Deep Shelter (2 page)

“Nick.”

“Kirsty.”

Kirsty Craik stood up, smoothing her skirt. She offered her hand and seemed aware that it was an odd form of greeting after their last physical contact. Belsey tried to ignore a pang of nostalgic lust.

“How are you doing?” he said.

“Good. I heard you might be around.”

“I’m told it’s expected of me. It’s nice to see you.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course.”

Craik didn’t look too fazed. Here was that law of nature that gathers up the indiscretions you’ve left behind and strews them in front of you. They did the split-second routine: checked each other’s bare ring fingers, apportioned guilt.

“So, take a seat,” she said. “What are the chances?”

“Moderately high, I guess. It’s a small police force.”

“Smaller by the day. What happened to your face?”

“Straight in with the insults.” Belsey smiled. Craik rolled her eyes. “I was chasing someone. They didn’t like it so they hit me.”

“Are you all right?”

“Never felt better.” He had felt better. And he had looked better, he realised. Craik, though, looked in good shape, even after another few years in the force. She still had the blue eyes, wet and bright. They could make her seem startled when she was just thinking. He’d learned that. He’d been assigned to mentor her during the twilight days of his posting at Borough station. She was new to CID; he was a few weeks away from nearly being sent to jail along with half the officers on the team. So Kirsty Craik got a slightly unusual introduction to detective work.

“Where’ve you been?” Belsey asked.

“Most recently, Kent. Kent CID.” She didn’t expand on the journey that had brought her to Hampstead police station. Maybe his bosses saw an officious, straight-A new blood; someone they could push around. Belsey looked at Craik and didn’t see that at all. He made a vow that he wouldn’t try to sleep with her this time.

“I heard Hampstead was nice,” she said.

“Idyllic.”

She hesitated.

“I need to get my feet under the desk and all the other clichés. Are you in tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s talk more then.” She glanced across her paperwork, unenthusiastically.

“Want to pass some jobs my way?”

“Well, seeing as you ask . . .” Craik selected a duty sheet and handed it over. She seemed only slightly uncomfortable with this exchange of roles. “Looks like it’s been sitting around for a while.” Belsey skimmed it and felt disappointed.

“Break-in at St. Pancras public library?” he said.

“Third this month.”

“That’s the literacy drive paying off.”

“It sounds like someone in the council’s getting a bit upset. Maybe this is a north London thing, I don’t know. Want to give it a look?”

“Of course.” Belsey pocketed the sheet. He had been hoping for something more high-end. This killed the reunion a little. “Consider it done.”

When he was halfway out of the door, he turned back.

“Kirsty, this is a bit of a long shot—the guy who hit me, I’ve been trying to figure out where he went. Near where I lost him, there’s a deep-level bomb shelter, built in the Second World War.” He paused to gauge her reaction. She didn’t even blink. “I think he might have gone in. I want to take a look inside, eliminate it as a line of inquiry. I think it would be easy enough, I’d just need a warrant.”

“A warrant on what grounds? That he disappeared close by?”

“Exactly.”

“Who owns it?”

“I don’t know. There’s a camera there, belongs to some government firm, so I guess it used to be the government, maybe a subsidiary of the government.”

“You want to get a warrant on government property but have no evidence that it’s involved in a crime?”

“I’m not sure who owns it now. It looks disused.”

“OK, Nick. I’ll think about it. I’m not sure we’re in a warrant situation here.”

“I guess not.”

He went back to his desk, wrote up the afternoon’s events and filed them. A fan stirred the heat. Belsey watched DC Aziz wipe his large brow with a paper serviette, then his shaven head, then his neck. Adnan Aziz had been on the team six weeks and had already acquired the workmanlike pace necessary to survive the long haul. He offered a wad of KFC napkins to Belsey and Belsey politely declined.

What a strange end to a strange afternoon. Belsey straightened his paperwork. He briefly wondered what he had done to his life. It was almost six thirty pm; his date was in one and a half hours. He looked at the library break-ins then put them to the side and touched his face where he’d been hit. He saw the man in his grey hoodie, speeding out of nowhere, falling into existence and out again. Belsey typed
PSA
into his browser and stared at the website. He picked up his phone and called downstairs.

“Is the storeroom open?” he asked.

