“What is it?”
“Headquarters of the South-East London Regional Seat of Government. That’s in the basement, beneath the flats. Pear Tree,” she said softly. “I haven’t thought about any of this for years.”
Belsey leafed through fast, searching for clues to the underground network. Riggs, meanwhile, had become wistful.
“What did I keep all this for? I must have been saving it for my memoir. For after I became Prime Minister.” She sifted the pages. As she did, Belsey saw a map of Britain covered in small triangles, similar to one he’d seen beneath the library.
“What’s the map of?”
“It shows Warning and Monitoring Posts. Two- or three-man bunkers. There are more than a thousand of them across the country.”
“What about these?” He lifted another set of maps.
“Civil defence boundaries, the regions into which we’d be divided, the Regional Seats of Government that would rule us, dividing up hell. The grid is so we can chart details of nuclear bursts.” She shook her head in wonder. “Croydon, Kingston—it’s hard to imagine them sounding as forbidding as Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I guess the residents of Nagasaki didn’t feel they were living anywhere special.”
He sifted through the various maps but there were none of the London tunnel system.
“Who’d know if there was a way of moving between bunkers underground?”
“Possibly no one. Departments become extinct, knowledge expires. Maybe, when they’re declassified, the files themselves will make it into an archive. Until then I guess they’re in limbo, neither alive nor dead. I remember, when I was in the cabinet, hearing that one of the secret government bunkers had flooded. Turns out it had been built on top of the buried stream of the Tyburn. For three weeks nothing was done. No one could remember who was responsible, you see; no department accepted responsibility.” She laughed. “Most of these contingency arrangements were secret from MPs themselves.”
“Where was this top-secret bunker?”
“I don’t know. Once again, you’ve reached my limits.” She checked the clock.
“So who knew about the shelters back in the day?”
“That group of people who don’t get voted in and out. Government is a frail, transitory thing. You’d need to dig down into the heart of the intelligence service for the people who ran this. These things are passed on, generation to generation, among a very small handful of individuals.”
Belsey was starting to give up. Riggs was enjoying a last moment of nostalgia. She picked up another document.
“Here you go: public sector workers, the roles we’d be assigned after the bomb. The bin man or park keeper turns up for work to be told his new duties are those of a gravedigger; a director of social services becomes responsible for sorting out refugee camps. Here’s you.” She waved a pamphlet entitled Police Manual of Home Defence. “Controlling the movement of subversive or potentially subversive persons,” the MP read. “What do you think that would involve, Detective Constable? Round up the communists, the socialists. No courts necessary; police commanders enforce the law in whatever way they see fit. On the spot if need be. This is war, remember.”
Her phone rang. She got up and spoke briefly to someone, then hung up.
“I’ve got to go. I hope that helped.” Riggs took a hairbrush from her bag. The nostalgia evaporated and she fixed Belsey with a professional stare. “I’m talking to you because you’re a police officer and you’ve told me someone’s in danger. I’d be very uneasy if I thought any of this was going to appear anywhere. As I say, I was a small cog in the machine but I am, like all of us, subject to the Official Secrets Act.”
“Where is Site 3?” Belsey asked.
“I don’t know anywhere called Site 3,” Riggs said.
“Heard of Ferryman?” Belsey tried.
“Ferryman? No.”
“Codename for a spy, someone who leaked information to the Soviets. Maybe about this exercise.”
“You may have misunderstood which part of government I worked in. I don’t know about spies.”
“Who could I speak to?”
Riggs looked at the picture of Jemma. Then she reached into her handbag and took out a pen. She found the order of service from the funeral and hesitated. It was a plush job, more like a brochure for a reputation. Sir Douglas Argyle stared accusingly from a portrait reproduced on the front. She apologised to the dead man, then scribbled a number in the margin.
“This is someone who probably won’t talk to you. But it’s the best I can do. Get a senior officer to call him and don’t, whatever you do, tell anyone where you got it.”
