Who swept a cellar? Had they just moved? Was someone else about to move in?
Sanky was pacing around all anxy. He was staring at the floor above our heads. Raising and lowering his gun. The phone light was switching around in his other hand, flashing all over. I went up to him, touched him gently, made him hold it steady. I whispered to him. Talked him into turning it off.
We held our breath and listened. Nothing. The pigs would be creeping in upstairs. Sanky lost his rag again. I heard him hiss and wipe the back of his gun hand on his nose.
Pazzer would not be pleased.
He turned his phone light on again. I didn’t say anything. It would only have made more noise. He shined it on the floor and started walking around slower. Having a real look at what was down there. He moved off deeper into the cellar.
It stretched under the hallway, across the width of the house.
I followed.
The cellar turned a bend, stretching back under the sitting room. Brick pillars there, spaced out, holding up the house. Sanky went in and out of them, flashing about with the light. We’d be about under the kitchen by now.
Over in the far back corner, between two pillars, Sanky stopped. He’d spotted something.
He kneeled and moved the phone up and down to make it out.
A line on the floor. A seam. Thin gap.
I kneeled beside him. Traced round it with the tips of my fingers. A groove cut through the floor. Stone on one side of it, smooth wood on the other.
I ran my palms over it.
Near the far edge my fingertips found something. Small, round and smooth. I whispered to Sanky.
It twinkled gold in the light of the phone.
A keyhole. Yale lock.
A trapdoor, cut in among the floor slabs.
He twitched and looked over his shoulder. We both went still. From round the bend and above came a creak of the hinge on the cellar door.
He put the light out.
They’d be on us in a sec. They had boss flashlights, the pigs. I’d seen them plenty of times when I was hiding down by the embankment or in the bushes in the park. When they’d caught me shoplifting or spliffing on a bench. Looked like tonight would be another of those times. The beam of the light on your mug and the sarky gobbing. Then the handcuffs.
They were taking their time, but they were coming. I breathed deep and gave up. I let my thoughts wander.
I was starting to wonder what good slotting my old dad had done me. It had made me feel better at the time. The nightmares had stopped for a bit. Now they were back, and I was more lost than ever. My dad. I wished I could have him back so I could kick his arse.
My dad.
I thought of that day I’d done him, there on the floor of The Grace, among the dark yellow wallpaper and Liver Bird mirrors. It wasn’t the best time to be daydreaming, but I couldn’t help it. Sometimes my mind just runs away with me, round in circles. The thoughts come rushing in.
I thought of how he’d gone down when I twatted him. How he cracked and splatted when I pulled the trigger. How I’d kept my head and gone through his pockets. To get hold of any useful bits and pieces for Paterson before the plods got to them.
How there’d been nothing in his pockets. Nothing but a key.
I’d slipped it in a pocket of my wallet and forgot about it.
Never known what it was for.
I fumbled with my right hand inside my trackie top. The pocket in the lining there where I kept my wallet. Little nylon thing. Not much in it. Couple of tenners. Little pic of Ali.
I fingered around for the inside pocket under the card flap. My hands trembled. Took me a couple of goes but I flipped the flap up and got my fingers into the hidden bit.
My fingertips touched metal.
It was still there.
I fumbled the key out and dropped it in the dark. Groped around with my fingertips on the wood of the trapdoor and got hold of it again.
I took a deep breath. My pulse slowed. My head cleared. I lifted the key between my fingertips and clutched it into my palm.
I slipped the wallet back in my top.
I fingered around until I found the lock. Shifted over onto my knees. I reached down with the key and slotted it in.
8
The trapdoor lifted up easy. It bumped on the floor when I laid it open. I froze for a sec, listening into the dark. Sanky was standing with his arm around a pillar, holding his breath.
I could see a bit now. There was a dim light below. I peered down.
Steps. Hard grey stone. Stained and chipped. Down and down they went. Almost further than I could see. Thirty or forty yards it must have been. Getting darker, reddy-brown at the bottom. Scaly and mossy.
A patch of black ground there at the bottom. A tunnel leading off it. I couldn’t see where to. I could see the steps though, which was something. There was an orange glow from somewhere deep below, in the tunnel.
I heaved myself over into the opening. Let my arse down onto the top step.
Sanky watched me.
“Come ’ead, then,” I said.
He flashed his phone again. Saw me half-swallowed by the hole in the cellar floor. Sat there frozen to his pillar.
“Last chance.”
I let myself down the steps and made room for him as he clambered after me. He swung the trap door shut over our heads.
He shone his phone up at the inside of the trapdoor. The lock was double-ended, set right through the wood. I squeezed along beside him on the steps, reached up and locked us in.
It was easier to breathe down there than in the cellar. Weird. We climbed arse backwards down the steps. I felt a scrap of cool air on my face.
We stood side by side at the bottom of the steps.
We looked along the passage. It was cut right through the rock. High enough to stand in. Warm dim light. There were weak bulbs strung along it every ten yards, lighting up the walls of brown sandstone. Little pubey fluffs of green moss had grown under where the bulbs were shining.
I turned back to face down the passage.
