She turned and walked back into the room. She was, I realised, checking the werelight on the ceiling to see if it looked the same. Why couldn’t I have got a stupid FBI agent? I asked myself. Or, if not stupid, then at least someone stolid and law-abiding – then she wouldn’t even be down here.
I proceeded down the stairs in the hope of forestalling any explanations.
‘I’m not sure I like that fact that we’re going down,’ said Kumar.
‘At least we’re out of the sewers,’ I said.
‘Have you smelt yourself?’ said Kumar. ‘We’re taking the sewers wherever we go.’
‘Look on the bright side,’ I said. ‘Who’s going to complain?’
‘Useful toy,’ said Reynolds. ‘Does it come with batteries?’
‘That reminds me,’ I lied. ‘What made you come underground in the first place?’
‘If I recall correctly,’ said Kumar, looking at her. ‘You owe us an explanation.’
‘His mom showed me his emails before I flew over,’ she said. ‘He talks about being involved in London’s underground art scene – “literally underground” he says in one.’
‘That’s it?’ I asked. ‘For that you climbed into the sewers?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘There was the forensics work you people did on his boots. That showed he’d been walking in the sewers.’
‘It’s a big system,’ said Kumar.
‘That it is,’ said Reynolds, who was obviously enjoying herself now. ‘But I did a survey of the manhole covers in the vicinity of the victim’s house and what do you know, one of them was much looser than the others. Had fresh marks around the edge – I suspect from where someone had used a pry bar on it.’
‘You were looking to break Zachary’s alibi, weren’t you?’ I said. ‘See if he sneaked past the cameras using the sewers.’
‘Amongst other things,’ said Reynolds. ‘How far down do you think this is going to go?’
‘If it descends to the same level as the Central Line,’ said Kumar. ‘It could be as deep as thirty metres.’
‘That’s a hundred feet,’ I said.
‘This may come as a surprise to you Constable Grant, but I am conversant with the metric system,’ said Reynolds.
‘Can you hear that?’ asked Kumar.
We stopped and listened. Just on the cusp of hearing I detected a rhythmic pounding, more a vibration in the concrete than a sound.
‘Drums,’ I said and then because I couldn’t resist it. ‘Drums in the deep.’
‘Drum and Bass in the deep,’ said Kumar.
‘Someone’s having a party,’ I said.
‘In that case,’ said Reynolds, ‘I’m so glad I dressed for it.’
The base of the stairway would have been familiar to anyone who’s ever had to schlep down the stairs at Hampstead, or any other deep-level tube station. At the bottom was a grey-painted steel blast door that, much to our relief, creaked open when me and Kumar put our shoulders to it.
We stepped into what I at first thought was an empty tube tunnel, but which I realised a moment later was too big for that – twice the diameter, about the same as a standard platform tunnel. The concrete forms which lined the walls were free of the usual tile cladding, but there was a flat cement floor that was shiny.
I know where we are,’ said Kumar. ‘This is the deep-level air-raid shelter at Holland Park.’
‘How do you know that?’ I asked.
‘Because it’s a deep-level shelter and the nearest one is Holland Park,’ he said.
Back at the start of World War Two the authorities forbade the use of the Underground as an air-raid shelter. Instead Londoners were supposed to rely on hastily built neighbourhood shelters or on the famous Anderson shelters which were basically rabbit hutches made from corrugated iron with some earth shovelled on top. Londoners being Londoners, the prohibition on using the Underground lasted right up until the first air-raid warning, at which point the poorly educated, but far from stupid, populace of the capital did a quick back-of-the-envelope comparison between the stopping power of ten metres of earth and concrete and a few centimetres of compost, and moved underground en masse. The authorities were appalled. They tried exhortation, persuasion and the outright use of force but the Londoners wouldn’t budge. In fact, they started to organise their own bedding and refreshment services.
And thus in a cloud of official disapproval the Blitz spirit was born.
A couple of thousand preventable deaths later, the government authorised the construction of new purpose-built deep-level shelters constructed, according to Kumar, using the same techniques and machines as the tube system itself.
I knew all about the shelters at Belsize Park and Tottenham Court Road – it’s not like you can miss the huge fortified concrete pillboxes that marked the ventilation shafts – but I’d never heard of one at Holland Park.
‘There used to be a top-secret government agency down here,’ said Kumar. ‘Only I heard they got relocated to Scotland.’
The opposite end of the tunnel was far enough away to be in shadow. I was tempted to brighten my werelight, but I was getting worried about the amount of magic I’d been using. Dr Walid’s guidelines, endorsed by Nightingale, were that I should refrain from doing more than an hour of continuous magic if I wanted to avoid what he called thaumatological necrosis and me and Lesley called cauliflower brain syndrome.
‘They did a good job stripping this place then,’ I said. It was completely empty. I could even see where light fittings had been prised out of the concrete walls. The bass rumble was louder, but it was hard to tell from where it was coming.
‘This is the intersection,’ said Kumar.
You could see the circular outline where a tunnel of similar size to ours had formed a crossroad and then been walled off with concrete and cement. There were four doors on each side, two at our ground level and two halfway up the wall servicing a floor level that had either been stripped out or never installed.
The doors were normal sized, but made of steel with no obvious handles on our side.
‘Left or right?’ asked Reynolds.
I put my ear against the cold metal of the nearest door – the bass rumble was loud enough for me to identify the track.
‘“Stalingrad Tank Trap”,’ I said. ‘By Various Artiz.’
I like a bit of drum and bass to dance to, but Various Artiz were notorious for cranking out one identikit track after another – they were as close to mainstream as you could get on the club circuit without turning up on a Radio Two playlist.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Kumar to Reynolds. ‘It was all jungle when I was younger.’
‘It sounds like they’re speaking English,’ muttered Reynolds. ‘And yet—’
I knocked on the door and hurt my knuckles.
‘Well, that’ll work,’ said Reynolds. She was jiggling up and down to keep warm.
I took off my helmet and banged on the door with that.
‘We’re going to have to strip you off,’ said Kumar.
‘You’re kidding me,’ said Reynolds.
‘We need to at least wring out your clothes,’ said Kumar.
I banged a couple more times while Reynolds expressed her disquiet about disrobing in a public place. I can, when I have to, burn through something like a bike chain or a padlock. Nightingale, according to his war stories, can punch a hole in ten centimetres of hardened steel. But he hasn’t taught me how to do that yet. I examined the hinges on the door and wondered if they’d prove a suitable weak point.
I decided to do it quickly in the hope that Reynolds was too distracted to notice. I quickly ran through the
‘Are you praying?’ asked Reynolds.
I realised I’d been muttering the
‘I think he’s going to do a magic spell,’ said Kumar.
