couple of feet from him.
Another half mile and they emerged into a dry tunnel, where the ceiling was considerably higher. There they met a pair of toshers, roped together for safety. They had long poles in their hands for fishing out valuables-or gripping the sides when caught by a sudden current after a rainstorm. They were dressed in the usual tosher gear: high rubber boots, hat, and harness.
It was Scuff who spoke to them, leaving the River Police in shadows with their lanterns half concealed.
Then they moved on again, probing the darkness with their feeble lights. The thought made Monk's stomach churn and his throat tighten: What would happen if they dropped the lamps? They would never get out of here. One day, in a week, or a month, some tosher would find their bones, picked clean by rats.
The last tosher they had questioned, half a mile back, had said there were people using this old way to get from one part of the city to another. The man they were looking for, whose name no one spoke, was one of them. In the subterranean world there seemed little of either friendship or enmity; it was simply coexistence, with rules of survival. Those who broke them died.
It seemed an age before Scuff finally led them up a ladder. Their feet clanged on the iron rungs. A few yards later they passed a sluice rushing so loudly they could not hear their own voices. Above, in a dry passage leading to a blind end, a group of men and women were sitting beside a fire, the smoke going up through a hole a little distance away and disappearing into utter darkness.
A short whispered conversation followed between Scuff and an old woman.
'Which way, ma?' Scuff asked her, touching his tooth to remind her whom he was referring to.
She shivered and jerked her head to the left. A younger man argued with her, pointing to the right. Finally Orme agreed to follow the youth one way with Kelly and Jones and return if he found nothing. Monk took the other two men and went with Scuff the way the old woman had indicated.
Half an hour later, after more twists and climbs, they emerged into an open cutting, air fresh and cold on their faces.
'She lied,' Scuff said bitterly. 'Scared, I spect. Daft of-' He stopped short of using the word he had been going to say. 'That way.' He pointed back where they had come from. At the next branch in the tunnel they divided again, Monk and Scuff going alone down more iron steps and deeper into the bowels of the earth.
Monk stopped, Scuff close beside him. Their lights showed only ten feet ahead, and then there was impenetrable darkness. Now there was no sound at all except the steady drip from the ceiling. Monk's anger had worn off, leaving him cold. He could not blame the old woman. He was shivering with fear himself. Had he ever felt this gut-churning terror before? He could not remember doing so. Surely he would never have forgotten it. It was primeval, woven into one's existence. His skin crawled as if there were insects on it, and he heard every sound magnified. His imagination raced. The river could have been twenty feet away or twenty miles. Was the assassin really somewhere ahead of them, perhaps even waiting? He heard nothing but water, dripping, running, splashing around their feet. This part of the old system was no longer used. The stream was shallow, fed by nothing but rain down through the gutters, but it still smelled of stale human waste. The gangers had not been here for a long time. The piled-up silt of excrement was like stalagmites.
There was a sound ahead. Monk froze. It was not the scratch of rats' feet but the heavier noise of a boot on stone.
Monk covered his lantern.
'It's 'im!' Scuff whispered, reaching up and gripping Monk's hand.
The noise of footsteps came again. Then a light reflected yellow on the ancient, slimy stone of the tunnel. A shadow grew larger, moving, swelling.
Scuff was holding Monk's hand so tightly his ragged nails bit into Monk's flesh, and it was all Monk could do not to cry out. He pulled Scuff closer, half shielding the boy behind him. His heart was pounding in his chest, choking him. Had he been aboveground when he was facing the man, however dark the night, he would have been calm apart from heightened senses. He was glad he had a gun, although this was like meeting the devil in his own territory, alien and dreadful, an inhuman evil.
The sound of a boot scraping on stone suddenly vanished as the man coming towards them trod in a drift of silt. There was nothing but the swelling shadow and the dripping of water.
Scuffs breath hissed in through his teeth, and he clung to Monk.
