Whispers Under Ground rol-3

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘Well, we have hole number one,’ said Kumar. ‘The ever-popular floodwater relief sewer. Or we have a dark and mysterious doorway.’ He struggled to his feet and went over to peer inside.

  ‘I vote for the doorway,’ said Reynolds. ‘Unless it goes back to the sewers too.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Kumar. ‘I’m not an architectural prodigy like Peter here but I’m pretty certain this is part of the Underground.’

  I looked around. Kumar was right. The room had the cement and concrete squatness that I associated with the mid-twentieth-century sections of the Underground. The late Victorians went for brick and the modern tube stations are all brushed concrete surfaces and durable plastic cladding.

  Kumar stepped through the doorway. ‘It’s a stairwell going down,’ he said. ‘But it’s going to be a bugger to navigate without lights.’

  ‘I’ve got an emergency light,’ I said getting up. I nudged Reynolds with my foot. ‘On your feet, Marine,’ I said.

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Reynolds, but she dragged herself up.

  Kumar stood aside as I stepped into the doorway and, keeping my back to Reynolds, made myself another werelight. It revealed a spiral staircase with wooden banisters and a metal core.

  Definitely London Underground, I thought.

  ‘See,’ said Kumar. ‘It used to go up but it’s blocked off.’

  Crudely bricked up with breeze blocks, in fact.

  ‘Could we break through?’ I asked.

  ‘Even if we had the tools,’ said Kumar, ‘we don’t know if the top of the shaft is still open. They often just plug them up when an old station site is redeveloped.’

  ‘Down it is, then,’ I said.

  ‘How are you doing that?’ asked Reynolds suddenly from behind me.

  ‘Doing what?’ I said as I started down the steps, increasing my pace.

  ‘That light,’ said Reynolds. ‘How are you doing the light?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kumar. ‘How are you doing that?’

  ‘It’s just a plasma ball,’ I said. ‘It’s just a toy.’

  She turned and walked back into the room. She was, I realised, checking the werelight on the ceiling to see if it looked the same. Why couldn’t I have got a stupid FBI agent? I asked myself. Or, if not stupid, then at least someone stolid and law-abiding – then she wouldn’t even be down here.

  I proceeded down the stairs in the hope of forestalling any explanations.

  ‘I’m not sure I like that fact that we’re going down,’ said Kumar.

  ‘At least we’re out of the sewers,’ I said.

  ‘Have you smelt yourself?’ said Kumar. ‘We’re taking the sewers wherever we go.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ I said. ‘Who’s going to complain?’

  ‘Useful toy,’ said Reynolds. ‘Does it come with batteries?’

  ‘That reminds me,’ I lied. ‘What made you come underground in the first place?’

  ‘If I recall correctly,’ said Kumar, looking at her. ‘You owe us an explanation.’

  ‘His mom showed me his emails before I flew over,’ she said. ‘He talks about being involved in London’s underground art scene – “literally underground” he says in one.’

  ‘That’s it?’ I asked. ‘For that you climbed into the sewers?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘There was the forensics work you people did on his boots. That showed he’d been walking in the sewers.’

  ‘It’s a big system,’ said Kumar.

  ‘That it is,’ said Reynolds, who was obviously enjoying herself now. ‘But I did a survey of the manhole covers in the vicinity of the victim’s house and what do you know, one of them was much looser than the others. Had fresh marks around the edge – I suspect from where someone had used a pry bar on it.’

  ‘You were looking to break Zachary’s alibi, weren’t you?’ I said. ‘See if he sneaked past the cameras using the sewers.’

  ‘Amongst other things,’ said Reynolds. ‘How far down do you think this is going to go?’

  ‘If it descends to the same level as the Central Line,’ said Kumar. ‘It could be as deep as thirty metres.’

  ‘That’s a hundred feet,’ I said.

  ‘This may come as a surprise to you Constable Grant, but I am conversant with the metric system,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘Can you hear that?’ asked Kumar.

  We stopped and listened. Just on the cusp of hearing I detected a rhythmic pounding, more a vibration in the concrete than a sound.

