Deep Shelter

by Oliver Harris

  “Jigsaw,” Belsey said.

  “J-I-G-S-A-W. Like that. An anagram.”

  “An acronym.”

  “That’s the one.”

  Terry must have registered the effect this had on Belsey, because he frowned. “Know it?”

  “London is a jigsaw puzzle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. What does it stand for, the acronym?”

  “No idea.”

  Belsey looked at the map again.

  “What’s it all about?” he said. “What’s the idea?”

  “To escape. When everything else is obliterated. A city below the city. I don’t think it’s about the Post Office: we were a useful cover for the government and military. The exchanges are just entrance points. And no one’s going to bat an eyelid at the GPO digging cable tunnels are they?”

  “And Site 3? That’s what Kyle was after.”

  “Site 3.” Terry let this linger. They had reached another precipice of knowledge. “You’re the only other person I’ve met who knows about it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I don’t either. But I’ve got some funny ideas.”

  “I could really do with a laugh.”

  Terry removed his glasses. Belsey was surprised by the softness of his gaze.

  “Hardest files to get your hands on are the Sites. They’re the big boys, the last refuges when everything else is gone. Site 1 was the Whitehall exchange, under King Charles Street. It was never referred to by name. Chancery Lane is Site 2. But Site 3 is bigger. There were specs for it in the files. More than five times the size of the other two put together. I don’t know what it is or what it’s under, just the specs. Anything that might suggest where it was had been removed or inked out. Big black lines.”

  “But you’ve heard other things about it. Right?”

  “Just rumours.”

  “Tell me the rumours.”

  “Engineers who serviced it came in from the MOD. Someone said they had to be blindfolded in and out.”

  “Blindfolded.”

  “To and from. That’s what I heard. And no one went there twice. You did the job on a small bit of the electrics or the cables and never saw the place itself. Maybe it was deeper than the others, that was the thing. I thought maybe it wasn’t so much for people as for money, art, gold reserves—all that. Might be where they’d stick valuables, in case of a nuke. Maybe it related to Bank of England goodies. There’s something at the core of it, I think. Especially sensitive.”

  “Core?”

  “Gives you an idea of the scale, doesn’t it? Core where they keep the real goodies.”

  “That’s what you were after?”

  “I never forgot what I read in those files. Years later I was in Cancún. Know it?”

  “Not as well as I’d like to.”

  “Beautiful little place. I got speaking to a Merrill Lynch chap over there. Says he’s shown around the week he starts at King Edward Street and told that in the basement they’ve still got the Mail Rail stop and trunk exchange and that no one’s allowed to touch any of it. Government stipulations. No one goes down there. He thinks that’s a bit strange: the rail’s been out of use seven years. And all this got me thinking again. Maybe this was Site 3. Close enough to the Bank, right. And it’s next to St. Paul’s tube station. Those deep shelters you were on about. Don’t know about Camden or Clapham, but when I was doing my nosing about there was a file: ‘Deep Shelter—St. Paul’s.’ Top sheet said: ‘St. Paul’s: site abandoned, no works commenced.’ The story they gave was that they were concerned about damaging the cathedral’s foundations. Nonsense. So when I heard about that space under King Edward Street, I thought maybe they hadn’t abandoned it at all. That it was the big one.”

  “But it’s not.”

  “Not from what Kyle saw before he had his collar felt. But there must be something serious near there, because they never chased up his misadventures. I remember, a couple of days after it happened, someone spoke to me for about three hours: what did I know? What had I seen? He had the map I’d drawn Kyle. He wasn’t CID, I could tell that much. Never known the filth wear Savile Row. Never known any serving coppers who walk with a stick. Then that was it. Never heard about it again. Strange, isn’t it. You’ve got to hand it to this kidnapper of yours, though. If you’re going to take a girl, the system’s a good fucking place to hide her.”

  “How would I get down there?”

  “You might try some regular post offices. Russell Square, I think. Aldwych, Trafalgar Square. Those are the Royal Mail buildings I know with ladders down. There’s something under the old Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill. But I imagine it’s all bricked up now.”

