The Cilla Rose Affair (19 page)

“Do you bring a lot of people down this way?”

“Not many,” Bob replied, without turning around. “The odd Christmas party, walking tours by special request…I wanted to drive the trains when I was a kid but when I got older I reckoned I’d be better off on the Public Relations side of things. There were 16 stations in all along this original eight mile route, all except Golders Green giving access to the twin platforms by means of electric lifts provided by the Otis Elevator Company. At all of the stations except Golders Green, Charing Cross and Oxford Street, the surface buildings were two-storey, steel-framed constructions clothed in ruby-red terracotta. At ground floor level a ticket office was provided in the area leading to the lifts. The lift machinery was installed on the floor above. Although most of the lifts have now been replaced by escalators, many of the original station houses have been preserved, and can be seen on the Northern as well as the Piccadilly and the Bakerloo lines. Are you interested in all in the technical aspects of the Underground?”

“The power supply, in particular,” Rupert prompted.

“Two-rail system. Separate positive and negative rails—negative rail in the centre of the two running rails, positive on the outside, current supplied at 630 volts DC, fed to the track from 114 substations located every few miles along the lines. Current comes into each substation at 11,000 volts AC from three distribution switch points at Coburg Street, Cromwell Road and Stockwell. The substations provide current for fans, pumps, lifts, lighting and escalators, as well as the traction.”

“And where does the power come from to supply your three major switching points?”

“It used to come almost exclusively from our own generating stations at Lots Road, Neasden and Greenwich,” Bob replied. “However, during the last war arrangements were introduced to allow supplies to be obtained from the national grid. At present about one-third of the Underground’s power comes from the grid. We expect to transfer over completely sometime this decade.”

“So you don’t actually maintain your own independent power supply.”

“Not exclusively, no. By the year 2000 we’ll be at the mercy of the utilities, just like everyone else.”

“Then somebody could, in theory, tap into that supply—from down here, for instance—and if it happened to be a rather large and dramatic drain of electricity—it could, in theory, short out the mains in the roadway directly above.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bob answered, doubtfully. “We’re on a completely different grid.”

But Rupert’s mind was already racing ahead.

“Is there ever a time when the tunnels are completely deserted? No trains, no fluffers, no engineering gangs?”

“I suppose there might be,” Bob conceded. “We’ve got 273 stations and 254 miles of tracking to maintain, 85 of those in the tubes. We can’t be everywhere at once.”

“No,” said Rupert, thinking. “So—in theory—a person could gain access to the tunnels after hours, and never actually be noticed.”

“It would be bloody difficult, but yes, in theory, it’s possible.”

“A person could come through with a maintenance crew, for instance.”

“I suppose so, yes. He could hide somewhere until they’d moved on—in a shunting tunnel or a reversing siding. Mind you, there’s not a lot of that sort of thing along this stretch of tunnel—no, hang on, I tell a lie. There’s an abandoned station up ahead—old Romilly Square. Took a direct hit during the war and was never reopened.”

Bob stopped, and shone his torch around the tunnel walls.

“Here we are then—I reckon we’re just about directly underneath the Fitzroy Theatre.”

“Thank you,” Rupert said, picking his way over the rails, and shining a small torch of his own into the cast iron ribs running over his head.

“If there is any damage to the tunnel,” Bob volunteered, “I’m quite certain the works people would have noticed it by now.”

Rupert craned his neck up into the darkness.

“What, exactly, were you hoping to find? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Cracks…” Rupert said. “Some signs of impact…or electrical arcing…”

“Well,” said Bob, shining his light up over his head, “I hate to put a damper on your enthusiasm…but I’m damned if there’s anything like that up there.”

But something else had attracted Rupert’s attention. The trackbed, in contrast to the tunnel walls, was surprisingly clean—with the exception of a wide scattering of black over a very limited area, like a circular deposit of oily snow.

Rupert examined his discovery in the bright beam of his light. “You’re quite certain,” he checked, “that nothing out of the ordinary’s been reported by any of your works people over the past few days, anywhere on the Northern Line?”

“There’s a real myth about my sort of job,” Sara said. “The glamour, the exciting holidays abroad. The dangerous liaisons in foreign bedrooms.”

