up ahead.
I carried on, my feet returning to the grass of the line, weeds crawling through the cracks in the baked earth, masonry kic
ked off on to the old track from the island. There was so much of it – chunks of brick, shards of roofing, clumps of tile. One wrongly placed foot and my ankle would snap.
As the trees grew thicker and the shadows longer, there was a subtle change in the atmosphere: the foliage seemed to drop, as if reaching out, and another tunnel emerged, almost from nowhere, like it was part of the trees and grass; all but carved from them. It was as gun-barrel-straight as the last one, but it was even longer, the daylight at its end just a pinprick against a slate-black wall. I walked right up to it, stopping short of its entrance, but the closer I got, the more I started to sense something. Something defective and amiss. Places were shaped and moulded by their history, by the events that had taken place in them, but mostly they were shaped by the people who had passed through them.
I stepped inside and felt wet mud beneath my feet. The further in I got, the more the temperature seemed to drop. For a moment I felt adrift. My eyes hadn’t adjusted. The ground was uneven and shifting under my boots. I slowed slightly and, as I did, I heard something ahead of me, like footsteps softening, getting further away from me. Then there was no noise at all.
I stopped.
‘Duncan?’
My voice echoed along the tunnel and then vanished, as if absorbed by the dark. The daylight at the other end was about the size of a dinner plate, but it was below my eyeline, like I was heading down into the earth, rather than over it. I glanced back over my shoulder to where I’d come in: the entrance was about forty yards back, a circle full of trees, and hazy in the distance was the island and station house. I thought briefly about backtracking, about returning to the sunlight – because even after being inside the tunnel for thirty seconds, I could barely see anything; maybe ten feet in either direction.