Deep Shelter (19 page)

And now Belsey saw the Central London skyline again: the BT Tower conquering the air alongside Centre Point, less than a kilometre away. Two silhouettes you couldn’t escape. As a child, taken to town for the day, he could never believe there were people in the BT Tower. It looked more like technology than architecture. The Post Office Tower, as it had been known then. The Post Office . . .

And then, in the recesses of his brain, another post office-related puzzle glimmered into significance: why steal a chef’s van from behind a postal depot at 10.15 in the morning? A strange MO and now getting stranger. Could they connect? It felt like a lead, but usually with a lead you had some sense where it was leading, it wasn’t a path fading out into the mysteries of the nuclear age.

“I’ll be in touch,” Belsey said, putting a fiver by the noodles and getting up.

“I’ll be here,” Monroe said, unwrapping chopsticks.

Belsey phoned the station from his car and got the number for Victor Patridis, owner of the missing Vauxhall Vivaro. He dialled. A woman answered.

“Is Mr. Patridis there?”

“No,” she said. “Who is this?”

“It’s the police. About the stolen van.”

“He’s at work.”

“At Mount Pleasant?”

“Yes,” she said impatiently. “Where else would he be?”

ROYAL MAIL MOUNT PLEASANT SPRAWLED OVER A
square kilometre between King’s Cross and Farringdon, once hub of the UK’s postal system and Europe’s biggest sorting office. Belsey parked overlooking it. He could just see the back road where the van had been stolen. He watched the endless fleet of red Royal Mail lorries coming and going in the soft light of 5 p.m. The depot had the faceless enormity of an industrial works. He used to drink with some posties in The Apple Tree. They referred to the depot as Coldbaths, after the Victorian prison that used to occupy the site. It hadn’t shaken the ambience.

The General Post Office, Belsey thought. And what did you do in the cold war?

He approached security on the north gate with his badge out. They suggested he make his way to the manager’s office and pointed him across five hundred metres of tarmac to the one human-sized entrance beside the bays. They ran a swipe beside the gate and it opened for him.

The manager’s office was on the third floor, above the chaos of trolleys and sacks. He was young, taut with responsibility, neck shaved raw. His office was bare but for a large desk, the only items on the walls a plan of the depot itself and a chart of monthly targets. He peered anxiously at Belsey’s ID.

“A guy robbed?”

“Yes, a chef. Victor Patridis. Is he here?”

The manager checked a binder.

“Patridis . . . There’s three thousand men and women who work here,” he said, with the air of someone who’s been given a big present they haven’t figured out how to use yet. He gave up on the binder and looked through a spreadsheet on his PC, then went over to a map on the wall. “Three bloody canteens,” he muttered. “Why do we need
three
?”

The manager flicked through a second ring binder until he had an extension. He dialled.

“Yes, can he come up now? No, the food’s fine, it’s about the theft of his van.”

The manager didn’t look optimistic when he hung up. He probed Belsey about the crime while they waited, whether it had any implications for the smooth running of his depot. Patridis appeared five minutes later: squat, unshaven, in a hairnet and disposable blue gloves. He stood with his feet apart and smelt of chip fat. Belsey showed his badge.

“You had a van stolen.”

“Have you caught him?” he asked.

“Not yet. Tell me what happened.”

“I stopped to get some cash out, came back to the van and he jumped me. He must have been waiting round the back.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He said, ‘Give me your wallet.’ Which was stupid. Thing is, the cash I’ve got out is in my hand—250 quid. He sees it but doesn’t take it, dozy twat.”

Belsey considered this.

“Why do you think he wanted your wallet, then? If he left the cash?”

“I have absolutely no idea. I’ve cancelled all the cards. I told him the van was empty apart from some bread. It’s not worth anything. You’re not going to get money for it.”

“What was in the wallet?”

“Debit and credit card, Tesco Clubcard, driver’s licence, swipe.”

“Swipe for the depot?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything on the van to link it to the depot?”

“No.”

“How often do you make the journey?”

“Five days a week.”

“How often do you stop to get cash out?”

“Each day.”