The man came around the corner only twenty feet ahead of them. He had gone another five or six feet before he realized that the shadows of Monk and Scuff by the wall were human and not detritus heaped against the stone. He froze, his lamp unwavering in his hand, the yellow glare of it lighting his face like a lined yellow mask. He was thin, his hair unkempt and ragged to his shoulders. The black slashes of his brows cut across his face. He had a long, narrow-bridged nose, flared nostrils, a lantern jaw, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. Surprisingly, there was intelligence in the eyes, even humor.
Very slowly he smiled, and Monk saw the sharp, oversized eyeteeth, the left bigger than the right. Monk froze, the picture indelible in his mind.
Then the man turned and with astounding swiftness loped away.
Monk galvanized into action. He tore the cover off the lantern and, still grasping Scuff by the hand, floundered through the silt and water and up into the drier streambed after the man. Scuff was now easily keeping up with him, so he let go of the boy's hand. The man ahead was forced to keep his lantern high as he splashed, slipping, his huge shadow on the walls and ceiling like the image of a wounded bird trying to fly, arms wide. The yellow light jerked over the black, shining ooze on the walls and the slick surface of the stream.
There was a turn, and then utter darkness. Scuff was so close to Monk he pressed against him.
Monk realized how wet he was. His legs were frozen, but his body was sweating. He could feel the perspiration run down his back and his chest.
There was a noise ahead, a splash. He jerked around to face it. The right tunnel.
'Rats!' Scuff whispered hoarsely. ' 'E's jiggered up ' em rats. C'mon!' And without waiting to make sure, he plunged through the water.
Monk drew in his breath to cry out 'Stop!' but bit it back. Sound echoed down here. He had no idea how far ahead the assassin was, perhaps only a few yards. He ran, slipping and struggling after Scuff. The dim reflection on the water made Scuffs small figure oddly elongated as it moved with a jerky, swaying gait.
The light ahead was there again, bright and unguarded. Monk saw the assassin turn to face them, his arm lifted. There was a sharp crack, a spurt of flame. Scuff cried out and crumpled into the water.
Monk lunged forward, pulling his gun out of his pocket. He fired it again and again even after the figure had disappeared and there was no light in the suffocating darkness except his own.
He put his gun away and held the lantern high, staring at the stream, looking for the small figure. Scuff would be already floating, pulled along by the current, scraped by the sludge and filth. Monk saw him, lost him, and found him again. He bent over awkwardly, because there was nowhere to set the lantern, and picked up the limp body. Scuffs face was white and wet, reminding him with a lurch of pain of Mary Havilland, but Scuff was far smaller, pinched and thin, the skin almost blue around his eyes and mouth. Thank God he was breathing, in spite of the blood that oozed through his clothes and stained them scarlet around his shoulder and chest.
The assassin must be somewhere ahead of them, but the thought of leaving Scuff and going after him never entered Monk's head. Clumsily, because of the lantern, and trying to carry Scuff gently with only one arm, he turned and began the long way back. He walked in the center of the sewer floor, where he could move the most easily. He had very little idea where he was, and his only thought was to find the way up towards help.
He did not know how badly Scuff was hurt, but he could not stop here to find out. There were rats everywhere, and they would smell blood. Far worse than that, the assassin knew he had hit Scuff. The fact that Monk had not followed him would tell him that Scuff was not dead and that Monk was trying to get back up again, hampered by carrying a wounded child. As soon as he was certain of that, would he double back and try to finish Monk off? If the positions were reversed, Monk would!
He was lost. There was a fork again: three ways, two ahead, one behind him. Which way had he come? Think! Scuffs life depended on it! The water was flowing around his feet quite rapidly. It must have kept raining all day. What happened if it got harder, heavier? Flash floods, of course! Deep water. Enough to pull him off his feet, maybe even drown him and Scuff. Was it still raining? He could feel the panic rising inside him. He commanded himself to stop behaving like a fool, and think.
Water flows downwards. On the way in, had he been going with the flow or against it? With it, of course.
