‘The advantage being?’
‘We’re less vulnerable going in, we can sus it out first and we have the car for a getaway.’
‘Plan B has my vote,’ said Polly.
‘OK. Let’s do it.’
Back over the bridge, right into the Kensal Rise Industrial Estate. ‘Slow down. Poll, I can’t read the signs –’
The single road immediately branched into three. ‘Take the left,’ I said. We crawled along while I tried to get my bearings.
It might not have been outright winner of the Bleakest Place in the Universe Award, but it was in contention. An ill-assorted collection of huts, sheds, outhouses, the common factor being that they looked shabby and seedy, as if they’d been shoddy to start with and abandoned long since. Weeds crept through cracked concrete, corrugated iron roofs were rusted and slipping, and blistered and peeling signs advertised defunct businesses and hopes.
Unit 12 was deep into the estate, up against the high tottering wire fence that bordered the Scrubs. Its name was misleading: it sounded like a dead average unit, another rickety shed. But it was a Victorian factory which must have been there long before the estate proliferated in squalor round it. Built in solid confidence, proud and profitable, with high brick walls, narrow long windows and towering chimneys that once belched smoke and now soared into invisibility in the fog, it was about the size of the red-brick Victorian schools that dotted the London streets.
Compared to the other units, it was huge. But the sign outside was clear, maybe the only clear sign in the place, with a functioning light on it: UNIT 12. It should have been called Satherthwaite’s World-Renowned Sanitary Ware or Fuller’s Fine Furniture, but its current alias was Unit 12, and it had too much bourgeois self-assurance to be faced down by a label. It was the sign that looked silly.
I didn’t point it out to Polly. I let her drive past. All the irrational fears I’d had about Bartlett Close seized me here, only stronger, added to the rational fears that had been solidifying on the drive over as my brain sorted through what I knew.
‘Turn right here,’ I told her, then, ‘right again. Stop on the left.’
When she turned the engine off, the car was in an area with no functioning street lights, well placed for a getaway to Scrubs Lane down the middle road of the three, partially hidden from the factory by intervening sheds, but with a good sight-line from the driver’s seat to the main factory door, only about ten yards away and visible through the fog. It was my best shot.
We both got out, into the quiet, and listened. Trains, from the junction. The faint fizz and pop of fireworks from the Scrubs. The murmur of traffic. London is never completely silent.
‘Which is Unit 12?’ said Polly. ‘That gi-normous soap factory thingie?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can only see one door.’
‘Me too, but there’s probably one round the back.’
‘It’d have to be right up against the fence.’ Then she gripped my arm. ‘Listen!’ she hissed. ‘Something moved.’
She pointed. I couldn’t see movement, but I walked in the direction she’d pointed out, towards a shapeless mound.
There was an explosion, squeals and howls and leaping shapes that streaked away from us and past us.
I jumped. At least a foot in the air, or that’s what it felt like. When I landed Polly grabbed my arm and buried her head in my neck. ‘OK, Poll, OK, it’s only cats. Cats. Feral cats, Poll.’ I kept walking towards the mound, and switched on my torch.
‘Let’s go back to the car, Alex.’ She was tugging at my arm.
‘In a minute,’ I said, and shone the torch on the mound. At first I saw only a tattered black plastic bag with lumps of meat bulging from it. Then I realized what the meat was, switched off the torch, and turned back to the car.
‘What was it?’ she said. ‘Did you see?’
‘It’s OK, Poll.’
‘Tell me. Was it a body?’
‘No. Only puppies.’
‘Puppies?’
‘An unwanted litter, I expect.’
We got back in the car and closed the doors, quietly.
After a moment, she said, ‘What sort of puppies?’
‘I didn’t see.’ I had, but the fuzzier her mental picture, the better.
‘And the cats were eating them?’
‘They have to live,’ I said, as neutrally as I could. No point in snapping at her. She needed to get her nerve back.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, cleared her throat and squared up her shoulders. ‘I’m all right now, really.’
