Whispers Under Ground

18 Notting Hill Gate

My first thought was, how many people could be supported by five to six boxes of vegetables a day? My second thought, after we’d been walking in a straight line for five hundred metres or so, was this was a hell of a long way to go to the shops. Which was followed by my third thought which was – where would these hypothetical vegetable eaters be getting their protein from? Mushrooms, rats, the occasional commuter? Cannibal navvies – thank you so much Inspector Nightingale.

‘When do you think this was built?’ asked Kumar.

‘The same time as the cut was dug,’ I said. ‘See the way the bricks are laid? That style’s called an English Bond. It matches the work on the tracks and it’s the same kind of London brick. Probably made locally.’

‘They teach you this stuff at Hendon?’ asked Kumar.

‘I had an education before Hendon,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of training to be an architect.’

‘But you were lured away by the glamour of police work,’ said Kumar. ‘Not to mention the high pay and the respect of your peers.’

‘Architecture didn’t work out,’ I said.

‘How come?’

‘I found out I can’t draw,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ said Kumar. ‘I didn’t know that was still a requirement. What with computers and everything.’

‘You still need draughtsmanship,’ I said. ‘Is that a turn ahead?’

Ahead, the passageway curved to the left. Kumar checked his map.

‘We must be following the curve of the trackway. I think you’re right about this being contemporaneous,’ he said. ‘It must have been built by the contractor.’

It made sense. If you’re cutting a nine-metre wide trench through the heart of London you might as well throw in a side tunnel. It could have all sorts of uses, a safety route, a utility conduit. But in that case, why not just make the cut wider? Or if you wanted it covered, why not a colonnade?

‘We should have checked the original plans,’ I said.

‘I did,’ said Kumar. ‘Definitely no secret passages.’

We stopped when we were far enough around the curve to start losing sight of the passage behind us. I flashed my light back towards where Lesley was hopefully standing guard and called her on my airwave.

‘Still here,’ she said, and I saw a flash as she waved her torch at us.

I told her that we might be out of communication soon. Airwave works in the Underground but only when it’s in range of a relay and the tunnels predated digital radio by a good century and a half.

Lesley told us that Nightingale had popped up on the other side of Bayswater Station, which meant that it was growing more likely that James Gallagher could have used the passageway to reach Baker Street. She suggested we look for any evidence that he’d been in our section.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Never would have thought of that.’

‘Stay safe,’ she said and hung up.

I was just wondering if we were going to end up walking all the way to Notting Hill when Kumar found the stairs. It was a spiral staircase wrapped around a thin cast-iron hub, unmistakably late Victorian – who else would expend that much effort on something no one was ever going to see? It was impossible to tell how far down it went, although I caught a strong whiff of excrement and bleach wafting up from below.

‘That’s the sewers,’ said Kumar. ‘No mistaking that.’

Beyond the entrance to the staircase the passageway continued in its curve to the left.

‘Down the stairs or keep going?’ I asked.

‘We could split up,’ said Kumar with more enthusiasm than I liked.

The floor of the passageway beyond the stairs seemed a paler colour under my head light than the section we’d just walked. I squatted down and had a closer look. There was definitely more dust on the far side and it seemed less disturbed. I admit it wasn’t much, but it was all we had and there was no way I was splitting up.

I explained my reasoning to Kumar, who cracked a glow tube to mark the spot and made a note on his map.

‘Down it is,’ he said.

We went down slowly counting revolutions as we went. Three turns down we encountered a landing with a doorway – the stairs continued downwards. When I had a look through the doorway the shit and bleach smell was strong enough to make me gag. The room beyond was barely larger than a broom cupboard and most of the floor was taken up with an open hatchway. Holding my nose and breathing through my mouth I peered down. Below I recognised one of Bazalgette’s famous sewers, complete with egg-shaped cross-section and sturdy English bond brick lining. It was over a metre across at its widest point and a quarter filled with surprisingly watery-looking water considering what it smelt like.

‘Tell me they didn’t take their food through that,’ I said.

‘Definitely an FSA violation,’ said Kumar. ‘We don’t want to go down there. I’m not qualified for the sewers.’

‘I thought you went caving in wild out-of-the-way places,’ I said. ‘Caves that no man had caved before.’

‘And none of them were as dangerous as the London sewer system,’ he said. ‘Or as smelly.’

I examined the hatch. It looked cast-iron and late Victorian. It also had the same ceramic camouflage as the door in the cut fused into its underside.

‘This is obviously designed to be closed.’ I swung the hatch back and forth a couple of times to demonstrate that it wasn’t rusted open or anything. ‘Somebody left it open, probably because they were in a hurry, and I think we’ve got to check it out.’

‘You know I’ve heard rumours about you,’ said Kumar.

‘Are any of them true?’

‘Understatements,’ said Kumar. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking what the rumours were.

‘We drop down and have a quick look and if we don’t find anything we come back.’

‘Smelling of roses,’ said Kumar.

My dad says that the Russians have a saying: a man can get used to hanging if he hangs long enough. Unfortunately, what is true of hanging is not true of the smell of the London sewers, which are truly indescribable. Let’s just say that it’s the sort of smell that follows you home, hangs around outside your door and tries to hack your voicemail. Kumar and I ended up stuffing tissue paper up our nostrils, but agreed that if we had to come down again more drastic action would be justified – like amputation.

Since it was my idea I got to go first. The, let’s call it water, was freezing and knee-deep so that it cascaded over the top of my wellies. Later I learnt from a flusher, them that make their living maintaining the sewers, that only an idiot climbs into the sewers wearing anything other than waist-high waders. In my defence there were plenty of other idiots underground that night.

The ceiling was just high enough that I could wade upright, although the top of my helmet scraped the brickwork. I pushed upstream against the surprisingly strong current and Kumar splashed down behind me.

‘Oh god,’ he said.

‘Yeah I know,’ I said. ‘Water’s cold.’

‘That’s because it’s snowmelt,’ said Kumar. ‘That’s why we’re wearing wetsuits.’

I heard a splash from up ahead and pointed my helmet light in that direction.

‘There’s somebody ahead,’ I said.

‘Kill your lights,’ said Kumar. So I did and he followed suit.

It went completely black. I became aware of the sullen wash of the filthy water against my knees, of random sloshing sounds and a really disgusting slurping sound from somewhere behind us.

‘I think they heard us,’ I whispered.

‘Or there’s nobody there,’ Kumar whispered back.

We waited while the cold seeped into our legs. I’m not claustrophobic. It’s just that my imagination won’t let me forget how much the stuff above my head weighs. And if I start thinking about my breathing I start thinking about how it doesn’t seem to be bringing in enough oxygen.

There was a splash up ahead. The distance was difficult to judge, but I thought less than ten metres. I surged forward as fast as I could against the current and fumbled to turn my helmet light back on. When it came on I was rewarded with a flash of green and tan ahead of me. Despite the up and down of the light, I realised that I was looking at somebody’s back and shoulders as they tried to wade ahead of us. They were wearing woodland camouflage pattern, what looked like a skateboarding helmet and, unlike me. they were short enough to be submerged above their thighs.

‘Stop,’ I yelled. ‘Police.’ I hoped they would, because I was getting knackered.

Our fugitive tried to pick up their pace, but my height gave me the advantage.

‘Stop,’ I yelled. ‘Or I’ll do something unpleasant.’ I thought about where we were for a moment. ‘Even more unpleasant than what we’re doing now.’

The figure stopped, the shoulders slumped and then started to shake with laughter and I suddenly knew who it was.

Agent Reynolds turned to face us, her pale face caught in the bobbing circles of our helmet lights.

‘Hi, Peter,’ she said. ‘What are you doing down here?’

19 Ladbroke Grove

‘We’ve got to go now,’ said Agent Reynolds. ‘I’m right behind them.’

There are some questions you have to ask even when you don’t want to. ‘Right behind who?’

‘There’s somebody down here,’ she said. ‘And it isn’t you, me or some guy from water and power.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Kumar. ‘And who are you?’

‘Because they’re moving about without using a flashlight,’ she said. ‘And I’m Special Agent Kimberly Reynolds, FBI.’

Kumar extended a hand over my shoulder which Reynolds shook.

‘I’ve never met an FBI agent before,’ he said. ‘Who are you chasing?’

‘She doesn’t know,’ I said.

‘If we don’t follow now we’re going to lose him,’ said Reynolds. ‘Whoever it is.’

So we chased because they were, allegedly, running away and that’s just the way the police roll – even when they’re special agents. I made it clear that post-chase there were going to be some explanations.

‘Like what brought you down here in the first place,’ I said.

‘Later,’ said Reynolds through gritted teeth as she splashed ahead.

I say chase, but there’s a limit to how fast you can go when you’re knee-deep in icy water, not to mention how bloody knackering it is. After watching Reynolds flounder in front we persuaded her to follow behind and grab hold of my belt so that I could half pull her along. We were too breathless to talk and by the time we reached a dog-leg a couple of hundred metres further up I had to call a breather.