  ‘Drums,’ I said and then because I couldn’t resist it. ‘Drums in the deep.’

  ‘Drum and Bass in the deep,’ said Kumar.

  ‘Someone’s having a party,’ I said.

  ‘In that case,’ said Reynolds, ‘I’m so glad I dressed for it.’

  The base of the stairway would have been familiar to anyone who’s ever had to schlep down the stairs at Hampstead, or any other deep-level tube station. At the bottom was a grey-painted steel blast door that, much to our relief, creaked open when me and Kumar put our shoulders to it.

  We stepped into what I at first thought was an empty tube tunnel, but which I realised a moment later was too big for that – twice the diameter, about the same as a standard platform tunnel. The concrete forms which lined the walls were free of the usual tile cladding, but there was a flat cement floor that was shiny.

  I know where we are,’ said Kumar. ‘This is the deep-level air-raid shelter at Holland Park.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  ‘Because it’s a deep-level shelter and the nearest one is Holland Park,’ he said.

  Back at the start of World War Two the authorities forbade the use of the Underground as an air-raid shelter. Instead Londoners were supposed to rely on hastily built neighbourhood shelters or on the famous Anderson shelters which were basically rabbit hutches made from corrugated iron with some earth shovelled on top. Londoners being Londoners, the prohibition on using the Underground lasted right up until the first air-raid warning, at which point the poorly educated, but far from stupid, populace of the capital did a quick back-of-the-envelope comparison between the stopping power of ten metres of earth and concrete and a few centimetres of compost, and moved underground en masse. The authorities were appalled. They tried exhortation, persuasion and the outright use of force but the Londoners wouldn’t budge. In fact, they started to organise their own bedding and refreshment services.

  And thus in a cloud of official disapproval the Blitz spirit was born.

  A couple of thousand preventable deaths later, the government authorised the construction of new purpose-built deep-level shelters constructed, according to Kumar, using the same techniques and machines as the tube system itself.

  I knew all about the shelters at Belsize Park and Tottenham Court Road – it’s not like you can miss the huge fortified concrete pillboxes that marked the ventilation shafts – but I’d never heard of one at Holland Park.

  ‘There used to be a top-secret government agency down here,’ said Kumar. ‘Only I heard they got relocated to Scotland.’

  The opposite end of the tunnel was far enough away to be in shadow. I was tempted to brighten my werelight, but I was getting worried about the amount of magic I’d been using. Dr Walid’s guidelines, endorsed by Nightingale, were that I should refrain from doing more than an hour of continuous magic if I wanted to avoid what he called thaumatological necrosis and me and Lesley called cauliflower brain syndrome.

  ‘They did a good job stripping this place then,’ I said. It was completely empty. I could even see where light fittings had been prised out of the concrete walls. The bass rumble was louder, but it was hard to tell from where it was coming.

  ‘This is the intersection,’ said Kumar.

  You could see the circular outline where a tunnel of similar size to ours had formed a crossroad and then been walled off with concrete and cement. There were four doors on each side, two at our ground level and two halfway up the wall servicing
a floor level that had either been stripped out or never installed.

  The doors were normal sized, but made of steel with no obvious handles on our side.

  ‘Left or right?’ asked Reynolds.

  I put my ear against the cold metal of the nearest door – the bass rumble was loud enough for me to identify the track.

  ‘“Stalingrad Tank Trap”,’ I said. ‘By Various Artiz.’

  I like a bit of drum and bass to dance to, but Various Artiz were notorious for cranking out one identikit track after another – they were as close to mainstream as you could get on the club circuit without turning up on a Radio Two playlist.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Kumar to Reynolds. ‘It was all jungle when I was younger.’

  ‘It sounds like they’re speaking English,’ muttered Reynolds. ‘And yet—’

  I knocked on the door and hurt my knuckles.

  ‘Well, that’ll work,’ said Reynolds. She was jiggling up and down to keep warm.

  I took off my helmet and banged on the door with that.

  ‘We’re going to have to strip you off,’ said Kumar.

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘We need to at least wring out your clothes,’ said Kumar.