There was a number. No name. Belsey thanked her and left.
He walked to a pub on Vauxhall Bridge Road, innocuous for the passing tourists and businessmen, drank half a coffee while trying to decide what to say, then he stepped outside and dialled the number. A man answered.
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Constable Nick Belsey. I need information about deep-level tunnels beneath London. I was told someone might be able to help.”
There was a second’s pause.
“I see,” the man said, evenly. “Tunnels. Let me get someone to call you back.” He sounded urbane, affable. Someone on leather seating. Belsey gave his number.
“Soon as possible, thanks.”
He took a seat outside the pub and rolled a cigarette. Someone called back in two minutes. Belsey couldn’t tell if it was the same man. He didn’t introduce himself.
“These shelters. I wouldn’t worry about them,” he said.
“Wouldn’t worry about them?” This cheerful rejection threw Belsey. “I kind of need to worry about them. A young woman is in danger down there now.”
“Forget it happened. You asked me for advice, that’s it.”
“I asked you for information.”
“The information is that it’s a good idea to leave it.”
Belsey paused, holding his phone, order of service in hand. What could he say? Sir Douglas looked unimpressed. He sat before his map of Europe and a flag. Belsey stared at the flag, pinned across the wall. It bore the image of a dagger emerging from a cloud of smoke. Beneath the smoke was a scrolled banner containing the word: CAVE.
“Sorry I can’t be of more help,” the man said.
Belsey put the phone down.
CAVE. The graffiti on the side of Centre Point. He thought of the body being dropped and he looked at the Order of Service again.
He went back in and sipped his coffee. Then he ran a search for obituaries of Douglas Argyle. There was nothing substantial yet, just a death announcement in the Telegraph: Air Chief Marshal Sir Douglas Argyle, Former Chief of the Defence Staff, died peacefully on Saturday night surrounded by his family. Belsey called the Metropolitan Police control room and asked for a search on the police log for the night of his supposed death. It didn’t record any bodies identified as Douglas Argyle or Sir Douglas. No emergency services attended the Lord’s home. No hospitals reported him dead.
Belsey tried to remember the timing of the corpse dump on the vanished CCTV. Around four thirty Sunday morning. Then something that Riggs had said came back to him.
I’m not going to peddle gossip . . .
In what situation do ageing Lotharios have heart attacks?
Belsey decided to risk a call to Monroe, to see what Fleet Street knew about the gossip. His phone vibrated before he could dial. A Hampstead landline. Belsey answered.
“Hey.”
“There’s a gun trained on you.”
Belsey cast an eye over the nearby windows.
“Is that right?”
“I don’t know. It’s the sort of thing they do. Now that we’re working together there will always be a gun trained on you. Like an eye.”
“Are we working together?”
“So it seems.”
“As colleagues, shall we lay down a few ground rules about abducting each other’s dates?”
“It’s too
late for that.”
“Did you kill Douglas Argyle?”
“Apparently not. What would happen if I killed you? Maybe they’d sweep it up. Then would you be dead?”
“What do you want?”
“What do they want? It’s a predicament, Nick. She’s started complaining—doesn’t like the restraints. I’ve got to go back, check she’s OK. Think outside the box.”
“Is that what you called to say?”
“London is a jigsaw puzzle.”
“Give me a clue. What am I meant to be doing exactly?”
The caller laughed.
“You can’t give a clue to a jigsaw puzzle, Nick. You just put the pieces together.” Then he was gone.
Belsey finished his coffee and walked to the river. Vauxhall Bridge rose up as it left the north bank, so that it looked like it was heading into clear blue sky. Then you saw the buildings on the other side: glass apartment blocks, MI6.
He looked at his phone, at the call. He could trace it. But there was no point. The forensic caution—the wiped receiver at the phone box this morning—suggested his target was already on the system. Or suspected he might be. Where has he had contact? He was being careful, but no one’s careful all the time. People leave prints when they’re off guard, in situations where it’s difficult to use gloves. Fiddly things.