‘Fuck it,’ I said. ‘We’re not going to catch them.’

Reynolds screwed up her face, but she was too winded to argue.

Where the sewer turned through a dog-leg its builders had briefly doubled its width. Halfway up the walls a number of moist brick apertures periodically gushed fluid around our feet. Underneath, one in particular was a heap of vile yellowish white stuff.

‘Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,’ said Reynolds weakly.

‘What do you think it is?’ I asked.

‘I think it’s cooking fat,’ said Reynolds.

‘That’s what it is,’ I said. ‘You’re in the famous fat caves of London – a major tourist attraction. Smells a bit like a kebab shop, don’t it?’

‘Since we’ve lost the FBI’s most wanted,’ said Kumar. ‘Do we go forward or back?’

‘Are you sure you saw someone?’ I asked Reynolds.

‘I’m positive,’ she said.

‘Let’s at least see where this goes,’ I said. ‘Because I do not want to have to come back down here later.’

‘Amen to that,’ said Reynolds.

We pushed on, literally, up the sewer pipe which got gradually narrower until I was walking hunched over. I also started to suspect that the water level was rising – although it was hard to tell, what with the changes in pipe size. To be honest I think we kept going out of misplaced machismo, but by the time we reached the junction we were ready for any excuse. One branch carried on straight ahead while a second branch curved off to the right, both equally narrow, cramped and full of shit.

And like the last temptation of Peter Grant there was, on the left, a slot in the wall less than a metre wide that contained stairs going up.

‘Much as I love standing knee-deep in shit,’ said Kumar. ‘It would be a really bad idea to hang around here much longer.’

‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

‘The water level’s rising,’ he said. ‘In fact, as the senior officer here I think I’m going to insist.’ He stared at us, obviously expecting one of us to object.

‘You had us at “the water level is rising”,’ I said.

We squeezed up the narrow staircase into a rectangular landing where a ladder, which I noted was much more modern than the Victorian wall it was attached to, led two metres up to what was presumably the underside of a manhole.

‘Listen,’ said Reynolds. ‘Can you here that?’

There was a drumming sound from the manhole. Rain, I thought, heavy rain. And also the sound of rushing water, faint but distinct, coming from the opposite corner of the landing. I turned my head and my helmet light illuminated a shadowy rectangle in the floor – the top of a vertical shaft.

Kumar took hold of the ladder. ‘Let’s hope it’s not welded shut,’ he said.

I stepped over to the hole in the floor and looked down.

There, less than a metre below, a young man was staring up at me. He was hanging from a ladder that led down into the darkness of the shaft. He must have been frozen there hoping we wouldn’t look down. I didn’t get more than a glimpse in my helmet light, of a pale face with big eyes framed by a black hoodie, before he let go of the ladder and fell.

No, not fell. Slid down the shaft, hands and feet jammed against either side to slow his descent. As he went, I heard a noise like a room full of whispered conversations and felt a burst of imaginary heat as if I’d stepped out into hot sun.

‘Oi,’ I yelled and went down the ladder. I had to. What I’d felt had been vestigia and what the guy had done, slowing himself down without friction burning his hands off, had been magic.

I heard Kumar call my name.

‘He’s down here,’ I shouted, trying to skip rungs and then jumping the last metre. The impact of my landing drove the accumulated water in my wellies up into my groin – fortunately it was warm.

Another short narrow corridor. I saw movement at the far end and followed. The air was full of the sound of rushing water. Common sense made me skid to a halt at the end, just in case the guy was waiting around the corner with an offensive weapon. The corridor opened into a barrel-vaulted tunnel. To the right, water cascaded down a weir and to the left I saw my guy, bent under the low ceiling, water up to his hips – wading away as fast as he could.

I jumped into the water behind him and the current swept my legs out from under me and landed me on my back. What can only be described as highly diluted poo washed over my face and I shoved myself back up fast enough to crack my head on the ceiling. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I probably would have killed myself.

I staggered forward, vaguely aware of splashing behind me which I hoped was Kumar or Reynolds. Ahead, the man in the black hoodie was making for what looked like another intersection. He glanced back, caught sight of me, and suddenly turned, raising his right hand. There was a flash, a painfully sharp retort and something zipped past my ear.

The big difference between green and experienced soldiers is that until you’ve actually been shot at once or twice, your brain has trouble working out what’s going on. You hesitate, often for only a moment, but it’s the moment that counts. I was green as snot but fortunately Special Agent Reynolds was not.

A hand grabbed the back of my coverall and yanked me off my feet. At the same time there was a bright flash just to my right and a bang that was so loud it was like being slapped in the ear with a telephone directory.

I went back down – shouting. There were three more flashes, three more bangs, mercifully muffled by the water this time. I came back up spluttering and froze.

Reynolds was kneeling beside me, shoulders square and a black semiautomatic pistol held in a professional two-handed grip aimed up the sewer. Kumar was crouched down behind me, his hand on my shoulder in an effort to restrain me from leaping up and making a target of myself.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I asked Reynolds.

‘Returning fire,’ she said calmly.

Her pistol had one of the little back torches slung under the barrel and I followed its beam back to the intersection eight or so metres ahead. I remembered the first flash and bang.

‘Did you hit anyone?’ I asked.

‘Can’t tell,’ she said.

‘Do you know how much trouble you’re going to be in if you’ve shot someone?’ I asked.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

‘We can’t stay here,’ said Kumar. ‘Forward or back?’

‘If the special agent here hit someone we can’t leave them there to bleed out,’ I said. ‘So, forward.’ There was a conspicuous lack of agreement from Kumar and Reynolds. ‘But only as far as the intersection.’

‘Am I allowed to return fire?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Only if you give a warning first,’ I said.

‘What’s she going to say?’ asked Kumar. ‘Halt, totally unauthorized armed foreign national, drop your weapons and put your hands in the air?’

‘Just shout “Freeze FBI”,’ I said. ‘With a bit of luck it will confuse them.’

Nobody moved.

‘I’ll go first,’ I said.

I’m not totally mad. For one thing, the only reason I could think that our mysterious hoodie would hang about was if he’d been shot. And for the other thing, I took a deep breath and mentally ran through aer congolare – just to be on the safe side.

It was a still very cautious advance – with me in front, I might add.

The small sewer we were clambering along met a much bigger sewer at a diagonal. Judging from the yellow-brown brickwork and its relatively fresh fragrance I guessed it was a later addition and probably a floodwater relief sewer which was, judging by the water rushing through it, admirably doing what it was supposed to do.

‘Clear,’ said Reynolds and did a second three-sixty just to be on the safe side.

Upstream, the relief sewer was dead straight, vanishing off into infinity. Downstream it turned sharply down into a step-weir that dropped over three metres.

‘I think he went that way,’ said Reynolds pointing down to where the water boiled white at the bottom of the weir.

‘Either you missed him,’ I said. ‘Or he was wounded and swept away.’

‘There’s an access ladder here,’ said Kumar hopefully. It was mounted in a recess just short of the weir.

‘We’re not going to find him tonight,’ I said. ‘We might as well go home.’ I looked at Reynolds. ‘And you’re coming with us for a chat about why you were down here.’

‘I’m going back to my hotel,’ said Reynolds.

‘It’s us or Kittredge,’ I said.

‘It’s all the same to me,’ she said.

‘Children,’ said Kumar. ‘We are leaving.’ He put his foot on his ladder for emphasis.

‘Can you promise me hot towels?’ asked Reynolds.

‘As many as you can eat,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ she said and then she looked past my shoulder. I saw her react and the thought form on her face long before she got her mouth open to yell – behind you!

I lurched around as fast as the water would let me, my mind grasping for the formae, and got the shield up just in time.

The Sten gun is one of those iconic bits of British design, like the Mini or the Tube Map, that has come to represent an era. It’s a submachine gun of very distinctive configuration with its side-mounted magazine and tubular stock. Designed at the start of World War Two to be cheap and cheerful, providing your definition of cheerful was lots of pistol-calibre bullets going in the general direction of the enemy. As Nightingale explained to me, when we found a couple of rusted examples in the armoury, from the individual infantryman’s point of view there really is no such thing as too much personal firepower.

The guy had popped up from nowhere in the small pipe, kneeling to fire in just the same fashion as Reynolds had. My gaze was so fixated on the gun that all I registered was the same pale face, big eyes and a look of terrified determination.

The Sten had a 32-round magazine and early models fired only on full auto. But the action was crude, which meant they weren’t particularly accurate – which is probably what saved my life.

The flash blinded me, the noise deafened me and then a sledgehammer smashed into my chest, once, twice and a third time. I staggered backwards trying to keep my mind focused only on the spell while another part of my mind was yelling that I was dead.

Then the lights went out and I went over backwards and down the weir.

