City of Shadows

Chapter 51

5 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, London

‘Do you hear that, Liam?’ Rashim tapped the brick wall again. They both heard the faint clatter and rustle of loose mortar dropping on the far side.

‘It sounds like there’s a hollow there.’

Rashim nodded. ‘That’s got to be it — the conduit.’

‘Well done, skippa!’ chirped SpongeBubba. Above the lab unit’s goofy grin, its small gherkin-shaped nose wobbled slightly as it fidgeted from foot to foot.

Liam, Rashim and SpongeBubba had settled into their viaduct archway — the dungeon they were calling it now — a few days ago and all three had been kept busy. Rashim had figured out a way to make them some money. Obvious really. So obvious the entire team had collectively, figuratively palmed their foreheads when he’d mentioned it.

Gambling. More specifically, card games. Every public house seemed to have a room at the back, thick with pipe smoke, where a ‘gambling party’ had gathered: working men who were stupid enough to lose their wages night after night. Rashim and Liam had played faro several nights on the trot, learning how to count the cards, and Rashim calculating the odds. There was also hazard, which relied purely on chance, and a game they avoided like the plague. Chance wasn’t any good to them.

After four consecutive nights of winning at several different gatherings, they were beginning to be recognized. Liam suggested any further money they’d need to make might be best earned placing bets on horses. A little trip of a few weeks into the future would give them the names of every winning horse in the country. Once they were all properly settled, that was going to be the first order of business.

With some money to tide them over, Liam had been busy buying some furnishings and comforts. There were plenty of pawnshops and second-hand furniture shops nearby in Holborn. It also gave him a chance to find his way around this part of London. To drink in and learn the finer nuances of London life in this time.

This morning, though, their attention had turned to the task of hooking into the source of electric power that was chugging away close by. They’d been digging small ‘sample’ holes along the back wall all morning. At first where they’d expected to find the narrow space according to the blueprints Maddy had printed out for them. And then, when it became clear the blueprints weren’t entirely accurate, at random intervals along the wall.

Rashim worked the tip of his screwdriver along the mortar around a loose brick. This time, finally, it looked like they’d found the narrow voids beyond; they could hear the hollow echo of skittering rats, the tap and echo of grit and mortar falling off the brick wall on the far side. The mortar was like clay.

‘Not very good,’ he said. ‘The building contractor must have been using a cheap mix.’

The brick shifted. It was loose enough now to remove with his fingers. He pulled it free. Liam flipped on a torch and shone it through the small hole in the wall into the darkness beyond. They could make out a passage about a yard wide and only the same again high.

Rashim cursed. ‘I was actually hoping it was tall enough to be a walk space.’

Liam studied the floor of the passageway, littered with rat droppings. ‘It’s a crawl space,’ he said. He grimaced. ‘And it’s covered in rat poo.’

‘Great.’

They eased another dozen bricks out and widened the hole. Rashim consulted the blueprint by the light of Liam’s torch. ‘Twenty, maybe thirty metres down there, and that takes us very, very close to where the generator is supposed to be located.’

Liam took off his thick felt coat and began to unbutton his waistcoat.

Rashim sighed. ‘No, maybe… I should go. If they’ve used this conduit for laying down cables then it’s best I take a look at them.’

Liam looked again at the rat poo. ‘Are you sure?’

Rashim grimaced at the fleeting sight of tiny grey furry bodies, flickering bald pink tails and the glint of dozens of beady black eyes. ‘Not really.’ He sighed. ‘But I… it’ll be easier if I can see for myself to do the job.’

Liam nodded. Patted his shoulder. ‘Aye, there is that. I’ll probably get it wrong and end up blowing this place to kingdom come, or something.’

Rashim stripped to the waist, folding his clothes carefully. He grabbed his tool bag and then, with a cheap keyfob pen torch between his teeth, climbed into the hole in the wall. He hesitated outside the crawl space.

‘I really hate rats.’

‘Ah now, go on. They’re probably more frightened of you than you are of them.’

Rashim ducked down into the space and began to crawl along the passage.

‘Ughhh!’ His voice echoed back after a minute of grunting and shuffling. Liam heard him swearing in Farsi.

‘You OK in there?’

‘I have just put my hand in something disgusting.’ Liam heard Rashim’s breathing and muttering echoing back towards him. By the light of his own torch Liam could only faintly see the soles of Rashim’s boots.

‘Rashim, are you OK in there?’

‘Dead rat.’

SpongeBubba was hovering curiously beside Liam’s elbow. His plastic lips curled half convincingly. ‘Ewww!’

Another couple of minutes of shuffling, the grunts and scrapes slowly receding, and Liam had lost sight of him. He snapped his torch off. Now their main room was lit only by an oil lamp flickering away on top of a wooden crate for a table.

The room was filling up with things from 2001 as well. They’d spent the last two days beaming back supplies and components and spares of things they thought they might need. Sal and Maddy had raided Walmart. The tools from their DIY section. The kettle, toaster and George Foreman griddle from their Home Essentials aisle, all sitting in a yellow plastic stack-box, would have been an unforgivable contamination of modernity under their old stricter contamination-averse regime, their old mission statement. But down here in this dungeon-like environment, under lock and key — and only they had the key, of course — no one was going to stumble upon these things.

