Red Gloves, Volumes I & II

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘It was I who made the decision to requisition the horses for the cavalry officers. I thought I could take them for our comrades, and the food supplies would be delivered by mule through the mountains. I did not know that most of the mules had died, and that without them there was no way of the food getting through.’

  ‘I knew our comrades needlessly died of starvation when they should have lived to fight the enemy,’ said Sir Henry, shocked. ‘But I did not know of the part you played, Charles.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Believe me, had I known the results of my actions, I would not have acted thus.’

  ‘Then these are not the spirits of avenging Russians, but of our own men!’

  ‘Are there others in the village who are privy to this knowledge?’ asked Holmes. ‘It is vital that I am in full possession of the facts.’

  ‘No sir,’ said Mr Charlton, ‘for I made sure that the requisition copies were destroyed. The secret resides solely with me, and now the deed is being punished. The dead do, indeed, return. And the lives of all those who survived in place of their fallen comrades are at risk.’

  ‘Pish,’ said Holmes. ‘I do not believe in ghosts. You think the spirits of the fallen have been enticed by the Devil to take revenge against you? That they ride from Hades to take your lives?’

  ‘Sir, I know this to be the case, and you have seen the hoofprints yourself, not made by horses but by the cloven-footed devils upon whom the soldiers of the dead must ride, for you see—they had no horses of their own.’

  ‘It is madness to consider such superstitious nonsense,’ said Holmes, but even as he spoke the wind howled down the chimney, blasting a great inferno of cinders out into the room, extinguishing the few remaining candles. Miss Woodham and myself stamped out the burning coals, but now the far window had blown in, as if the Devil himself was leaning against the walls. The full fury of the storm was attempting to enter the house.

  ‘I must go out there and offer myself,’ said Mr Charlton wildly. ‘It was I who exposed my guilt before God by burying the medal, and now I must save Sir Henry while there is still time.’

  ‘Listen to me, Mr Charlton,’ said Holmes, ‘I honestly believe you blame yourself for angering the dead, but it is a storm that caused the churning of the ground, and lightning that slashed the throat of your groom, nothing more.’

  ‘That is not true, Holmes, and you know it!’ I cried. ‘I saw the wound for myself.’

  ‘You are a man of science, Watson, you cannot believe this too!’

  Mr Charlton ran to the door and flung it wide. We started after him, to pull him back into the safety of the room, but we were too late. Charles ran out onto the lawn and shouted at the sky, where a funnel of thick black cloud was spinning down towards the earth.

  We felt the ground shake beneath us as great brown clods of mud were torn in a channel that roared toward Mr Charlton like a platoon stampeding through a valley. The ‘Phantoms of the Dead’, as the stable boy had called them, had returned. We watched in horror as Mr Charlton’s body was slowly lifted in the air, punched and twisted this way and that, as if unseen creatures were pushing at him. Blood flew about his face and neck, then his chest and arms, and finally his limbs were torn and stretched until they broke. We could hear each crack and cry from below, where we stood. When he was eventually released and fell, we saw the slashes across his stout form that had parted clothing and flesh all the way to the bone, cutting him to ribbons. Mr Charlton was dead even before he had hit the ground.

  A spectacular flash of lightning illuminated the scene. For a brief second I saw—or fancied I saw—the fiery horned devils who bore the dead on their backs, armed with unsheathed cavalry swords. And then they were gone, thundering back into the rolling clouds, borne away by the tempestuous night.

  ‘No more!’ Holmes slammed the doors shut at his back, leaving the fallen man outside.

  ‘No, Mr Holmes, now there is only me, and I am an old man whose time has come,’ said Sir Henry, as his daughter ran to his side.

  ‘Father, the Devil has had his due,’ exclaimed Miss Woodham. ‘Mr Charlton has made right his terrible mistake.’

  ‘Perhaps that is so,’ said Sir Henry, ‘for there is no greater crime than when an officer has made his own men suffer.’

  ‘You are wrong, sir,’ said Holmes with some passion. ‘The greater crime is to engage the enemy in the sure belief that God is on your side.’ He turned to me. ‘Come, Watson, I feel we should return to London tonight. There is nothing more to be done here.’

