Death Penalties

by Paula Gosling

  And then it was gone.

  Disbelievingly, she lay there, her breath coming painfully from her constricted chest, her hearing numbed by the explosion of sound that was even now diminishing as the train disappeared into the far tunnel, the last of the lights from the coaches flickering against the sooty walls.

  Darkness came again.

  Tess began to sob, great wracking sobs of relief. But that relief was tempered by the realization that this was not the end, that more trains would come, and that she could be – would be – battered again and again by the maelstrom of noise and wind. She had survived one onslaught, the thought of others inevitably coming was almost impossible to bear.

  The tube trains stopped during the night, didn’t they? Maintenance crews came along, then, so the electricity in the rails would be switched off, eventually.

  She clung to the thought, even as the ground again began to shake beneath her and once more the distant rumbling began. From behind her, this time. The last train had gone by on the far side – this one would probably come closer for it was travelling the other way.

  ‘Oh, God, please help me,’ she sobbed, and again curled against the wall as the light burst forth from the tunnel and noise became a pounding ram of force that would surely crush her or tear her apart.

  But it didn’t.

  This train also passed by on the far side.

  Breathless, grateful, she lay there and tried to sort out her impressions. She had closed her eyes each time the trains had burst out of their respective tunnels. There were tracks next to her, she had glimpsed them momentarily before she blindly cringed away. Why weren’t the trains using them?

  Someone was shouting from above. She paid no attention. Kobalski, John Soame – they had nothing to do with her now. Whatever danger they represented paled in comparison to the danger only inches from her.

  After a few minutes the ground began to vibrate once more, and again there came the distant mutter and rhythmic pulse of an approaching train. She was ready, she could bear it, she would keep her eyes open this time.

  At the last minute she lost her nerve, and her eyes closed involuntarily against the wind and the spinning grit and rubbish. But she had seen enough. The tracks next to her were overgrown and barricaded at the tunnel’s mouth. They were not being used. She could move.

  Maybe.

  Just because they weren’t being used was no guarantee that electricity still didn’t pulse through them when the trains passed on the far side, did it? Wasn’t there something in electricity about completing a circuit? Isn’t that why lightning didn’t hurt you if you were earthed – whatever being earthed entailed. Not for the first time, she cursed her ignorance of the way things worked. She knew nothing about the underground system or how it functioned – she only knew how to get from one station to another. To touch the wrong rail – the centre rail? – was certain death, she knew. On the other hand, she knew that she had read of people falling beneath the trains and surviving – or was that simply in the stations where there was a deep channel beneath the rails?

  At any rate, it was simply a matter of staying where she was until the trains stopped, and then perhaps a maintenance crew would come along and —

  Something touched her face. She screamed and flailed out wildly with her hands. Was it an insect? A bat?

  After a moment she saw it against the sky and realized it was a rope. A rope! Lowered down to her – was this salvation? She struggled to her knees and looked up.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, grab on and we’ll pull you up,’ came Kobalski’s voice, sweet again with lies. ‘You don’t want to get electrocuted down there, do you? We won’t hurt you, I promise. I only want the money, honey.’ He chuckled, he actually chuckled, and the sound whispered back and forth in the small canyon of the cutting, reverberating between the walls in a mockery of the thunder that had gone before.

  She waited for John Soame to add his treacherous voice to this less than tempting lure. But he was silent, perhaps realizing she would not trust him any more than she would trust Kobalski, who was apparently under the impression that she was stupid enough to climb back up to him.

  She sat back down, ignoring the rope that dangled before her. Then it began to jerk about wildly: did he think that would increase the temptation? She looked up, preparing to tell him what he could do with his damned rope, and saw he was already doing something with it.

  He was climbing down to her.

  Perhaps to make certain she fell in front of the next train.

  ‘Oh, God—’ That was twice she had invoked the deity, and twice she had been disappointed. She was sure there was one, but He seemed to be looking elsewhere at the moment. She struggled to her feet, gasped at the pain from her ankle which she had momentarily forgotten, and began to edge away down the wall.

  ‘No! No!’ she yelled. She saw the figure on the rope turn towards her, spinning awkwardly against the sky, searching the dark shadows for her and stiffening angrily when he realized she had moved away.

  To what?

  She didn’t know, she didn’t care. Sheer terror robbed her of reason, gave strength to her legs, and drove her before it. Mindless and blind, she ran along the wall, squeezed past the barrier, and went into the black mouth of the tunnel, where even the faint luminosity of the night sky could not reach.

  In the distance, the fresh thunder of an approaching train began to mutter.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The noise in the brick-walled cutting had been bad enough, but the crescendo of the passing train within the tunnel was like a fist to her head and a hammer to her body. Tess turned and pressed her face against the grimy wall and felt her skirt whip around her legs as the train went by.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the passengers in the coaches, peacefully reading their evening papers or staring blankly at the advertisements that ran in a line above the windows, oblivious to her existence or her terror. Some were even chatting, hanging from the straps and exchanging polite but weary evening smiles.