There were boxes of Coco Pops, pot noodles, several dozen packs of Dr Pepper — enough to keep Maddy going for a few weeks.

Halfway up the brick wall on the far side of the room another plastic stack-box protruded as if it had always been a deliberate part of the viaduct’s foundation construction. A mis-translation. A box full of batteries, electrical flex, diodes, spare circuit boards that at some point they really ought to chip out of the bricks and remove from the wall.

Rashim and Maddy’s response to that mistake had been to offer him a nervous ‘oops’ grin. Liam had complained that this instance of mis-translation could easily have happened to one of them. As it happened, it turned out to be the result of a bug in the new code they’d written for the reconfigured displacement machine. Since then, everything else beamed back from 2001 had landed in the middle of the chalk squares marked out on the floor of their new home.

He was about to call out again to Rashim, to check if he was all right, when he heard a loud knock on their small door. He was planning on ignoring it until he heard the voice of their landlord, Delbert Hook.

‘Hoy! You gents all right in there?’

He turned to SpongeBubba. ‘Go hide and don’t make a sound.’

‘Righto, Liam.’

Liam tucked his torch away, picked up the oil lamp and made his way to the door. He ducked into the low archway. Hesitant to slide the bolt and open it, he cupped his mouth instead and answered through the door’s keyhole. ‘Uh… I’m perfectly fine, Mr Hook, so I am!’

‘Come on now, Mr O’Connor,’ the man’s muffled voice returned. ‘That’s no way to welcome your good neighbour, is it?’

Liam cursed. He looked back over his shoulder. SpongeBubba was out of sight and most of their bits and pieces from 2001 were covered by a tarp. By the faint glow of lamplight Delbert Hook wasn’t going to see anything much, and most importantly, not the far wall, vandalized as it was with holes all along the length of it.

He quickly slid the bolt to one side and pulled the door open — catching Delbert still hunkered down, caught in the act of attempting to sneak a peek through the keyhole. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Hook?’

Delbert awkwardly straightened up, flexed his neck and smoothed down his waistcoat. ‘I… well, I heard some knockin’ going on in here. Thought perhaps one of you might have got stuck. Locked in by mistake, so to speak.’

‘No.’ Liam offered him a reassuring face. ‘No, we’re just fine.’

Delbert was craning his neck curiously, trying to see past Liam. ‘Is that some of your scientific paraphernalia I see behind you?’

Liam looked over his shoulder at the dim hump of the tarp in the middle of the floor. ‘Aye. Just assorted bits and pieces.’

‘A lot of bits and pieces by the look of it.’ Delbert frowned suspiciously. ‘I didn’t hear you bring all of that lot in.’

‘We used the Farringdon Street door, so we did.’

‘Very quietly it seems.’

‘Ah well, we didn’t want to disturb you up the front.’ Liam offered him a polite smile. ‘Don’t want to be a nuisance or anything.’

There was an awkward silence between them as Delbert’s head ducked and weaved to get another look past Liam, and Liam shuffled subtly from side to side to obscure his view.

‘So, is your Dr Anwar going to be starting his experiments soon, is he?’

‘When he’s good and ready.’

Delbert gave up on the peeking. The doorway was too narrow. ‘Well, if you gents need anything… any supplies? You know I’m the man to call on. I can get you anything you want.’ He winked. ‘ Anything.’

Liam nodded. ‘Well, if we do need your help, Mr Hook, we’ll be sure to ask.’

The little man stood on tiptoes and craned his neck to one side, one last time. Liam mirrored him. ‘Anything else, is there, Mr Hook?’

He sighed. Back down on flat feet. ‘No… no. Just remember, your rent’s due on the Sunday.’

‘Aye, every Sunday. I won’t forget.’

‘Right then.’ A frustrated smile flickered across Delbert’s lips. ‘I’ll bid you good day.’

Liam watched him turn and go, whistling tunelessly as his feet scuffed the floor and he finally disappeared from view. He closed and bolted their door.

‘OK, SpongeBubba, you can come out now.’ The lab unit shuffled out of a dark corner.

Liam heard Rashim’s voice echoing down the passage and out of the hole in the back wall. He couldn’t make out what he’d said, but it sounded encouraging. A moment later he spotted the soles of Rashim’s feet followed by his rear appearing in the crawl space as he slowly, awkwardly, reversed back out.

He stood up; his chest and back, hands and face were caked with dirt and grime. But he was grinning like a child. He held up a loop of modern plastic-sheathed flex, taped off to insulate the end. ‘I managed to patch into their copper wiring.’

It took him another few minutes to wire in a heavy-duty transformer and then finally pull out a desk lamp from beneath the tarp. He plugged it into a four-way connector.

‘So, here it is.’ Rashim licked his lips anxiously and flicked the switch. ‘Hopefully.’ The desk lamp’s bulb flickered on with a dull snick.

‘And voila! Now we have power!’