He shared the bar with a thirty-something couple on an awkward date, three men loudly celebrating, two women who looked like models. Dance music pumped half-heartedly. The sky flashed.
Belsey walked out into a thunder clap loud as a bomb. It set off car alarms. There was sudden laughter, howls. Someone slammed into him—“Sorry mate”—a gang of kids high on weather, off to steam the late-openings. Belsey checked that he still had his wallet. Clouds opened with a ripping sound. He stared up through the rain at Centre Point. Then back through the streaming windows at his drink.
He checked his jacket for the disc from Camden CCTV and it was gone.
16
IT WAS 7:15 P.M. BY THE TIME HE MADE IT BACK TO THE station. A crowd had gathered in the small office behind reception. It included Kirsty Craik.
“Sarge, I need to talk to you,” Belsey said. It was quite a get together in the little room. People stared at him. Everyone was there, civilian staff, even custody officers. They stood around a small table as if paying their last respects.
“Nick,” Craik said. “Look.”
A package of pale blue tissue paper had been torn open. He thought at first it contained a wig. The hair was dark, long. It was in good condition, glossy beneath the neon bulb; a full head’s worth. It spilled from the paper onto the white tabletop. No one touched it.
Belsey put on a pair of latex gloves from a box at the side. He picked up the paper and a small white card fell out. In neat black biro someone had written: To DC Nick Belsey.
“Where did it come from?” he asked.
“Left in reception, ten minutes ago,” Craik said. Belsey placed the card beside the strands and crouched to the level of the tabletop. The hair had been chopped unevenly. He rubbed a couple of strands between his fingers and a familiar dark dust came off.
“Someone actually entered reception?”
“Yes.”
“Who was here?”
“I was,” Wendy Chan said. She was back at the reception monitor now, checking the tapes.
“What happened?”
“He walked in, said it was for you, said you’d know what it was about and left. He was white, with a hood up. I’d say thirty to forty.”
“Grey hood?”
“Yes. Grey hood, and gloves, I think. We’ve checked the tapes and there are no clear shots. What is this, Nick? Who is he? Someone winding you up?” Her voice was weak and hopeful.
“Anyone see which way he went?”
“He was gone before we realised what had happened,” Chan said.
“Have patrols been alerted?”
“Yes.”
Belsey moved past the crowd, back into the rain. The street was empty. He drove to the Belsize Park shelter. No sign of any recent activity around the turret. A little further down the hill there was action, a small, soaked crowd around the tube station. Gates had been drawn across the entrance. Tempers were fraying. A couple of damp Transport Police constables loitered.
“What’s going on?” Belsey asked.
“Person on the tracks, near Golders Green.”
“A suicide?”
“Don’t think so. In the tunnels.”
BELSEY SWUNG THE SKODA around and sped to Golders Green. It had a similarly frustrated crowd, blocked by a whiteboard: Station closed due to person on tracks. Belsey moved past the notice and showed his badge to the staff member on duty.
“I need to speak to the Station Manager immediately.” He was led into the station, along a platform. The platforms were open-air: Golders Green was where the Northern Line surfaced after fifteen miles underground. To the north, overground track ran through low-built suburbia. To the south, a tangle of rails ran into three black holes, sinking under central London. It was an obvious entry point for someone wanting to explore what lay beneath the city.
The Station Manager greeted Belsey wearily. He was tall and grey with thick-lensed glasses. He had his bicycle clips on and was holding empty Tupperware. Home time. Only one colleague remained; he wore a hi-vis jacket and was reading a paperback propped on his stomach.
“What can we do for you?”
“I need to know about the trespasser.”
“Yes, I spoke to one of your lot a moment ago. Southbound tunnels. Don’t know what happened.”
“Did anyone see the intruder?”
“No. But they triggered an alarm.” The manager didn’t seem unduly fazed.
“When was this?”
“About half an hour ago. I don’t know where they went. Haven’t been any more alarms set off.”