  I banged a couple more times while Reynolds expressed her disquiet about disrobing in a public place. I can, when I have to, burn through something like a bike chain or a padlock. Nightingale, according to his war stories, can punch a hole in ten centimetres of hardened steel. But he hasn’t taught me how to do that yet. I examined the hinges on the door and wondered if they’d prove a suitable weak point.

  I decided to do it quickly in the hope that Reynolds was too distracted to notice. I quickly ran through the formae a couple of times to line them up – lux aestus scindere. My mastery of aestus, which intensifies lux, was not brilliant but I really wanted out of the Underground.

  ‘Are you praying?’ asked Reynolds.

  I realised I’d been muttering the formae under my breath, number six on Nightingale’s list of my bad habits.

  ‘I think he’s going to do a magic spell,’ said Kumar.

  Making a note to have a word with Kumar later, I gritted my teeth as Agent Reynolds asked exactly what he meant by ‘magic spell’.

  Oh well, it wasn’t like she wasn’t about to get a demonstration.

  I took a breath and, silently, readied the formae.

  Then the door opened and a white boy stuck his head out and asked if we were from Thames Water.

  Thank god for that, I thought.

  The instrument of the Lord was topless. A dayglo orange sweatshirt was wrapped around his waist, half covering baggy electric blue shorts, a whistle hung on a string around his neck and his sandy hair was slicked down to his forehead with sweat. Despite some muscle he still had his puppy fat and I figured he was in mid-teens. Automatically I checked out the bottle in his hand for alcohol but it was just water. A gust of warm damp air rolled out from behind him and with it the thumping back beat of Various Artiz seeking to prove that you really can dance until your brains dribble out your ears.

  I considered showing him my warrant card but I didn’t want to risk him closing the door in our faces.

  ‘We’re here about the plumbing,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ he said and we trooped inside.

  It was another double-width tunnel but this one had been converted into a club, complete with a professional-level light gantry over the dance floor and a bar that ran down one wall. We were far enough from the sound system to hold a conversation, which is why our shirtless friend had heard us banging on the door. We squelched our way through a dim area that seemed given over to sofas, chairs and snogging couples towards the dance floor which was heaving with clubbers, mostly white, dancing mostly in time to the music. There was a lot of furry legwarmers, Lycra shorts and halter tops fluorescing in the UV light. But for all the bare belly buttons and spray-on hot pants, I was getting a definite sixth-form disco vibe from the crowd. Probably because none of them seemed old enough to vote.

  ‘Somebody’s parents are away for the weekend,’ said Reynolds. ‘I feel overdressed.’

  The crowd quickly parted as the clubbers realised that we weren’t the cabaret act.

  ‘Maybe you can find a change of clothes here,’ said Kumar.

  ‘I don’t think they’ve got anything in my size,’ said Agent Reynolds primly.

  Three people covered in sewage will have a dampening effect on even the most ardent clubber and it wasn’t long before a ripple passed through the crowd and two young women stalked through the dancers towards us.

  They weren’t identical twins but they were definitely sisters. Tall and slender, dark-skinned, narrow-faced, flat-nosed and with sly black eyes that pinked up at the corners. I could just about tell them apart. Olympia was a tad taller and broader of shoulder with her hair currently in a weave that cascaded expensively around her shoulders. Chelsea had a long neck, a narrower mouth than her sister and was sporting what I judged to be about thirty-six man-hours’ worth of twisted hair extensions. They were wearing identical hot pink knit mini-dresses that I know their mother wouldn’t have approved of – I kept my eyes on their faces.

  ‘You’d better have a really good reason for this,’ said Olympia, folding her arms.

  ‘Agent Reynolds, Sergeant Kumar, let me introduce the goddesses of Counter’s Creek and the River Westbourne,’ I said, and bowed for good measure. The girls shot me a poisonous look but I figured they owed me for that time they left me to sink or swim in the Thames.

  ‘You know we’re Olympia and Chelsea,’ said Chelsea.

  ‘Although,’ Olympia said to Kumar and Reynolds. ‘We are goddesses and expected to be treated as such.’

