Off the Rails (24 page)

‘Yeah, we got something that looks like proof now, from two nights ago, the night your bloke went missing.’

‘Wherever there’s darkness there are ghost stories,’ Bryant conceded. ‘So what are you saying, that you’ve actually seen this creature for yourself?’

‘Better than that,’ Rasheed told him. ‘We have footage. Mr Dutta was going through the hard drive checking it again and he found this.’ Rasheed searched beneath the burger wrappers on the desk. ‘Where did you put it, Sandwich?’

‘Sorry, mate, I was using it as a coaster.’ Sandwich pulled the disc box out from beneath his tea mug. Rasheed wiped it down and inserted the disc in the optical drive beside his desk.

‘The footage is very dark because half of the lights are out,’ he apologised. ‘When the old Thameslink station shut down and moved over to St Pancras, they left the tunnels open because the maintenance crews still need access to the trunking at
night. Most of the CCTVs have been decommissioned because there’s no-one down there anymore. A couple of cameras are still used for fire prevention, but they’re pretty dirty and have no burned-in time code. We know this footage was shot late on Tuesday night, though, because the cameras are still programmed to record at set times, and there’s an electronic log. Here we go.’

Rasheed hit Play, and they all watched the screen. At first it was difficult to make out what they were seeing. ‘That’s the tunnel wall, on the right.’ Rasheed tapped the screen. ‘Now watch the floor.’

On the monitor, a white flap tumbled and fluttered. ‘That’s just a sheet of newspaper. You feel the wind in the tunnels more at night.’ In the murky brown corner of the screen, something appeared to be crawling slowly along the floor.

‘See it?’ asked Rasheed. ‘It’s too big to be a dog or anything like that.’

A tingle ran across Bryant’s skin. The thing was scuttling like a crab, trying to claw its way up the wall, only to fall back. It had a shiny black carapace like an enormous wrinkled beetle, but there was no way of making out any details. ‘What on earth could it be?’ he asked, leaning forward.

Bitter suddenly spoke up. She opened her mouth so rarely and spoke so softly that everyone found themselves listening intently. ‘It’s the Night Crawler,’ she told them. ‘People say it’s the ghost of a dead man, but it’s not.’

‘Then what do you think it is?’ asked May.

‘A vagrant. When we turned off the electrical supply to the tunnels, we created an ideal hiding place for outcasts. There are people living down there, but you’ll never find them. Not without a guide. We can’t cap off the tunnels, see.’

‘It makes no sense,’ Bryant insisted. ‘Why would a bright,
successful student with a great future ahead of him stage a disappearing act to live in an unlit network of tunnels with a bunch of homeless people?’

‘If that’s what he did, he must have been very frightened of something,’ said May. His finger traced the crawling creature on the screen as it twisted and evaporated. The pixels split into rainbow prisms and the screen crackled into darkness once more.

T
he asymmetrical complex of towers, gables, dormers, chimneys, spires and angled arches that comprised the old redbrick Cruciform Building had been abutted by the vast white façade of the University College Hospital. Together, the two medical centres, one Victorian, one millennial, dominated the streets around Euston. Meera Mangeshkar and Colin Bimsley arrived on the hectic third floor at the hospital just before five
P.M.
Naimh Connor, the duty nurse, took them to Tony McCarthy’s bed.

‘How’s your arm, Meera?’ asked Connor. ‘Fully healed? You didn’t come back to get signed off.’

‘I took the sutures out myself,’ said Mangeshkar. She had recently received a minor injury in the course of duty, and regarded anything less than twenty stitches as something not worth mentioning. ‘How’s he doing?’

‘He’s on heavy medication for pain management. I’d be in
favour of keeping him that way, to be honest. He’s nothing but trouble when he comes off his methadone program.’

‘You’ve had him in before?’

‘He’s turned up on my emergency room shift a few times.’

‘Is he ever with anyone?’

‘Gentlemen with anger management issues like Mr McCarthy here don’t have too many friends,’ answered Connor. ‘No-one’s tried to see him. You can have a word. Hope you get more out of him than I do.’

