“You think he went through here?”
“We heard this gate closing.”
Craik shook the bars. The grille was secured with a new D-lock. They took turns rattling the metal, which must have amused their suspect if he was still in earshot.
“How did you get out last night?” Craik asked.
They returned to the communications room. Belsey gave Craik a leg-up through the crumbled ceiling panel to the next floor, then pulled himself after her. They splashed their way down the fetid corridor and climbed the winding stairway up to the door that led into the library basement. The cupboard was wedged firmly in front of it again but together they pushed, hearing the cupboard shift loudly until it toppled over. By then the young black guard with the sideburns was waiting.
“Good to see a familiar face,” Belsey said. The guard looked slightly horrified. He was joined a second later by his colossal friend. They peered past Belsey and Craik at the darkness from which they’d emerged.
“Call the police,” the first guard said to his companion. Belsey turned to Craik.
“You explain.”
Craik got her badge out and persuaded him there was no need. She was more convincing than Belsey had been. They went upstairs. Belsey made a mental note of their route to street level and its landmarks. He wasn’t going to lose the door again. When they were outside the library, Craik got on her radio to Serious Crime and told them to hustle a full SOC team. She gave directions along with a brief explanation of what they’d find. It was quarter past ten. The rain had stopped; the city glistened.
“How are you feeling?” Belsey asked.
“Worried.”
The first patrols arrived, followed by CID from local stations, then senior command. Craik directed them down. Belsey hung back. She spent fifteen minutes giving an account to two chief superintendents from the Yard’s Serious Crime squad. Craik dispatched Jemma’s loyalty card with instructions to get owner ID and a record of recent use, along with files on any missing women, by dawn.
And then there was a moment’s peace. The two of them swept aside by the arriving army of crime scene investigators like people who’ve had their party crashed.
“Need us here?” she asked the Yard team.
They were instructed to clean themselves up and get some rest.
“Well, I need a shower,” Craik said to Belsey. “I’m still shaking.”
“You say he broke into your car.”
“That’s right.”
“Was there anything in it with your address on it?”
Craik thought about this.
“Some post.”
“I don’t think you should go home.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Nightcap, my place.”
17
EVEN MARTYNA’S POKER FACE WAS TESTED AS BELSEY led Kirsty Craik, bloodstained, through the reception of Hotel President. The women exchanged glances.
“Does she see this a lot?” Craik asked, when they were in the lift.
“No.”
“Is this really where you live?”
“For the moment.”
The lift took them unsteadily upwards. They were both silent, then silent along the corridor to his room.
“This is the Presidential Suite,” Belsey said. He unlocked his door and scanned the room for any traces of corruption and deceit. It looked innocent enough. It looked inadequate for a man in his late thirties. Craik managed a smile. She appraised the uneven stacks of books, the well-stocked bar on an upturned grocer’s crate. She sat on his bed. Belsey opted for the window seat. When they were sleeping together in Borough he had a London Bridge apartment. Not paid for out of entirely legitimate income. Maybe this new set-up looked honest, ascetic. Her presence made it feel a little absurd.
“What does he want?” Craik asked, finally.
“To show us that he can,” Belsey said. “He has knowledge and power. I think these tunnels involve more than is in the public domain.” He paused, choosing his words. “Kirsty, there’s a possibility we’re into more than we can handle, something that has confidentiality from the top, from the government, or military intelligence. That kind of scene.”
“Why do you think that?”
“All sorts of reasons. I had a disc of what looked like someone disposing of a body behind Centre Point—same suspect, moving a corpse from the BMW he stole on Friday. I couldn’t tell much about the corpse. On CCTV you can see police and ambulances attending. But there’s no record of it happening, nothing on the system. The site has been cleaned up. I think someone stole the disc from me when I was examining the area.”
Craik digested this. The night’s events had opened her mind.
“You think he’s connected to the government?”
“No, but I think he’s possibly encroached on their secrets. I don’t know how or why. I think he’s holding someone hostage because he wants to draw us into whatever game he’s playing. It involves revealing this system. Look.” Belsey found his A-Z in his jacket and sat beside her. “They’re deep-level tunnels. The system involves the old shelters but extends further.” He took a pencil and put a cross between Hampstead and Golders Green. “We saw North End station. We know it connects to St. Pancras Library. We saw tunnels beyond that. Red Passholders Only. From the library it’s just a kilometre along the Gray’s Inn Road before you hit a secret telephone exchange under Chancery Lane.” He placed a cross on Furnival Street.
“A telephone exchange.”
“A huge exchange. All underground. There’s bound to be some tunnel connecting them. If you follow that west you get to Centre Point where he decided to leave the body. He was deliberately placing it there. He sprayed the word ‘CAVE’ on the side of the building. Centre Point’s got an interesting history. There was a dispute over planning permission: the building went against all regulations. At the last moment, the government steps in and says it has to be built. The permit’s waved through. But it sits empty for ten years. Totally unoccupied.”
“What are you saying?”