Like turning pages.
Belsey took the diary out and angled it in a square of sunlight. It was covered in fingerprints. They didn’t look thirty years old.
21
HE WALKED INTO THE ANODYNE HOME OF PGC Forensic Services on Hammersmith Road, ready to hustle. Since the government closed down its own Forensic Science Service, work had been outsourced to innumerable companies cashing in on Britain’s contact traces. PGC did most of the jobs for Camden Borough. They had access to the relevant databases. They were also the easiest to squeeze for prompt results. And they’d headhunted his favourite scientist, Isha Sharvani.
The front desk liked to make him wait. The building was cold, fierce air-con obliterating any whiff of the unsterile life going on outside. Belsey sat in reception, studying the diary in the light of the halogen bulbs. The paper itself was speckled with blue spots of damp but the prints overlaid the damp. They were made with what looked like the same residue of dirt and grease that coated the tunnels. But it wasn’t Belsey’s print. After ten years in CID he knew his own whorls. Someone else had been leafing through, past the commencement of war and the destruction of London, trying to find out how it ends.
After five minutes he was sent up. He knew the lab would tell him it would take a couple of hours to process. He didn’t have that time. The more he looked at the print the more confident he felt that it was his man. At the third floor he put on the regulation overalls, then found Sharvani’s lab. She was alone. Up on a large screen was what looked like a tree that had been struck by lightning: a blackened, exploded stump. Belsey checked the microscope beneath it and saw a hair. Isha Sharvani was using tweezers to portion the rest of the strands into small bags marked Hampstead Station. If she knew about the hair, Belsey reasoned, she knew why the hairdresser’s print might require fast-track attention.
“Was she alive when it was cut?” Belsey asked.
Sharvani turned.
“Jesus, Nick. How did you get in?”
“I told them I was a detective.”
“You’re a nuisance.” She straightened and took her mask down. Then she saw he was serious. “Was she alive? I don’t know. You’re not the first to ask.”
“Who was first?”
“We’ve had press calling.”
“What press?”
“Press press.”
“When?”
“The last couple of hours.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing, of course.” Sharvani put the tweezers down and adjusted the microscope. “If she’d been dead for a while you’d see death rings: decomposition in the follicle. We don’t have many follicles and no banding on the ones we do have. It doesn’t mean she was alive, just not dead for ages.”
“Any good news?”
“Depends what cheers you up. The hair was hacked off with a knife. But it looks like the victim struggled because at least a few strands have come out at the root. You can see the root is stretched and has broken with some tissue attached. It’s going to take a while to do full DNA.”
“What about the dirt on it?”
“The black deposit is actually particles of metal and carbon. You see it where there’s been machinery wearing down over a long period of time. Friction.”
“Brake pads.”
“Yes.”
“Brake pads for tube trains.”
Sharvani was hesitant, but conceded: “Sure. There are other traces you’d expect from tube tunnels: dense skin particles, rat urine. But I’m not sure what kind of tunnel this is. There are flakes of paint that contain lead.”
“And lead paint’s banned.”
“Exactly.”
“When did we ban it?”
“1958, I just checked. So go on, fill me in. What is this?”
“She was abducted on Monday night. I think she’s being kept underground somewhere. It might be in tunnels that haven’t been used for a long while. She’s being held there and we’re receiving threats that she’s going to be killed soon.”
“Have you got a suspect?”
“I’m glad you asked.” Belsey brought the diary out. “These might be his prints.” He handed it over. She inspected the marks.
“Not bad.”
“I need them processed.”
“I can tell the print team to do it this afternoon.”
“We have minutes rather than hours.”
Sharvani looked at the diary again. She walked him down the corridor to Fingerprints. The lab was a similar set up to Photographic, same white worktops, same smell of cleaning products and new technology. It had more stations, more computers, fewer empty mugs lying about.