Mac was propped on a stack of pillows with a white plastic OxyMask fixed to his face. His right wrist was strapped to the bed-rail to prevent him from pulling out his saline drip. He yanked down the mask when he saw the officers. ‘I need to get to a private room,’ he told them. ‘One with a door.’

‘Sure,’ replied Mangeshkar. ‘Just give me your credit card and I’ll have you moved this evening.’

‘I don’t feel safe in an open ward, man.’

‘You think he’s going to come after you again?’

‘You don’t know what he’s like.’

‘Tell us. We may be able to help you.’

Mac leaned up on one yellow bony elbow. He’d been washed, but still looked grubby. ‘He’s a crazy man. He hired me to do a bit of work, right, nothing shifty, make a delivery, drive a van, only he goes and—’ Even in his doped-up state, Mac realised he was about to incriminate himself.

‘Kills someone,’ finished Mangeshkar. ‘We know all about Mr Fox.’

Bimsley pulled his partner to one side. ‘And if he admits he does, too, it could make him an accessory to murder,’ he whispered. ‘We have to tread carefully.’

‘We want to stop him before he gets to you, Mac. He tried once; he’ll probably try again. You’re safe and secure in here.
But once you step out of those doors, we can’t protect you. Why did Mr Fox attack you?’

‘Because I know what he did—I know who he killed. I saw it in the paper.’

‘So did everyone else in London,’ said Bimsley. ‘So why’d he single you out? Just because you performed a few legals for him? Doesn’t make sense, mate.’

‘It’s not that. It’s other stuff.’ Conflict twisted Mac’s face.

‘What other stuff?’

‘If you don’t tell us, we can’t protect you,’ Mangeshkar repeated.

Mac’s eyes flicked anxiously from one officer’s face to the other’s. ‘I know who he really is,’ he said finally.

‘This was an ordinary street crime until you interfered,’ claimed Raymond Land, somewhat unfairly. ‘Now it’s turned into the pair of you chasing some kind of supernatural being through the London Underground. I simply cannot sanction this. I can’t have you creeping through the tunnels of the subway system looking for a giant bat, placing yourself and everyone else in danger.’

‘I knew we shouldn’t have told him,’ mouthed Bryant to May, rolling his eyes.

‘Apart from anything else, it is not under your jurisdiction. The transport police have their own division for this sort of thing.’

‘We’ve spoken to them,’ May explained. ‘They have no record of anyone living rough in the system. I quote: “They used to have this sort of problem in New York, but it’s never happened here.” But if the Hillingdon boy is in hiding and there really are people down there, don’t you think they might have taken him in?’

‘They could be holding him against his will,’ Bryant added, more for dramatic effect than anything. ‘All right, perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned the part about the Night Crawler, but we know this creature was in roughly the same area of the tube system when the boy disappeared.’

Land folded his arms in what he hoped was a pose of determination. ‘You might as well tell me the boy’s been eaten by cannibals or strung up inside a giant web by aliens. I’m simply not going to buy it.’

‘All right, but Hillingdon is missing and may already be dead. Somebody in that house knows something because a travel card used by him on the evening he went missing has mysteriously reappeared in one of the other students’ bedrooms.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Land. ‘You didn’t search the place without a warrant, did you?’

‘No need for a warrant, old sock. I used my legendary charm and discretion. And my light fingers. Hardly any of his friends can properly vouch for their movements on Tuesday night.’

Land massaged the centre of his brow. He was starting to get a migraine. ‘You usually come to me with some kind of theory that makes a sort of distant, twisted sense, but this is the first time you haven’t even bothered with that. First you let this Mr Fox get away, then you take it upon yourselves to start interrogating a bunch of innocent students who obviously have nothing to do with the case I’ve put you in charge of. I sometimes wonder what I’m here for.’

‘Don’t worry, old sausage, we all wonder about that. Look, we’ve got evidence pointing in at least two directions and we think someone in Hillingdon’s group knows where he is, so why don’t we keep a discreet eye on them?’

‘And how are you going to do that?’ asked Land suspiciously.