“The main problem with the planning permission was the height. It meant they had to excavate incredibly deep to stabilise it. Something is in that space beneath the building, and it’s being watched by the same people who have their cameras trained on the deep shelters—Property Services Agency, which is a government subsidiary and doesn’t like answering its phones.”
Craik studied the map.
“Where else does this system go?”
“I don’t know. If the Chancery Lane exchange continues east along High Holborn, you’re in the City. If the Goodge Street shelter goes south, then you’re approaching Trafalgar Square, then Whitehall. Obviously there are tunnels down there.”
He took a handful of papers from the Umbro bag and passed them over. Craik leafed through. The online aficionados couldn’t help themselves when it came to Whitehall. But amid their wilder speculation, there were recurring points of consensus. Downing Street and Parliament connected underground. Each government department had extensive tunnels beneath its own headquarters, each warren probably leading to the next. Belsey knew that for Diana’s funeral they had to plant Parliament Square with flowers to deter the huge crowds that would have fallen straight through. A few streets away, under the Treasury building on Horse Guards Road, were the old War Rooms, preserved for tourists with a waxwork high command in place. And from these, logically enough, a select few could have walked the few hundred metres to the Prime Minister’s residence, or passed under Whitehall itself to whatever delights lay beneath the glum colossus of the Ministry of Defence.
Less certain, but far from implausible: there had been a tunnel dug under the river connecting Westminster and Waterloo. There was a bunker retained for an unspecified purpose beneath the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre on Broad Sanctuary. Tunnels had been extended from the Cabinet War Rooms to a new subterranean complex under Victoria, with an emergency exit in the basement of the old Westminster Hospital.
>
“He’s not going to get beneath Whitehall,” Craik said.
“Maybe not, but I reckon he’d like to. This individual has sent threatening emails to members of the press, signing himself as Ferryman. Ferryman was the codename for a Soviet spy.”
“A spy?”
“In the seventies and eighties. I’ve no idea what to make of it. He’s interested in cold-war history. A fantasist. But on to something.”
“This is insane.”
Craik sifted through the papers. Then she put them down and exhaled. Her body relaxed against his own.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said. Belsey put a hand on her back and then moved it so his arm was around her shoulders.
“Me too,” he said. “Someone shot me.”
“Oh, God.” She lifted a corner of his shirt and touched a hand to the Taser wound.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
She felt where the barb had torn a neat line.
“Have you got a shower?” Craik asked.
“Through there. I’ll get some towels.”
She went into the bathroom. He headed to the store cupboard at the end of the corridor and took a stack of towels and a bathrobe. The shower was running when he returned. He threw the towels and robe into the bathroom along with jogging bottoms and an old T-shirt. Then he poured vodka into mugs.
“Join me in problem drinking?” he called through.
“Are you serious?”
“Medicinal. It will keep us going.”
Belsey drank and the situation immediately seemed more manageable. He was getting closer. He took his shirt off and splashed some vodka on the wound, then split a hexobarbitone with his thumbnail and took a speculative half. He called the CID office. There had been no more sightings of the suspect. The forensics team was working on the package of hair; London Underground and the Transport Police were keeping an eye out for any more trespass incidents.
He emptied an ashtray into the bin and tidied some clothes away, then took a seat on the bed and listened to the water trickle off Kirsty Craik’s body. It was past midnight now.
The water stopped. After another five minutes Craik appeared. She’d gone for the robe. She was pink with heat, hair under a towel. She sat beside him, then lay back across the bed. He lay beside her. He slipped the robe off her shoulder. There was the tattoo. He couldn’t remember if the writing was Thai or Vietnamese, but knew it was meant to offer protection in battle.
“Checking it’s me?” she asked. She rolled onto her side, away from him. He watched her neck. He had the feeling of returning to a place after years and the odd wonder that it should still be there, that things go on without you, but also that you might return.
“I should have trusted you,” Craik said. “About all this.”
“Not unless you’re mad.”
He put his arm over her. She wove her fingers into his own. A train slowed into King’s Cross with an interminable hiss as if the machinery of the city itself was decompressing. Then everything was quiet. He could hear the echo of platform announcements. I can have this moment, Belsey thought. He felt he’d overcome several insurmountable laws, of time as well as morality. He inhaled the peace, dragging it deep into his lungs. This was what corrupted: peace and quiet. It was what secrets fed off, growing inside you.
“Can I ask you something?” Craik said.
“Of course.”
“Why did you just vanish?”
Belsey hesitated.
“Tonight?”
“At Borough.”
“I didn’t vanish. You were posted away. I was almost prosecuted for all manner of offences. You didn’t want me messing up your career as well.”
“I was posted two miles away. It wasn’t overseas.”
“You were on the up.”
She unlocked her hand and turned towards him, studying his face as if for later identification purposes.
“What did you really think when you saw me at Hampstead?” she asked.
“I thought about us breaking into Brockwell Lido at three in the morning. I wondered if you were going to lead me astray again.”
“That was an amazing night.” Craik smiled, then glanced around the hotel room. “Do you like living here?”