She was walking with Robin along the deserted road, with dark, sleeping St. James’s Park on their left, and Wellington Barracks to their right.

“It’s true for a little while, I suppose. It is glamorous. But then afterwards, it’s just bloody hard work. I mean, you’re whisked in and out of hotels by tour reps—you’re there just long enough to tick the rooms off on your comparison sheet—balcony—yes, view—no, toilet—clean—and then you’re driven about the city in a bus, and what it takes your clients a week to explore you’re done with in an hour, two at the most.”

Robin slipped his arm around her shoulders.

“My trouble is, I seem to be a walking disaster asking to happen wherever I go. I once toppled head first onto a rotating baggage carousel.”

“You didn’t,” Robin said.

“I did. I was reaching for my suitcase, and I realized too late it was jammed tight between two other bags. I was too stupid from jet lag to let go, and before I knew it I was tipped over and dragged halfway round the ramp. A rather nice gentleman came to my aid by inserting his hands under my armpits and lifting me up and setting me squarely on my feet again.”

She giggled.

“And then, in Fiji, I managed to shut myself out on the balcony of my hotel right in the middle of a raging tropical storm. And as I’d also pushed in the safety lock on my room door, the only person who had access to the master key was the manager—and he’d gone and taken himself off to a Rotary lunch in Suva and wasn’t expect back until morning. I was rescued in the end by another very kind gentleman with a long ladder and a windblown umbrella and a rather wet towel. I mean, it’s not as if I’m helpless, Harris—I just seem to be always landing in these stupid situations from which I require extrication.”

Robin led her to a solitary streetlight.

“You’re not under any sort of bizarre curfew, are you?” he said. “Sara Jane Woodford must be home before the stroke of midnight or she turns into a cantaloupe?”

She laughed. “God no. Anyway, it’s gone two. I’ll have to flag down a taxi—”

She stopped. It was necessary to stop, because he was kissing her, gently, with one hand lightly holding her shoulder, and the other…the other touching her breast where before only Jon had touched her, because there hadn’t been any others, just him, and his fingers had been quick and greedy, not like this, not a bold exclamation…but a question mark, a feather-light, lingering question that invited an answer instead of demanding one…

She hadn’t forgotten him, all those summers ago. She’d only put him away—out of necessity—in a drawer filled with torn-in-half ticket stubs and bits of old jewellery, and a diary with tiny, dried wildflowers pressed between its pages.

Finding him again at Bournemouth, talking to him, laughing and dancing with him, and then walking with him along the moonlit beach, had stirred those memories. Robin was a book she’d had to set down before reaching the end. She’d left a slip of paper behind, to mark her spot. In Bournemouth, she had discovered that book again, and had pulled the gossamer webs from its cover, and had opened it. And now it was time to turn the page.

Tuesday, 03 September 1991

Sara opened her eyes.

She had been lying in Robin’s arms, listening to the quiet whisper of his breathing, relishing the warm nakedness of his skin, pressed against hers.

After their love-making, she had drifted into an exhausted sleep, but it had been brief, and an hour later she had woken up, troubled by the unfamiliarity of the hotel room, the narrow little bed, the crisp white starchiness of the sheets, the foreign shadows, the noise from the overnight traffic and what seemed like endless sirens from ambulances rounding Russell Square, on their way to Great Ormond Street.

She turned a little in Robin’s arms, and she thought of last night, and of all of the places on her body he had touched with his lips. And she discovered them again with the tips of her fingers.

And she found herself, once more, thinking of Jon. Her first. Her educator. Her dazzler—who went about the business of sex the way he pursued lucrative business propositions—and other women—with gusto and energy. Jon the hunter. Jon the conqueror.

And now, there was Robin, as gentle as he had been nearly ten years earlier, when their promises were filled with the passion of youth, and their kisses innocent.

She slipped out of bed and, wrapping herself in a blanket, which had tumbled to the floor, went to sit beside the window.

In the grand old Russell Hotel, across the way, a young man in a suit was polishing a pair of shoes in a back scullery. Beside him, a young woman in a maid’s uniform was arranging an early breakfast tray.

