Deep Shelter (10 page)

“You say it’s still confidential.”

“Details remain sensitive.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Obviously.”

“So where did you get information?”

“I stole it off some better writers who’d put a lot of time and effort in. Where do you think? He’s an interesting figure. Interesting enough for both sides to have allowed him to sink back into obscurity. Still, I don’t think he reinvented himself along these lines. I don’t think he’s resurrected his old handle for the sake of abducting girls and trying to create a media commotion.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Then Belsey decided to share.

“Do you know St. Pancras Library? The ugly concrete building opposite the train station?”

“Some would call it a masterpiece of the Brutalist style, but yes, go on.” Monroe sipped, intrigued.

“Last night I followed a tunnel from a deep-level bomb shelter in Belsize Park to a bunker under the library. I ended up in a room with communications equipment. It was set up with this system: HANDEL.”

The journalist checked Belsey’s face for sincerity.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty clean these days, Tom. I know when I’m stuck in a cold-war bunker and when I’m just having a bad night. I was there: it had the switches, the phones, all under the council HQ. Have you heard anything about tunnels like that? A system?”

“No. What were you
doing
down there?”

“Trying very hard to get out. The bunker beneath the library was last used in 1983, by the look of it. Does that make sense?”

“I don’t see why not. There was almost a nuclear war in the eighties. It wasn’t all cocaine and Duran Duran. Things were tense.”

“Does Ferryman connect to that?”

“Sure. That’s the period. Why?”

“Why? Because I’m trying to get something to make sense here. You can see I’m struggling.”

“I can see you’re struggling, but I can’t see what it’s about. Is there an ongoing investigation? Is there a media team I can speak to? Or are you just tunnelling around on your own. Who made
you
Spycatcher?”

Belsey drank. He wondered. He’d walked into it. Driven into it. He’d been in the wrong place at the right time—was that it? And then he’d encroached on someone’s lair.

“I can’t go into more details just yet.”

“So I’m not meant to run any of this.”

“Not a word. I can make sure you’re the first to know when we’ve got something. You’ll have it on exclusive. But I need you to help. To find out about this underground system.”

“It would be more helpful running this picture.”

“No. That’s what he wants.” Belsey picked up Monroe’s phone. “Have you replied to the email?”

“Of course not.”

Belsey pressed reply and typed:
I’d like to interview you. Speak to me, I think I can help.
He sent the message, then forwarded the email to himself. Then he deleted it from Monroe’s phone.

“Tell me if you hear anything,” he said. “Me, not anyone else.”

“I might call the police next time.” Monroe took his phone and cigarettes and walked out. Belsey sat for a moment in the shadows with the pint glasses. He looked at the picture of Jemma again and the HANDEL attack-warning equipment. He tried calling her mobile and it went to voicemail. Phone could be dead. She could be dead. She could be underground; phone could be underground. He had a thought.

Belsey called three mobile phone companies and ran Jemma’s number by them. Jemma Stevens wasn’t a customer of Talk Talk or O2. He got a result from Vodafone: she had been a contract customer for two years. Belsey gave the necessary credentials to be put through to their police liaison department.

“Hamish speaking.”

“Hamish, does this phone have a locator service?” Belsey gave her number.

“No.”

“Any kind of tracking set up?”

“Afraid not. There’s no GPS on this make of Nokia.”

“Could you tell me when it was last used?”

“No calls or texts have been made since Monday evening.”

“We’ve got a possible kidnap situation. Can you ping it for me?”

“Hold on a minute.”

Pinging a phone the old-school way meant locating it by establishing which mast was closest. 999 calls automatically got a ping location. Otherwise, without consent of the phone owner, it was slightly more complicated. Sure enough, when Hamish came back he asked if Belsey had a court order.

“I’m getting it through now. But we’re looking at minutes rather than hours. Hang on.” He half covered the receiver. “They matched the skin patch? OK, no. Removed while they were alive? A square of skin? Are you joking? Yes, I’m speaking to her phone company now. Hamish? Are you still there?”

“NW3, yesterday,” Hamish said. “8:21 p.m. That’s when the phone was last in signal.” NW3 was Belsize Park. 8:21 p.m. was Belsey taking her down. Not much help. “Then the signal cut out.”

