by John Creasey
Gideon could not prevent himself from pausing.
“New to you?” asked Boyd, close to his ear.
“I’ve been inside Battersea and Lots Road,” said Gideon. “One forgets.”
“Can you stand the noise?” Boyd’s breath was warm on Gideon’s cheek.
“Not if I can help it!” Gideon said clearly.
Boyd grinned, and opened a door opposite the guard rail. The wall in which the door was set seemed thin, but once it closed, much of the noise was shut out. There was still plenty, but it was no longer necessary to shout. A long, narrow passage led straight from the main door, with doors on either side, glass panelled at the top. The walls here were glass too, or plastic panelled, so that dozens of men and women, at desks, were visible.
“We call this the goldfish bowl,” said Boyd. He had big, well-shaped teeth, which made his smile seem a little mechanical. Yet there was something likeable as well as impressive about him. “Here’s where I five.” He opened another door, the first one which was of solid wood, into another room, the sides of which appeared to be of glass. But there was hardly a sound as he closed this door, only a distant humming and throbbing. The office was sparsely furnished with steel chairs and filing cabinets. Along one wall ran a table which was obviously used as a control panel, but Gideon could not see immediately what purpose it served.
“Sit down, please,” said Boyd, and he sat behind a big, flat-topped desk when the others were seated. “Commander, I can’t tell you what a proud moment this is in my life. I didn’t ever expect to meet the most renowned detective in the world.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Gideon, too startled to feel embarrassed.
“It isn’t nonsense, Commander. I’ve been all over the world, and seen fifty different police forces in action, and they all speak of you with awe. I’m a little in awe of you myself, in point of fact.”
“You conceal it well,” said Gideon, mildly.
“Conceal—” Boyd laughed, loudly: he was in many ways a loud and boisterous man. “Your point, sir! If I hadn’t already been in awe, I would very soon have become so after a talk with Superintendent Piluski here.”
Piluski sat unmoving, almost as if he were carved from a particularly hard and dark wood.
“Why?” asked Gideon.
“I wouldn’t have believed that anyone outside the industry would have spotted what you spotted so quickly. Most of my experience of the establishment is that they wake up to what might happen about a year after it has happened. What put you on to it?”
Whether he held Gideon in awe or not, he had certainly started as if he meant to take and keep the upper hand. Gideon thought he saw why he had been persuaded to come, rather than have Boyd visit him at the Yard. Boyd liked to be the dominant figure and was unwilling to risk the chance of being cut down to size.
“Thirty-five years of training, and the fact that I have to be a dozen things at once,” he answered at last.
Boyd seemed to take this hint, for when he spoke it was in a rather different key, as if he was implying: All right, let’s get down to business.
“Do you know the fundamentals of a generating plant?” he demanded.
“I’ve only a passing knowledge, better assume I know nothing.”
“Right, Commander! Then we heat the water which gives off the steam which drives the generator which feeds the network, or the grid. This power goes out into the consumer lines through transformers which take it down from roughly 83,000 volts to 415 or 240. That boils your kettle.”
Gideon nodded, impressed by the simplicity and the lucidity.
“To heat the water we need fuel and boilers, to work the transformers and to open and close valves and to control pressures we need electricity,” Boyd went on. “There are a dozen ways in which we can have trouble, a dozen ways in which there can be a power failure, but the back room boys anticipated that. Consequently, they created a system by which if we get power failure from one source, another feed supply automatically comes in – if all the necessary valves, trips and gadgets work, that is. Generally they do. Generally, I say – but there is still a ten million to one chance of a cumulative series of breakdowns like they had in New York in 1965 – or was it ‘66? A breakdown in power supply only comes if peak demands are made on it or if there’s interference. The interference is usually accidental or natural – act of God, so to speak – and can be quickly traced and put right. It is nearly always with transmission, occurring after the power has left the power house or generating station. Cables or lines can be damaged, but the point is, it’s almost impossible to have a power failure of the kind we’ve been having lately unless two things go wrong at the same time. It can happen – it has happened. But not six or seven times in a row, within a short period. One or two failures could have been caused out of spite or for personal reasons, but this—” Boyd broke off, then added vehemently: “Not on your life!”
There was no doubt of the depths of his feeling, and there seemed to be none of his competence.
“You don’t have to convince us of that,” Gideon remarked. “What we have to find out is who’s doing it, and why. If we don’t stop it soon, it could really become dangerous.”
“That’s a major point of agreement between us,” Boyd declared. “I think it’s politically inspired.”
“Why?” asked Gideon.
“It’s the kind of thing that political fanatics would do.”
“Might do, perhaps,” Gideon conceded. “There are other possibilities.” He did not feel inclined to elaborate, for he had become a little unsure of the man. “Have you any troubles here?”