I tumbled, cracking elbow, hip and thigh against the weir’s steps, and then I was dragged face down along the rough bricks of the sewer floor. I pushed myself up and broke the surface gasping for breath. I tried to stand against the current but I’d just made it to my feet when something human-sized smacked into me and sent us both underwater.

An arm grabbed me under the armpit and hauled me up in the classic lifesaving position – I heard an annoyed grunt in my ear.

‘Reynolds?’ I gasped.

‘Quiet,’ she hissed.

She was right. Mr Sten Gun could still be standing at the top of the weir, or he might even have come down it – it’s not like I would have heard him. Reynolds was letting us both float back with the current – the better to put distance between us and the gunman.

‘I don’t think he’s following us,’ said Kumar right beside my ear.

‘Jesus Christ.’ I managed to keep it to an outraged hiss.

‘I’m not the one coming back from the dead,’ he said.

‘Can we please not blaspheme,’ said Reynolds.

I remembered the blows to my chest.

‘The vest caught it,’ I said.

Kumar grunted in surprise – the Metvest is supposed to be stab and bullet resistant but I don’t think any officer I know ever believed it.

‘I reckon we’re clear enough for you to use your flashlight, Sergeant,’ said Reynolds.

‘Love to,’ said Kumar. ‘But it’s dead.’

‘Yours is dead as well?’ asked Reynolds. ‘What are the odds of that? What about yours, Peter?’

I didn’t need to check. I asked Kumar if he had any glowsticks.

‘Just the one,’ he said and cracked it, careful to mask the yellow light with his body.

‘You can let go of me,’ I told Reynolds. ‘I can stand on my own two feet.’

Reynolds let me up, my feet skidded on the floor and I had to lean at a forty-five-degree angle just to avoid being swept away. The water was up to my waist. According to Kumar the water was probably a combination of snowmelt and unusually heavy rain in the North London catchment area.

‘How long have we got?’ I asked.

‘Cave systems can fill up very quickly and this is a system that been purposely designed to fill up as fast as possible,’ said Kumar.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to stay down here,’ I said.

‘You think?’ said Reynolds.

We decided that, mad gunman notwithstanding, we probably couldn’t push our way upstream even if we wanted to.

‘There’ll be street access further down,’ said Kumar. ‘We should let the current wash us along until we reach one.’

I looked at Reynolds, who shrugged.

‘Let’s do it,’ she said.

So Reynolds got behind me and grabbed my shoulders, Kumar got behind her and grabbed hers and on the count of three we all lifted our feet and let the current sweep us down the sewer pipe.

The water was above the halfway point and running faster than a mountain stream. In case you’re wondering, I’ve kayaked down a mountain stream – it was a school trip and I spent a lot of time underwater. As the guy at the front I was doing that again now – only the water wasn’t as clean. In the absolute black, Kumar’s glowstick didn’t do much more than texture the darkness and add to the sensation that we were hurtling out of control.

‘Oh great,’ I screamed. ‘Now we’re a bobsleigh team.’

‘It’s the luge,’ yelled Kumar. ‘It’s only a bobsleigh if you’ve got a bobsleigh.’

‘You two are insane,’ shouted Reynolds. ‘There’s no such thing as a triple luge.’

Between duckings I glimpsed a patch of grey. I opened my mouth to yell ‘Daylight’ and then really wished I hadn’t when I got a mouthful of diluted sewage.

It was another intersection. I saw an alcove with a ladder and lunged – only to be swept past, with my fingers centimetres from the metal. My foot hit something underwater hard enough to pitch me over and the world’s first-ever Anglo-American Olympic sewer luge team broke up.

I slammed into another thing that was at least vertical and made of metal, and then something else caught hold of my ankle.

‘Are you holding onto me?’ I shouted.

‘Yes,’ gasped Reynolds. ‘And Kumar’s holding onto me.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Because I think I’ve found a ladder.’

20 Holland Park

The thing about absolute darkness is that you end up doing things very carefully, especially after the first time you nearly brain yourself on a concrete cross-beam. So when I reached the top of the ladder I felt around myself slowly – I had come up through another floor hatch, I thought. There were no lights visible in any direction.

I made a werelight, which revealed a rectangular concrete room with a high ceiling and a shadowy doorway at the far end.

‘I can see a light,’ said Reynolds from below.

‘Just a moment,’ I said.

I fixed the werelight to the ceiling with scindare in the hope that Reynolds would mistake it for a light fixture, and climbed out of the hatchway onto the gritty cement floor, freeing it up for her.

‘About time,’ said Reynolds.

I reached down to help her up. She was shivering and her hands were freezing. She crawled clear of the hatchway and flopped over onto her back breathing heavily. Kumar followed her up, staggered a few steps, and sat down heavily.

‘A light,’ said Reynolds, staring at the ceiling. ‘Thank God.’

We could still hear the water rushing away below us.

I gingerly undid my coverall and felt my chest. The Metvest was still intact but there were three holes in the nylon covering. They were ragged with blackened edges – like cigarette burns. Something dropped from my chest and pinged off the cement floor. I picked it up – it was a pistol-calibre bullet.

‘That’s odd,’ said Reynolds, who’d sat up to take a look. She held out her hand and I dropped the bullet into it so she could examine it more closely. ‘Nine millimetre. It’s barely deformed at all. Are you sure this hit you?’

I winced as I felt the bruises under the vest. ‘Pretty certain,’ I said.

‘This one must have gone through the water first,’ she said.

I found it remarkably easy not to tell her that it was more likely that the bullet had been slowed by the magical force field I’d conjured up.

‘I don’t know what happened to the lamps,’ said Kumar. He’d detached his helmet lamp from its bracket and was prising off its back.

‘Maybe they’re not as waterproof as we thought they were,’ I said.

Kumar frowned down at the lamp, but LEDs, like most solid-state technology, look the same whether they’re broken or not. ‘Never happened before,’ he said and gave me a suspicious look.

I looked away and noticed that Reynolds was still shivering.

‘Are you cold?’ I asked.

‘I’m freezing,’ she said. ‘Why aren’t you?’

I explained that we were wearing wetsuits.

‘They didn’t have those at the embassy thrift store,’ she said. ‘I had to make do with Marine hand-me-downs.’

I’d like to have asked what had brought her into the sewers in the first place, but her face had gone very pale. I’m not privy to the media policy directives of the Metropolitan Police, but I suspected that from a public relations standpoint a dead FBI agent would be way more embarrassing than a live one.

‘We need to find somewhere for you to dry off.’ I said. ‘Where’s your backup?

‘My what?’ she asked.

‘You’re an American,’ I said. ‘You guys always have backup.’

‘Times are hard,’ she said. ‘And resources are limited.’ But she looked away when she said it.

Ah, I thought. She’s playing that movie – the one where the pen-pushers block the hero from getting involved and she goes rogue to solve the mystery herself.

‘Does the embassy know you’re down here?’ I asked.

‘Never mind me,’ she said. ‘Where’s your backup?’

‘Never mind backup,’ said Kumar. ‘Where are we?’

‘We’re still in the sewers,’ I said. ‘We just need to find a way out.’

‘What are our options?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Well, we have hole number one,’ said Kumar. ‘The ever-popular floodwater relief sewer. Or we have a dark and mysterious doorway.’ He struggled to his feet and went over to peer inside.

‘I vote for the doorway,’ said Reynolds. ‘Unless it goes back to the sewers too.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Kumar. ‘I’m not an architectural prodigy like Peter here but I’m pretty certain this is part of the Underground.’

I looked around. Kumar was right. The room had the cement and concrete squatness that I associated with the mid-twentieth-century sections of the Underground. The late Victorians went for brick and the modern tube stations are all brushed concrete surfaces and durable plastic cladding.

Kumar stepped through the doorway. ‘It’s a stairwell going down,’ he said. ‘But it’s going to be a bugger to navigate without lights.’

‘I’ve got an emergency light,’ I said getting up. I nudged Reynolds with my foot. ‘On your feet, Marine,’ I said.

‘Ha ha,’ said Reynolds, but she dragged herself up.

Kumar stood aside as I stepped into the doorway and, keeping my back to Reynolds, made myself another werelight. It revealed a spiral staircase with wooden banisters and a metal core.

Definitely London Underground, I thought.

‘See,’ said Kumar. ‘It used to go up but it’s blocked off.’

Crudely bricked up with breeze blocks, in fact.

‘Could we break through?’ I asked.

‘Even if we had the tools,’ said Kumar, ‘we don’t know if the top of the shaft is still open. They often just plug them up when an old station site is redeveloped.’

‘Down it is, then,’ I said.

‘How are you doing that?’ asked Reynolds suddenly from behind me.

‘Doing what?’ I said as I started down the steps, increasing my pace.

‘That light,’ said Reynolds. ‘How are you doing the light?’

‘Yes,’ said Kumar. ‘How are you doing that?’

‘It’s just a plasma ball,’ I said. ‘It’s just a toy.’

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 formae a couple of times to line them up – lux aestus scindere. My mastery of aestus, which intensifies lux, was not brilliant but I really wanted out of the Underground.