Sara watched as they pantomimed a conversation, their heads bobbing, their hands making agitated points in the air.

Once, on a fam to Italy, she’d spent an evening observing an oily man in a vest and a thin woman in a bra and slip, both of whom had been occupying the flat across the road from her hotel. They were arguing, and their protestations had grown more and more violent until, at last, the oily man had flung the scrawny woman onto the bed, knocking over the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

Sara had waited, her curiosity trampling down any guilt she might have felt over her shameless spying. Was there a stabbing going on? A strangling? A smothering with a pillow? Perhaps the brawny man was making rough, passionate love to the woman’s pale and drooping body. Perhaps there was no passion involved. She was his wife and he was angry about something—his tea not ready, her stockings in the sink. He raged and she submitted, and that was all there was.

At the Russell Hotel, the butler had finished his shoes, and the maid had disappeared. The light remained on in the now-empty window.

Sara let her gaze slip down to the street, where a solitary van was parked underneath a lamp, its windows partway open.
Odd
, she thought, resting her chin on her forearm on the windowsill. There were two men sitting inside, one older, one younger, the younger one drinking something from a thermos. The older man, the driver, had something dark in his lap—Sara couldn’t quite make out what—until he shifted slightly in his seat and she saw the binoculars.

Intrigued, she waited.
Who were they watching
?

The driver looked at his watch, then picked up his binoculars. Sara pulled back behind the curtains. She peeked out, cautiously, taking care not to let the fabric move. The binoculars were trained on her window.

“Woodford,” Robin called, lazily. “Come back to bed.”

She went.

She climbed in, and his chin, night-bristled, nuzzled her neck.

“There are two men outside in a van watching us,” she said.

“Are there?” he answered, sleepily.

“Yes. I expect they think you’re having it off with somebody’s wife.”

“Not me,” Robin said, kissing her.

“Oh, well, then, I’ll just ignore them, shall I?”

“Mmm,” Robin said.

“Mmm,” she said back, snuggling into the warm hollow of his armpit. She buried her nose in the delicious thatch of red-gold hair on his chest, and breathed in the subtle scent of his skin—the lingering, faraway hint of Fa soap and something lemon and lime. And she thought to herself how peculiar it was that men could possess such tiny, perfect nipples.

Tuesday, 03 September 1991

Evan left his car, and walked the short distance to the DLR station at Tower Gateway. He climbed the long staircase and bought a ticket to Island Gardens, and took a seat aboard the two-car shuttle that was waiting at the platform.

It was a slow journey; he sat facing forward in the lead car, watching the narrow little track run east on its viaduct, parallel to the BR Fenchurch Street line.

At Westferry, three people got off, and one came aboard, wearing a sunhat and carrying a large straw bag.

“Evan Harris,” she said.

“Nora Darrow,” he acknowledged.

She sat down beside him. “How fares The Flowerpot Man?”

“He’s on hiatus,” Evan replied, “for the summer.”

“Is he really? I wonder if he realizes what a dangerous life the actor who portrays him is leading these days.”

“It was mentioned as being one of the hazards of the trade, yes.”

“I’ve got something for you. The opportunity’s never really arisen to return them to their rightful owner.” She placed the small brown paper bag squarely in Evan’s hands. “Oh, do look,” she urged, with a pleasant smile.

Evan obliged. Nestled inside, like a mass purchase from an electronics shop, were all of the eavesdropping devices his son had diligently installed in each of Simon Darrow’s homes.

He placed the bag on the floor without comment.

“I’ve requested this meeting, Evan, in order to warn you that you had better watch your back. You’re beginning to get on some rather well-placed nerves.”

“So I see. Are those two gentlemen who seem to be perennially camped outside my front door acquaintances of yours?”

“I should abandon my little witch-hunting project if I were you, Evan,” Nora continued, ignoring him. “You won’t prevail.”

“I don’t play games hoping to lose, Nora.”

“Why is it you Americans always see things in terms of basketball? You shoot, I shoot, we all shoot until the clock runs out. You never seem to care much for how well the match is played. You only want to know who has the two-point advantage when the final buzzer sounds. Why is it you Americans always see everything in terms of half-time scores?”