“I haven’t locked it.”

“I need some oil in the Skoda.”

“Help yourself.”

Belsey went down to the basement. He took a hand axe, bolt cutters and a twelve-inch Maglite, loaded them into his car and drove to Belsize Park.

QUARTER TO SEVEN AND THE HIGH STREET WAS
packed. Belsize Park had continental pretensions and only a few weeks of sunshine a year to exercise them. Restaurants spilled furniture onto the pavement. People spoiled the effect, sitting on kerbs holding dented cans. Office workers who’d been playing truant were safe now, lost among the crowds of reinforcements outside every pub. Everyone was drunk. Everything was launching unsteadily into the night.

Belsey parked across from the Costa, took his tools and walked down the alleyway. He stared at the entrance tower and felt it staring back at him. No one could see him from the high street. He knocked on the metal and wondered what he expected to happen. He considered obscuring the CCTV, but if someone somewhere was monitoring this set-up then they knew him by now. He made a final attempt at calling PSA, a gesture for his own conscience. Again it rang without answer. Well, they could try getting in touch with him if they had a problem.

He cut through the wire fence. Soon there was a gap big enough to clamber through. He took a broken chair from among the rubbish in the high weeds. It was stable enough on its side and got him to what he took to be a boarded-up window. The wood, rotted around its nails, came away easily when he wedged the axe blade in, exposing a black gap.

Belsey chucked the rotten boards into the weeds and stared through what had been a small window, no glass, some thin, rusted mesh folded down. He shone the torch. He could make out a scattering of dead leaves, curved brick walls and the grille of an ancient lift. Narrow passageways led either side of the lift. He hid the axe and bolt cutters among the brambles, then pulled himself up to the ledge and jumped in. The bare concrete made for a heavy landing. He straightened and tingled. It was dark. A lot cooler than outside. The ventilation slats afforded milky strips of light. The floor was messy with brick dust and bird feathers.

He peered through the lift’s grille into the endless black shaft. He checked the inside of the front panels that blocked the entrance and saw a brass padlock fastening them, cheap but new. He looked for scratches around the lock; hardly any. He handled the cold metal. Then he walked around the lift to the back of the turret. The torch beam lit a lot of white growth like cotton wool; not cobwebs. He peeled a strand. It was a kind of mould. It stuck to his hands. Then, where the mould had been cleared, he found a wooden door. Belsey turned the handle and it opened, towards him. On the other side concrete stairs spiralled downwards between blackened brickwork.

“Hello?” he called.

He felt stupid. He stepped in and eased the door closed behind him, leaving it just ajar. The stairs twisted around the mesh cage of the lift shaft. Dust-furred suspension ropes sunk down inside the cage. Belsey descended five steps, then ten, then committed to reaching the bottom. He followed the torch beam, timing his descent. The blood-like smell of rusting iron and damp stone grew thicker. He felt he was being swallowed—that it was no longer curiosity driving him but some form of peristalsis. The shelter nourished itself on over-curious detectives. Maybe his man in the BMW procured them.

Two minutes later he paused, still on the stairs, and tried to assess his depth. The earth above him rumbled. So he was beneath the tube. The track between Hampstead and Belsize Park ran almost two hundred feet below the surface. That was a fair slice of London clay above his head. He remembered how much he liked space, being able to move, change location if he wanted. On the two occasions he’d been locked in a cell this was the revelation: he hadn’t thought he was claustrophobic because he was rarely confined. After another minute Belsey reached a corrugated iron panel screwed into the walls either side, blocking the way down. A notice had been pasted over the metal a long time ago:
DANGER: NO ENTRY
. But someone had decided to ignore the notice, smashing the metal off its fixings. Belsey pushed and it toppled over with a clang.

“Police!” he said, then forced a laugh to take the edge off the silence. Here was the law: darkness behave. He stepped over the metal. No more stairs. A short corridor led to a brick wall. To his left, a cell of rusting machinery. To his right there was a heavy iron door, painted battleship grey with a handwheel in the centre. It was the sort of thing you might find in a bank vault. Belsey tried turning the wheel, then pulled hard and the door eased towards him on recently oiled hinges.

