The Salt Marsh (30 page)

‘He must have gone into one of the wharves,' Sonny said. ‘Meeting whoever was in the Audi, I suppose.'

‘There's a skip just inside the tunnel. We could wait behind that, see what happens.'

‘OK.' He didn't agree with any enthusiasm.

The skip was overflowing with bricks, rubbish bags oozing dirty nappies, chicken bones, squashed baked bean cans. A seagull patrolled the contents proprietorially. They squished themselves into the gap between its dirty metal sides and the sooty bricks of the tunnel wall; the smell of rotting flesh and excrement made her gag. Clink Street, a road sign above their heads proclaimed, site of the old prison. A pigeon flapped, dissolved in the tunnel's darkness, solidified in the daylight at the far end. A car roared up behind them, swerved the corner, sped past the skip, low and black, braked suddenly, pulled up behind the Audi, left the engine idling.

‘Porsche,' she said. ‘I bet it's the one I saw in Dungeness the day Luke disappeared.'

A car door slammed, the Porsche revved away, left a tall skinny figure standing on the cobbles.

‘It's Regan,' Sam whispered. She was sweating, adrenalin pumping, fired by the sense that she was finally homing in on Luke. ‘What do you think she's doing? Collecting something?'

Sonny shrugged in a couldn't-care-less way. Regan disappeared into the warehouse. The Porsche had sealed it as far as Sam was concerned; she was certain Luke must have discovered something about Regan's involvement in the caesium smuggling from Patrick, and had probably seen her that day in Dungeness, maybe with her enforcers; which was why he had vanished. He had been scared by Regan.

‘We should go now,' Sonny said, ‘while we have a chance. I think we've seen enough to confirm that she's a dealer.'

‘I'm not going now. No way.'

She was jittering; stress, the cold dampness of her coat.

‘Sam, it's time to leave. There's nothing we can do here.'

She didn't even bother to reply, eyes trained on the warehouse door through which Regan had disappeared. Waited. Unmoving. Willed the door to open. It did. Regan reappeared, trod the street in their direction. For a moment she thought they had been spotted, but she passed through the tunnel, pale face ghostly in the dimness, and turned north in the direction of the river. Sam shuffled sideways along the wall, waited a few moments before she stuck her head around the skip to see what was going on. She had to pursue Regan, find out what she knew about Luke. She inched out from behind the cover of the skip. Sonny yanked her back.

‘Don't be stupid.'

‘Let go.' She pulled her arm away, broke free, sprinted along the road, not caring about the risks, possessed by anger, fear for Luke, a determination to protect him whatever the cost. Regan had disappeared. The road angled sharply right along the river wall. Sam peered over. A flight of rickety, wooden stairs fell down from the embankment to the river. A black dinghy was easing away from the bottom step, two figures on board, one hoodie-covered, the other Regan, fiddling with the outboard motor.

The prospect of losing her lead filled Sam with desperation. She bellowed, ‘Regan, where's Luke?'

Regan looked up, her eye sockets dark circles in her anaemic face, thin mouth twisted in a knowing leer.

‘You fucking what?'

‘My boyfriend. Luke.'

‘I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.' She smirked, fired the motor, turned away as the Zodiac headed downstream.

Sam leaned over the wall, wondering whether there was any way she could still reach Regan. If she climbed down the stairs, waded out into the water. She heard footsteps running up behind. Sonny.

‘She's getting away,' Sam said, pointing wildly. ‘She said she—'

Sonny interrupted. ‘We've got to move. Four of them have piled out of that warehouse. One of them was swinging an iron bar around. God knows what weapons the others have got.'

‘I don't care.'

‘I do,' he said. ‘You'll get us killed.'

A voice yelled, ‘They must have gone this way.'

The shout brought her to her senses, aware of the imminent danger.

‘The backstreets,' she said. ‘We can lose them in the old Mint.'