  I had never seen my friend in a mood like this. He was angry. Not detached and analytical, but furious that he was being forced to face the impossible and consider it real. I felt sure that back in London he would bury his doubts once more in work and the syringe.

  My last view of Sir Henry was as a sickly old man being comforted by his daughter, slumped in his armchair before the dying fire, disturbed by doubts that he might have spent his life believing in things that were not true.

  Holmes and I returned to London, but during the long train journey home we did not speak of the case again, for fear that it might have awoken a chasm between us that no amount of reason could ever fill.

  Down

  Honor Oak reservoir is underneath a golf course in Peckham, Thornhill reminds himself as he walks. That’s the biggest subterranean vault he’s ever visited, an inverted cathedral that’s the largest reservoir in Europe, with four great chambers that hold 256 million litres of water, a great heart made of orange brick that ceaselessly pumps life into the metropolis. He would have liked to work on the new Brixton extension at Honor Oak but there wasn’t a position, so he’s back here in the Tube tunnels beneath King’s Cross, moving through the dead dusty air, looking for circuit faults. He comes down every night at midnight and goes up at 4:00 a.m.; that doesn’t sound hard but there are meetings before and sometimes after, and while you’re down you’re on the move the whole time.

  Looking back, he can see the unmistakable silhouette of Sandwich hopping nimbly across the rails. Sandwich’s real name is Lando—he was named after a character in a Star Wars film, and hates it—his mates call him Sandwich because no-one has ever seen him eat, even though he’s the size of a bear.

  Thornhill has been down for three years now, and likes the job. The perks are good, his fellow workers are a nice bunch and he gets regular health checkups chucked in for free. They’re all outsiders, of course, men and women who work down here, because they’ve joined a veritable foreign legion of employees who go below to forget.

  But he doesn’t forget. He goes down in order to remember.

  ‘Early nineteen thirties,’ calls Sandwich in that peculiarly high voice of his, ‘Holborn Kingsway tram station. E/3 class double deckers. Wouldn’t have minded driving them.’ Everyone down here is a bit of an expert on some aspect of the transport system. Some of them could bore for England.

  ‘Why didn’t you become a driver?’ Thornhill calls back.

  ‘Couldn’t pass the eye test,’ Sandwich explains. ‘Short-sighted. When I was a kid I always wanted to drive the 1938 red tube stock, varnished wood interiors, red and green finish, shovel lampshades. They’ve still got a few on the Isle of Wight.’

  ‘That figures.’

  ‘When they brought in the ’67 Victoria line carriages I reckon it took most of the fun away, anyway.’ After that, drivers only had to press two buttons, one to operate the doors and one to start the train. Driving a train now was not much more than an exercise in staying awake.

  ‘You’ve got an N3 up ahead,’ calls Sandwich. ‘First stop.’ They’re heading south on the Kennington branch of the Northern Line between King’s Cross and Euston, checking all the junction boxes, looking for an intermittent fault that’s showing up on the grid as an irregular power loss—inconsistent and too brief to disrupt service but a break all the same. Usually there’s four of them working together, but tonight the other crew have been sent up to Highbury & Islington where one of the clean
ers has found debris on the line. They’ve gone to see if any overhead cabling staples have come loose; it could be dangerous if they’ve fallen on the rails.

  Thornhill is in boots and the orange boiler suit that makes him look like a Guantánamo Bay inmate. He raises his cage-lamp and aims the light on his helmet in the direction of the box, fixed on the wall at head-height where the main tunnel meets one of the side tubes leading away from the now-defunct Thameslink station on Pentonville Road. Such side-tunnels are rarely filled and capped. Most get used for equipment storage. Many just remain empty, and a few which run parallel to the main lines are kept clear in case of emergency, a euphemism for terrorist acts, and even the underground staff don’t know exactly where these are located.

