Kadinsky sprints across the kitchen, fires loosely into the cold store, destroying a bag of dragon shrimp, several chickens and a bucket of bean curd, twists around to cover his back and comes to rest behind the zinc counter.
He changes position, moving along the length of the counter, sweeping from left to right, firing at random. He knows they are trapped in this kitchen. He can sense their fear in the air around him. He gazes up at the smoke extractor. The fire in the restaurant is starting to buckle the ceiling timbers, bringing down snowflakes of paint and plaster. In another few minutes the building will collapse upon itself and come crashing into the basement. But he won’t be cheated of his quarry. He knows they are here. He can smell their terror. He gazes around the floor and there, between the stairs and the ovens, is a thin but glistening trail of blood.
He follows the trail to the wall behind the ovens where a broken grating reveals an earthenware pipe twisting into the darkness. It must be an air shaft or part of some dismantled drain, just large enough for a frightened man to adopt as a makeshift coffin. The wire grating has been wrenched from its screws and torn away from the wall, dragging with it a black veil of cobwebs.
Kadinsky checks the laser sight on the Glock and squeezes into the blood-stained chamber.
Frank and Webster crawl from the pipe and search themselves for damage. Frank’s face has been scorched and his jacket buttons have melted. There are tiny puncture marks on his neck where a flight of toothpicks caught him with the force of blowpipe quills. His shoes are torn. His hair sparkles with broken glass.
Webster’s face has been badly scratched and his knuckles are blistered. A hole in his vest is plugged with a smouldering roll of banknotes. Blood fills his sleeve from elbow to wrist and spills from his fingertips.
‘Bugger it!’ he grumbles, trying to peer at the gash in the arm. ‘I think I’ll need stitching.’
Frank shakes his head and pokes at his ears. The explosion has all but deafened him, filling his skull with the clamour of bells.
They are standing in a brick cellar with walls that are bulging with moss. Far above them a square moon casts a feeble light through the prison bars of a gulley-hole in the street. Before them, through a low arch of dressed stone, lies a second chamber, dark and dripping with water.
It is Webster who catches the sound of Kadinsky crawling along the pipe behind them. The soft breath of death. The ticking heart of a tiger. He gestures for Frank to be silent, waving him forward into the watery chamber.
‘Where?’ shouts Frank. ‘Where!’ He’s stunned by the sight of so much blood and his head is still baffled by bells.
Webster pushes him into the gloom, along a crooked corridor as Kadinsky scrambles into the cellar. The ground tilts beneath them, the air grows cold and their feet splash a stinking silt of fermented mud and leaves. The brickwork is cracked and weeping with rust from iron girdles that help support a vaulted ceiling.
The corridor leads to a sudden spiral of stone stairs that sends them sprawling down through the darkness into a shallow sewer basin. Webster shouts in surprise, plunging and thrashing in freezing water. Frank struggles to pull him ashore, dragging him to the safety of a concrete ledge that runs along the wall of the passage. And here they rest for a moment, exhausted and shivering, while Frank makes a brave attempt to examine Webster’s tattered arm.
‘I can’t feel it,’ complains Webster, thumping the shoulder with his fist, trying to startle it into life.
‘We’ve got to get you back to the surface,’ says Frank grimly. The elbow is shattered. If they don’t soon get to a hospital there’s a chance that Webster will bleed to death. He stares into the twilight, watching the steps leading into the basin, waiting to catch the shape of a phantom gliding through the water towards them.
‘No!’ hisses Webster. ‘Down and out. We have to go down and out.’ He clambers to his feet and lurches along the ledge, steering himself by dragging his am against the wall. The sewer glows in the sulphurous light from a series of safety lamps, revealing a wide and curving tunnel that beckons them deeper into the system of subterranean canals.
Frank follows in Webster’s wake, running forward in a clumsy crouch with his head tucked into his shoulders. A hundred yards away the tunnel meets a junction where several cankerous pipes spout from the walls and drain to a channel of deeper water. The water is fast and bearded with foam, rushing towards a thundering abyss beyond a concrete weir.
‘We’re trapped!’ shouts Webster. ‘It’s the devil or the deep blue sea!’ He peers into the whirlpool and imagines this underground torrent reaching the freedom of the river through fantastic lakes and waterfalls, the river gathering strength as it slides triumphantly into the sea.
‘If we can climb into one of these pipes!’ shouts Frank. ‘There’s a chance. If we can work our way to the surface.’ He scrambles among the rusty conduits, peering into their throats in a hopeless hunt for a glimmer of light from the distant streets.
Webster leans against the wall and wearily shakes his head. He’s breathing hard. His hands and face are varnished with blood and smoke. ‘I don’t think I have the strength, Frank. I don’t feel so good any more …’
‘I’ll help you!’ shouts Frank, to encourage him. ‘We’ve got to keep moving along …’
But Webster falls to his knees and makes a clumsy attempt to pull the wadding from his shirt, spilling banknotes into the air, watching them flutter around him.
