Deep Shelter

by Oliver Harris

  The place to be was the bunker. Alarm setting to black, stocks sufficient, communications 100 per cent, no sickness reported. Standing by.

  The banks closed on Tuesday 8, the same day the BBC suspended weather forecasts and Warsaw Pact divisions entered Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, King’s Cross and Paddington stations shut down due to a mass attempt to flee the capital.

  World War III began at 11 a.m.

  11:05. Attack Warning sounded.

  11:32. Three 20-megaton ground-bursts. Croydon, Brentford and Heathrow destroyed.

  12:00. Putney Bridge and Wandsworth Bridge down, plus elevated section of the M4.

  16:00. First radiation sickness reported across Essex and Cambridgeshire.

  Wind NW.

  Four more waves of attacks came over the next twenty-four hours. When the smoke cleared the first stats arrived: two and a half thousand dead in Barking; Southwark close second with over two thousand casualties. Camden and Westminster fared better: fifteen hundred dead between them but a lot of survivors trapped under houses.

  Belsey tried to remember November 1983. He had been nine years old, living in Lewisham, preparing for life as a professional footballer while avoiding an alcoholic detective father. Lewisham—1300 dead, 8000 injured.

  He got up to fix another drink.

  What did he do in the cold war? He remembered the Soviet Union on maps, Reagan, Thatcher, a theatre group that visited his secondary school and performed a play about the bomb. CND put on an exhibition at Catford Library showing Japanese children with third-degree burns. He didn’t remember half the population disappearing. London appeared to still be there tonight, rain-soaked. It had survived, even if the peace felt fragile.

  He sat down again, beside the window, leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

  Ferryman.

  Why take Jemma? What did he want Belsey to do? There are obsessives, Monroe warned. Cold-war obsessives. Spy obsessives. An individual alights on the mysterious figure of Ferryman. What does it mean to them? Ferryman’s someone at the heart of the secret state, betraying it; he passed intelligence on and then disappeared. That was something to idolise, Belsey supposed. And everyone liked spies. They resembled us, only ever half in their own lives. But with a purpose. They survived on a familiar diet of deception and selective betrayal. Sometimes they got away. Ferryman was a myth and still perhaps in the world, in the London of 2013, abandoned on his island of secrecy.

  Belsey saw the deep shelters being passed from war to war, preserved in the ice of the nuclear age. He saw the tunnels, and then Jemma bound to the HANDEL machine. When he next opened his eyes the room had turned grey with morning. Craik’s phone was ringing. He found it among her clothes and gently shook her awake.

  “It’s the station,” Belsey said. “Want it?”

  Craik swung herself upright. Belsey went into the bathroom and splashed his face. He could hear the conversation.

  “No, not all CCTV. Establish where and when the card was last used, which branch. Then, if there’s footage, whether she was with anyone. It’s not complicated. Have them send it directly to me.”

  Belsey was thinking he could do with some coffee. His muscles were stiff from the electrocution. He walked back into the room and his own phone rang. It wasn’t the station; it was a local landline. Very local: same initial digits as the hotel.

  “Hello?” Belsey said. No one spoke. He checked the signal; the call was connected. He walked over to the window. “Belsey speaking.”

  No one speaking back. No one hanging up either.

  Craik said: “I’ll head over now. No, I’m not at home. I’m . . . close by.”

  Belsey grabbed a shirt and stepped out to the corridor.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “Did I disturb the two of you?”

  The voice was calm, soft. Background of street—a car passing, a shutter being rolled up. Then the clunk of coin; a phone box. Belsey walked to the window at the end of the corridor and checked the slice of Caledonian Road beneath it. No one there.

  The two of you. Had he followed them from St. Pancras last night?

  “No. Now’s good,” Belsey said, heading for the stairs barefoot, shirt flapping open. Where was the nearest phone box?

  “Nice hotel.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you on holiday?”

  “I wish.” There were traces of an accent. He was English but not from London. There was a softer cadence. Belsey couldn’t place it. He took the steps quickly, trying to remember the rudiments of hostage negotiation. “I reckon we could both do with a holiday.”

  “That’s true. This is a crazy situation we’ve got ourselves into.”

  “How do you see it unfolding exactly?”

  “I thought you were going to impress me with your detective skills.”

  Belsey sighed. “You chose the wrong detective for that. I can recommend better ones. Holborn station has a good team.”

  “Can I speak to Sergeant Craik?”

  “No.”

  “Should I contact her directly?”

  Belsey crossed the hotel reception. He turned to Martyna, muting his phone.

  “Anyone been around, looking for me?” She shook her head. He walked out into the street, the world cheery with dawn, clouds uplit, paving slabs cold. He knew there was a phone box by Market Road, usually broken, one on the corner of Huntingdon Street. He headed towards Huntingdon Street.

  “Is Jemma OK?”

  “Not great.”

  “What do you want?” Belsey asked.

  “I want you to do your job.”

  “What job? Finding you?”

  “Following the clues. Detective work. I thought maybe Sergeant Craik could help. She could be the brains.”

  Belsey got a stare from a street cleaner, another from a man walking his dogs. He was still slightly cocooned in hexobarbitone, but waking up fast.