“Not particularly.”
“What’s the picture, propped against the window?”
Belsey turned to see. There was Walbrook, the well mannered crowd peering into London’s fresh wound.
“It’s a bomb crater from the Second World War. It revealed a Roman temple buried beneath the City.”
“Why is it there?”
“I don’t know.” Belsey felt the pure present collapsing. The picture brought back memories of last night. He untangled himself and went over to it. He didn’t need the polygraph of Craik’s body against his own, monitoring his heartbeat. He opened the window and lit a cigarette. “Have you been to Rome?”
“Once, a few years ago.”
“When they got rid of Nero they buried his palace. Centuries later a shepherd boy fell through a crack in the hillside and discovered it. He fell into the palace. All the treasures and artworks were still there. Everyone came and let themselves down on ropes to see it—all this art from ancient times greater than they had thought possible. There it was, buried beneath their feet.”
“You were thinking about that?”
“Not exactly. I was thinking about people sleeping in shelters and tube stations during the Blitz, trying to imagine better ways of protecting themselves. Architects sleeping down there, dreaming of something that’s going to keep them safe for ever, and then they surface and the bombs have cleared space for them to have a go. So they start flinging up things like Centre Point. They want concrete. Somewhere they can hide.”
Craik made a noise that could have been assent or a yawn. After a moment she said:
“How far did we run?”
“Golders Green to King’s Cross, four miles or so.”
“Jesus. I can feel it in my legs.”
Belsey looked at her. Her courage wasn’t news to him. A moral kind of courage: he’d seen Kirsty Craik break up pub fights and stride into bloodstained domestics. She’d probably been missing the action.
“Sleep,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere for a while.”
He went to shower. A moment later she called through:
“Who’s Jemma Stevens?”
Belsey froze, water streaming into his face. The laptop. He turned the shower off, dried himself, and made a calculation as he dressed. The loyalty card was already being analysed: he had an hour or two before her name came up. Detectives didn’t do coincidences.
Craik had his laptop up on the bed. She wore a look of amused disapproval. The screen had blinked straight to Jemma’s Facebook page.
“Cute,” she said. “Bit young for you.”
“It may be our missing person,” he said. Craik’s expression darkened. “Her flatmate called the station a few hours ago and said she’d gone AWOL. I had a look at her page while you were showering. It could be nothing.”
Craik studied Jemma’s hair in the most recent pictures. It was long and dyed black.
“Or it could be something,” she said.
“It’s something to check. I feel like I might have come across her before. She sounds like a wild child.” The fact that he had remained calm was, Belsey suspected, testament to the soothing powers of hexobarbitone. “It’s just a possibility. I called the station; there’s been no developments.”
“Jemma Stevens.” Craik lay back. “I don’t think I’m going to sleep.”
“Just rest your eyes then.”
He sat by the window. Next time he looked she had her eyes closed. Belsey assessed his immediate future. First thing that would happen tomorrow: they get a positive ID from the loyalty card. Next, Jemma Stevens comes up on the police database with Belsey as arresting officer. They visit the flatmates who recognise him from visits to the club; then they get footage
from Costa matching her card and see them together a few minutes before she goes missing. As investigations go that was pretty sweet. The whole thing would be wrapped in less than three hours.
So he needed to be clever. He stood up and no clever thoughts came. He lifted his jacket from the floor and something fell out. It was an exercise book. And then he remembered—the diary from the bunker. Belsey picked it up and flicked through. Neat biro covered the pages. The entries were initialled “S.R.”—the cover signed by “Regional Controller: Suzanne Riggs.” Each page was divided down the middle: on the left side was a commentary on the state of the nation; on the right, the scene down in the bunker. This listed officers present, alarm settings used, supply levels, sickness. But nothing was as vivid as the reports coming in from the outside world.
Thursday, 3 November
Military build-up along Soviet Union border with Turkey.
Covert civil preparations ongoing across London. Key personnel meeting at relevant centres.
Wartime Broadcasting Service in place, police support units on standby, local authorities briefed.
Friday, 4 November
Fire Brigade moved out of London, plus all hospital staff within 15-mile radius of Charing Cross. Non-critical patients sent home. Schools and libraries given Level 2 protection; communications installed.
Protests in Camden and Southwark.
Petrol rationing.
Belsey read on. Things didn’t improve. By the end of Sunday, 6 November all transport was under government control including British Airways and commercial shipping. The Cabinet’s War Measures Committee had begun moving art treasures out of London, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Twelve major roads had been reserved for government traffic.
At 12:30 p.m. on 7 November the Cabinet approved Queen’s Order 2. Parliament was suspended, emergency powers activated.
That was when the panic buying became serious. Alongside increased protests and acts of sabotage. Evening of 7 November: terrorist bomb at Immingham destroyed the oil refinery and fuel stocks. A bomb at Devonport naval base killed four. The Prime Minister made three broadcasts discouraging evacuation, promising that the government was going to stay side by side with ordinary Londoners.
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