  Digging his key from his tool-satchel, he unlocks the lid of the box and peers inside. Two rows of green LEDs tell him that all contacts are working perfectly. He’s pretty sure that an intermittent fault would register as a flickering light or a red, in which case he’d simply replace the connector. ‘Clear,’ he tells Sandwich. ‘How many more on this run?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ says Sandwich, checking his chart. ‘They go all the way down to Goodge Street.’

  ‘That’s going to take us all night. What if it’s something we can’t fix?’

  ‘Then someone will have to come down with specialist equipment and run a day-test on the line,’ says Sandwich, who has caught up with him.

  ‘Do you know where all the boxes are?’ asks Thornhill.

  ‘They’re all on the main southbound except the ones between Euston and Warren Street.’ Sandwich hands him a sheet with a diagram overlaid on their section of the Tube map. He taps his thumb on the remaining pages thoughtfully. ‘We could still finish on time if we split up,’ he suggests. Crews are always supposed to operate in pairs, just in case one gets injured or suffers an attack of nerves. It doesn’t happen very often; the LU workers know the dangers and are a pretty careful lot. Sandwich knows that if they take half the line each they can be back before four, and no-one will be any the wiser so long as they clock off together before the power is turned back on at 4:15 a.m.

  ‘I guess that would be okay,’ says Thornhill somewhat hesitantly, knowing he will be in breach of contract by agreeing. Sandwich has spent his entire working life so far down here. The tunnels hold no terrors for him.

  ‘You all right?’ asks Sandwich. ‘Only when you didn’t come in last week…’

  ‘I told you, I had a cold,’ Thornhill quickly explains.

  ‘I thought maybe—the cut on your hand.’

  Thornhill hides his bandaged knuckles behind his back, self-conscious. ‘That’s nothing. I’d had a few. I get a bit angry sometimes.’

  Sandwich is thinking it through, picking at the thought like a scab. ‘Because Thornhill’s not actually your name, is it? I only noticed because you left your mobile in the office and saw that it’s registered in a different name. I know it’s none of my business—’

  ‘You’re right,’ snaps Thornhill, ‘it is none of your business.’

  ‘I mean, we all come down for different reasons. But there’s also a reason why there are checks in place, you know? I’m not talking about terrorism or nothing like that.’

  ‘I think I know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You didn’t get the Honor Oak job, so you came back down here.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I didn’t mind where I went, so long as it was underground.’

  ‘Fine.’ Sandwich knows better than to ask why. As he says, everyone has their reasons. ‘Look, I’ll go down to Tottenham Court Road and start from that end, you work from here and we should meet up at Warren Street by about three thirty.’ Without waiting for a reply, Sandwich nips over the rails to the far side of the tunnel and sets off, whistling something that sounds like ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. Moments later, Thornhill finds himself quite alone.

  He has never worked alone down here before, but he’s always known that the practice went on among the more experienced crews. He isn’t frightened—quite the reverse—but it still feels strange. Sandwich is a nice guy, a bit of a sad case since his girlfriend left him, but he never stops talking, never stops prying and asking questions, and the endless to-and-fro of vapid conversation never gives Thornhill time to be alone with his thoughts. Which is a pity, because there’s still a lot to think about.

  The faint swaying light from Sandwich’s helmet in the tunnel ahead disappears, but there’s still not total darkness. Somewhere further on to the left, in the curve of the ceiling, there is a grating that allows in a nimbus of pale luminescence.

  He reaches the second junction box at a point where the main line meets a smaller service tunnel, and stops within the circle of darkness to listen. He can feel a cool breeze lifting the hairs at the base of his neck. The Tube is beset by these dark zephyrs that eddy and swirl where tunnels meet. You can faintly hear the passing air, but nobody knows where it comes from or why it disappears as suddenly as it starts. Before the 1970s, an army of women used to enter the system after the last train had run. They were called Fluffers, and their job was to remove all the dust-balls, flakes of skin and human hair that had gathered in the tunnels. People always leave traces of themselves.

  Improved ventilation has removed the need for the Fluffers now, so that the only human beings who venture down here after the Tube stops running are the ones making electrical repairs or inspecting water damage. Most of the deeper stations have problems with underground wells, rivers, streams and conduits that periodically back up, and it’s not a good idea to have water dripping onto electrical equipment.