FIFTEEN

T
HEY DARTED BETWEEN
a viaduct and a wall of derelict warehouses. The shield of anger that had made her immune to danger when she thought she was on Luke's trail had evaporated. She was scared. She could hear shouts. Boots on cobbles. They cut across a no-man's wasteland by the railway arches; acrid smoke from an oil drum fire drifted around the yard, caught the back of her throat with its toxicity, made her eyes sting. She glimpsed a black-clad figure stirring the brazier flames. He looked up from the oil drum and she saw icy eyes, a crescent scar. He shouted – stop. She ran on, but she couldn't help turning. There was nothing to see. Everything veiled in smoke. She gagged, memories taunting her. Then she found her feet, pounded. Left, right, right again.

They headed into the Mint – a lowland festering sink which once provided shelter for London's fleeing debtors. Rubbish, blocked drains and persistent summer rain had returned the Mint to near swampland once again. Glimmers of the setting sun crept like intruders over the roofs of boarded warehouses but failed to penetrate the narrow streets below. An old man slumped in a doorway flashed a smile as they passed; or maybe he wasn't so old. His teeth looked suspiciously good. A watcher?

She had to slow down, she couldn't keep this pace, she had a stitch. They turned a corner. She was uncertain of her bearings. A shuffling bag lady appeared from nowhere, tan blanket pinned around her shoulders, crutch in one hand, dragging a wheeled Black Watch shopping bag with the other. Sam tried to sidestep, but the woman pushed her trolley out as Sam passed and she half stumbled over one of its wheels. Sam righted herself and was about to say something. The bag lady spoke first.

‘It's the smell I can't stand.' She spoke as if they were old friends, her voice warmer than her appearance. She tapped a manhole cover with the peeling rubber tip of her crutch. ‘You hear that gurgle? The Neckinger. It gets its name from the gibbet at its mouth – used to hang smugglers by the neck.' She cackled, then stopped abruptly. ‘Listen again,' she said.

Sam heard footsteps pounding.

The bag lady said, ‘You're dead if they catch you. Better find somewhere dark to hide till they've passed.'

She waddled off, the wheels of her shopping trolley squeaking as she went. The footsteps were getting louder, heavier, but in the mazelike streets of the Mint, it was hard to relate noise and distance. Sam heard a shout. ‘That old man's seen them.'

They must be right behind. She looked down at the manhole cover, nudged it with her foot.

He followed the line of her gaze. ‘Down there?'

She nodded. ‘We could see if there's an access ladder. I've got a torch.' Even as she suggested it, she wished she hadn't because she knew she didn't want to do it.

Sonny didn't hesitate. He gripped the manhole cover with his fingers, shifted it to one side.

‘Give me the torch, I'll go first.'

He crouched and disappeared backwards through the hole. She followed, moved without thinking because she knew that if she stopped to consider what she was doing, she wouldn't budge. Over the edge, easing the manhole cover back into place above her head, shutting out the light. For a five-second eternity they were in complete darkness, suspended in space, nothing but the roughness of rusty metal on her hands and a deep gurgling noise rumbling up from way down below. Sonny lit the torch, swept the walls with its beam. A vertical chute, once red Victorian bricks fading to grey, a ladder clamped to the wall and running off into oblivion.

‘Are you OK?' His voice reverberated.

‘Not sure. How far is it to the bottom?'

‘I don't know.'

They descended the vertiginous ladder into the darkness, feet searching for rungs, fingers gripping metal. Eventually her shoe hit a flat surface. Sonny swung the torch, yellow eyes reflected, scattered. Rats. The tunnel ran on into nothingness, the air was stale; a heavy muskiness cut by the tang of piss. She listened for the scrape of metal, the giveaway sounds of pursuers, but there was nothing except for the distant rumbling she had heard as they descended. They stood without talking for a while, taking in their situation, drawn below the streets by some strange force of gravity. She felt the tears in her eyes and realized then how scared she was; how stupid she had been.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I shouldn't have chased Regan. I couldn't stop myself.'

‘It was reckless. But I can understand why you did it. It's hard to think straight when emotions kick in.'

She wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘We could wait here for half an hour or so and then climb back up,' she said. ‘I don't want to get lost. A treasure-seeker I met by the Thames told me about the tunnels, the underground rivers. It's a labyrinth.'

‘I'm not sure I can stand still.' His voice had an edginess she hadn't heard before and she realized he was afraid too. ‘If we keep to one tunnel, we'll be OK. Let's walk, see if we can find another exit.'