  It was the crackle of the electricity that was the worst – and the strange metallic smell it left in the air. The space within the tunnel was even more restricted than it had been in the cutting, although this was still a double tunnel. There was no shoulder of ground, here. Just a ledge, barely walkable. The curved walls seemed to press her over as her feet edged along.

  For a while there was silence, blessed moments of relief. She didn’t know how long it would last, but she wanted to make the most of it. She could hear her own breath, panting, and a low moaning whimper that seemed to originate in her throat – a throat already sore from screaming.

  And someone else was in the tunnel, too. Scraping sounds overlapped her own, more than echoes. So Kobalski had followed her in. He was intent on her destruction, one way or another.

  Doggedly she kept on, trying to remember how long a run it was by train between stations. Surely she’d come this way a hundred times over the past years? But which station to which station it was she didn’t know, because as she’d wandered the streets looking for Max she hadn’t kept track of distance or direction. She could have gone in a circle for all she knew – where were those derelict houses? She’d only seen them from the car when Roger was driving the back way to avoid a jam.

  It couldn’t be far, she thought. This is still London, not the suburbs. Not more than two minutes between stations here, surely? Unless I’m under the park. The wall curved under her outstretched hands, seemed to go on and on and on.

  Now she could see signal lights ahead. Didn’t that mean a station was near? Or was it a junction? She moved along, then paused beneath them to catch her breath. They shed red illumination on her face, casting her eye sockets into darkness, turning her into a desperate masked creature of the forever night, crawling beneath the earth.

  Beside the signal lights there was a small niche in the wall.
On the floor lay some tools, discarded or left deliberately for the next man or the next job. She bent down and ran her fingers over them. She grasped what felt like a pipe or a wrench. It was heavy, about a foot long. At least she had something to defend herself with now. She could wait until he came along and —

  But he can see me here, because of the lights, she thought, and moved on.

  About twenty feet past the lights and around a last, sharp bend, she came to a place where the rails divided. A faint light came from a grimy light bulb set high in the tunnel roof, showing her two ways to go. Obviously the left hand tracks would eventually lead to a station, but at what cost? It was a narrow tunnel, holding only one track – a live track – with no more than inches between the wall and the sides of the racing trains.

  There hadn’t been a train for some time. Odd, considering this was the rush hour. Looking back she could see that the signals were still red. If she chose the narrow tunnel she might make it to the next station before a train came. Or she might try to go too fast, and fall onto the live rail. Or a train might come and smear her along the wall, crushing her like an insect.

  The right-hand tunnel only offered blackness, but safety from the terrible voltage of the live rail, and perhaps from Kobalski, too. What else it might offer she would not think about.

  She went right.

  This tunnel was wider, with a margin of cinder track beside the rails. And there was no smell of electricity here, either. Perhaps only because the circuit was not complete. One touch and she could become the last arc. She kept on, blindly, holding her hands out in front of her, keeping her shoulder against the wall so as not to stray onto the rails. The ground seemed to slope upward, slightly. After what seemed like an eternity of slow, groping progress, she sensed an open space ahead. Perhaps through some change in the quality of her own breathing and the sound of her shuffling footsteps? A draught of fresh air? Was it yet another junction? She knew there was an absolute maze of tunnels and junctions beneath London streets of which ordinary people like herself knew little. Like the sewers and the conduits for electricity and phone cables, it was a secret and hidden world.

  She began to move along more quickly, hoping for another niche in the wall in which she could rest or hide. Instead, her groping hand encountered what felt like the edge of the wall. She could thrust her arm all the way back and still she did not encounter anything but space.

  It was a platform!

  With some difficulty, she climbed up and felt her way onto the flat space. She moved forward until she ran smack into another wall. Splaying out her hands, she felt the cold shininess of tiles, some missing, and then stepped to the side and barked her shins against a rough bench, onto which she sank. It was a station!

  But there were no bright lights, no gaudy advertisements, no crowds of people impatiently waiting. Nothing. It was deserted, abandoned. She sat there, panting, gathering herself together. She ran a hand down her leg and encountered a large swelling – the ankle had bandaged itself. She could hardly flex it, but the pain had diminished a little.

  Her breath was coming in hiccups and sobs now. Had she been seen under the faint light at the junction? Had Kobalski followed her into the blackness or not? There was no way of knowing, but she had come to expect the worst. God still seemed to be looking the other way.

  She couldn’t risk it, couldn’t stay where she was. She had to hide or – better still – find a way out of here and into the open air.

  She forced herself to her feet and, arms outstretched as before, began to work her way along the old platform. She could still see nothing, and the air was dead and still. Claustrophobia, which sheer terror had kept at bay while in the tunnel, now began to press in on her.

  Her groping hands suddenly went forward into space, and she nearly fell to her knees again.

  A way out?

  She moved forward, feeling ahead of her with her good foot, and almost immediately banged into another wall. Right or left? She tried both and realized she was in a pedestrian tunnel that turned after leaving the platform and led-where?