‘Of course you are. And we’re going home.’
‘Why?’
Because you’ll be as much use as a Kleenex in a typhoon, I thought. Not blaming her,because I was frightened myself.‘Because I didn’t see any vandalism in Unit 12, that’s why. No graffiti sprayed on the walls, no broken windows. They’re protected by wire screens anyway.’
‘No vandalism,’ she said. ‘Which means?’
‘Which means that Fairfax was lying and we’re walking straight into a trap. Let’s go.’
‘No, wait. We only came because we thought it was trap, actually, didn’t we? We came to flush them out. And it’s also a very good place to keep Nick, isn’t it? So she might be in there.’
I looked at the factory. Isolated, well built. A very good place to keep Nick.
‘We won’t go yet,’ said Polly, attempting firmness through the nervous wobble of her voice. ‘Try the mobile, see if Lil’s left a message for you.’
I dialled. No message.
‘Try Cairncross again.’
I dialled. His mobile service answered. I wished it was a person, not a recorded voice, then I could have asked if he’d picked up my earlier message.
‘Listen, Alex, I think we should give it a try.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if it’s a trap we’re on the right lines, and Nick might actually be there, and she’ll be alive of course.’
‘Will she?’
‘She bloody well will,’ said Polly. ‘That’s all.’ She looked at me. ‘I know you think the world’s a terrible place –’
‘Do I?’ She’d never said that before. I couldn’t imagine why she thought it.
‘Yes, you do. You think if things can go wrong they will, and that people only act out of self-interest, and if they do things to help other people it’s because that makes them feel good . . .’
Thanks for all the hours I spent listening to you chuntering on about your love life, I thought. Thanks for all the foot-sore weary slogs round the shops helping you choose additions to the zillions of clothes already hanging in your cupboards, thanks for the albums full of family photographs I didn’t yawn over.
‘. . . and it’s like the old story about the economist, the physicist and the engineer on a desert island with a can of beans and no opener. “Heat it till it explodes,” says the physicist. “Bash it open with a rock,” says the engineer’ She paused. ‘What do you think the economist said?’
Stop drivelling, I thought. ‘No idea,’ I said.
‘The economist said, “Assume a can-opener”.’
‘The point being that economists have no grip on reality?’
‘The point being that economists deal with so many variables that they have to start somewhere, so they make an assumption. Like us. We’re starting from the assumption that Nick is alive.’
Which doesn’t open the tin of beans, I thought. Meanwhile Polly had talked herself into a pause. Then she took a deep breath, and said more calmly, ‘If you think I’m not brave enough, just say so.’
‘I don’t think either of us is stupid enough,’ I said.
‘We’re wasting time. It’ll be better if you go in, and I stay here and watch the door. We can have the phones on, an open line, then, if anything happens either end we can let the other one know.’
It wasn’t such a bad idea. ‘You’ll stay in the car?’
‘No way. I’m a sitting duck here. I’l
l take cover. In the opposite direction from the mound. Do feral cats eat people?’
‘Never,’ I said.
She was unconvinced.‘They can’t eat live people, anyway. Surely.’
‘Of course not.’
‘What’s your number?’ she said, and when I told her, repeated it several times, then dialled.
Brr Brr. I punched the button. ‘Hello,’ I said into the phone.
‘Hi,’ she said, giggling. ‘What’s the signal like?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Probably be worse inside,’ the phone crackled into my ear. ‘Never mind. Come on. No, wait, we need the interior light off. Don’t want to advertise the car to the bad guys, do we?’
We got out and moved away from the car into the darkness.
‘What’s that?’ she whispered, directly into my ear.
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘I saw something move. Over there.’ She pointed.
‘Cat?’
‘Bigger.’
We both peered at shadows through the fog. Nothing moved. ‘Could be Cairncross’s men,’ I whispered, not believing it for a moment. But nor did I believe she’d seen anything significant. She was jumpy.