‘What is it?’ yells Frank, confused, watching the old man fight to throw his money away. The notes cascade from his pockets in dozens of exploded bundles, swept into spirals, tumbling around the sewer, until they are blown to the licking water and pulled down into the foam.
‘It’s slowing me down …’ mutters Webster. ‘I can’t seem to breathe for the weight of it …’
Kadinsky stands in the shelter of the sewer basin and studies the fugitives as they fight to escape with their lives. Their shadows leap against the walls transforming them into dancing giants. He knows that one of them must be wounded, the way he staggers and slumps to the ground, rubbery as a drunkard, raking at his chest with one hand.
Slowly he raises the automatic, grips the weapon in both pale fists and gently concentrates the laser into a tiny medal of light a fraction above Frank’s heart.
Webster succeeds in dragging a bundle of notes from his vest with such determination and vigour that the force of it knocks him sideways, pushing Frank to the wall.
The crack of the Glock bursts the stagnant air, rattling the pipes in their sockets and rolling away through the culverts in a distant rumble of thunder. The first shot hits a brick a few inches from Webster’s head. The brick falls apart like cheese, scattering crumbs upon his shoulders. The second and third shots are wild, punching at the concrete somewhere beneath the water.
‘Get down!’ bellows Webster, pulling Frank to the floor and looking for shelter among the pipes.
Kadinsky creeps forward, closing the distance between them and setting his sight on Webster’s chest. This time he wants a one-shot stop. This time he wants a killing.
The shock of the bullet smashing his ribcage catapults Webster across the sewer. He sits waist-deep in water and stares at the hole in his chest, trying to cover it with his hands, afraid that his heart and lungs will come tumbling from the cavity. The blood spurts through his fingers and sprays his eyes and mouth.
Frank lets out a great shout of fury, splashing towards him, trying to pull him back to safety.
‘Help me … help me into deeper water …’ gasps Webster. His teeth have started chattering. He’s shaking so much that he can’t control his arms and legs.
‘No!’ pleads Frank. ‘I’m going to get you out of here!’
‘Too late. Too late,’ gasps Webster. ‘Let me find my way to the sea …’ He pushes Frank away and attempts to drag himself forward, grunting with pain, floundering in the foam, until Frank can endure it no longer and helps to launch him into the torrent.
Kadinsky stands on the opposite bank and follows Webster’s progress with the barrel of the Glock. He fires at the sight of a shoulder, the twist of an arm, the glimpse of a boot as it flips through the water. He fires at the ghost and the ghost of the ghost of the man who dared to defy him. But Webster has already slipped away, beyond the sewers and the dirty river, into the warmth of a coral sea, chasing the late and lovely Dawn among the mermaids and porpoises.
Frank goes crashing into the water, throwing himself at the far bank and making a lunge at Kadinsky before the assassin has time to turn and train the gun upon him. As Frank leaps forward Kadinsky clubs at him with the Glock, stepping back, retreating along the tunnel, trying to keep the distance between them. But Frank swings his fist and catches the side of Kadinsky’s face, making him shout in surprise, scuffing the skin from the cheekbone.
Kadinsky touches a hand to his face and smiles. He waits for Frank to hit him again, taunting him by lifting his chin and turning the other cheek, and then cheating him by jerking away and cracking Frank’s skull with the gun. Frank stumbles and falls to the ground. He feels himself surrendering to a long and lazy descent, as if he were softly sinking through mud. The darkness floats up through his buckling legs, filling his body, leaving a dwindling rainbow of light swarming behind his eyes.
Now the killer is kneeling over him, smiling and flaring his nostrils, inhaling the sharp scents of gun smoke and blood as they mingle with the stench that leaks from the black, congested bowels of the city. He pokes the Glock into Frank’s neck, searching for the hollow under his jaw. It’s the end of tonight’s entertainment. He turns his own face away from the blast and quickly pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He springs to his feet and plucks the empty magazine from the grip, letting it fall to the ground with a clatter. He wasted too many shots in the kitchen, shooting at chickens and dragon shrimps, and squandered the rest of the magazine trying to blow out a dead man’s brains.
Frank catches him still fumbling with the clasp of spare ammunition. He grabs him by the ponytail, jerks back his head until the neck cracks and bangs his face against the wall. Kadinsky’s nose, that cruel snout, shoveller of human stinks, breaks open like a rotting fig. He coughs and snorts blood, spitting and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. The rocket of pain between the eyes has blinded him for a moment, leaving him dazed and vulnerable. He tries to shake off the next assault but Frank still has hold of a hank of hair and, no matter how he squirms and kicks, Kadinsky’s face strikes the bricks again, spreading his mouth and breaking his teeth. He moans and stays pressed to the wall, choking on his own blood. His fingers, paralysed with pain, lose control of the automatic.