  To some stairs, she discovered, after falling painfully up the first three. Pressing her back against the handrail that was fastened to the wall, she started to edge up the stairs one at a time. They were wooden, and creaked alarmingly under her weight. For all she knew, the staircase was incomplete. For all she knew, she could fall through on the next step. Or the next. Or the next.

  She continued to climb, she had to climb, there was no other option. From below her she saw, reflected in the dusty tiles, a brief flicker of light. Kobalski and his damned cigarette lighter. The light disappeared. He wasn’t wasting it – just giving himself brief illumination now and again.

  And he was still coming after her.

  Tess continued to climb, a step at a time, until she reached the top. She sensed a great space ahead of her, and began to move through it, arms outstretched, testing each step before she transferred her weight to it.

  By the time Kobalski reached the top of the staircase behind her, she was in the middle of what – in the flare of his lighter – seemed to be the booking hall. She froze where she stood, arms out as if she was preparing to fly, her tear-filled eyes starred by the reflection.

  ‘Well, hello there,’ he said. He sounded quite cheerful.

  ‘Stay away from me,’ Tess croaked, raising the metal bar she’d found in the tunnel. ‘Just stay away.’

  ‘My goodness, you scare me half to death,’ Kobalski said, and smiled. He came towards her, holding his lighter at shoulder level. The light reached out faint fingers all around, and Tess could see that the ticket booths were shrouded in cobwebs and dust, and the walls contained shreds of old advertisements, half torn away and faded. One said ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ – telling her when the station was closed.

  And possibly why.

  She started to back away, glancing over her shoulder, prepared to see a yawning gap of bomb damage, or some fallen timbers. But the way was clear, only a rusting folding gate drawn across a solid wall of wood. Station closed. What lay beyond the gate and the boarding she could only guess at. She didn’t remember seeing a deserted station anywhere in the streets of the area. Perhaps it had been bombed. Perhaps there was an entire building beyond the boards.

  Her tomb was going to be an impressive one.

  When, one day, they re-entered this place, what would they think when they found her body lying here – or even, by then, her skeleton? Would they think she was an ancient war casualty? Would she haunt the hall, wandering forever down the tunnels, searching for a way out, for a way to her son?

  ‘Where’s Max?’ she demanded, hoarsely.

  ‘How the hell would I know?’ he asked.

  ‘Didn’t you kidnap him?’

  ‘Hell, no. But it would have been a good idea, come to think of it. You’d have handed over the money, then, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘If she had it – which, she doesn’t,’ said John Soame, emerging at the top of the stairs behind Kobalski. ‘I told you that before. She never had it.’

  Kobalski whirled so quickly at the sound of John’s voice that the lighter went out, and he had to flick it into life again. As he did, she saw him reach into his pocket.

  ‘He’s got a knife!’ she shouted. But then, John knew that, didn’t he? Why on earth had she bothered to warn him?

  ‘Yes, I know he has. And I have a gun.’ He moved a hand inside his jacket pocket, extending it as if there were a pistol inside. Kobalski sneered at such a pathetic subterfuge.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ he drawled, ‘A two-finger thirty-eight. Why shucks, you can’t hardly get them no more.’ His tone was bored – he’d seen it all before. ‘I thought you’d run for it,’ he said. ‘Thought you’d turned tail. Persistent bastard, aren’t you? Well, you can’t pretend you have anything to offer me any more, because I know you haven’t.’ Flicking his
knife open in one movement, he thrust the naked blade towards Soame. It was a mistake.

  The sudden movement caused him to slide on the gritty surface, and he dropped the lighter. It cracked onto the marble floor and lay there, its fluid flooding out and burning brightly for a moment before flickering out.

  Darkness again.

  There was a sharp intake of breath, a scuttle of steps, a grunt, a moan, and then the noise of struggle. Tess backed away, afraid to strike out in the dark, although she still held the metal pipe. She kept backing until she hit the wall, and then just stood there, helplessly.

  The sounds, the terrible animal sounds, seemed to recede from her, and then there was a sudden shout and a crash of splintering, rotten boards. They had broken through the stairway and fallen, locked together, to the platform below.

  Tess covered her face with her hands.

  And then there came a new sound.

  A high, thin whistle.

  Suddenly there was light. Faint and pale yellow, two of the three globes in an overhead fixture came to life, throwing barely adequate illumination onto the vast, dusty hall. They brightened for a moment, and then one flickered and popped out, leaving only one to shed its light, creating more shadows than sense in the big space.

  At the same time there was a loud noise and more light poured in – this time from a slowly widening gap in the boarding beyond the metal gate. Men stood there, silhouetted in a bright light that scalded Tess’s eyes. She could see them moving, peering through. Then she heard Abbott’s voice. He sounded almost bored – certainly annoyed.

  ‘All right, that’s enough. I am a police officer and I am armed.’ He stood to one side while a man in a London Transport uniform unlocked the gate. With a protesting shriek of rusty metal they pushed the gate aside. Policemen poured in, and stood staring around them.

  ‘They’re down there,’ Tess shouted, pointing.