“So if he was watching he’d know you worked at the depot. He could see you go from the cashpoint into the depot itself using your swipe.”

“I suppose so. Why?”

Belsey turned to the manager.

“Did you block the swipe?”

“I’m not sure I was ever aware of this. I’ll speak to my head of security. It would involve resetting more than a thousand cards, you see. We can’t do that—the cost alone, the time.”

“Have you had any recent thefts from within the depot?”

“Nothing for weeks. I’ve cracked down on that.”

Belsey got up and went over to the plan on the wall. The depot was a complex machine. He followed it down with his eyes, from the offices to the hangar-sized sorting rooms, to the equipment and maintenance in the basement, to a tunnel. The tunnel was shaded with red diagonal lines.
CLOSED 2003
.

“What’s this?”

The manager came over.

“The old Post Office Railway.”

“Go on.”

“It was an underground system, connecting the post offices and railway stations. Meant they could avoid the roads. Before my time.”

Belsey stepped back, stared at the depot plan. Once again, his home city revealed itself as alien.

“And it closed in 2003.”

“Apparently so.”

“Could a person get around the tunnels?”

“Walking? Why would they want to?”

“Let’s say they did.”

“Maybe.”

“They’re small,” Patridis interrupted them. “It just carried post and parcels. The trains were driverless. Not like proper trains.”

“How were they operated?”

“From control rooms at each station, I think.”

“Have you had any trouble with it recently?” Belsey asked the manager. “Anyone down there, messing about?”

“Not that I’ve been aware of.”

“Where does it go, exactly?”

The manager produced the biggest, most dog-eared binder yet; this one was apparently passed down the generations. He flicked through it for a moment then gave up and went online. He found a map on a website devoted to Post Office history: Mail Rail. 1927–2003. Belsey walked around to the screen. So did Patridis.

“From Paddington in the west to Whitechapel in the east, via Oxford Street, Liverpool Street. Nine stops in all.”

“Does it connect to other underground systems?”

“Like what?”

“The tube, or any other tunnels?”

“I don’t know. Why would it?”

“Let’s take a look down there.”

“Now?” The manager looked flummoxed. He checked the map of the depot then started searching for keys.

“What’s it got to do with the van?” Patridis asked.

“It may be why he wanted your swipe.”

The chef thought about this.

“Can I see it?” Patridis asked the manager.

The three of them walked down the corridor to a stone stairwell at the back of the building. The stairs were unlit. They descended several floors below ground level to a fire door. The manager spent a moment looking through his bunch of keys, forced one in, but the door was already unlocked.

It opened into a loading area littered with palettes and discarded sack ties, an old lifting truck in the corner. The space was cold and dark. Half-open steel concertina doors revealed the platform.

The manager searched for the lights and seemed surprised when the station appeared in flashes, twenty or thirty strip-lights flickering back to life. It was an underground train station, but everything was half-size. One train still waited on the narrow-gauge track, three feet high. Its main body consisted of cages for holding parcels. There was no driver’s cab, just windowless engines at the front and back. It was like something from a bad funfair; a grimy, steel children’s ride.

The chef chuckled to himself and took a picture on his phone. The manager looked around curiously, hands in his pockets. Belsey walked along the narrow platform. He found the Perspex front of a control office. The door was open. It contained antiquated grey equipment with red and black knobs, a swivel chair, another map of the system.

“How deep do you reckon we are?” Belsey asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe seventy feet beneath street level.”

“And no security issues with it recently?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

Belsey jumped down to the tracks. He stared into the tunnel. It was smaller than the ones he had walked through, but still tall enough to stand. Tall enough to move in. He walked to the entrance and stepped across the threshold. Listened for screams.

“I wouldn’t go too far,” the manager said.

“Why not?”

“I just mean, I’m not sure how safe it is.”

QUARTER PAST SIX. HE DROPPED INTO THE STATION
and ran a search for any crime reports involving Mount Pleasant. There were only two since the van had been stolen—a phone gone missing from a locker, a fight in the canteen. A similar scattering of minor offences over the preceding months. Then one curious record from six years ago.