  “The brains. That’s funny.”

  “Was Kentish Town too far for her to get home last night?” the voice asked. Belsey winced.

  “Leave Kirsty Craik out of it.”

  “That’s sweet. What shall I do to Jemma?”

  “Let her go. It’s nothing to do with her.”

  “Who is it to do with?”

  “How about it’s just us?” Belsey suggested. “What’s the problem?”

  “We’re dead men,” the caller said. “That’s the problem.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s a good question. Maybe that can be your question for today: why are they going to kill you?”

  “Who’s going to kill me?”

  “She’s not looking in a good way, Nick. Jemma, I mean. She wishes you’d hurry up, while you can.”

  Belsey saw the phone box a few metres away, glass obscured by prostitute cards. They both went silent. He moved around to the front and it was empty.

  He began up Caledonian Road.

  “No luck?” the caller said.

  “Do you think you’ll get away with this?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “OK.”

  “I dreamed of you.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “You were on fire. You said you wanted to give me a map before it burnt. You were ignoring the pain of your own skin burning. Do you think you could do that?”

  “What was it a map of?”

  “Site 3. You said I should take Jemma there.”

  “Site 3. Like on the pill bottles.”

  “Well spotted.”

  “I’ve been wondering where that is.” Belsey arrived at the next phone box. No one. He turned and ran back past Pentonville Prison, down towards Copenhagen Street.

  “I’ve got to go. Jemma says she wants to visit Site 3.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “She says she doesn’t want to die there, though.”

  Click.

  He got to the phone box thirty seconds later. He knew it was the right one: the handset was gleami
ng. He could smell lemon and lime, see the smear of a cleaning wipe. He looked around—empty streets: no witnesses, easy escape routes into the Thornhill Estate. He had a futile look among the cagey council homes, then walked back to Hotel President. Craik was searching through her clothes, trying to construct an outfit that didn’t involve dried blood.

  “Where did you go?”

  “That was him,” Belsey said. “Our man. He was in a phone box nearby.”

  Craik straightened and stared at him.

  “You’re joking.”

  “He knew we were both here. He knows you live in Kentish Town.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked if it was too far for you to go home last night, back to Kentish Town. What was your call about?”

  “It was the office. They can’t get through to anyone at Costa. He knows where I live?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Get forensics on the phone boxes.”

  A squad car collected Craik a few minutes later. Belsey said he’d catch her up. Then she was gone and he was still barefoot. He called forensics. He rinsed his feet. Craik’s clothes lay across the bathroom floor. This was one way to handle a morning after.

  18

  HE PICKED HIS CAR UP FROM GOLDERS GREEN, RETURNED the torch to a puzzled member of staff at the tube station and thought about fleeing. He wasn’t going to, but it was an ongoing area of interest. Freedom was starting to feel precious. He drove to the corner of Hampstead Way and Wildwood Road and saw Kirsty’s Mondeo, its back window smashed, dutifully watched over by a bored-looking constable. A few metres away, behind a green fence, was the entrance to the tunnels: a low, white windowless structure with a sign that said: Keep Clear. Contact Control for Access to Substation. But the vent on it was too big for an electrical substation. Its door was padlocked.

  Belsey drove on. He found himself at the top of the hill, where you got a view of London laid out beneath you. There it was: Centre Point, St. Pancras, Chancery Lane; the whole a facade, a cover story. He felt a lifetime’s memories and associations subtly undermined. The city had betrayed him.

  That can be your question for today: why are they going to kill you?

  He returned to the station. Craik had produced a blouse and skirt from somewhere. She looked sharp.

  “Still no ID from Costa,” she said. “Trying to get someone out of bed to run the check. Head office isn’t open.”

  Belsey sat down and slapped himself awake. He backdated a call log from Jemma’s flatmate to fit the story he’d given Craik. Then he called Camden CCTV.

  “Chib there?”

  “No.”

  “I need a new copy of some footage I was looking at yesterday.” Belsey gave him the details. The man said he’d check. He called back a moment later.

  “The tape’s wiped.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No.”

  “I thought you kept the tapes for thirty days.”

  “Not this one, it seems.”

  “When’s Chib in?”

  “Tomorrow. Not much Chib’s going to do, though.”

  Craik walked over. She wore a look of anxious uncertainty. Belsey hung up.

  “They’ve put the investigation on hold,” Craik said. “The search of the bunker has been called off, pending ‘official authorisation.’”

  “Of course it has. I told you we were on strange territory.”

  “I’m going to see what I can do. Apparently I need some jabs first. You should get checked.”

  Jabs. He hadn’t had time to contemplate the health-and-safety issues of the tunnels. Hepatitis was not chief among them. Craik went down to the duty medic. Belsey turned his computer on and typed in Site 3.