“Jack,” Sharvani said. The print technician came over. He wore several earrings and traces of eyeliner. She explained the situation and he seemed open to helping. He placed the page under a lens of the IDENT1 machine and it appeared on his monitor. Belsey looked up and saw the words large across the screen: Croydon fatalities: 130,000.
“What is this?” the technician asked, looking impressed.
“Someone’s diary.”
“They had a worse week than me.”
He adjusted the page—Kingston forty percent destruction. Fallout high—then the fingerprint loops appeared, white on a black background. The technician isolated a print. He clicked a mouse, leaving a trail of crosses along the various ridges. A few more keystrokes and it was connecting to the national database. With a print that clear, if he was logged with a criminal record, results could be almost instantaneous. If he was on the rest of the system—people who’ve been printed as part of an inquiry but who have no record—it could take hours.
Belsey grabbed a seat at the side. Argyle, he thought. He looked at the portrait again. CAVE. Was it a motto? He got his phone out and typed in Cave military motto. No “Cave,” a lot of others; they were all in Latin.
“Does ‘cave’ mean something in Latin?” Belsey asked.
“‘Beware,’” Jack said, without looking up from the print scanner. “Why?”
“It means ‘beware’?”
“Like in ‘caveat.’”
“You’re wasted here, Jack,” Belsey said.
“Never during office hours.”
Beware. A dagger and smoke clouds. Belsey found what he could about Argyle’s career. Chief of the Defence Staff 1951–66. Permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence in 1970. He oversaw Britain’s civil defence arrangements in the cold-war period.
Civil defence was Riggs’s Saturday job. He opened another browser and typed in local authority defence bunkers. There was a list compiled by a group of enthusiasts: thirty-seven bunkers across the UK, stashed beneat
h innocent neighbourhoods, waiting. Hardened civil defence control for the Corporation of London could be found beneath the Guildhall, for the middle classes under Stoke Newington Town Hall. Salt-of-the-earth Bermondsey placed its council’s nuclear bunker under a garage adjoining the council offices, Dagenham beneath the grounds of a civic centre.
The same site also listed UK radar stations, NATO bases, the anonymous depots where emergency food and medical supplies were kept; finally, the Warning and Monitoring posts Riggs had mentioned. There were more than a thousand scattered about, operated by an army of volunteers until 1995. Belsey had to read the year twice. The posts consisted of an underground room big enough for three, equipment for them to monitor the surrounding landscape for bombs, fallout, chemical or biological attack, and riots. According to the site, the government had replaced all the old computers in these posts in the early nineties before someone somewhere pointed out the insanity.
So much effort. So much fear still down there, unspent. No one cleans up. He was starting to understand: something that never happens has a strange relationship to time. It can’t become the past. It gets lodged. And this was his suspect’s obsession—all the breaking into shelters, the rifled drawers beneath St. Pancras Library, trying to gather up abandoned paperwork . . .
“You’re a lucky man, Nick. You should take up gambling. Again.”
Sharvani and the print technician were staring at the computer.
“What have you got?” he said.
“Eighty-seven percent match.”
“He’s on the system?”
“Duncan Powell, West London, forty years old.”
Belsey went over.
“What’s it on for?”
“Dangerous driving—arrested, not charged, twenty-third of January this year. He was in a blue Volkswagen Passat. Taken to Kilburn police station.”
“What’s the address?”
“12 Viners Road, Willesden Junction.”
22
BELSEY SLOWED DOWN ONCE HE WAS IN WILLESDEN. Viners Road was a short street of red-brick houses blocked at one end by the chain-link of a school playground. Belsey tried to match the placid scene with his image of the man tormenting him. Why not? Suburbs lent themselves to sadism and espionage. There was number 12, there was the blue Volkswagen owned by a man whose prints were all over Riggs’s diary. It was the last house on the row. Belsey parked, blocking the Volkswagen in, just in case Mr. Powell made a run for it. He grabbed his cuffs.
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