  “When did everything start getting bricked up?”

  “Mid-eighties. 1984, 1985.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea. I think there was some pretty odd stuff going on in the name of JIGSAW. I really don’t know what.”

  Terry got to his feet. Visiting time was over. Belsey sensed something like morning-after regret. He took a last puff on the Montecristo before being led back upstairs. His phone was waiting by the door. No sign of the guard. Terry picked up the mobile and held it.

  “Three hours I was in that interview room after they nabbed dear old Kyle, being asked what I knew. No lawyer, no cup of tea, no pack of fags on the table. It wasn’t police talking to me in that room. I’ve been interviewed twenty-six times. That was the only one where I thought, this guy could do what the fuck he wants with me.” He handed the phone back. “I’m just saying, you’re not on an official investigation. I can tell that much. Might be saving you more than trouble if you find a new hobby.”

  28

  BELSEY SAT IN HIS CAR BESIDE TERRY CONDELL’S drawbridge. A new hobby sounded a fine idea. It had gone 8:30 p.m. and Hadley Wood was easing itself into a night as quiet and empty as any other time of day. Kirsty Craik would be processing his arrest warrant: either Jayden Culler had made a tasty accusation, or she’d chased up the CCTV from Costa and seen what it had to show, or both. He had nothing but a puzzle.

  J.I.G.S.A.W.

  He called Jemma’s phone. It went to voicemail. He looked at Terry’s markings on the A-Z, then drove back south, into the city. One last look, he thought. The next time he passed through London it could be in the back of a Serco van.

  It felt too bright for the hour. Light was thickening rather than dispersing. After-work drinks were over and those remaining seemed to have run aground. It was Wednesday. Belsey kept his A-Z on the dashboard and followed the tunnels. Drove the X-Ray. Chancery Lane, past the Prudential Building. 1952 the GPO gets sued for tunnelling under the Prudential Insurance offices on High Holborn without permission. The offices were still there, silent in their Victorian pomp. A few metres further east he saw the winch on Furnival Street, like a giant gallows folded away. On, through the Square Mile to the river. The sun was dipping behind Baynard House, the telephone exchange’s long layers of concrete stacked in silhouette. A plaque told Belsey he was on the site of a Norman castle. He tried to remember what Terry had said about the building. Three floors down, the lift opens, cardboard coffins . . .

  Belsey walked around the windowless concrete of Baynard to the Thames and looked across the grey ripples to the southern embankment. He imagined the tunnel as it passed beneath, to the exchange under Waterloo. He had a sense that if he could just find the right way in, the front entrance, he would have access to it all. That you could break through, as Ferryman had done, and the kingdom was yours to wander.

  He got back in his car. His phone buzzed: a message sent from Jemma, supposedly.

  Find me.

  Attached was a blurred photograph of tall, narrow silhouettes against a low sun. Tower blocks? But they were too rough and misshapen. And there were no buildings either side. Belsey adjusted his sense of perspective. He thought they looked like standing stones. That book, he thought: Guide to the Standing Stones of Wiltshire . . . W
hat was Ferryman saying?

  Then the message was replaced by an incoming call. Kirsty Craik.

  He let it ring. He followed the tunnel along the river to Westminster. The Houses of Parliament looked soft as cake. He imagined London crumbling until only the tunnels remained, like the veins of an anatomical model. A minute later he arrived at Westminster Green, the old hospital. You wouldn’t have guessed its previous existence from the neat red bricks of the apartment block. A guard sat in the lobby. But it wasn’t a lobby made for a guard. He was at a table squeezed in by the door. He’d been recently installed: army haircut, radio handset, vigilant. He noticed Belsey loitering within a second.

  Belsey drove on, up through Whitehall. Over Q-Whitehall. He wondered how you lured a former Chief of the Defence staff down into tunnels alone. What you’d have to say to him. What secrets he might be protecting. He slowed past Trafalgar Square—imagined the confluence of the tunnels beneath the splashing fountains, the tourists posing for photographs—reached the Opera House, turned, headed east again, back into the City.