‘Are you praying?’ asked Reynolds.

I realised I’d been muttering the formae under my breath, number six on Nightingale’s list of my bad habits.

‘I think he’s going to do a magic spell,’ said Kumar.

Making a note to have a word with Kumar later, I gritted my teeth as Agent Reynolds asked exactly what he meant by ‘magic spell’.

Oh well, it wasn’t like she wasn’t about to get a demonstration.

I took a breath and, silently, readied the formae.

Then the door opened and a white boy stuck his head out and asked if we were from Thames Water.

Thank god for that, I thought.

The instrument of the Lord was topless. A dayglo orange sweatshirt was wrapped around his waist, half covering baggy electric blue shorts, a whistle hung on a string around his neck and his sandy hair was slicked down to his forehead with sweat. Despite some muscle he still had his puppy fat and I figured he was in mid-teens. Automatically I checked out the bottle in his hand for alcohol but it was just water. A gust of warm damp air rolled out from behind him and with it the thumping back beat of Various Artiz seeking to prove that you really can dance until your brains dribble out your ears.

I considered showing him my warrant card but I didn’t want to risk him closing the door in our faces.

‘We’re here about the plumbing,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ he said and we trooped inside.

It was another double-width tunnel but this one had been converted into a club, complete with a professional-level light gantry over the dance floor and a bar that ran down one wall. We were far enough from the sound system to hold a conversation, which is why our shirtless friend had heard us banging on the door. We squelched our way through a dim area that seemed given over to sofas, chairs and snogging couples towards the dance floor which was heaving with clubbers, mostly white, dancing mostly in time to the music. There was a lot of furry legwarmers, Lycra shorts and halter tops fluorescing in the UV light. But for all the bare belly buttons and spray-on hot pants, I was getting a definite sixth-form disco vibe from the crowd. Probably because none of them seemed old enough to vote.

‘Somebody’s parents are away for the weekend,’ said Reynolds. ‘I feel overdressed.’

The crowd quickly parted as the clubbers realised that we weren’t the cabaret act.

‘Maybe you can find a change of clothes here,’ said Kumar.

‘I don’t think they’ve got anything in my size,’ said Agent Reynolds primly.

Three people covered in sewage will have a dampening effect on even the most ardent clubber and it wasn’t long before a ripple passed through the crowd and two young women stalked through the dancers towards us.

They weren’t identical twins but they were definitely sisters. Tall and slender, dark-skinned, narrow-faced, flat-nosed and with sly black eyes that pinked up at the corners. I could just about tell them apart. Olympia was a tad taller and broader of shoulder with her hair currently in a weave that cascaded expensively around her shoulders. Chelsea had a long neck, a narrower mouth than her sister and was sporting what I judged to be about thirty-six man-hours’ worth of twisted hair extensions. They were wearing identical hot pink knit mini-dresses that I know their mother wouldn’t have approved of – I kept my eyes on their faces.

‘You’d better have a really good reason for this,’ said Olympia, folding her arms.

‘Agent Reynolds, Sergeant Kumar, let me introduce the goddesses of Counter’s Creek and the River Westbourne,’ I said, and bowed for good measure. The girls shot me a poisonous look but I figured they owed me for that time they left me to sink or swim in the Thames.

‘You know we’re Olympia and Chelsea,’ said Chelsea.

‘Although,’ Olympia said to Kumar and Reynolds. ‘We are goddesses and expected to be treated as such.’

‘I could arrest you if you like,’ I said. ‘I mean, is there actually anyone down here who’s old enough to purchase alcohol?’

Olympia pursed her lips. ‘Well, Lindsey’s boyfriend Steve is eighteen,’ she said. ‘Does that help?’ To be honest I was too knackered to banter. I checked whether they’d seen strange white guys in hoodies prowling around the tunnels but the sisters said they hadn’t. So I asked if they had somewhere we could wash up, and a working landline.

Chelsea laughed. ‘Landline,’ she said. ‘We have wifi down here.’

They also had a full-on locker room and shower last fitted out, judging by the brass taps and stainless steel fittings, sometime in the 1960s. I guessed it must be a leftover from Kumar’s secret government agency. The girls even managed to dig out a sweat shirt and tracksuit bottoms for Reynolds, who glared at me and Kumar until we remembered our manners and left. We found ourselves waiting in a storeroom filled with bottled water and catering boxes of fun-sized chocolate bars. We washed our faces with the water and had an argument about Mars Bars versus Milky Way and then more water after the taste test. When I judged that Kumar was all sugared up I asked him the difficult question.

‘Is it a total coincidence that you were assigned to this case?’

‘Meaning what?’ asked Kumar.

‘I magic up some lights and introduce you to a pair of river goddesses—’

‘Teenaged river goddesses,’ said Kumar. ‘And it’s not like either of them has done anything particularly religious.’

‘What about the lights?’ I asked.

‘Was that magic?’ he asked.

I hesitated. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Really magic?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fuck me!’

‘Now you’re reacting?’

‘Well I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the American,’ said Kumar.

‘So you’re not from the BTP version of the Folly?’ I asked.

Kumar laughed and said that British Transport Police had plenty of other demands on its budget.

‘But there is a certain amount of weird shit that goes on down here and people got into the habit of asking me to keep track of it,’ said Kumar.

‘Why was that?’

‘Watched too much X-Files growing up,’ he said. ‘Also I’m a bit of an urban explorer.’

‘So, not your first time in the sewers,’ I said. Urban explorers liked to climb into the secret and abandoned nooks and crannies of the city. That a lot of this involved illegal trespass merely added to the attraction.

‘It’s the first time I ever went surfing in one,’ he said. ‘I come from a family of engineers so I like poking my nose in and seeing how things work. I kept volunteering to do the weird stuff and in the end it became semi-official.’

And thus another arrangement was born.

‘If you ever meet Lady Ty,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell her. That sort of things drives her berserk.’

‘Speaking of X-Files,’ said Kumar, gesturing back towards the locker room. ‘Do you think Agent Reynolds—?’

I shrugged. ‘What do I know?’ I said. I was thinking of making it my family motto.

‘Maybe we should ask her,’ said Kumar.

‘And destroy the mystique?’ I said.

Kumar wanted to know how magic worked but I told him that I was supposed to keep it secret. ‘I’m already in a ton of shit for opening my mouth,’ I said.

Despite that, he asked whether it was element based – fire, water, air and earth. I said I didn’t think so.

‘So no Earthbenders kicking rocks around,’ he said.

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Or Airbenders, or Waterbenders or He-Man or Captain Planet.’ Or any other character from a kid’s cartoons. ‘At least I hope not. What kind of stuff do you get down in the tunnels?’

‘Lots of ghost reports,’ said Kumar and started digging through the catering boxes. ‘Not as many as we get from overground tracks.’

I thought of Abigail’s deceased tagger.

‘Anything else like the guy with the machine gun?’ I asked.

‘There are always rumours that there’s people living in the Underground,’ he said.

‘Think it’s likely?’ I asked.

Kumar gave a happy grunt and emerged from the box with a multipack of cheese and onion crisps.

‘I wouldn’t have said so,’ he said. ‘The sewers are toxic, it’s not just the risk of infection or disease—’

‘Or drowning,’ I said.

‘Or drowning,’ said Kumar. ‘You get gas build-ups, methane mostly but other stuff as well. Not very conducive to human habitation.’

I thought of the big eyes set in a pale face. Too pale perhaps?

‘What if he wasn’t entirely human?’ I said.

Kumar gave me a disgusted look. ‘I thought I was used to investigating weird shit,’ he said. ‘I really had no idea, did I?’

‘No idea about what?’ asked Reynolds from the doorway. ‘Shower’s all yours by the way.’

We showered and then stripped, which is how you do it when you’re covered in sewage. I had a row of spectacular bruises across my chest that I knew were going to come up good and purple in the next twenty-four hours. Kumar showed me how to wring out coveralls and then we put all our, still damp, kit back on – including the Metvest. Especially the Metvest.

Me and Kumar agreed that I’d talk to the sisters while he checked in with his boss, my boss, my other boss, Seawoll, and, finally, Lesley. This is why nobody likes joint operations.

Smelling only moderately bad, we went into the storeroom to discover that Reynolds had gone exploring. We found her back in the club talking to Olympia and Chelsea. As we walked over she handed back to Olympia a chunky black mobile phone, the kind favoured by people who might have to spend a certain amount of time underwater. Reynolds had obviously taken advantage of our shower to make contact with the surface world. I wondered who she’d called. Somebody at the embassy or perhaps the senator? Was it possible she’d lied about not having any backup?

I checked my watch and found it was six thirty in the morning. No wonder I was feeling so knackered. The club looked like it was winding down, drifts of teenagers were piled up around the chairs and sofas at the end of the tunnel and those who were still dancing had that frantic quality you get when you are absolutely determined to wring the last bit of excitement from the night. I also noticed that the DJ had stopped talking over the tracks, and any DJ tired of the sound of his own voice is tired indeed.