“OK.”

Belsey was about to ring off when Hamish said: “Hang on. Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“There’s a weak signal now.”

“Same mast?”

“No. Holborn area.”

“The phone’s in Holborn now?”

“It’s a very weak signal, coming and going. Either the batteries are dying or there’s some obstruction.”

Belsey grabbed the
A-Z
from his jacket.

“Can you narrow that down at all?”

“The tower covers WC1. That’s the tower she’s receiving signals from. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

Belsey tried to remember the nearest deep shelter to Holborn. He’d marked nothing on the
A-Z
until Goodge Street, a mile away. He brought up the list of shelters on his phone. It mentioned one around Chancery Lane. According to the site it had been built but never opened to the public. Built between 1940 and 1942 and never opened. So what the hell was down there?

FIVE O
’
CLOCK, ELECTRICITY IN THE AIR, STORM CLOUDS
imposing a heavy silver twilight. Belsey parked on Gray’s Inn Road and walked to Chancery Lane tube station. The shelters never seemed to stray far from the tube. Men and women streamed past, out of the courts and legal chambers, smart, harried, scanning the sky. He searched the surrounding architecture for war. His senses were open. He looked for the tell-tale bricks and geometry, for cameras and barbed wire. He walked up and down High Holborn, gazing over the heads of the crowd, looking in the cracks between sandwich shops and newsagents.

The pavement prickled. She was under his feet. There were hatches in the ground. Once Belsey began looking he saw them everywhere: iron manhole covers, weathered, some ancient, marked with the names of companies who once had privileged access to what lay below. TWA—Thames Water Authority, long gone. LEB, London Electricity Board, that was disbanded. CATV? He had no idea. There were some with the old 1980s British Telecom logo. Belsey knelt and checked the locks. Commuters parted around him. The hatches needed special lifting tools. A pair of Community Support Officers saw him and stopped. Belsey straightened. They lifted a radio and he slipped off the main road onto a narrow side street.

Furnival Street. He sensed something about the place before he knew what it was. A security camera assessed him from the top of a pole planted on a narrow island in the centre of the road.
Images are recorded in the interests of National Security
. The City of London liked to keep itself secure but didn’t camera every square inch. No banks around, nothing high risk. Then Belsey saw it, squeezed nonchalantly between the office buildings: a slab of moody brick and grey tiles. It conformed to the size and shape of the buildings either side but this structure had no windows, just black steel doors at ground level and a ventilation grille across the whole of the second floor, like a mouth. Its most striking feature, however, was an industrial-size winch mechanism swivelled to fit flush against the bricks. It looked like something you’d see on an old warehouse or a mine.

The internet on his phone was down. Belsey hesitated, then called the office. Rob Trapping picked up.

“Rob, I need you to run a search online for me.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to find out what happened to the deep-level bomb shelter at Chancery Lane.”

“What?”

“Just search it: Chancery Lane deep shelter.”

Trapping tapped at his keyboard.

“It never opened,” he said.

“I know. But it was built.”

“Hang on.” It took him a minute. “Nick, I’ve got a website that says twin tunnels were excavated under Chancery Lane during the Second World War.” Trapping paused. “This is weird.”

“What is it?”

“They were then used by the government.”

“For what?”

“They reckon some kind of secret telephone exchange.”

“Underground?”

“Yes. According to this it stretches for a mile beneath High Holborn. It says here it has its own water supply from an underground water source, food stores, oil reserves.”

“Stretches for a mile in which direction?”

“Nick, this could all be bollocks. It’s just some amateur’s website.”

Belsey was already heading back to the main road.

“It follows the length of High Holborn?”

“Supposedly. This is what the site says.” Trapping read in a faltering monotone: “The spine of the exchange is a tunnel 100 feet down on the northern side of High Holborn, between Hatton Garden and Bloomsbury Square. It runs under Gray’s Inn Road. Eating and sleeping facilities are situated on the Bloomsbury side. The Hatton Garden end has communications equipment and generators.”

“Where’s the entrance?”

“31 High Holborn, apparently.”

“Hold on.”