“Are people looking for them now?”
“No.”
“Are you able to pinpoint exactly where they triggered the alarm?”
The manager put his Tupperware down and showed Belsey a metal alarm panel in a control room behind the office. It had a map of the tracks studded with small bulbs, then switches underneath for deactivating alarms at entry points and stretches of tracks while engineering or inspections took place.
“Here.” The manager touched a bulb in the centre, halfway between Hampstead and Golders Green. “Around North End.”
“What’s North End?”
“The old station.”
Belsey peered closer. He had spent half his life travelling the Northern Line. There was no station between Hampstead and Golders Green. Yet the map thought there was: North End.
“When was there a station?”
“Never.” Now the man allowed himself a smile. “It never opened. Abandoned before it was half-built. Stupid idea. They thought there was going to be a development on the Heath.”
“When was that?”
“About a century ago.”
“What’s there now?”
“Bits and pieces.” He checked his watch and drummed his fingers on the Tupperware.
“What’s that meant to mean?”
“I don’t know what’s there now.”
“Is there an entrance above ground?”
“Sort of, but it’s not obvious. It’s on the corner of Hampstead Way and Wildwood Road—just a little white box, like a Portakabin. There’s stairs down to what’s left of the station.”
Belsey knew Hampstead Way and Wildwood Road. Nice houses, occasional burglaries. He’d never noticed any portals leading underground.
“Could the trespasser have got in that way?”
“Not easily.”
Belsey went back to the map of the track and tunnel system.
“But they triggered the alarm near the abandoned station.”
“Roughly.”
“And there was no sighting of them here or at Hampstead?”
“No.”
“How far is North End from the stations on either side?”
“About a kilometre in each direction.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“North End?”
“Yes.”
He stared at Belsey. An odd smile curled his upper lip.
“You’ve got to be joking. I couldn’t authorise it anyway. North End’s nothing to do with us.”
“Who’s it to do with?”
“It’s got special security.”
“What do you mean?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t have authorisation. Besides, there’s only the two of us on duty and I’m about to clock off.” He checked his watch again and swore. “I’ve got to run now, in fact.”
Belsey was about to explain that he was in pursuit of a murder suspect and what this meant in terms of priorities, but it seemed unlikely to win the manager over. He seemed scared by the place and Belsey wanted to know why.
“OK,” Belsey said. “I just need to do some checks around here.”
“For what?”
“Fingerprints.”
“Fingerprints?”
“I’ll see myself out.” This was all the manager needed to hear. He picked up his bike helmet, bade farewell to his colleague and left. Belsey waited. The colleague settled back down on his chins. The book ros
e and fell as he breathed. Belsey gave it thirty seconds. He took a step towards the room with the alarm panel. He waited for his companion to look up. There was no movement. Belsey walked in. He reached for the panel, found the alarm switch for North End and eased it down. He did the same for the sections leading south from Golders Green, then slipped a torch off its hook.
He walked down the platforms to the southern end, past the sign No Passengers Beyond This Point, beneath the last of the security cameras. No one stopped him. The platform sloped down to the tracks. He walked on the gravel, along the sidings towards the three black mouths of the tunnels.
He didn’t know if all routes passed the ghost station. The middle tunnel seemed as good as any. He stepped over the tracks towards it. The darkness looked solid. Some vague superstition made him wonder if he could just walk in. He could. The air was immediately cooler. Belsey kept the torch off for eighty metres or so, until the entrance was a small coin of world behind him. Then the tunnel curved and the world was gone.
Silence again. Belsey continued south. There’d been a trespasser half an hour ago. How far could he get in that time? Was he heading back to his captive? Belsey stepped from sleeper to sleeper. Every minute or so he’d stop and listen. If someone decided to run a train he’d feel the vibrations. He would have time to press himself against the sides. He’d be visible, though.