‘OK.' It wasn't OK, but then nothing was particularly OK at that moment.

He directed the beam along the tunnel; the floor tilted at a slight angle, a black ribbon running slowly along its centre. She stooped, examined the viscous trickle. ‘God, what is this black stuff?' The sludge had a phosphorescent glow, a radioactive luminescence. She dabbed her finger in the tarry mire, held it to her nose. It didn't have the overpowering whiff of straight sewage, though it undoubtedly had some crap in it.

‘Residue,' she said.

She thought of Crawford's Sewer Squad, wading knee-deep in shit, according to Harry. And she wondered whether the trickle contained the wash-off from London's grubby deals, the dark arts, reverse alchemy, the dirty laundering as stolen gold was passed from hand to hand and transformed from something pure into degraded substances; smack, tabs, dope, firearms. The torchlight glinted on the endless stream. ‘Whatever it is, there's a hell of a lot of it.'

They kept to the slope of the wall, leaving footprints in the wallow. The intermittent chains slung across the tunnel's bottom were clogged with the discard of a million lives above: grey rags, abandoned toys, dentures, bones, gaudy trinkets glinting in the torchlight. Hair. Lots of bloody hair. Cavernous arches marked intersections where red brick drains joined the sewer, the vaulted ceilings gilded with snail trails and lurid fungal growths. The dark matter meandered down each tunnel, bad blood infecting every vein. The distant rumble grew louder.

‘What is that noise? Do you think the heavies could have followed us?'

‘They don't know we are down here.'

‘Nobody knows we are down here,' she said. ‘You could kill me and nobody would ever find my body.'

She shook as she spoke, wished she hadn't voiced her fear to Sonny.

‘You could murder me and nobody would find my corpse,' he said.

‘You're right,' she said. ‘I could.' She wanted him to think she had the Firebird with her. She was regretting leaving it in her bedside cabinet.

‘And even if they did find my corpse,' Sonny said, ‘they wouldn't know who I was, because all I've got is fake ID.'

Jim used to say the same when he disappeared undercover; if he didn't come back, they might never find out what had happened to him, because nobody would be able to find out his real identity; a nameless body in the gutter, two bullets in the back of his head. Spooks, undercover agents, they were ghosts even when they were alive. She had a sudden urge to scream, scrabble her way back to the surface. She stifled it, swallowed it. Her mind wandered back to Jim, the footprints in the Effra run-off, his shadow sliding along the tunnel walls. And here she was, trapped in the sewers with her father's phantom and his killer. She held her breath and heard a splash, an echo, the familiar tune whistled in a melancholic key.

‘Can you hear the music?'

‘Yes.'

The notes faded away. She wanted to cry again, with fear, the loss, regrets, she wasn't sure. The torch beam caught a side tunnel. Sonny said, ‘Let's rest in there a while. Switch the torch off, save the battery, and make sure we're not being followed.'

His voice sounded fractured too. They perched on the sloping, damp wall of the drain. Torch extinguished. The blackness engulfed her, odour overwhelming, noises hard to identify.

Inside, outside, far, near, dead or alive, it was all the same in the blackness. She couldn't take it. Her hand reached out, searched for Sonny's hand.

‘I'm scared,' she said.

‘It's OK,' he said. ‘We'll be OK.'

His voice trembled.

‘You don't have to pretend to be brave for me.'

‘OK. I'm scared too.'

‘What's your deepest fear?' she asked.

‘Dying alone.'

She linked her arm around his.

‘What's yours?' he asked.

She didn't answer for a while. Then she said, ‘I'm afraid I'm dead already. That I can't feel. I've perished from the heart, hollow inside. A replicant. A ghost.'

‘Don't worry,' he said. ‘You're alive. You're human.'

She wasn't sure how long they sat in the darkness, arm in arm, without talking, because the only things worth saying were too difficult to be spoken. She didn't stop herself from crying, though, and tasted the saltwater on her lips.

After a while, she said, ‘Maybe it's safe to go now.'

‘I'm beginning to like it down here. There's a certain security in being hidden from the world.'

‘I know. But I think we should face the light.'

He switched the torch back on. They blinked. His face was smeared with grime and tear tracks. He directed the beam at the intersection. ‘There's a ladder up there.'