“No, thank God. And ever since it started, I’ve had a double and treble check at all danger points. One thing I should have told you. We’re like most of the other London stations but not like the provinces. They feed the grid and the grid feeds the consumer. We feed the consumer and if we get in trouble, the grid feeds us. Some of the other big metropolitan areas are rather the same, I’m told, but my worry is London. We’ve four weak spots. The electrical supply itself. The water intake for the boilers. The valves which control the flame which heats the boilers. And the transmission, once the power’s generated. No one can fool around with anything in this establishment without being seen and questioned.”
“But they could have, before you learned what was happening in the other power houses.”
“Yes, sir! If the others would take the same precautions as we’re doing, the saboteurs would run into trouble. Sooner or later someone’s going to try here, and when we catch ‘em—” he brought the palms of his hands together with a tremendous bang.
Gideon made no comment, but asked: “Now I’m here may I have a look at these danger points?”
“There is a wonderful vantage point here,” answered Boyd. “Quite by chance, too. This office used to be the wages office, but soon after I came I saw how it could be used to better advantage. From this spot you can see pretty well every key point. Look.”
He got up and led the way to the window behind him.
It was strangely placed, between the two big buildings, and he could see into the vast generating shed and the boiler houses on the other side. A telescope on a revolving-stand had been erected at head height, so that Gideon did not have to bend down. Once he had his eye on it, the whole picture was transformed – even the furthest corner seemed close at hand. Certain spots had been marked with DAYGLO red paint, and these were obviously the danger points. Valves and switches had been ringed round, and the approach to them obviously cleared.
Boyd was giving a running commentary.
“If the oil lead to the boilers one, two and three was interrupted, the flame would fade, heat be lost, and the steam pressure would soon start falling. So the turbo-generators would stop working and we’d be in bad trouble – we couldn’t feed the railways. If boilers f
our, five and six were affected there’d be short supply to most of the industry we feed – and that’s a lot of industry. We’d turn over automatically to the grid unless someone dickered around with that inflow. That’s what’s happened before: trouble in the power house, simultaneous trouble with the grid inflow – result blackout.
“Take it from me, Commander, you can do a million pounds worth of damage in five minutes.” Boyd banged his hands together again. “In five minutes – in five seconds. If anyone wants to bring this nation to its knees, that’s the way to do it. Cut out its power.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Cool Mind
When Boyd stopped, the silence in the office was absolute. Gideon could hear his own breathing, his heart thumping. Gradually, sound came into his consciousness from outside. That ceaseless drumming and throbbing, the very sound of power. He studied the curiously cat-like eyes before him, the bony face, the shiny skin. He had seen men look like this, occasionally, when carried away by some great enthusiasm. It was the look of the fanatic and also the look of the prophet.
It faded slowly.
Then Piluski spoke for the first time.
“Then it is even more important to find out who is behind it, and why.”
“You never said a truer word,” agreed Boyd, heartily. The glow had quite gone now, and the hint of fanaticism with it. He took out a pale brown handkerchief and wiped his brow, then peered into the telescope and swivelled it round slowly. Gideon had a feeling that he was deliberately stalling, as if he needed time to recover inwardly from the outburst. Piluski looked intently at Gideon, his heart-shaped mouth pursed; it made him look older.
Boyd moved from the telescope.
“How about some coffee?” he suggested. “Or something stronger?”
“Coffee will be fine,” Gideon said. “But I’d like a look through the station before I go.”
“Then let’s do that now and come back for refreshment,” said Boyd. “Shall I lead the way?”
He turned right, out of the door into the passage – the opposite direction from which they had come. The passage ended at a T-junction, and on the right was a small, iron spiral staircase – surely a relic from a building which had been here long before this one. Boyd’s footsteps rang out; he obviously wore metal tips on his heels. At the bottom of the staircase there were two doors, and he opened the one on the left.
Gideon was prepared for a sudden onslaught of sound, but there was very little. They entered an enormous room, or shed, which towered above their heads, turning them into pygmies. Moving about leisurely were men in blue boiler suits, some on platforms which ran halfway round the huge, white-painted boilers. It was warm; not over-hot but moistly warm.
“Here’s the boiler house I was talking about,” said Boyd. “It holds some of the biggest and most modern boilers in England. They hold 30,000 gallons, 300,000 pounds weight that is, and they produce three and a half million pounds of steam every hour.”
Gideon tried to take this in as Boyd went on: “Very terrifying stuff, steam, when you come to think of it. Got far more power in it than we realise.” He stood craning his neck to see to the top. “Get a build-up of steam pressure in one of those, close up the safety vent, and you could jam it easily – you’d blow the place to pieces.”
“The place – or the boiler?” inquired Gideon.
Boyd looked at him almost pityingly.
“If one of those boilers exploded there wouldn’t be any boiler house left, worth speaking of. See those vents? The things that look like big doors?” There were two, on one side of the boiler where they stood. “If there is a pressure build-up inside and a blow, the pressure blows them open and most of the steam is wasted. Makes a hell of a bang, and a hell of a blast, but no one’s likely to get hurt and damage can soon be put right. Checking those safety vents is A1 priority. I have instituted an hourly check.”
“Can they jam accidentally?”’ asked Gideon.