Ten minutes in he found North End. There was a gap in the bricks beside him. A small arched passageway led from one darkness to another. He walked through and found himself beside a platform. The platform was at shoulder height. It had been taken over for storage: sacks of loose ballast, wooden sleepers, cable reels. All had become a uniform grey, like deep-sea creatures starved of light. He lifted himself up to the platform, blackening his hands in the process, and stepped past the abandoned ballast into a central corridor. It had unpainted plaster walls but modern emergency exit signs pointing to the bottom of a concrete spiral staircase. There were bright red fire extinguishers as well, shiny as Christmas baubles. To the right of the stairs were the steel doors of a lift that hadn’t been installed earlier than the 1970s. It had an up button and a down button, but the down button needed a key card to operate it. He could hear the station manager’s uncertain voice: It’s got special security. Belsey pushed the buttons. No lift came. Something scraped behind him.
The sound came from the far end of the central corridor. It was the sound of metal being dragged along the ground. His torchlight picked out a small door at the end of the corridor: No Access to LU Staff. Belsey walked through and almost fell to his death.
The cover of a square hatch had been removed. It opened onto a brick shaft with a ladder on one side, leading down into bottomless darkness. His stomach turned. He was standing in a dank cubicle, apparently built for the purpose of housing this hatch. There were two notices on the wall, one with health and safety regulations, one detailing the Official Secrets Act.
Belsey could hear someone at the bottom, running. He tucked the torch into his belt and started down.
When he reached the bottom he found a familiar set-up: the low, rounded tunnel in the torchlight, a subterranean fug. He smelled wax and rust and something marshy, the slow decay of metal and concrete. But this time there was company, running fast. Belsey headed in pursuit of the sound. The narrow strip between the curved walls made chasing difficult. Twice he tripped and fell. After five minutes or so Belsey stopped and could still hear the person ahead. He set off again. He ran for twenty minutes. It was impossible to tell how far ahead his target was. They sounded tantalisingly close, but then there wasn’t much going on to drown them out. Belsey wondered if he was chasing echo. Then he thought of the package of hair and gathered his strength for a final sprint. The sound of steps had gone. He reached a T-junction and felt sure this was where he had been the previous night, but that now he was rejoining the tunnel he’d originally investigated. The sense of familiarity gave him hope. He headed left, towards the library bunker.
Somebody screamed. It was a woman, up ahead. A couple of seconds later there was a crash. Belsey sprinted again. He almost ran straight past the ladder he’d used twenty-four hours earlier. There was no bike today. The hatch at the top was open. He looked at the square of darkness and imagined someone ready to decapitate him as he surfaced. He could hear breathing just by the hatch. Belsey hauled himself up slowly, then reached into the space of the room and his hand brushed a leg.
Fabric. Shin bone. Calf muscle taut. He grabbed ankles and pulled hard. The individual tumbled. Belsey levered himself out and onto them. Fingers went for his eyes. He felt the Kevlar padding of a stab vest against his chest.
There was a blue glow and then he was convulsing, electricity in his teeth and fingernails, stars buzzing before his eyes. He managed to think: Taser. He waited for the stun-cycle to pass. Then the world came back. Some more stars. Then the sun. Then the sun moved out of his eyes and he could see Kirsty Craik.
“Shit,” she said.
“Jesus Christ.”
Craik lowered the torch. She was injured. Blood smeared her blouse.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“I’m OK. You?”
Belsey found the Taser barb in the flesh beneath his ribs and plucked it out.
“I think you’ve cured my depression.” He lay back, holding the barb, catching his breath. She sat beside him. He could see she’d grazed her right cheekbone and right ear. Most of the blood came from her lower lip, though. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“Hampstead Way. There’s a building . . .”
“Leads down to North End.”
“To something. A dead station of some kind.”
“Why were you there?”
“We got a report, just after you left—someone worried about a man in their garden. Matched the description of our man at the station: grey hood, black gloves. I was taking a look, then I heard someone breaking into my car. I think it was him. When I got closer he ran into the small building—like a white cabin. I looked in there, and I think it was rigged to lock behind me. I don’t know. I couldn’t get out, so I went down the stairs . . .”