‘Yah. Twenty strong policemen.’
‘Thirty strong policemen.’
‘A hundred strong policemen. We got back-up.’
‘We got an army.’ We were whispering into each other’s ears like lovers, then we giggled like lovers, then she squeezed my shoulder like a very frightened but willing woman, well out of her depth, and I set off towards the door, keeping close in to what cover the other buildings offered. When I reached the last building I looked round.
No Polly. She’d vanished. Good girl.
‘I’m off,’ I whispered into the phone.
‘All clear,’ she said. ‘Go go go.’
This is really, really stupid, I thought as I scurried across open ground towards the blank face of the towering building.
Chapter Thirty-One
Close up the double doors of the factory were enormous, tall enough and wide enough for transport lorries, except it wouldn’t have been lorries, it would have been horse-drawn carts when it was built. The doors were solid wood, and smooth, no handles. They must open from the inside. No way I could break through them.
I switched on the torch and flicked it the length of the doors. There was a handle, a small handle. In a wicket-gate.
I jammed the phone in my pocket and tried the handle. It turned, smoothly, and the wicket opened.
Trap, surely. I kicked the door wide open and shone the torch inside.
Nothing that I could see.
I went in, shut the door behind me and moved quite a way down the wall to my right before standing still to get my bearings, far enough from the entrance not to be a complete sitting duck. The floor was stone flagged and mostly clear underfoot, I only had to pick my way round one pile of rusty metal.
No one. Nothing. The darkness wasn’t absolute: the pale beams of the street lamp leaked through the tall windows, making the dark darker by contrast. I switched off the torch and listened to the silence.
My eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the dark and the space. I’d expected a derelict industrial museum, but although there were occasional smallish piles of litter or junk metal, there were none of the bulky powerful lumps of Victorian machinery that would once have moulded artefacts proudly stamped MADE IN BRITAIN, tended by workers who took for granted the roar and clatter and the dirt and the heat. Sold for scrap, I supposed, long after they’d stopped making a profit, and with them had gone the heart and muscles of the place.
Now it was effectively an empty rectangular warehouse, with a gallery running round the walls halfway up and what looked like rooms (offices?) off it. There’d probably be stairs up to the gallery at each corner, and judging from the condition of the doors they’d probably still be sound but I couldn’t see. I also couldn’t see any other doors but there must be some.
I was beginning to relax. I didn’t mind the feel of the place. It was damp, of course, and cold and dark, but not menacing.
I stuffed the torch in one pocket and pulled the phone out from another I listened: just the faint crackle of an open line.
Briefly, I was appalled by the extravagance of the call and tried to remember who had dialled who. ‘Polly?’ I said quietly.
‘All clear,’ said her voice in my ear, quite strong. A surprisingly good signal.
‘Nothing so far I’ll keep you posted.’
The phone safely in my pocket, I took a last look at the door I’d come through before I set off along the wall, exploring. I felt safeish standing still but didn’t like the thought of edging on towards who knew what, with who knew who slipping into the building behind me, and I wasn’t going to keep the phone to my ear the whole time, it was too constricting.
There was a bulky object fixed to the wall six feet from the floor, just this side of the door, with thick dark cables snaking down from it. Electricity. Put in long after the place was built. I looked down to the bottom of the wall where the cables ran, and a glint of something paler caught my eye. I bent down, and stared. Nestled among the thick dark cables was a white plastic electric lead. Modern.
Suddenly, I was scared again. The Victorian ghosts of the place were Heritage ghosts, exhausted and exploited and, as resentful as the factory workers had probably been, they’d long slept in Kensal Rise cemetery. The owners had banked their profits and cashed in their chips. None of them cared about me.
But someone had installed this lead, connected it to the mains, and got the mains turned on. Someone was paying London Electricity, month by month, for power in an apparently deserted building. I was intruding on that someone.
At least I had a lead. I followed it, nearly to the corner.
Noise. Little high-pitched noise. I froze.