“Not likely! No, Commander, if one of those was jammed it would be done deliberately. And the most likely way to cause an explosion is deliberate, too. Shut off the oil feed, put out the flame, leave it a few minutes, light the flame again, and up she’d go. Or play around with the water supply. If you cut that for a few minutes but maintain the heat, the boiler will get too hot and ups-a-daisy again. That’s why I say two things have to coincide to make trouble. You can have an explosion in a boiler but it won’t be serious unless the safety vent is jammed. Seen enough?”
“What fuel do you use here?”
“In this house, heavy oil. There’s a smaller house next door which uses solid fuel, but the principle’s the same. The oil feed goes straight into the burner, which ignites the gases, the solid fuel goes into a hopper and then into a mill which crushes it to powder – fine as face powder, that stuff, ought to be a commercial market in our new ghettos! The powder’s not so different from the oil, the principle’s the same.”
He strode on – pointing at electric switches, complicated-looking valves and equipment at the foot or side of each boiler, repeating monotonously: “Electricity again – see how dependent we are on it? Throw the wrong switch and we can be in serious trouble. That’s a safety valve which shuts out automatically, but it can be jammed, and without current it wouldn’t work … Go through this door into the yard.”
They went out, into the cool fresh air of the morning – and Gideon had a sense almost of surprise. It was so bright and sunlit, so normal. He had not realised when inside how oppressive the boiler-house had been. They walked along a hard-surfaced road between storage tanks on one side, and the thousands of drums on the other.
“Oil storage – and some emergency supplies in drums could get us out of trouble if there are hold-ups in delivery. We carry a week’s supply, so a week’s strike by oil delivery men could cause chaos, especially in the winter,” Boyd said. “This way.”
They turned into a narrow alley, where there was no room for a car to pass. At the far end was an open shed with bicycle racks, comparatively few of the racks filled. Gideon thought of Lemaitre and the missing George Jensen and his bicycle, but that did not stay in his mind for long.
John Boyd did.
Boyd led the way, a tremendously powerful man striding with an almost feline movement; blonde beast, Gideon thought out of nowhere. He led the way across the road between the power houses and the generating shed. Doors leading into this were heavily marked: KEEP OUT UNLESS ON BUSINESS. SHOW YOUR PASS. DANGER. By each door was one of the uniformed security men, and the nearest moved forward very quickly when Boyd turned towards his door.
“Going in, sir?”
“Yes.” Gideon had a feeling that Boyd added: “You fool” under his breath. The door opened and they stepped into a kind of sound trap which reminded Gideon of the entrances to air-raid shelters during the war. Though noisier here than outside, it was not deafening. The droning, throbbing sound of power seemed muted. Then Boyd opened another door, and the roar thundered against their ears with ferocious impact. Gideon felt as if he had come up against a raging wall of sound.
From ground level, the turbo-generators, painted in that bright orange, looked like grotesquely swollen slugs, hugging the cement floor. There was vibration everywhere, faint but unmistakable, as if some uncontrollable convulsion was shaking the earth. There seemed to be a latent threat that this vibration would grow fiercer and fiercer until finally it shook the very strength out of all those who were rash enough to be near.
The men looked so tiny, so ineffective, yet they moved about with a kind of calculated precision, without haste but with clearly understood purpose. Two men in lounge suits came out of an office, but did not approach the trio.
“This is where we can run into more trouble,” declared Boyd. He directed his voice well, so that he could be clearly heard. “This is the panel which controls distribution to
the various centres.” He led them to the high wall on which the telephone size ‘fuses’ were fastened. Each was marked with the name of a company or place. B. & I. Cables read one. Ford’s – Emergency, Hospital, Technical College, Power Electrical, Race Track – in all there must be over a hundred, Gideon estimated.
“Pull one of these out, blow it, cut a wire or switch off the current – and the supply fails,” went on Boyd. “Damage the whole control board, and there will be a blackout over the entire area. The grid can cut in quickly but if there’s simultaneous trouble at the transmission lines from the grid, then power’s off for an hour, maybe a lot longer. I tell you this place is as vulnerable as a bank, Commander.”
“I realise that,” Gideon said.
“Then you’re the first man I’ve come across in any position of authority to do so,” went on Boyd. “That’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.”
“Can you give us any positive clue as to the identity of the saboteurs?” inquired Gideon.
“Look among the commies and the militant immigrant groups,” urged Boyd. “And look among the C.N.D. cissies and these humbugging flower people. You know what I think, Commander?” He gave Gideon no chance to answer as he careered on. “This country is ripe for revolution. It may sound corny to say that the first things revolutionaries would go for is power, but I mean this kind of power. If they could get control of it, or put it out of action for a few days, they’d be halfway home. I think these power houses ought to be put on a military security basis.”
Gideon made no comment.
Boyd gave a fierce grin, and said in a very loud voice: “When I first warned them what was going to happen in Kenya if they didn’t police the country better, they ignored me. I was right then. I’m right now. I can’t make you or anyone else see it, can’t make a horse drink even when you’ve led it to the water. But one thing’s certain.”