  ‘I could arrest you if you like,’ I said. ‘I mean, is there actually anyone down here who’s old enough to purchase alcohol?’

  Olympia pursed her lips. ‘Well, Lindsey’s boyfriend Steve is eighteen,’ she said. ‘Does that help?’ To be honest I was too knackered to banter. I checked whether they’d seen strange white guys in hoodies prowling around the tunnels but the sisters said they hadn’t. So I asked if they had somewhere we could wash up, and a working landline.

  Chelsea laughed. ‘Landline,’ she said. ‘We have wifi down here.’

  They also had a full-on locker room and shower last fitted out, judging by the brass taps and stainless steel fittings, sometime in the 1960s. I guessed it must be a leftover from Kumar’s secret government agency. The girls even managed to dig out a sweat shirt and tracksuit bottoms for Reynolds, who glared at me and Kumar until we remembered our manners and left. We found ourselves waiting in a storeroom filled with bottled water and catering boxes of fun-sized chocolate bars. We washed our faces with the water and had an argument about Mars Bars versus Milky Way and then more water after the taste test. When I judged that Kumar was all sugared up I asked him the difficult question.

  ‘Is it a total coincidence that you were assigned to this case?’

  ‘Meaning what?’ asked Kumar.

  ‘I magic up some lights and introduce you to a pair of river goddesses—’

  ‘Teenaged river goddesses,’ said Kumar. ‘And it’s not like either of them has done anything particularly religious.’

  ‘What about the lights?’ I asked.

  ‘Was that magic?’ he asked.

  I hesitated. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Really magic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fuck me!’

  ‘Now you’re reacting?’

  ‘Well I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the American,’ said Kumar.

  ‘So you’re not from the BTP version of the Folly?’ I asked.

  Kumar laughed and said that British Transport Police had plenty of other demands on its budget.

  ‘But there is a certain amount of weird shit that goes on down here and people got into the habit of asking me to keep track of it,’ said Kumar.

  ‘Why was
that?’

  ‘Watched too much X-Files growing up,’ he said. ‘Also I’m a bit of an urban explorer.’

  ‘So, not your first time in the sewers,’ I said. Urban explorers liked to climb into the secret and abandoned nooks and crannies of the city. That a lot of this involved illegal trespass merely added to the attraction.

  ‘It’s the first time I ever went surfing in one,’ he said. ‘I come from a family of engineers so I like poking my nose in and seeing how things work. I kept volunteering to do the weird stuff and in the end it became semi-official.’

  And thus another arrangement was born.

  ‘If you ever meet Lady Ty,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell her. That sort of things drives her berserk.’

  ‘Speaking of X-Files,’ said Kumar, gesturing back towards the locker room. ‘Do you think Agent Reynolds—?’

  I shrugged. ‘What do I know?’ I said. I was thinking of making it my family motto.

  ‘Maybe we should ask her,’ said Kumar.

  ‘And destroy the mystique?’ I said.

  Kumar wanted to know how magic worked but I told him that I was supposed to keep it secret. ‘I’m already in a ton of shit for opening my mouth,’ I said.

  Despite that, he asked whether it was element based – fire, water, air and earth. I said I didn’t think so.

  ‘So no Earthbenders kicking rocks around,’ he said.

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Or Airbenders, or Waterbenders or He-Man or Captain Planet.’ Or any other character from a kid’s cartoons. ‘At least I hope not. What kind of stuff do you get down in the tunnels?’

  ‘Lots of ghost reports,’ said Kumar and started digging through the catering boxes. ‘Not as many as we get from overground tracks.’

  I thought of Abigail’s deceased tagger.

  ‘Anything else like the guy with the machine gun?’ I asked.

  ‘There are always rumours that there’s people living in the Underground,’ he said.

  ‘Think it’s likely?’ I asked.

  Kumar gave a happy grunt and emerged from the box with a multipack of cheese and onion crisps.

  ‘I wouldn’t have said so,’ he said. ‘The sewers are toxic, it’s not just the risk of infection or disease—’

  ‘Or drowning,’ I said.