It was Polly, squeaking from my pocket. ‘What?’ I said into the phone.
‘Someone’s coming in now. Small, woman, I think, alone. 999?’
‘No. Keep watching.’
I darted away from the wall to the biggest pile of junk I could see and lay face down behind it. If there were overhead lights I was done, but otherwise . . .
The door opened, someone came in, someone with a deformed and bulbous head and one elongated and bulbous arm. No, wearing a crash helmet and carrying a shopping bag. She walked purposefully, using a torch whose beam came nowhere near me, keeping close to the wall in the same direction I’d been going. Someone familiar with the building. Certainly, from the shape and movements, a young woman, and probably Sam Eyre. She was the only small young woman in the cast of characters to date.
Sam Byre, part of Bourbaki, the group who’d kidnapped Nick? Why? Especially since I was sure the kidnappers were also the Killers, and the killing had started months before she’d gone to stay at Bartlett Place.
Sam Eyre an intended victim, going willingly to slaughter? Why?
Sam Eyre the housekeeper with a bag of provisions for Nick? I hoped so.
When she reached the corner she stopped, bent down and pulled up a section of the floor. Must be a trapdoor. Then her torch light wobbled, diminished and finally vanished, presumably as she shut the trapdoor behind her.
The crash helmet worried me. Was she the Golden Kid’s pillion passenger? He’d said she’d liked the Harley. Was he just outside, following her? Or was she wearing the helmet because she rode her own bike? Was the Kid part of the Bourbaki group?
Waste of time speculating. I’d follow her but not immediately, in case she was the bait. There might be someone not far behind her, ready to pounce on me. There might also be someone beneath the trapdoor ready to pounce on me, but it’d stretch their nerves to wait.
‘Polly?’ I whispered into the phone.
Crackle-crackle of an open line.
‘Poll?’
Crackle. I pressed the light button on the phone and looked for the signal strength. It was high. I should be
able to hear her.
Squeak from the phone. ‘Alex? Alex?’
‘I’m here. All well?’
‘Thought I heard someone, went to look. Seems all clear.’
‘The person who just came in went into a basement place. I’m going to follow. Don’t speak unless it’s vital.’
‘OK. Take care.’
‘And you.’
With the phone in my pocket, I went in the direction of the trapdoor, walking quietly by keeping my weight on the outside of my feet as Barty had once told me stalking soldiers did. It was so quiet I could hear the thumping of my heart, the hiss of the open line and the muffled clanking of the tools in my pocket. I could have done with Barty now. He’d been in the army for years and probably knew a hundred and one deadly uses for torch, chisel and wire-cutters.
A needle-thin line of light marked the rectangle of the trapdoor. I squatted down to listen, but either the place was too solidly built to leak sound. Or else there was no sound to hear. A D-shaped brass handle lay flat, flush with the floor.
When I went in, it had to be quick, I knew that. Quick and noisy, to fluster Sam and whoever else might be waiting down there. And I’d go in with my hands free then grab the wire-cutters, the heaviest weapon I had, once I was safely down the steps – there must be steps, or a ladder.
I grasped the brass handle, ready to pull, breathed deeply, and yanked the trapdoor open. Steps, beneath me. ‘YAAAAAAA!’ I yelled, and scrambled down into the light.
Chapter Thirty-Two
When I landed in the room, I felt seriously stupid. The first thing I saw, in the muted glare of spotlights from the ceiling, was Sam gaping vacantly at me, about five feet away. She looked half-familiar, as people do when you’ve only seen a photograph of them, but most of all she looked young, and unthreatening, and frightened.
‘Oh! Oh!’ she squeaked.
I wondered if the SAS had a course in how to behave if you burst into a room in warrior mode in error. I wished I’d taken it, because she was alone, understandably alarmed, and completely non-aggressive. ‘Would you like a biscuit?’ she offered, fishing in her plastic Tesco bag and producing a packet of chocolate digestives, which she began to open.
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