I caught Olympia’s eye and beckoned the sisters over. They didn’t even try to look reluctant. Our FBI agent had piqued their interest and they wanted to know what the gossip was.

‘Your rivers …’ I said.

Chelsea gave me a dangerous look. ‘What about our rivers?’ she asked.

‘They run … mostly underground,’ I said. ‘Right?’

‘We can’t all go frolicking through the suburbs,’ said Chelsea. ‘Some of us have to work for a living.’

‘Though Ty’s got plans,’ said Olympia.

‘Ty’s always got plans,’ said Chelsea.

‘You’d know if there were people living in the sewers?’ I asked.

‘Not away from our courses,’ said Olympia. ‘It’s not like we spend that much time in the dirty bits.’

Chelsea nodded. ‘Would you?’

Olympia waved her hands vaguely about. ‘Sometimes I get a kind of itchy feeling, you know like when there’s a thought in your head and you’re not sure it’s one of yours,’ she said.

‘I think it’s more like when your leg twitches,’ said Chelsea.

‘Your leg twitches?’ asked Olympia. ‘Since when?’

‘I’m not saying it twitches all the time,’ said Chelsea. ‘I’m saying that sense of involuntary movement.’

‘Have you seen a guy called James Gallagher down here?’ I asked. ‘American, white, early twenties, art student.’

Olympia nodded at Reynolds. ‘Is that what she’s here for?’

‘Is he important?’ asked Chelsea.

‘Murder victim,’ I said.

‘Not the guy they found at Baker Street?’ asked Olympia.

I told them it was the very same, which was when I glanced over and saw Zachary Palmer tending bar.

‘How long has he been working for you?’ I asked the sisters.

‘Who?’ asked Olympia and looked over at Zach. ‘Oh Goblin Boy?

‘Is he a goblin?’ I asked. ‘He said he was half fairy.’

‘Same thing,’ said Chelsea. ‘Sort of.’

‘I can’t keep them straight,’ said Olympia.

‘It’s all the same to us,’ said Chelsea.

‘But he does work for you?’ I asked. ‘Full time?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Chelsea. ‘He’s the neighbourhood odd job guy.’

‘Yeah,’ said Olympia. ‘If the job is odd he’s the goblin for you.’

I looked over to find that Zach was staring back at me. I was tempted to go ask him some questions but I really felt I’d been underground long enough.

‘I can’t be bothered to deal with you two now,’ I said. ‘But don’t think I won’t check with your mum.’

‘Oh we’re quaking in our boots,’ said Olympia.

‘Relax, magic boy,’ said Chelsea. ‘We keep it all strictly contained.’

I gave them my sternest look, which bothered them not at all, and went off to join Kumar and Reynolds.

Apparently we had two options, a long climb up a set of spiral stairs or we could go through the now open Holland Park tube station where at least we could take the lift up – as if that was a contest. We were just heading for the passageway to the station when Zach intercepted me.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

I told Kumar and Reynolds that I’d catch up.

‘We heard the ambience was brilliant,’ I said.

‘Yeah, no, look, listen,’ said Zach. ‘I thought you might be looking for other tunnels.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for a change of clothes.’

‘The old GPO tunnel goes right past this place,’ he said.

I heard the whistle the second time. Given the thump, thump, thump of the bass beat and the fact that Zach was trying to shout over the music, it’s amazing I heard it at all. On the third whistle there was no mistaking the non-studio-processed nature of the sound and I looked across the dance floor to see Kumar waving for my attention. When he had it he pointed at his eyes and then at the far end of the club. I turned back to Zach, who had a strangely frantic look on his face.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said.

‘What about the tunnels?’

‘Later,’ I said.

I pushed my way through the crowd as quickly as I could and as soon as I was close Kumar yelled, ‘He’s here.’

No need to ask who. ‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Going out through the station exit,’ said Kumar.

Out amongst the innocent bystanders, I thought.

‘Could you see if he still had the Sten gun?’ I asked.

Kumar hadn’t seen it.

We headed out through the exit into Holland Park station – at a walking pace, thank god. Reynolds had been shadowing him and we found her crouched at the bottom of a flight of stairs trying to get an angle on anyone at the top without being seen.

‘He just went up,’ she whispered to us.

I asked if she was sure it was him.

‘Pale face, big eyes, that weird round-shouldered posture,’ she said. ‘Definitely him.’

I was impressed. I hadn’t even noticed his posture. The sisters had said that after the stairs there was a short corridor and then a fire door out into the station proper. We reckoned he’d hear our boots if we ran up behind him. So we walked up, having a casual conversation in the hope we’d sound like weary clubbers. In the course of the first two flights I learnt that Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds was from Enid, Oklahoma and had gone to university at Stillwater and thence to Quantico.

Sergeant Kumar turned out to be from Hounslow and had studied Engineering at Sussex University but had fallen into policing. ‘I’d have been a terrible engineer,’ he said. ‘No patience.’

I had a jazz anecdote about my father all ready to go when we very clearly heard the sound of a door slamming shut up ahead – at which point we legged it.

It was an ordinary fire door, heavily spring-loaded, presumably so Olympia and Chelsea’s friends could leave without letting the commuter traffic leak back in. We went through it slowly and quietly and found ourselves in an alcove tucked away near the stations lifts. Our suspect wasn’t amongst the passengers waiting to go up in the lift and, according to them, they’d been waiting at least a couple of minutes, which was too long for him to have gone up earlier.

‘Stairs or platforms?’ asked Kumar.

‘He likes to stay underground,’ I said. ‘Platforms first.’

We caught a break when I spotted him through the grilled windows where the corridor cut across the top of the eastbound platform. We ran as quietly as we could down the next flight of stairs and piled up like cartoon characters at the entrance to the platform. I was just nerving myself to have a look around the corner when Kumar pointed at the convex mirror at head height opposite. This was a holdover from the days before CCTV when station staff and BTP had to scope out stations with the mark one eyeball.

I spotted him, small and oddly shaped in the mirror, at the far end of the platform.

‘If he’s still armed,’ said Kumar. ‘We’ll never get close.’

I felt a puff of air on my face and the rails began to sing. It was too late – a train was coming.

21 Oxford Circus

Sergeant Kumar was very clear about one thing – you don’t do shit when the train is in motion.

‘Someone pulls the emergency stop between stations you can lose a passenger to a heart attack there and then,’ he said. ‘And you do not want to be evacuating members of the public down a live track – trust me on this.’

You certainly didn’t want to be leaping out on a possibly armed suspect in something shaped exactly like a firing range – especially if you’re going to be the target at the far end.

And the carriages were packed, which took me by surprise, and not with your normal commuters either. Lots of parents with kids, clusters of chattering teenagers, older people in good coats clutching cloth bags or towing shopping trolleys. Last full shopping day before Christmas, I realised, Kumar was right – we really didn’t want to be kicking off anything we couldn’t contain.

It’s a sad fact, but policing would be so much easier if you didn’t have to worry about members of the public getting under your feet.

Kumar had Agent Reynolds, the only one of us who didn’t look like they were remaking Ghostbusters, go ahead and peer through the double set of grimy windows and into the next carriage. When she signalled all clear we opened the connecting doors and stepped through.

There’s no connecting tunnel on a tube train, you open the door and step across the gap to the next carriage. For a moment I was caught in a rush of air and darkness. I swear I heard it then, the whisper, behind the clatter of the wheels and the smell of dust and ozone. Not that I recognised it for what it was – not that I’m sure I know what it was even now.

The Central Line runs what is imaginatively called 1992 Tube Stock consisting of eight carriages. Our suspect was near the front and we were near the back so it took us twelve minutes and five stops to work our way forward. As the train pulled into Oxford Circus we had our suspect, unknown to him, bottled up in the front carriage. So that, of course, is where he chose to get off.

Reynolds spotted him first, signalled back to us and – as he walked past the open doorway where we were standing – we jumped him.

It was as sweet a take-down as anyone could wish for. I got his left arm, Kumar got his right, I slipped my knee behind his, hooked and down he went. We flipped him over on his face and got his arms behind his back.

He wriggled, as sinuously as a fish. It was difficult to keep him pinned. All the while he was completely silent except for a weird hissing sound like a really pissed off cat.

I heard someone in the crowd ask what the fuck was going on.

‘Police,’ said Kumar. ‘Give us some room.’

‘Which one of you has cuffs?’ asked Reynolds.

I looked at Kumar and he looked at me.

‘Shit,’ said Kumar.

‘We don’t have any,’ I said.

Wriggling boy subsided under our hands. Beneath the thin fabric of his hoodie he seemed much skinnier than I expected him to be, but the muscles in his arms were like steel cables.

‘I can’t believe you didn’t bring handcuffs,’ said Reynolds.

‘You didn’t,’ I said.

‘It’s not my jurisdiction,’ said Reynolds.