  The LEDs in the second box form two unbroken emerald lines. The fault lies further on, so he’ll have to go deeper. All of the tunnels heading south descend toward the Thames, which is why the passages are fitted with flood gates. Thornhill can feel the temperature dropping as he sets off once more, passing beneath the dull glow of the grating, turning into the next great brick curve. The steel lines glint coldly in the beam of his lamp. Nests of mice, tiny brown bundles of fur that look as if they belong in country wheatfields instead of the London underground system, turn their black beads timidly up at him before scampering for cover. He approaches another tunnel entrance, D117 according to his diagram, and wonders if it’s the one that was used as emergency headquarters for the wartime Railway Executive Committee. He’s read a lot about the Tube system since—he’s read a lot. He can see there’s no track leading inside, and the dust has settled thick and undisturbed, far removed from commuters and cleaners.

  And there, standing in the tunnel entrance, swaying very slightly, is a young man of about fifteen or sixteen, his outline barely discernable. ‘Can you help me?’ he asks very politely, but in the kind of cockney accent Thornhill associates with old British films. He shines his torch on the lad’s face, and is surprised to see that despite a neat short-back-and-sides haircut he is covered in dried mud. He wears a dirty collarless white shirt, braces and brown flannel trousers with thick turn-ups. The trousers are wet to the knees, as if he has been wading through water. ‘Sir? Can you help me?’ he asks again.

  ‘What are you doing down here?’ asks Thornhill, surprised to find himself unalone.

  ‘I ought to be out of London,’ he says apologetically. ‘You know, like the poster.’

  ‘What poster?’

  ‘There’s a drawing, a cartoon like, of a warden telling off a boy. You ought not to be in London. The Ministry of Health evacuation scheme. We didn’t go. My old man thought it was for cowards.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not with you.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Euston interchange. I mean—you’re underneath Euston station. How did you get here?’

  ‘Came up from Balham,’ says the lad, dusting his sleeves. ‘Cor, you should have seen the mess down there. A right old state. It bounced clear down the steps and into the northbound tunnel before it went off—buried the whole length of the platform in gravel, ble
w out the walls, ruptured the water mains and flooded the platform three feet deep. You should have heard the screaming. Shocking, it was. Hundred and eleven.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hundred and eleven dead so far. We was sheltering down there, six hundred of us kipping like sardines. The girl two down from me had both legs blown clean off. The escalators came down, then there was another bang and we looked up through the dust—we couldn’t hardly see anything—and there was only a bloody bus, gone and driven right into the crater. I think the driver got out all right.’

  ‘How did you get out?’ Thornhill asks, puzzled.

  ‘Well, we didn’t.’ The boy shakes his head in sleepy wonderment. His eyelids close and open again. There’s dust on them.

  ‘Do you need to get up top?’

  ‘Can’t. Staying down here now. But I thought you might know if I’m going the right way for Bromley-by-Bow. I’ve got relatives over there.’

  Thornhill knows he should feel absurd giving directions to a dead man, but tonight it seems like a perfectly natural thing to do. When he’s finished explaining the route, his companion smiles wanly and sets off once more with a little backward wave. Thornhill stands and watches until his form has faded into the dry black air of the tunnel. He admires the lad’s determination.

  The next junction box proves impossible to open. Water has calcified the lock, so he is forced to chip away with the end of a screwdriver for twenty minutes before he can unlatch it, and the wasted time sets him back. The connections are all functioning, though, so he closes it and continues downwards.

  Sometimes the desiccated air sets off an ache behind his eyes, but tonight he feels fine, rather light-headed and slow, as if he is sinking into a dream. He runs the tips of his fingers along the curving wall, over the sooty fat trunks of cables, heading towards the next box. It’s darker now, no overhead light seeping in from anywhere, and the breeze is moaning faintly at his back. That’s when he notices the sound of another man, deliberate footfalls planted behind his own. He turns and waits, staring into the dark until it pixelates into the fractured vision of a migraine.