  The Moorgate telephone exchange had vanished, its form preserved in scaffolding and flailing, translucent sheets of plastic. Decrepitude spread from the demolished exchange. The raised walkway into the Barbican had been closed. Belsey climbed over a plastic barrier, up the steps. The whole walkway with its offices and shops was dead.

  He went down to street level again, to a very new bar by Moorgate station that offered to serve you two hundred different types of vodka. The bar was all glass, as were the office blocks around it. He saw the glass now as a very slow tide, eroding the concrete. The bar was dark with occasional spotlights, filled with people for whom the past was not a profitable concern. Belsey got a taster menu of three infused vodkas and drank off his anxiety. He listened to healthy men talking about their children’s schools and upcoming holidays. Sky News reflected in the floor-length windows: Jemma, then Jemma on London Underground CCTV, walking through Belsize Park tube station on her way to meet him.

  His phone rang again. Kirsty Craik. Belsey finished his vodkas and drove to Hampstead.

  CRAIK WAS IN HER office. Belsey went in and closed the door. A statement by Jayden Culler lay in the centre of her desk.

  He sat down. She stared at him. Of course it would be conceivable to her that he might kill a young woman. What had he shown her to make it unlikely?

  “Do you know where Jemma Stevens is?” Craik asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know Jemma Stevens?”

  “Yes. I took her down there, into the tunnels.”

  Craik’s expression was cold, holding off dismay.

  “And killed her?”

  “No.”

  “You let Jayden Culler go. Rob had him in for questioning.”

  “Whatever’s happened has nothing to do with Jayden Culler.”

  She moved Culler’s statement to the side. There were more papers underneath.

  “You arrested Jemma Stevens on the afternoon of the first of May, while she was attending a protest against the police.”

  “That’s when I met her. Over the following weeks we saw each other a few times. I visited the bar where she works.”

  Craik checked her notes: “That was Saturday the eleventh of May. Then you visited again on the Friday of the following week, Friday the seventeenth.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “And she was your date that night, Monday, when I saw you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why have you been giving me nothing but bullshit?”

  “Because you’re a good enough detective to see that everything points to me being guilty.”

  “And I shouldn’t believe that?”

  “You can believe what you want. I’m not the one who abducted her.”

  Craik turned through the paperwork again as if trying to find something that wasn’t damning.

  “Did you request the CCTV from Costa?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Maybe I should.”

  “Of course you should. It will show me with Jemma Stevens about fifteen minutes before she goes missing. This is what I’m saying. I’m not stupid, Kirsty. I know how it looks.”

  “All the stuff about Soviet spies, government secrets . . .”

  “That’s true. Why do you think this investigation is being blocked? There’s something seriously odd going on with these tunnels. I just spoke to someone about a General Post Office scheme . . .”

  “Nick.” Craik winced. “Stop. Please. I think this is about secrets, not governmental ones.” Her eyes aimed angry points of light. The tide of credibility had turned. “Did you attack me down there?”

  He saw how far she’d speculated the case against him.

  “No. And I didn’t send the hair in.”

  “It would be a pretty good ploy.”

  “It would be amazing. Do you think I did?”

  “I don’t know. But, as you point out, it doesn’t make a difference what I think. I could have a guy walk in covered in blood making a confession, but it’s still you taking her down into tunnels then removing all evidence of it. I’ve had three journalists calling in the last half-hour. We put a picture of her out there. This is going front page and I can’t see what you expect me to do, Nick.”

  “Arrest me.”

  “Is that meant to be a challenge?”

  “No. What else are you going to do? Place me under arrest. I’ll be off your hands soon enough. Or get Derek Rosen to do it. I’d do it myself but I can’t be arsed with the paperwork.”

  “It’s not funny, Nick.”

  “No.”

  He picked up Jayden Culler’s statement. Then he saw, beneath it, a file with the name: Duncan Powell.

  “You got the file on Duncan Powell’s killing.”