December 2007, a man was doing temp shifts over Christmas. This was a common enough source of crime: turn up at the Jobcentre mid-December and you were sent to Mount Pleasant. In certain pubs they referred to the place as Santa’s Grotto, so easy was it to slip cash from Christmas cards. But this temporary employee had bigger ideas. He went AWOL mid-shift. Four hours later he turned up in the basement of Merrill Lynch, one and a half miles away. According to the security guards who discovered him, he was covered in dirt and was carrying a digital camera and a hand-drawn map.

The man in question was Kyle Townsend, a repeat petty offender of mild notoriety. He’d been twenty-three years old at the time of his postal explorations. Belsey had briefly crossed paths with him during a Soho shakedown. He could picture Kyle spitting rocks of crack into the hands of a Drugs Squad officer. Belsey located the Merrill Lynch HQ on a map—EC4, next to Paternoster Square, St. Paul’s Cathedral, heart of the Square Mile. A strange place to find yourself after a shift at Mount Pleasant.

Belsey drove over. Early evening in the City was civilised, smart congregations outside pubs, ties loosened. He passed Chancery Lane and St. Paul’s. The wealth managers of Merrill Lynch occupied an appropriately grand Edwardian building, next to the ruins of Greyfriars. He showed his badge to the burly guards in black suits and hi-vis jackets and said he needed to check the basement.

They weren’t having any of it, not without a warrant, not from an officer who wasn’t one of their friendly local City police. Belsey walked around the building wondering about back entrances when he saw a statue. A plucky, waistcoated gentleman in brass surveying the world from the pavement in front: “Rowland Hill—Postal Reformer, Inventor of the Postage Stamp.” It seemed whimsical of Merrill Lynch to celebrate Britain’s postal heroes. Belsey walked the perimeter again and saw a founding stone amid the ornate flourishes:

Edward VII King of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the seas, Emperor of India, laid this stone of King Edward Buildings, Headquarters of the General Post Office, on the 16th Day of October 1905.

Merrill Lynch occupied the old Post Office headquarters, then—the penultimate stop on the Mail Rail map. The stone grandeur was bizarre compared to the post offices Belsey knew: worn, beige retail operations for pushing lottery tickets and packs of stationery. He found the Mail Rail enthusiasts’ website on his phone. Building purchased by Merrill Lynch in 1997, they reckoned. Occupied by finance ever since.

Belsey sat on a bench by the west wall of the cathedral. He called in and got Aziz.

“I need the record sheet for Kyle Townsend,” Belsey said.

“OK. The Sarge was asking after you.”

“What’s she got?”

“Someone come forward about something.”

“Who?”

“Flatmate of the missing girl.”

Belsey felt a pang of dismay.

“Jayden Culler?”

“Exactly.”

“I let him go.”

“Well he’s back, of his own accord this time. He wanted to talk to her. Fuck knows what his game is.” Belsey digested this uncomfortably. “What was it you said you wanted?” Aziz asked.

He emailed Belsey Kyle’s record sheet. Belsey took a breath then tried to focus. At the time of his Mount Pleasant escapade Kyle had already served eight months for a series of street robberies. Since 2007 he’d done time for intent to supply and, two years ago, for an attempted smash-and-grab in which he’d driven a moped at the window of a Dolce & Gabbana boutique and broken his neck.

He didn’t do time for his visit to the underside of Merrill Lynch. In fact all charges were dropped. There was no sign of his interview on file.

Belsey called Snow Hill police station, which had had the honour of dealing with Kyle on that occasion.

“Can you pull up details for the Kyle Townsend arrest, December 2007?”

They tried.

“They’re not here.”

“What do you mean?”

“The file’s missing.”

Belsey searched for Kyle’s current whereabouts. According to the system, Kyle was acting shy. He’d been arrested for assault on his fiancée in May and then skipped bail, maybe knowing he was looking at a proper stretch now. Belsey made some calls. No one wanted to help. He called the chemist.

“Does the name Kyle Townsend mean anything?”

“Many things to many people, I imagine.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“What could you say if I offered you half the stash on a free?”

“What do you want?”

“Kyle.”