“And got here.”
“Someone was chasing me.”
“I was chasing you. I went into the tunnels at Golders Green. You pursued him on your own?”
“I didn’t have much choice.”
“And he attacked you?”
“Here. Yes. I didn’t see him. I think he got my CS spray.”
Belsey listened. He didn’t like the idea of getting sprayed underground. He saw the desk of communications equipment had been knocked in the fight, amplifier toppled, Guide to the Standing Stones of Wiltshire on the floor. The ceiling showed broken ends of wood where he’d smashed his way out. He couldn’t see Jemma’s bag or the box of candles. There was one other difference: the door marked To Situation Room was ajar. Faint light leaked through the crack. And now there was a noise from the same direction. A splash and then what sounded like rusted hinges creaking.
Belsey and Craik exchanged a glance. Craik was at the doorway before Belsey could say anything. He followed her into a bare corridor. An arrow scrawled on the concrete wall pointed left. Craik touched the mark. Belsey did the same. It was greasy. It smelt like lipstick.
They turned the next corner. There was a line of light beneath a narrow door at the end. Both stepped closer, exchanged a nod and Craik kicked it open. Birthday candles flickered and swooned. Twelve of them lit a double-height room centred on a large, hexagonal table. Calcium bled out of the concrete ceiling, dividing the space with tapering white stalactites. Similar growths rose up beneath each strand, from the table surface and the floor, like two thin fingers trying to touch. Candles burnt among them, five on the table itself, seven up on the rail of a balcony casting a glow over old maps. They’d been lit no more than five minutes ago.
Around the edges of the room were bottle-green filing cabinets, ledges covered in papers, blackboards with painted columns
headed Reconnaissance, Rescue and Casualty Collection. The place had been methodically searched. A filing cabinet stood with its drawers open. The papers spread across the hexagonal plotting table had been sorted into rough piles: maps, graphs, tables of figures. There was a yellowed Guardian: “US Troops Invade Grenada,” “CND March Attracts Biggest Ever Crowd.” Belsey picked up an exercise book from beside a mug with a head of mould. On the front, in heavy black pen, someone had written Regional Defence Group 4, London North. He opened it.
Wednesday, 2 November 1983
USSR has demanded Norwegian and Dutch withdrawal from NATO. Local Government Emergency Planning Officers have taken up contingency roles.
Warsaw Pact forces mobilising.
“Look,” Craik said, quietly. Belsey slipped the book into his pocket. At the back of the room was a chair with silver duct tape around the legs, the tape sliced roughly to free whomever it had restrained. Craik pointed the torch beam down. Something red reflected back beneath the chair. A Costa Coffee loyalty card. Craik peeled it from the dirt.
“No ID on it,” she said.
She held it by the edges and showed him. It was red, with a picture of a coffee cup. Costa Coffee Club. Enjoy FREE Costa coffee when you collect points!
“Don’t reckon it’s from the cold war,” Belsey said.
“Know how these work? Would it be registered to a name?”
“Possibly.”
He remembered Jemma using it. The card must have been in a pocket of her shorts. It would have recorded details of their visit—which store, what time, two coffees. Easy lead to in-store CCTV. That would look cute, the two of them at the till, just before she disappeared. If she’d registered it there would be her name and address on the system. Clever thing to drop if you wanted to notify the world of your predicament.
Craik pocketed it carefully.
“Hello?” she called. There was another door at the far end of the room. She investigated the darkness on the other side. “Nick, look here.”
The doorway led into a short stub of bare, unpainted corridor that ended at a locked grille. More tunnel was visible through the bars, steel sections bolted together with rivets the size of fists. Directly in front of the grille was a wooden sentry post, not much larger than a cupboard. It contained a bench seat. Nailed above it was a sign in a slightly hysterical antique font: Red Passholders Only!
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