‘Well, there are five students, so we send Janice, Meera,
Colin, Dan and Jack out to monitor their movements, see where they go and what they get up to. Meanwhile, John and I can search the tube system.’

‘Don’t you think you’re a bit old to be climbing down into tunnels?’ Land scoffed.

‘At least I’ll be able to move at my own rate. I can’t be expected to trail a fit young student all over town, not with my legs.’

‘Fair point.’

‘So we’ll do it and report back.’

Land suddenly realised he’d been tricked into letting London’s most senior detective team go underground to look for some kind of lost tribe. He dreaded to think how this would look on the report to the Home Office.

‘Don’t be so glum, chum.’ Bryant gave his acting superior a friendly tap. ‘Detection is not an exact science. It’s not like you see on the telly, all mitochondria samples, antibacterial suits and slash-resistant gloves. Most days we’re lucky if I can manage to locate the murder site on my A to Z.’

‘That’s because it was printed in 1953,’ said Land. ‘You are not filling me with confidence.’

‘Look, if we’re wrong about the giant bat, I’ll simply blame my medication.’

‘I’m the one who has to carry the can for the Unit’s mistakes,’ Land complained.

‘Then we’ll tell the Home Office you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. We’ll say you had a nervous breakdown after you found out about Leanne.’

‘Leanne? What has my wife got to do with this?’

‘Oh. Er, nothing.’ Bryant offered up an unreassuring smile. ‘Right, let’s get cracking.’

M
ay was sceptical about the idea, but Bryant would not be dissuaded. The pair would personally search the tunnels for any sign that Matthew Hillingdon had been abducted.

This time Raymond Land had insisted they do everything by the book. Before photo passes could be issued along with their Personal Protection Equipment, the two detectives had been required to sign a liability register and read the Health & Safety regulations, which covered everything from the danger of discarded syringes to Weil’s disease in rats, and the risk of being bitten by the tube system’s unique breed of mosquito.

Now, dressed in lemon yellow reflective vests, goggles and steel-capped workboots, the pair waited at the bottom of the King’s Cross escalators for their guide. It was one
A.M.
, and the tube lines were closed for the night. An army of maintenance personnel had moved in to replace tiles, remove fire hazards, renovate paintwork, fix water damage and rewire cable
boxes. They had just four hours to get everything done: All adhesives, paints and cements had to be touch-dry before they left, all equipment repacked and stored away.

‘I’m Larry, your Site Person for the evening,’ said Larry Hale. He solemnly shook each of their hands in turn. Their guide was a barrel-chested black man in his late forties with pugnacious features and gold ear studs. ‘We’ve only got a couple of lads repairing some lights down here tonight, so you won’t be in anyone’s way. I say lads, but there’s more women than you’d expect.’

‘How many workers are there on a team?’ asked May as they walked toward the platform.

‘Depends on the size of the job. We had nearly two hundred at Piccadilly Circus for the refit,’ Hale told them. ‘When we add electronics, the new systems run in tandem with the old ones for two weeks, to iron out bugs.’

‘And I’ve heard there are second sets of tunnels, too,’ said Bryant, ‘built for emergencies on sensitive sections of the line.’

‘Don’t know anything about that,’ said Hale, and Bryant sensed he had stumbled upon an area of secure information. ‘There’s storage behind here, but that’s not ours.’ He indicated a rampart of blue-painted plywood. ‘Licenced by the London Fire Brigade. There are other control and server rooms down here, as well as the giant vents. You’re looking for a place a lad could hide, yes?’

‘Or somewhere he might have fallen,’ said Bryant.

Hale nodded. ‘There are a lot of dead areas in the system,’ he said. ‘Whenever platforms get rebuilt, the old layouts get left behind. The dead tunnels are capped but not filled in. The old City & South London Line’s still there, and parts of the Northern Line that fell out of use, plus there are all the connecting staircases. Many have got access doors but we keep them locked, so he wouldn’t have been able to get in. Mind you, even
I don’t know where all the accesses are, and I’ve been down here seventeen years. My missus says I spend more time here than at home. You’ll have to keep your eyes peeled.’