He couldn’t understand what he was seeing at first: iron racks, long rows of metal shelving, which he realised, after a moment, were beds. Three-tiered bunk beds. The dormitory was low with a rounded ceiling formed by arched sections of metal. The walls glistened in the torchlight. Belsey walked in. The beds stretched endlessly down each side. To the left was a door with a tin sign:
Warden’s Post
. The warden’s post was a small square room with a wooden seat and a desk supporting one empty champagne bottle. Evidently the warden had been celebrating. Belsey lifted the bottle: 1970 Krug. He sniffed it and could still smell the alcohol. There were fresh fingers marks in the dust.

A porcelain sink at the back of the warden’s post contained flakes of plaster. Above it was a cabinet. Belsey opened the mirrored doors and found a heap of tiny bones and a mouse skull, like parts from an assembly kit. On the top shelf were two brown pharmaceutical bottles. One was labelled “Evipan,” the other “Dexedrine.” They were empty. No date, no patient name. They weren’t standard pharmacy labels.

He checked his watch. It was five past seven but this felt as if it related to somewhere far away. Belsey walked back into the dorm. He tested a bunk with his hand then lay down on the metal. It was comfortable enough when his weight settled. He switched the torch off. The darkness was so thick it had its own texture. It bristled. The mind rebelled and projected images, then patterns, then tried to come to terms with the total absence of sight. This is death, he thought. He could smell old blankets. There was a wave of stale fear left by the original shelterers, then boredom, then both passed. He began to feel an astonishing sense of calm, as if someone had just explained that the world above ground was an elaborate hoax.

He sat up and switched the Maglite back on. There were the curved ribs of wall, like whale bones. A faded sign:
Put out all lights before leaving at night
. Then his torchlight hit glass, low down: bottles glinting on the floor between the bunks. He stepped closer. Champagne bottles. They had been arranged like skittles. These ones were unopened. There were more cases stacked against the sides: sealed 1970 Krug, seven cases, six bottles each. Then, further in, smaller, unmarked boxes. Belsey tore them open. Taylor’s Vintage Port and Hennessy cognac. It was all old: labels in styles he recognised from framed adverts on pub walls. The boxes were marked
For Dispatch: Red Lion
. Which Red Lion had lost this haul? There were also cartons of Embassy cigarettes and three plastic cases marked with a first-aid cross. Belsey opened one and whistled: eleven bottles of pills. They had the same neat, bare labels as the two he had seen in the warden’s cabinet, only these were still brimming: hexobarbitone, modafinil, sodium amytal, Evipan, Pentothal, benzylpiperazine. He’d stumbled upon a treasure trove.

Belsey stuffed a couple of medication bottles into his jacket pocket, then took the foil off a Krug and popped the cork. The champagne ran over his hands and fizzed in the dirt. He swigged. It was fine champagne. Even at room temperature—subterranean temperature. There were many Red Lion pubs, many he knew and had enjoyed, few with a wine list like this. The bubbles crackled around his shoes; then all was silent with secret joy. He swigged again. It was peaceful. He tried to remember the last time he’d been out of the earshot of sirens.

7:20 P.M. AND BELSEY
hauled himself out through the window, blinking at the shine of the present day. He brushed Blitz dust off his suit. It was remarkably unstained, which seemed to accentuate the ease, and therefore opportunity, of the whole thing.

He called a contact as he drove back to the station: Mr. Kostas, proprietor of Diamante’s on the Seven Sisters Road. They went back years, and Belsey knew Kostas could do with some help. He’d started talking about torching the place.

“Mr. K. I’ve got a few crates of bubbly going cheap, if you’re interested.”

“How cheap?”

“Champagne at twenty. It’s genuine Krug. Also cognac at ten, which is robbing myself. I’ll throw in five cartons of cigarettes, maybe a bottle of port.”

“How much have you got?”

“Forty bottles thereabouts.”

“Saturday I’ve got a hen party coming, Nick. You do something that looks classy at fifteen a bottle I’d get the lot.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

Belsey made a quick calculation: fifteen a bottle, six bottles a crate, make two or three trips up and down, plus a hundred quid for the cigarettes, then the meds—benzylpiperazine was an upper, so was Dexedrine; he didn’t know modafinil; hexobarbitone was presumably a barbiturate. Say five hundred for the drugs at a very conservative estimate and he was looking at over a grand.