I’d dreamed about tunnels like this one. In my head they just led on without stopping. I’d run along them and forget how to get back. So deep the weight of the earth choked me.
When I was little I’d daydreamed about my dad being locked up underground like this. In whatever country he’d been taken off to. That was the way the tale always went in my head. That he’d been taken away. Never that he’d run off. Never that he’d left me.
Now here I was. He’d sent me here without knowing it. This was his dungeon, and it wasn’t off in some sweaty cockhole in the Middle East. It was right here in the guts of Liverpool.
But what was it?
I walked slowly between the reddy walls. No doors in them. No turnoffs. Straight and long.
Sanky faded out of sight behind me. The ground started sloping down. The gaps between the bulbs got bigger. The light dimmed.
I carried on.
The path widened out. The ceiling opened into a big vault. Arches. Space. The bulbs ran all around it.
An old cast-iron walkway ahead of me. A kind of banister closed it in on the left side. The vault opened up below. Two sets of metal steps leading down from it, one just to our left, another near the far end thirty yards along.
A line of doors gave onto the walkway on the right hand side. Low ones made of old wooden beams. Iron-barred peepholes in them. Dark inside.
I gazed over the banister. My eyes had got more used to the gloom. I could see a bit of what lay beyond it. This big open space twenty feet below. An old couch. A folding table with six chairs round it. Then trenches ran off the length of the hall.
Not trenches. Tracks.
Rails.
They vanished in a tunnel at the far end of the cavern.
A sound came from along the walkway ahead. The click of a latch. A rattle and a scrape.
I jumped. Sanky had come up behind me. I put a finger to my lips and pointed along the passage.
Near the end, one of the little doors was scraping open.
We looked around. No time to duck down the steps to the tracks. We looked ahead, to the nearest of the little doors on the right. I stepped towards it and peered through the peephole. Dark inside. No sign of life.
It had a round ring for a latch-handle, like a garden shed. I spanned my palm round it and twisted it one way, then the other. The latch clicked up and the door opened inwards. We stooped and nipped in. I knelt on the floor and pushed the door to, letting the latch down as soft as I could.
We looked around. Nothing to see but gloom.
We must have been sixty feet underground.
I put an eye to the peephole. Peered out at the dim walkway and the banister.
A minute later they came into view, walking towards the passage me and Sanky had just come down. Heading out to where the bizzies were snooping.
First came a woman.
It was her. The one I’d seen that time with Raz. The banshee. White tracksuit top and jeans. Her grey ponytail was down to her arse behind. She turned to look over her shoulder.
I got a glimpse of her face. Skin drawn tight on her cheekbones. A sharp nose. Thick eyebrows. She turned back towards the upward passage.
Another woman came after her. Younger and darker. Her hair was down on her shoulders. Thick shapeless kind of robe on. Tied at the waist. She shifted in and out of the glow as she passed. She was holding something down by her side. Eh?
A washbag on a string. Shampoo bottle poking out the top of it.
In her other hand, a tube of toothpaste and a brush.
I peered round through my peephole at an angle as she reached the mouth of the passage. I could see her feet.
Slippers. Bathrobe.
She’d stopped. I heard the first woman speaking. The thick wood of the door muffled the words. The voice was fast and high. Hard. The girl behind her stood still, staring at the floor.
They were listening. The banshee had heard something. Or sensed it. I could still see a patch of her white top and the silver of her ponytail. Then she was gone from view. She’d moved on up the tunnel and left the other one waiting there.
Me and Sanky crouched there in the dark and waited.
Two minutes later I heard the banshee’s voice again. The one in the bathrobe turned round on the walkway. She shuffled back along towards the dungeon she’d come out of.
The banshee followed. I ducked my head down away from the peephole and lay on the floor.
She passed our door.
Sanky was crouching in the corner to my left. He reached out and shook my arm. Beckoned me over.
He was on his knees. He’d switched on the light on his phone again.
A rusty chain lay where the floor met the wall. He moved the light up. Old iron rings, driven into the rock.
He crept into the dark as far as the back wall of the cell. About twelve feet. The same red-brown sandstone. Iron rings driven in all round it, with scraps of chain on the floor.
There was a noise out in the passage. Sanky killed the light.
A door a few rooms further down scraped open and boomed shut. A keychain clinked. Then footsteps came back up our way. Through the peephole I saw the white trackie going back up the tunnel and out of sight.
I waited a minute. I clicked the latch open and crept out.
I looked back along the line of doors. All closed again. I beckoned Sanky out. I told him to keep an eye out up the passage for her coming back. I crept along the way the other woman had gone.
The first door along after our one was padlocked. Through the peephole I saw the same kind of damp cell where we had just been hunkering. There was stuff stashed in this one though. Looked like black holdalls.
The next door was open and there was more to see. Two mattresses on the floor. One bare, one with a sleeping bag laid over it.
I went to the next door. Same setup. Mattress and a bag of women’s clothes. Primark pants and vests. Long floppy black robes.
Coming out of it, I glanced left. Saw the shape of Sanky standing at the foot of the passage.