Frank leans his weight against him, breathing hard, trying to summon the last of his strength for the final thrust of battle. He knows he has to kill this man. He knows that he must not hesitate. And yet they hold fast to each other, clinging like lovers with all passions spent. Their limbs are trembling with fatigue and the hammering of their hearts. Again Frank pulls Kadinsky from the wall by yanking at the ponytail and driving him forward into the brickwork. Kadinsky gurgles and folds at the knees, still hanging by the roots of his hair. Frank lets him drop to the ground and stares in disgust at the mangled features. The jaws grind a terrible grimace. The eyes flutter wildly in their sockets. He wants to retreat from the horror of that face. He wants to escape and run for the light. But turning away from the threat of this man has already cost Webster his life. Frank’s disgust turns into hatred.
He drags his victim to the edge of the canal and sinks him, head and shoulders, into the water. The head begins to hiss in a dark broth of bubbles and when the broth clears, Kadinsky is dead. Frank reluctantly loosens his grip and labours to push the body into the torrent, still half-afraid that Kadinsky will spring back to life again, more terrible than before, transformed by some magic into a grinning vampire, ruthless and indestructible. He crouches on his hands and knees and watches the body roll through the foam, banging against the weir, throwing out an arm in mocking salute, before it is swallowed into the darkness.
It takes Frank several hours to scratch his way to the surface, crawling through pipes and dripping tunnels, knowing the labyrinth watches him, mocking his every attempt at escape.
He has lost all hope of finding his way from the nightmare when he catches a faint draught of warm street air, flavoured with diesel smoke. He changes direction, moving against the current, feeling the air brushing over his face, sensing the shift in its ebb and flow, until he reaches a brilliant shaft of daylight, a pillar of fire in the darkness before him. He stumbles forward into the light, shielding his eyes from its glare, and then, without warning, finds himself released at last into a shallow gulley-hole with a broken grating into the street.
He emerges from the catacombs crawling on his hands and knees over the dappled, sunlit pavement. His skin is scratched and blistered, his bones bruised, his clothes drenched in sewer water and blood. He is standing in Piccadilly Circus. The sun is rising over the rooftops and casting shadows into the silent, empty streets. Pigeons strut among the railings where a mad old woman in a polythene shawl throws bread from a tartan shopping bag.
Frank shuffles painfully into the sunlight, shivering and confused. He sits on the steps of Eros and stares down the length of Piccadilly towards the Royal Academy and the Burlington Arcade. He looks around at the great buildings, beautiful in the lacquering light, their rooftops adorned with stone urns and extravagant swags of carved fruits and flowers. Above the towers and sparkling domes, starlings tumble in a chalk-white sky. And sitting here, in the solitude of dawn, the world seems changed and wonderful. He stares, amazed, at the shimmering herringbone tiles on a distant cupola; gazes at the glass of the street lamps, fashioned in the shape of ostrich eggs supporting gilded crests of flame; surveys the graceful bending buildings with their sooty columns and arches. Everything seems remarkable as if the city has been transformed while he was burrowing beneath it.
The old woman hobbles to the steps of the statue followed by a flurry of birds eager to follow her trail of crumbs. She cocks her head and considers Frank with her mad chicken eyes as she mutters in a language of her own invention. She opens her polythene cape to reach a broken handbag and tosses a few small coins at Frank’s feet.
Frank looks at the coins spinning, the birds running, the old woman retreating, and when he turns his head again there is a large green Bentley standing at a set of traffic lights, the car door flung open and Valentine walking towards him with easy strides, her long hair swinging against the collar of her fur coat.
He sits and watches her approach, finding nothing to surprise him in this morning of miracles.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ she complains, sitting down beside him and arranging the coat around her knees. She’s wearing her mother’s diamonds and a pair of long black evening gloves. Her perfume saturates the air.
‘I just went out to post a letter,’ says Frank quietly. ‘What happened to you?’
Valentine shrugs and stares back towards the Bentley. She wants to explain how she followed Kadinsky as far as Soho and lost him somewhere in Chinatown and then, when the restaurant exploded, knowing that Frank must have perished inside it, found herself aimlessly driving the streets, without direction or purpose, watching the dawn break over the river. She wants to tell him about her father and ask about the fate of Webster and if Kadinsky is dead or alive but, after everything that’s happened, she can’t summon the courage for so many questions. It’s enough to be with him again. It’s enough to have found him sitting here, on the steps of Eros, with the stink of death on his clothes but the warmth of the sun in his eyes.
‘Is it finished?’ she says at last, not daring to look at his face but reaching instead
for his hand and pressing the fingers against her mouth.
‘It’s finished,’ says Frank. He glances up at the sky, already overcast by the threat of rain.
‘Let’s go home,’ says Valentine.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1993 by Sinclair-Stevenson
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © Miles Gibson, 1993
The moral right of Miles Gibson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911591139
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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