into a narrow space with dead acoustics and dust in the air. Down a corridor, then left and right and left again, and more steps.
'Mind head,' said the giant a moment after she scraped the top of her head on what felt like soft brick. She stooped as she was led down a narrow stone staircase. By now, she knew she was deep underground. Another corridor, still stooping. She felt, then heard a gentle rumble somewhere off to her left. It took a moment to realise it must be a tube train.
Kate heard a key turn in a lock followed by the squeal of old hinges, then she was shoved through a doorway and her sleep mask was ripped off.
She was in a brick-lined cellar, barrel vaulted. Narrow but long, it stretched away, its vanishing point lost in darkness. There was a pervasive smell of damp and a distant sound of running water. An oil heater blazed away by the door, so at least it wasn't cold, but in every other respect it was probably the least healthy place in London. Trying not to think about the horrors of Weil's disease or the agony of hypersensitivity pneumonitis, Kate noted the bed, table and wind up lamp, the bucket in the corner with a tea towel draped over it and, finally, the girl sitting on the chair, dead eyed and listless, sallow cheeked and pale.
Kate turned to the giant, who was bent almost double in the corridor outside.
'People pay to come down here?' she asked, incredulous.
'No,' he replied. 'She come up for work. Stay here rest of time.'
'Okay, well that's got to change. You need to get her out of here now.'
'You stop her coughing.'
'I can't. Not if she stays down here.'
'You stop.'
'I told you, I can't. Even if I can alleviate her symptoms, they'll come back if she stays down here.'
The giant considered this. 'Stop cough. Only need to stop coughing for afternoon. After that…' He shrugged.
Kate sighed. 'Okay, I'll need prednisone.' The giant looked confused. 'Give me a pen, I'll write it down.'
He handed her a biro and a receipt. She briefly considered ramming the pen into his throat and trying to make an escape, but dismissed the idea as ludicrous. She scribbled the name of the drug and handed him the piece of paper.
'I come back in hour.' He slammed the door closed. Kate was imprisoned.
She stood there for a moment, then the girl on the chair burst into a fit of awful, hoarse coughing that went on for over five minutes. Kate held her shoulders as the spasms wracked her. There were flecks of blood on the girl's lips when she finally finished. Her breathing was ragged and rasping.
'What's your name?' asked Kate.
The girl stared at her, uncomprehending.
'Do you speak English?'
No response. Kate pointed at her chest and said 'Kate' then pointed to the girl, who just stared back at her as if she were mad.
'I feel like I'm in a bad Western,' muttered Kate. Another ten minutes of trying failed to illicit any response. The girl was in deep shock, nearly comatose. There was no reaching her. Kate explored the depths of the tunnel, but found only rubble and rats. In the end there was nothing to do but wait for the giant to return. The girl had moved to the bed when Kate walked back from the far end of the tunnel. Kate sat next to her and put her arms around her bony shoulders. They sat there like that for a few minutes, then the girl rested her head on Kate's shoulder until she fell asleep and slumped into her lap. Kate sat there, with the head of this sick, lost, broken, doomed girl nestled in her lap. She stroked her lank, greasy hair and cried.
As much as she had been forced to confront brutal reality on the night she met Spider, it was during that long hour in that awful place that Kate changed forever. Parts of her psyche scabbed over and hardened, unexpected resolve made itself known, and the well of her compassion was exposed as deeper than she had ever imagined.
When the giant opened the door and handed her the drugs, it was a different woman who took them from him. Harder, colder, angrier and less afraid.
Kate administered the drugs and told the giant that she had done all she could. The sleep mask was replaced, and she was led away from a girl she was sure would be dead by nightfall.
A tiny part of Kate remained behind in that cellar. The tiny piece of Jane that had been born there left in its stead.
She was driven back to her flat, back to the world she knew. But it felt different. Distant. Changed forever. She walked up to her front door and reached into her pocket for her keys.
'Oh fuck it,' she cursed, remembering that she had not had time to grab them. She stood and stared at the door and then stepped back and took a running kick at it. She felt the wood give and heard the sharp crack as it splintered. She kicked it again, and again, then shoulder charged it, yelling as she did so, smashing into the door time after time, hating it, wanting to annihilate it utterly, as if it was mocking her. The facia caved and split before, after one almighty crash, it flew of its top hinge and collapsed inwards.
Kate stood there, breathing hard, teeth clenched, eyes wide, her heart pounding, ignoring the pain in her shoulders and legs. She heard a slight cough to her left and turned to see the old biddy from flat four peering anxiously out of her door.
'What?' snapped Kate. The woman's head disappeared inside and the door was firmly closed.
'Didn't you just pay a lot of money to have that door fixed, Miss Booker?' said a soft voice to her right. She spun, suddenly alarmed. But whereas a week ago she might have given a tiny yelp of surprise and felt a jolt of nerves, now she didn't make a sound and stood ready to fight.
The man from the coffee shop stood there in the corridor. Short for a man, about the same height as Kate, he wore a black leather jacket, white shirt and blue jeans above waxed black Docs. He looked about forty, blonde hair slightly receding but not too much, with laugh lines around his mouth, and deep crow's feet framing his blue eyes. Kate's first thought was 'he fancies himself'.
'And who the fuck are you?' she snarled.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small leather wallet which he flipped open and held up for her to inspect.
'DI John Cooper. Metropolitan Police. Can we go inside and talk? That is, if we can get the door to close behind us.'
He helped her prop the door back up in its frame and shoved a dining chair up against it to keep it in place, then sat on the sofa as she made him a cuppa.
Her mind was racing as she fumbled with mugs and teabags. She'd been considering going to the police, obviously, but Spider had been clear that James would die very slowly indeed if she did so. He had sources within the police, he said, and he'd know the instant she broke ranks. She had looked at her brother's pitiful, tear-stained face as he crouched on that stage, handcuffed to the stripper's pole, and she'd known that she had no choice. This organisation was big and complicated; there was every chance that Spider was telling the truth, that he did have some bent copper on the take. No, she'd decided that if there was a way out of her situation, she'd have to find it herself.
Nonetheless, she slowed her step ever so slightly every time she passed a Police Station, and felt a jolt of butterflies at the thought of stepping across the threshold and spilling her guts, of sharing the problem, making it someone else's.
The man on her sofa made her almost as nervous as Spider had. Her first thought was that she had made some stupid rookie mistake, given the game away without meaning too, drawn needless attention somehow. Her second thought was that he could be Spider's enforcer, sent here to warn her to keep her mouth shut.
She wasn't sure which outcome would scare her the most.
She took the two mugs through to the living room, handed one to Cooper and sat in the armchair opposite him, sipping her own. She couldn't think of anything to say, so she sat there as he studied her, waiting for him to make the first move.
'Is that brick dust in your hair? Been on a building site?' he asked, not unkindly. His accent was hard to place. He didn't have the Southern glottal stop or the rounded vowels of the North. He spoke precisely, his words chosen