‘It’s not my jurisdiction,’ I said.

We both looked at Kumar. ‘Evidence,’ he said. ‘You said we were looking for evidence, not suspects.’

Our suspect had started shaking and making snorting noises.

‘And you can stop laughing,’ I told him. ‘This is really unprofessional.’

Kumar asked if we could hold him down on our own and I said I thought we could, so he loped off down the platform in search of a Help Point where he could contact the station manager.

‘I don’t think you want to be here when help arrives,’ I said to Reynolds. ‘Not while you’re tooled up.’

She nodded. It was just as well she hadn’t pulled it out in front of a CCTV camera. I glanced down the platform to where Kumar was talking into the Help Point and I must have loosened my grip or something – because that’s when the bastard tried to throw me off. In my defence, I don’t think the normal human arm is supposed to bend that way, certainly not twist up in some weird angle and smash its elbow in my chin.

My head cracked back and I lost my hold on his right arm.

I heard a woman scream and Reynolds yell, ‘Freeze!’

A glance told me that, despite everything, she’d stepped back and drawn her pistol.

Training, I learnt later, specifies that you never let your weapon get close enough to the perp to get snatched. I was also informed that the biggest fear an American law Enforcement Officer lives with is the prospect of dying with their weapon still in its holster.

The guy underneath me didn’t seem impressed. He reared up and then slapped the ground with the palm of his free hand. I got a flash of fresh loam and ozone and the cement floor of the platform cratered under his hand with a loud bang. I actually saw the start of the concussion wave in the dust around the crater and then it knocked me, Reynolds and half a dozen members of the public sprawling. We were lucky the train was still in the station or somebody would have gone onto the tracks.

Not me, though, because I still had a grip on the fucker’s arm. Because that’s how I’m trained. I pulled on it hard to try and keep him off balance and drag myself up to my feet. But he dug his fingers into the ground and twisted.

A crack the width of a finger shot across the platform and up the nearest wall. Ceramic tiles splintered with a noise like teeth breaking and then the floor lurched and dipped as if a giant had put his foot on one side and pressed down. The cement cracked open and I felt my stomach jump as the ground I was lying on dropped a good metre. And me with it. I saw a dark void under the platform and had just enough time to think – fuck me he’s an Earthbender – before falling into the black.

For a long moment I thought I was still unconscious but the long stripe of pain on my thigh changed my mind. Once I noticed that pain, all its friends queued up to say hello, including a particularly worrying throbbing patch on the back of my head. I tried to reach up to touch it with my hand, only to find that I literally didn’t have enough elbow room to bend my arm. And that, as they say, is when the claustrophobia really starts.

I didn’t call for help because I was fairly certain that once I started screaming I probably wouldn’t stop for quite a long time.

The ground had opened up and I’d fallen into it. Which meant there might not be too much rubble above me. I thought it might even be possible to dig myself out, or at the very least make myself some more breathing room.

So I yelled for help and, just as I suspected, it turned into a scream.

Dust fell into my mouth – cutting me off. I spat it out and weirdly that calmed me down.

I listened for a while in the hope that all that noise had attracted some attention. Consciously keeping my breathing slow, I tried to think of everything I knew about being buried alive that might be relevant.

Thrashing around is not helpful, hyperventilation is not your friend, and it’s possible to become disorientated in the darkness. There were documented cases of survivors digging themselves deeper into the ground when they thought they were going up. There’s a happy thought.

However, I did have a major advantage over run-of-the-mill victims – I could do magic.

I made myself a little werelight, floated it over my stomach and had a look around. With a visual reference re-established, my inner ear informed me that I was lying, feet down, at something like a forty-five-degree angle – so at least I was pointing in the right direction.

Five centimetres in front of my face was a concrete wall, the imprint of the wooden forms it had set in clearly visible on its surface. The clearance narrowed towards my feet reaching a bottleneck over my knees. I gently moved my feet around – I had more room there.

Hard up against my left was a wall of what looked like compressed earth and to my right was a space blocked by a portcullis made of rebar that, had it been half a metre closer, would have neatly bisected me. Then, presumably, I could have been pickled, put into a glass case and displayed at the Tate Modern. Brit Art’s loss was my gain, but it did mean I couldn’t wriggle that way. As far as I could tell, I was currently lying inside a sort of concrete tent with no visible way out.

I extinguished the werelight – they burn underwater but I didn’t know yet whether they burned oxygen or not, and I decided it was better safe than sorry. In the renewed darkness I considered my options. I could try and use impello to dig myself out, but that would always run the risk of collapsing the rubble on top of me. I had to assume that a rescue attempt would be made. Even if Reynolds had been a casualty, Kumar had been further down the platform – he knew I was here. In fact, there had to be CCTV footage of the whole thing from the feed into the station control room. I bet it was spectacular and even now was probably finding its way to the news company with the biggest chequebook.

Any rescue attempt would involve people clumping around in big boots, yelling at each other and operating heavy equipment. Chances were that I would hear them long before they could hear me. My most sensible course of action would be to lie still and wait for rescue.

It was remarkably quiet. I could hear my heartbeat and I was in danger of starting to think about my breathing again, so I made myself think about something else. Like who the hell our pale-faced hoodie Earthbender was. Now, you could literally fill two whole libraries, complete with card files, reference sections and a brass ladder thing that whooshes around on rails, with everything I don’t know about magic. But I think, had it been at all common, Nightingale might have mentioned a technique for gouging great big holes in solid cement.

Nightingale aside, the only practitioner that skilled who I’d ever met was the Faceless Man – who could catch fireballs, deflect flying chimney stacks and also, possibly, leap moderately sized buildings in a single bound. I knew this hadn’t been the Faceless Man himself because the Earthbender’s body shape and posture had been all wrong. Could he have been an acolyte or a Little Crocodile or possibly one of the Faceless Man’s chimeras?

Lots of possibilities, not a lot of facts.

The Earthbender had been travelling east, back into the West End, and had got off at Oxford Circus, a station less than a kilometre from the original Strip Club of Doctor Moreau. After we’d closed the club down, me and Nightingale had speculated that the Faceless Man’s new base of operations couldn’t be very far from Soho. He might be faceless but his chimeras, his poor little cat-girls and tiger-boys, weren’t exactly inconspicuous – hard for them to move around unnoticed and most sightings of them had been in the area. When I was chasing after the Pale Lady she’d headed for Piccadilly Station as if it was a safe haven. But they certainly weren’t getting around on the tube, with its ubiquitous CCTV cameras and the ever-vigilant Sergeant Kumar.

Now I knew there were other tunnels, secret tunnels and who knew what else, all going who knew where. Perhaps the Faceless Man knew where. Perhaps the Earthbender was helping him build more. A subterranean secret base in the fashion of a James Bond villain. The Faceless Man had the accent for it, true, but did he have a cat? I had a flash of him sitting in a swivel chair with a full-size cat-girl called Sharon perched on his lap while she’s talking to her BFF on her mobile. ‘And then he’s like “Do you expect me to talk” and the master’s all “No I expect you to die!” and he’s … What? I’m just telling Trace about last night.’ The thought made me giggle, which was nice – you need a bit of humour when you’re buried under a ton of rubble.

I reckoned the sly fucker had built his new lair under cover of the Crossrail construction work. Why not? The project had been sinking random holes into the ground for years and wasn’t even expected to be completed for at least another five – you could have stuck a whole hollowed-out volcano adjacent to Tottenham Court Road station without the public noticing.

But not without the contractors noticing or Health and Safety for that matter, I thought, and then I remembered a cool autumn night and coming across the Murder Team closing off a crime scene at the top of Dean Street. Had that been Graham Beale’s little brother? A top sub-contractor on Crossrail and a tunnelling specialist, as their family had been for more than one hundred and sixty years.

Could he have been done in by the Faceless Man to cover up his new base?

In which case it didn’t work, did it? I thought. Because now I know where to start looking for you, you freaky faceless phantom you.

I laughed out loud. It felt good, even if it did cause dust to fall into my mouth. I tried to spit it out, but as I turned my head to the side I starting giggling again. A little warning bell in my head went off and I remembered that euphoria is one of the warning signs of hypoxia.

Along with impaired judgement – which might explain what happened next.

I conjured a second werelight and had another look around my concrete coffin. To maximise my chances of getting some air I wanted to punch a hole upwards, but not so close to me that if I brought the roof down I would be under it. I chose the top corner on my right on the far side of the rebar portcullis and ran through my impello variations in my head. Impello, like Lux, is what Nightingale calls a formae cotidianae, meaning that generations of Newtonian wizards have poked and prodded and experimented and found lots of fun variations which they then pass on to their apprentices who pass them on to theirs. The hardest thing to learn about magic is that it’s not about wishful thinking. You don’t make an invisible pneumatic drill by picturing it in your mind. You do it by shaping the correct variation of impello, lining it up in the right direction and then essentially turning it on and off as fast as you can.