  There was nothing online about a subterranean Site 3. He tried a search on North End Underground station and scrolled through rumours on enthusiasts’ bulletin boards. North End was half built and then abandoned around 1905. Forty-five years later a lift and stairs were installed. No one knew why. The most popular explanation was that it was being set up as London Transport’s emergency headquarters in the event of nuclear war. This, it seemed, would involve more than the safeguarding of your daily commute. Work carried out on North End by the government and MOD in the 1950s transformed the place. The websites thought it attained the power to seal off parts of the Underground system entirely using lock gates hidden in tunnels. It meant that some routes could remain open, even during an attack, while hermetically sealed from flooding or nuclear fallout.

  One indisputable fact: the system remained classified.

  Belsey called Vodafone. He jumped through the necessary security hoops, only to learn that there were no more signals reaching Jemma’s phone. He tried to count how many hours sleep he’d had in the last two days and gave up. He made a coffee and crumbled a blue Dexedrine into the oily liquid. Breakfast was served. He switched on the office TV and searched for news. Then his name boomed from the doorway. The Chief had arrived.

  The Borough Commander, Chief Superintendent Northwood, was in fine voice. He’d put his uniform on especially. He was a tall, broad man and everything seemed tight.

  “Sir,” Belsey said. Northwood towered over him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a woman down there, in deep-level tunnels. Her hair was delivered to the station yesterday evening.”

  “I’ve just had a call from the editor of the Express. He has a journalist friend of yours who knows a lot more about what’s going on than I do.”

  “The suspect is sending messages to the press. Not me.”

  “Who are they? What do you know?”

  “I know very little. Just that we need to get down there.”

  “Where’s Sergeant Craik?”

  “With the medical examiner.”

  The Chief was starting to look slightly unwell himself. “What happened?” he asked.

  “She was attacked by the suspect. Down there. In a bunker under the library. She was in pursuit. We were in pursuit. We believed that a serious crime was underway.”

  “And now you’ve sent in half the Yard?”

  “I tried. The Yard is being recalcitrant.” Belsey sipped his concoction and shuddered. Chemical volts raced down his spine.

  “You had no authorisation.”

  “Tell me who can authorise it. I’ll speak to them.”

  “No you bloody won’t,” Northwood said. “This is chaos.”

  “We could try asking him to go about things in a more orderly fashion.”

  “It was my idea to send them down,” Craik said. Both men turned. Craik stood in the doorway to the office, one sleeve rolled up. “I authorised it. I judged it urgent.”

  “She had instructed me not to go near it,” Belsey said. “She was only there because I was.”

  “That’s crap,” she said.

  “You are not to pursue this, either of you.” Northwood turned to Craik and pointed at Belsey. “Remember what I told you about him. Liaise with Serious Crime. No more heroics.” He marched off. They waited for the Chief to turn the corner.

  “You were right,” Craik said.

  “About what?”

  “Card belongs to one Jemma Stevens, twenty-two years old, lives at 34 Kynaston Road.”

  “Bingo,” Belsey said. He played it expressionless. “What now?”

  “Want to return to full duties?”

  He felt a swirl of uncertainty. It would buy him time, of course. And one day could be enough to sort this out. Keep the investigation close.

  “What about Northwood?”

  “I’m your Sergeant, not Northwood. Prove him wrong. Run this.”

  “Sure.”

  “See when Jemma Stevens was last home. Try to find out when her bank card was last used. Take Rob with you.”

  “Are you sure we can spare him?”

  Craik rolled her eyes. “You say flatmates called it in yesterday?”

  “That’s right. She was last seen Monday.”


  “I want to know what made them worried so quickly.”

  She returned to her office. Belsey finished his coffee and let it enter his bloodstream. He watched the news for a couple of minutes. He was waking up now. Then Trapping strode in with his Ray-Bans on.

  “Sounds like we’ve got a mission,” he said.

  19

  BELSEY LET HIS YOUNGER COLLEAGUE DRIVE. They entered Stoke Newington at 8:30 a.m. Trapping was quiet.

  “Something going on with you and the new Sarge?” he asked, eventually.

  “Why?”

  “Just wondered.” He smiled uneasily. A minute later they pulled up at Jemma’s home.

  “Looks like a student house,” Belsey said. “Might not be used to early calls.”

  “Student house.” Trapping nodded.

  “Let me do the talking.”

  “What do we know?”

  “Twenty-two years old, missing since Monday night. Her Costa card was down in a bunker beneath St. Pancras Library.”

  Trapping shook his head as they got out and approached the front door.

  “What’s this bunker about? Is it connected to the Chancery Lane stuff I looked up?”

  “Maybe.”

  Belsey rang the bell. He hoped the change of context would make him less recognisable. Both flatmates had encountered him in Euphoria, neither of them more than twice. He wasn’t sure if they had known he was a police officer. It took three long rings, then the Latvian girl answered. She was sleepy-eyed, in a baggy T-shirt and shorts, hair in blonde pigtails. Belsey didn’t pick up any hints of recognition. He showed his badge.

  “Does Jemma Stevens live here?

  “Yes.”

  “Is she in?”

  “No. We haven’t seen her for a couple of days.”

  “Can we speak to you inside?”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Please.”

  The girl led them into the living room. The cans were still on the table, torn posters on the wall. She sat down but didn’t offer them a seat. They chose to stand.

  “When did you last see Jemma?” Belsey asked.