  “I got it. I spent an hour chasing a crappy attempt at a hit-and-run investigation. Now I’m wondering why you were so keen on having me do that.”

  Belsey opened the file. It was the full investigation, seven sheets. The unenthusiastic attempt by Barnet CID. But not entirely feeble.

  “It won’t be much use to you, Nick. Not unless your suspect is in Wiltshire.”

  Belsey stopped, his hand above the file.

  “Why Wiltshire?”

  “Take a look.”

  Belsey read. Craik watched him, perturbed by this sudden intensity. Barnet had accessed records of all calls Powell made in the days and hours preceding his death. One area code was conspicuous—01373.

  “Whereabouts in Wiltshire?”

  “A village called Piltbury.”

  “We’ve got him,” Belsey said quietly. Craik didn’t look impressed by this breakthrough. “We need to dial it.”

  “You can dial it all you want. It’s a phone box.”

  “In Piltbury?”

  “Yes. You’re saying the answer lies in a village in the West Country? That’s nice. I thought we were looking for someone who was in Belsize Park on Monday.”

  “The suspect has come into London,” Belsey said. “He’s not a Londoner. He doesn’t sound like a Londoner.” He examined the phone info again: three calls, one a day in the three days leading up to Powell’s death. Long calls. The first lasted twenty-one minutes, then a forty-five minute call on Sunday the ninth, then a nine-minute call at 10 a.m. on the Monday. They must have been arranging to meet. It was seven hours before Powell was killed. Enough time for someone to travel from Piltbury to London.

  Belsey put the number into his phone and went to his PC. He found a map of Piltbury. The village was twenty miles west of Swindon, ten miles east of Bath. It was tiny, population of less than a couple of hundred, he guessed. The screen was mostly white. The towns a few miles either side seemed to crumble into scattered fragments surrounded by nothing, a void.

  He took out his phone and found the most recent communication from Ferryman: a photograph of standing stones. How low was the sun, he wondered? How recently was it taken? He’s there. He’s telling me he�
�s there.

  Think outside the box.

  Belsey imagined someone amid all that white, filling it with thoughts of London: London tunnels, London police, its government and its secret service. He imagined the sense of invulnerability, diving in and out of the capital. Commuting. Best of both worlds: the civilised peace of the countryside, the hardened nuclear war defences of London. He imagined being in Piltbury, thinking of all the Met detectives searching the big bad city, running around your maze, tying themselves into knots. And you’ve got your captive amid all that space.

  He walked over to Craik’s office. She looked at him. She didn’t say anything. He went down to his car.

  29

  ALMOST HALF TEN. QUIET ON THE RADIOS. NO HOMICIDE news in London. Belsey hit the M4 in minutes.

  Nearest police station to Piltbury was in Chippenham, five miles away. He called Wiltshire Police and got put through. They didn’t know of anyone suspicious in Piltbury. No click on the vague suspect description Belsey gave. No incidents in the area recently, of any kind.

  He refilled the Skoda at Reading services and wondered what he was doing. The fields beyond the service station were very empty. The night air smelt sweet and utterly foreign. He was being steered onto someone else’s territory, alone.

  Belsey checked his cuffs and spray and began to drive again. Half an hour later Swindon appeared, a brief, orange smudge on the horizon. He passed signs for deer, theme parks and stone circles. Then he reached the turn-off for Piltbury.

  The village was visible in the distance as you left the motorway, a thin stretch of grey houses backed up against a steep hill. A square church tower broke the line of roofs. Then as you got closer the road sunk between hedgerows and the view was lost. The next time you saw the village you were in it.

  Belsey passed through a scatter of newer homes on the outskirts, obediently conforming to the slate-grey of the older cottages. They led to a main street with a convenience store and a tea-shop. Recommended by the Wiltshire Tourist Board. The place wasn’t Cotswold classic though, no village of the year awards going to Piltbury. Station Approach led to a small building with empty hanging baskets and a low platform. The main road ended at a roundabout with bare hillside and flowers blown flat in each direction.