Next door along was the fifth. I peered in. This one was the banshee’s. I could tell by the style of the trackies and trainies laid out on the mattress. She was the boss. She had a lot more stuff. Thick duvet instead of a sleeping bag. Phone charger. Nowhere to plug it. She had this placky see-through pouch with a white bottle of contact lens fluid.
The other woman must have been behind the sixth door. Time to go and see.
I was backing out and shutting the door to the fifth cell when I felt Sanky’s hand on my shoulder.
“She’s coming back.”
We were just across from the second set of metal steps.
We nipped down them and stood between the rail tracks. Turned and faced the far tunnel.
I stumbled on the sleepers and fell. Pushed myself up from my hands and knees. Old crumbling wood dust on my palms. Smelt like mould. I shoved one foot in front of the other. Felt a draft on my face. Heard bats fluttering overhead.
We couldn’t see a thing. When I thought I was a safe way off from the vault I flicked my phone screen on and shone it at my feet. Nothing there but the old rails. We plodded on. Left the vaults and cells and the woman in a bathrobe behind us.
It took hours. Or what felt like it. At last the tunnel narrowed off into a pile of bricks and rubble. A ladder. Metal rungs up the wall. Iron manhole ten yards up. Don’t know where I got my strength from but I shouldered it up. It honked open and crashed down.
I hauled myself into this little well-space. Sanky climbed up behind me. More rungs upwards and an opening. Cool air. We flopped over the edge. Grass. Gravel. I rolled over and picked myself up. Looked around.
I’d started in a red-brick Toxteth mansion. I’d gone through a dungeon and a tunnel in the guts of Liverpool. Now I was on a patch of rough grass down by Bootle docks.
I sank to my arse and leaned my back against the shaft. Sanky lit a fag and stood there. We stared at the cranes and the grey dawn sky over the Crosby Channel.
I fumbled my phone out and called Paterson.
9
He was in the same room as before. Where he’d talked to me the first day he set me loose. He had a desk but he was sitting in an armchair by the wall, with his lappy on his knees.
I felt like I was back where I started. Only worse off. I just wanted to sleep. But first I had to tell him about my night. Sanky. The tunnel. The woman in a bathrobe. The banshee.
He got up. Put his laptop down on his desk and walked to the window. Looked out of it over the wet playing fields while he unwrapped a chewy. He came back to his desk and sat down with his jaw snapping away.
“Leave the Toxteth mob to me,” he said.
“Oh aye? Dealt with them before, eh?
He raised an eyebrow.
“You had them torch Raz’s shop,” I said.
He winked. “I outsourced the job to a well-known local firm.”
“You’re in bed with Park Road.”
“Pazzer is a force. He helped us.”
“Helped you cover your arse after we screwed up.”
“Something had to be done about Raz’s lot.”
“Like all I did was nothing.”
He grinned. “Come on, Azo. You know better than to take this to heart.”
“Anyway, Raz is still loose,” I said.
“And weakened. Thanks to you.”
I lit a fag. He opened a window. He sat back down in his armchair.
“Any sign of Maya, then?” he said.
“No. But I reckon the banshee knows where she is.”
“Good. You stick with her.”
“Did you know there was a dungeon under Sefton Park? An underground railway?”
He shrugged. “Liverpool’s full of them. How else do you think we carted our slaves around back in the day?”
“You blagging me?”
He looked up from his screen at me with half a smile.
&
nbsp; “And folk still use them?” I said.
He grinned. “You’re right. I didn’t know that bit.”
I scratched my head.
“No one’s had any use for those tunnels in years, Azo,” he said. “But it looks like your friends have found one. You’ll need to get back in there.”
“Your bizzies were up our arse nearly as far as the trapdoor. Didn’t they find their way down?”
“They’re not my bizzies, lad. But I was able to stick my oar in. They reported the house, your break-in. The trapdoor. I had a word and made them hold off from opening it.”
“Why not just let them go down there? Nick the whole bunch. Clean up the mess we all left last year.”
“Same reason as always,” he said. “It’s not enough.”
“You scared everyone will find out what you’re up to? What are you up to anyway?”
“I’m not just after some batty lady in a tunnel. I want the rest.”
“Who?”
“The lot of them. Mossie. Rodney… “
“Raz?”
“Welcome back, lad.”
“He’s thousands of miles away after what happened last summer,” I said.
He spared me the ins and outs. “I’ll have him,” was all he said.
I lit another Regal.
“So we keep an eye on this house of birds,” I said.
“Right. Work out who these ladies are. Who this banshee is, as you call her. Who pays her. And what for.”
He winked at me, like the whole thing was meant to be a boss laugh.
“So I sit on my arse and watch them coming and going?”
He shook his head. “We need to get down there. And not by sneaking in with a key. We need to make friends with them.”
I stared at him. He didn’t pick up on what I was thinking, so I had to say it.
“You need a woman for that job.”
He nodded. “We do indeed.”
He stared into space like I wasn’t there.
“So find a woman bizzie.”
He sucked in his breath like he didn’t fancy that.
House of Birds: Forget who you were before... (The Azo Coke thrillers Book 2) Page 4