Belsey found number 31. It was a new apartment building, its salmon-pink imitation marble no more than ten years old. A passageway split the building from a tax accountant’s. Belsey ran down and saw an older extension jutting out: darker bricks, windowless, with one wooden door and an old sign:
London Transport Executive
. The door didn’t budge a millimetre when he pushed it. There was no handle. He thumped with his fist, and it felt solid as a wall.

“Any other entrances?”

“Furnival Street,” Trapping said. “It had a goods lift for transporting machinery down to the tunnels.”

“I saw that. The winch is still there but there’s no way in.”

“That’s everything, Nick. I’ve got to go. Sergeant Craik’s back.”

Belsey circled the area a final time. He found a metal chimney rising improbably out of a pedestrianized area on Leather Lane. It looked like some piece of public art. Office workers sat on the base, checking their phones, feet dangling over the abyss. He imagined cries for help coming from the chimney, startling them from their cappuccinos.

It stretches for a mile . . .

Belsey tried to feel the shape of it beneath him. Where did it end? He went back to High Holborn and turned, looking west over what must have been the length of it. He stared towards the hubbub of Oxford Street, the junction with Charing Cross Road, the one building alone against the sky: Centre Point.

THE RECEPTION AREA AT THE BASE OF CENTRE POINT
was very white, with a list of the building’s occupants on a backlit panel behind the security desk. Belsey read through, ignoring the stare of the guard sunk low in his swivel chair: a couple of foreign oil companies, a talent agency, a restaurant on the top floor. Nothing that leapt out and said nuclear-proof telephone exchange. The restaurant had its own lift. It also had a sign saying “Closed for Private Function.” But he wasn’t looking to go up anyway. He wanted to explore the lowest floors. Belsey moved for the stairs.

“Excuse me,” the guard said.

“Hi.”

“Who are you visiting?”

Belsey glanced at the list again.

“All-Star Talent Agency.” It was a bad choice. The guard raised an eyebrow.

“Your name?”

“They’re not expecting me.”

“Really.”

“I’ll give them a call instead.”

Belsey left the reception and walked around the concrete struts to a bar that occupied part of the building’s ground-level sprawl. Until a few months ago it had been a cheap and cheerful dive for students, and businessmen looking to prey on them. Now it had installed a girl by the door and was calling itself a private members’ club. Still his best chance of gaining access.

“I’m interested in joining,” he told the young gatekeeper. The girl looked him up and down.

“Have you emailed?”

“I don’t use email.”

This threw her a little. He glanced past. It looked quiet inside.

“Do you have any members?” he asked.

“It’s early.”

“I’d like to take a look around, see if it meets my needs.”

The girl was too detached for a confrontation. She squeezed a click counter and let him through “for a few minutes.” The bar was as he remembered it, only they’d stripped off the wallpaper and painted the furniture white. The barmaid was a stoned Spanish girl with a tongue piercing. Belsey waited for her to finish chalking up a list of cocktails.

“Strange question,” Belsey said. “Are you aware of any levels beneath the building?”

She shook her head.

“Do you have a basement?”

“Just the toilets.”

“Where are the kitchens?”

The girl pointed behind the bar.

Belsey got a whisky sour. He sunk into a sofa at the back, dialled the number for Land Registry and asked when Centre Point was built. They said 1963. He asked who the first occupants were and this took them longer.

“We don’t have anyone until 1973. Then several private businesses.”

“1973? I need to know who was in it first, after it was built.”

“It was empty. That is the first: 1973.”

“There was no one in it for ten years?”

“That’s right.”

He turned his mobile off and on. Internet returned. He typed
Centre Point
into his phone and found articles about the West End, redevelopment, bars, tourism. Then, several scrolls down, one entitled: “Mystery of Central London Eye-Sore.”

Recent weeks have seen proposals to re-landscape the notorious urban mess around the base of Centre Point. Yet what the glossy presentations fail to disclose is the mysterious past of this London landmark. The tower block has always been dogged by controversy. When it was built in 1963 it flew in the face of all planning regulations, leading members of the public to wonder why the government stepped in at the last moment to push it through. Suspicions grew when the building was subsequently left empty for the first ten years of its life.