No doubt there was a fourth-order spell, of elegant construction, which would have served. But I didn’t know it, and when you’re buried under the ground and running out of air you go with what you’ve got.

I took a deep breath, which didn’t satisfy the way it should have, and smacked my drill into the corner. It made a satisfyingly loud thumping sound. I did it again, then again, trying to get a rhythm going. Dust spurted with each impact, falling slowly as a haze in the still air. I stopped after about twenty strikes to check progress and realised that there was no way of measuring it.

So I started banging away again as dust thickened and my breathing got shorter, and then suddenly there was a thud just behind my right eye and everything went dark. Sweat broke out on my face and back and I was suddenly terrified that I’d done something irreparable. Had I just pushed myself into a stroke? Had I gone blind or had my werelight gone out? In the pitch dark it was impossible to tell.

I didn’t dare conjure another werelight for fear that I’d give myself another stroke – if that’s what had happened. I lay still and pulled funny faces in the darkness – there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with either side of my face.

Then I realised I was breathing deeply and the air smelt fresher. So at least the drill had worked.

I don’t know how long I lay there in the darkness, nursing a really bad headache, before I noticed that water was pooling around my boots. I did a little kick and heard it sloshing around. Ever since I’d started hobnobbing with the Goddess of the Thames and her daughters I’d started taking a keen interest in the hidden hydrography of London. So it didn’t take me long to work out that the nearest river to me was the Tyburn. But from the lack of smell I figured that this water was more likely to be coming from a ruptured water main.

In 1940 sixty-five people died when a bomb ruptured water and sewer pipes which flooded Balham Tube station. I really wasn’t in a hurry to recreate that particular historical precedent.

I told myself that my little void was unlikely to fill very quickly and in fact there was no reason for me to think that the water level would reach any higher than my ankles. I found myself just about as convincing as you can imagine and I was considering whether to indulge in a bit more panicked screaming when I heard a noise above me.

It was a vibration in the concrete, sharp percussive sounds of metal on stone. I opened my mouth to shout but a shower of earth fell from the darkness and I had to turn my head and spit frantically to avoid choking. Bright sunlight struck me like a blow on the side of my face, fingers dug into my shoulders. There was swearing and grunting and laughter and I was yanked into the light and dumped on my back. I flopped around like a fish and flailed my arms around just because I could.

‘Watch it, he’s fucking possessed,’ said a man’s voice.

I stopped moving and lay on my side just getting my breathing under control.

I was lying on grass, which was a bit of a surprise, I could feel it against my cheek and the green smell was tickling my nose. Birdsong, shockingly loud, came from above me and I could hear a crowd, which was to be expected, and the lowing of cattle – which wasn’t.

As my eyes adjusted to the bright light I saw that I was lying on a grassy bank. About three metres in front of my face was a haze of white dust kicked up by the feet of passers-by and a herd of a cattle. Pint-sized cattle, I realised, because their shoulders barely reached the chest of the teenaged boy who was driving them with expert flicks from a long-handled whip. The mini-cows were followed by a stream of strangely dressed people all carrying sacks over their shoulders or satchels under their arms. They mostly wore long tunics of russet, green or brown, with caps and hoods upon their heads, some bare-legged others in tights. I decided to stop looking at them and concentrated on sitting up instead.

Oxford Circus is fifteen kilometres from the nearest farm – had I been moved?

I tried to work some saliva into my mouth – somebody had to have something to drink. And soon.

A couple of metres away a trio of disreputable-looking white guys was staring at me. Two of them were bare-chested, wearing nothing but loose linen trousers that were rolled into their belts and barely reached their knees. Their shoulders were ropey with muscle and sheened with sweat. One had a couple of nasty red welts striped down his upper arm. They had dirty white linen caps upon their heads and both were sporting neatly trimmed beards.

The third man was better dressed. He wore an emerald tunic with fine embroidery around the neck and armholes over a brilliantly white linen undershirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The tunic was cinched with a leather belt, an elaborate buckle that supported a classic English arming sword with a cruciform hilt contrary to section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 which prohibits the carrying of blades in a public place. He had black hair cut into a pageboy, pale skin and dark blue eyes – he looked familiar to me. As if I knew his brother or something.

‘Has he been burnt?’ asked one of the half-naked men.

‘Only by the sun,’ said the man with the sword. ‘He’s a blackamoor.’

‘Is he a Christian?’

‘A better Christian than you I think,’ said the man with a sword. He gestured in a direction behind the men. ‘Is that not your master? Should you not be about your work?’

The silent member of the pair spat into the ground while his friend jerked his chin in my direction. ‘It was us who dug him up,’ he said.

‘And I’m sure he thanks you for it.’ The man’s hand slipped down to rest casually on the hilt of his sword. The silent one spat once more, clasped his comrade’s upper arm and pulled him away. As I watched them go I saw there was a line of similarly dressed men, perhaps thirty, working with shovels and rakes and other implements of destruction on a ditch by the side of the road. It looked like a chain gang right down to a large man in beige tights, a russet tunic with sweat stains around the arm holes and a sword at his belt. The only reason he wasn’t wearing sinister mirrored sunglasses was because they hadn’t been invented yet.

My young friend with the sword followed my gaze. ‘Thieves,’ he said.

‘What did they steal?’ I asked.

‘My birthright,’ he said. ‘And they are stealing it still.’

Some of the men were lowering hollowed-out tree trunks into the ditch which, once sealed together with pitch, would form a crude pipeline otherwise known as a conduit.

‘Water,’ I said wishing I had some.

‘Not so burnt by the sun as to be lacking your wits,’ said the man.

I recognised him then, or rather I saw the resemblance to his father and his brother Ash. With an effort I clambered to my feet and turned to look along the road in the other direction. It stretched out, straight and dusty, between big wide fields that had been planted with green stripes of crops. A continuous stream of people, carts, horses and livestock trudged towards a hazy orange horizon from which reared the oversized gothic spike of St Paul’s Cathedral. That was London, this was the Oxford Road and the young man with the sword was the original Tyburn from back when the stream tumbled down from the Hampstead Hills to quench the thirst of the crowds come to watch the executions. Now being diverted, by Royal Charter no less, to slake the forty thousand throats of London.

I hadn’t been moved. I’d been dug up eight hundred years too early.

‘You’re Tyburn,’ I said.

‘Sir Tyburn,’ he said, ‘And you are Peter of the Peckwater Estate, apprentice wizard.’

‘Bugger,’ I said. ‘This is an hallucination.’

‘And you know this for certain?’

‘I’ve heard Chaucer read out,’ I said. ‘I understood one word in five and there’s this thing called the great vowel shift – which means everyone pronounces everything differently anyway. Which means I’m still stuck in the hole.’ And if I start singing David Bowie’s ‘Golden Years’ someone would just have to shoot me in the head.

I looked down into the ditch from which Tyburn and his merry band had ‘rescued’ me. At the bottom there was a ragged hole a little bigger than a cat flap.

‘Since you are fixed for certain, and can do nothing for yourself, does it matter where you wait for rescue?’ asked Tyburn. ‘And I seem substantial to myself.’

‘You might be a ghost,’ I said, studying the ditch and wondering whether I should go in head or feet first. ‘Or a sort of echo in the memory of the city.’ I really had to come up with some better terminology for this stuff.

I jumped down into the ditch. The soil was soft, sticky yellow London clay. Head first would be quicker.

‘Or we could get a boat to Southwark,’ said Tyburn. ‘Hit the stews, get steamed – meet some hot girls from Flanders. Oh come on,’ he pleaded. ‘It’ll be kicking and I’ve …’ Tyburn trailed off.

‘You’ve what?’

‘I’ve been alone – here,’ he said. ‘For a long time I think.’

Possibly since you ‘died’ in the 1850s under a tide of shit, or so your father claims.

‘Now you’re saying things that I’ve just thought of,’ I said. ‘You see why I’m suspicious.’

This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I’ve never yet had a Higgs boson turn up and try to have a conversation with me.

‘Did you hear that?’ asked Tyburn.

I was going to ask what when I heard it – a long wail floating over the landscape from the direction of London. I shivered.

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

The wail came again, wordless, angry, filled with rage and self-pity.

‘You know who that is,’ said Tyburn. ‘You put him there, you pinned him to the bridge.’

As an experiment I stuck my foot in the hole, which sucked at it with an unpleasantly organic movement.

The wail was fainter the third time, fading into the wind and the noise of the passers-by.

‘Sooner or later you’re going to have to set the hooknosed bastard free,’ said Tyburn.

Not any time soon, I thought.

‘I don’t want to die in a hole with my eyes closed,’ I said, and shoved my foot in up to the ankle.

‘Don’t do that,’ said Tyburn, and jumped into the ditch with me. ‘I know a better way.’

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘This,’ he said, and hit me on the side of the head with the pommel of his sword.

I regretted the decision as soon as I opened my eyes to darkness, and the feel of water sloshing around my knees. It was cold – a wetsuit won’t keep you warm if you don’t move about.

I wondered if I hadn’t been a bit hasty. Was it better to die in the illusion of sunshine and warmth or face death in a cold darkness of reality? Was it better to die in happy ignorance or terrified knowledge. The answer, if you’re a Londoner, is that it’s better not to die at all.

So that is when I came up with the most ridiculous plan since I’d decided to take a witness statement from a ghost. It was a plan so stupid that even Baldrick would have rejected it out of hand.

I was going to reach out and contact Toby the Dog with my mind. Well not exactly with my mind – that would have been unlikely. Ever since Molly sent me on my little trip down London’s memory lane it had seemed obvious to me that all the accumulated vestigia that seemed to power the ghosts of the city were somehow connected. Information was definitely being passed from location to location. Like a magical internet. How else had I seen so much of the city while my physical body had remained in the Folly? I figured that if I could generate a sort of formless forma, enough to put magic into the stone, it might be possible to create a signal – a beacon that would propagate through the stone memory that might be detected by a particularly sensitive dog of my acquaintance. Who would then bark in an expressive fashion and rush over to Oxford Circus as fast as his little legs would carry him. There he would scamper about snuffling amongst the debris and a particularly intuitive rescue worker would say, ‘Hold up, I think the mutt may be on to something.’

Did I not say it was the most ridiculous plan I’d ever thought of? It had to be Toby because one of the first things I’d done, once Lesley had become an apprentice, was to buy a pack of ESP cards and see if I could use magic to talk mind to mind. So me, Lesley and Dr Walid spent a fun afternoon recreating various bonkers telepathy experiments from the 1960s and ’70s with disappointing results. Even the one experiment where I tried to identify the forma that Lesley was creating didn’t work properly because while I could sense the ‘shape’ in the magic I couldn’t have told you what it was. And besides, even that much only worked when we were less than a metre apart.

That’s what I hate about science – negative results.

But Toby had been proven to be sensitive to magic. And I’d always thought we’d shared a special affinity. And the water was pooling around my ribs and I was getting desperate.

I took a deep breath and created a forma in my mind. It was like Lux, which you use for creating werelights and, with a bit of modification, fireballs, skinny grenades and a really hot flame thing that I have hopes I could use for burning through steel if only I could get the heat to go in one direction only. Like the ESP experiments, I try to avoid telling Nightingale about my little innovations unless I have to explain why one of the labs is on fire. Lux was perfect because it’s known to put a lot of magic into the environment, and what I was going for was cool but noisy.

A dim blue light filled my concrete coffin, which was now half full of water. Reflections rippled across the ceiling in thin twists of green. I tried to maintain it for as long as I could, but the pain in my head got worse and the forma slipped from my mind.

In my imagination, I began to hear the voices of the dead. At least I hoped it was my imagination. A lot of people have died in the Underground, through accidents, through stupidity, or suicide. All the one-unders whose dying wish had been to make other people late for work.

I heard all these one-unders as distant wordless cries of despair and anger that cut off with the same sudden bluntness as Macky the luckless graffiti artist.

‘I’m not one of them,’ I shouted – although I think it was only in my head.

And suddenly they were upon me. All the accumulated casualties, from the train crashes and the fires and the victims of the hideous suicide of the Bradford boy who didn’t want to work in Father’s chip shop no more. A lot of them had gone without warning but others had time to realise what was happening and some, the worst of all the cries, had time to build up a head of hope before the darkness swept them up into the stone and concrete memory of the tunnels.

The rising water was a cold band across my chest.

I didn’t want to die, but the truth is that the choice isn’t in your hands.

Sometimes the only thing you can do is wait, endure and hope.

I heard rattling and scraping above me and for a moment I thought it might be Sir Tyburn back for another chat, but then I heard the unmistakable and beautiful sound of a pneumatic drill.

I waited for a pause in the drilling and gave panicked screaming one last shot – this time with feeling.

Dust filled my mouth.

Then there was light in my eyes which was suddenly obscured by a big black face.

‘You all right, mate?’ asked the face. I refocused and caught a flash of yellow helmet and heavy fire-resistant jacket. ‘Are you Peter Grant?’

I tried to say yes but my throat was clogged with dust.

‘Want some water?’ asked the fireman. He didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead he gently pushed a plastic drinking straw between my lips. ‘Just a little bit at first,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry there’s no paramedic for this, but things are a little tricky.’

Water trickled into my mouth and tasted the way water does when you’ve been thirsty for hours – like life itself. How long had I been buried? I tried to ask, but it just made me cough. I stuck to drinking the beautiful water instead. I sluiced it around my mouth and pulled my head back – the fireman withdrew the straw. I realised that he was lying on the platform floor peering down at me through a hole. Behind him was a portable floodlight on a tripod and behind that, visible in the reflected light, was more rubble. This was confusing me. I was fairly certain I’d only fallen a couple of metres.

It took them at least another hour to dig me out.

It’s difficult to describe the serenity of rescue, like a second birth. Only this time you’re secure in the knowledge that you know what you’re going to do with your life – even if it’s just what you were doing before.

They put me on a stretcher, plugged me into a drip, a heart monitor and gave me a cool breath of oxygen. It’s was all good right up to the moment Lady Ty leaned over and frowned down at me.

‘Tyburn,’ I said.

She smiled thinly. ‘Who were you expecting?’ she asked. ‘International Rescue?’

I didn’t say Toby the Dog because I don’t have a death wish.

‘Did you hear me calling?’ I said, checking to make sure nobody was close enough to hear. ‘I was calling with magic.’

‘I smelt you, boy,’ she said. ‘You were stinking up the sewers and, while I had half a mind to leave you, I couldn’t take the risk that you’d smell worse dead.’

She leant down until her lips were by my ear. Her breath was spiced with nutmeg and saffron. ‘One day,’ she murmured, ‘I will ask you for a favour and do you know what your response will be?’

‘Yes ma’am, no ma’am – three bags full, ma’am.’

‘You only become my enemy if you get in my way, Peter,’ she said. ‘If you get in my way you should make sure my enemy is what you want to be.’

She straightened up and before I could think of something clever to say she was gone.

22 Warren Street

I’ve never been one of those people who tell everyone they’re fine and try to climb out of their hospital bed. Feeling as shit as I did is your body’s way of telling you to lie the fuck down and take in fluids – preferably intravenously – so that’s what I did.

I was a little surprised that they took me to UCH, which was not the closest casualty unit, until Dr Walid appeared in my treatment cubicle and proceeded to loom over the shoulder of the junior doctor who was treating me for various cuts, bruises, scrapes and possible exposure. To give him his credit, the junior doctor who – from his accent – had inherited his breezy confidence and a private education from his parents, tried for professional insouciance. But there’s just something uniquely intimidating about a wiry six-foot Scot. Once he’d arranged to have a nurse come and put the actual bandages on, he gave me a professional smile and legged it out of there as fast he could go.

By day Dr Walid is a world-renowned gastroenterologist, but by night he dons his sinister white coat and becomes England’s foremost expert on crypto-pathology. Anything weird that turns up, living or dead, gets examined by Dr Walid – including me and Lesley.

‘Good evening, Peter,’ he said as he advanced on me. ‘I was hoping you’d make it all the way to Christmas intact.’

He became the fifth person to shine a light in my eyes to check for pupil reactions. Or perhaps he was looking for something different.

‘Does this mean you’re going to stick me back in the MRI?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Dr Walid with great relish. ‘Between you and Lesley I’m finally beginning to develop some decent data on what happens to your brain when you become a practitioner.’

‘Anything I should know about?’

‘Early days yet,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to get you booked in as soon as possible. I’m supposed to be on the train to Glasgow tonight.’

‘Are you going home for Christmas?’

Dr Walid perched on the edge of bed and scribbled a few notes on a clipboard. ‘I always go back to Oban for the holidays.’

‘So the rest of your family aren’t Muslims then?’

Dr Walid chuckled. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Loyal sons and daughters of the Kirk each and every one of them. Very dour, serious people except at this time of the year. They celebrate Christmas and I celebrate them. Besides, they’re always pleased to see me since I bring the bird to the feast.’

‘You take the turkey?’

‘Of course,’ said Dr Walid. ‘I have to be sure it’s properly Halal after all.’

True to his word, I was decanted into a wheelchair and raced up to the imaging department where they stuck my head in the MRI. It’s an expensive piece of kit and has a strict waiting list for tests that Dr Walid seems to ride roughshod over at will. When I asked him where his extraordinary privileges came from he explained that the Folly, through a charity first established in 1872, made a contribution to the hospital finances and in return he got to pre-empt non-emergency cases.

The techs who ran the MRI had been seeing me and Lesley on a regular basis since the summer – god knows what they thought I had. Some form of rare brain cancer I suppose. I must have been getting used to the machine, because, despite the sledgehammer sound of the magnetic coils, I drifted off to sleep mid-scan.