“But this one was different?”
“Yeah. Mostly they break on a join—the weakest point. This one just sort of blew apart.” He presses his hands together and springs them open. “We couldn't reseal it. We had to replace twenty feet of pipe.”
“Any idea what would have caused a break like that?” asks Ali.
He shakes his head and adjusts his crotch again. “Lew, a guy on our crew, used to be a sapper in the army. He reckoned it was some sort of explosion because of the way the metal got bent out of shape. He figured maybe a pocket of methane ignited in the sewers.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Nope. Used to happen a lot. Nowadays they vent the sewers better. I heard about something similar to this a few years back. Flooded six streets in Bayswater.”
Ali has been walking up and down the road, peering between her feet. “How do you know where the pipes are?” she asks.
“That depends,” says Donovan. “A magnetometer can pick up iron and sometimes we need ground-probing radar, but in most cases you don't need any gizmos. The mains are built alongside the sewers.”
“And how do you find those?”
“You walk downhill. The whole system is gravity fed.”
Crouching down I run my fingers over a metal grate covering a drain. The bars are about three-quarters of an inch apart. The ransom had been wrapped very carefully. Each package was waterproof and designed to float. They were 6 inches long, 21⁄2 inches wide and 3⁄4 inch deep . . . just the right size.
Whoever sent the demand must have expected a tracking device. And the one place a transmitter or a global positioning system can't operate is below ground.
“Can you get me down in the drains, Mr. Donovan?”
“You're joking, right?”
“Humor me.”
He rocks his hand back and forth. “Since 9/11 they been right edgy about the sewers. You take the Tyburn sewer—it runs right under the U.S. ambassador's residence and Buckingham Palace. The Tachbrook goes under Pimlico. You won't find 'em on maps—least not the maps they publish nowadays. And you won't even find the records in public libraries. They took 'em away.”
“But it still must be possible. I can make an application.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Might take a while.”
“How long?”
He rubs his chin. “Few weeks, I guess.”
I can see where this is going. The vast, moribund wheels of British bureaucracy will take my request and pass it between committees, subcommittees and working groups where it will be debated, deliberated upon, knocked about and run up the flagpole—and that's just to decide a form of words for the rejection.
Well, there is more than one way to skin a cat. There are three according to the Professor and he should know—he's been to medical school.
Nearly a decade ago in the battle over the Newbury bypass a man lived in a hole no wider than his shoulders for sixteen days. We had to dig him out but he could tunnel faster with his bare hands than a dozen men with picks and shovels.
Back then he called himself an eco-warrior, fighting the “earth rapists.” The tabloids nicknamed him “Moley.”
It takes Ali three hours and fifty quid in bribes to find his last known address—an abandoned warehouse in Hackney in one of those run-down areas that are hard to find unless you have a can of spray paint or need a “fix.”
Driving slowly between soot-blackened factories and boarded-up shops, we pull up opposite a wasteland where kids have marked out football goals with their puffer jackets. Our arrival is noted. The message will be telegraphed through the neighborhood on whatever grapevine reaches under rocks and into holes.
“Maybe I should stay with the car,” suggests Ali, “while it still has four wheels.”
Ahead of us, a disused factory has soaked up layers of graffiti until one forms an undercoat for the next. To the right is a raised loading dock and large shutters. It includes a regulation doorway that has been covered with a sheet of corrugated iron. Levering it open, I step inside. Shafts of light slant through windows high up on the walls turning floating cobwebs into silver threads.
The ground floor is mostly empty, apart from discarded crates and boxes. Climbing to the second floor, I find a series of former offices, with broken plasterboard panels and exposed wires. One particular room, barely six feet square, has a narrow shelf with a blanket and a mattress stuffed with clothes. A pair of trousers hangs from a nail and cans of food are lined up on a beam. Resting on a box in the center of the room is a tin plate and a mug with a Batman logo.
I trip over an oil lamp on the floor and catch it before it breaks. The glass is warm. He must have heard me coming.
Around me the walls are plastered with sheets of newspaper and old election posters, forming a collage of faces from the news—Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair, Yasser Arafat and David Beckham. George W. Bush is dressed in desert fatigues holding a Thanksgiving turkey.
Another page has a picture of Art Carney along with an obituary. I didn't know Art Carney had died. I always remember him in The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason. He was the neighbor upstairs. In this one episode he and Jackie are trying to learn golf from a book and Jackie says to him, “First you must address the ball.” So Art gives it a wave and says, “Helloooo ball!”
At precisely that moment my fist punches through the newspaper and closes around a clump of filthy, matted hair. Dragging my arm forward, the paper shreds and a squealing, feral creature squirms at my feet.
“I didn't do it! It wasn't me!” cries Moley, as he rolls into a ball. “Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!”
“Nobody is going to hurt you. I'm the police.”
“Trespassing. You're trespassing. You got no right! You can't just come in here—you can't.”
“You're squatting illegally, Moley, I don't think you have many rights.”
He looks up at me with pale eyes in a paler face. His hair has been twisted into dreadlocks that hang down his neck like rattails. He's wearing cargo pants and a camouflage jacket with metal buckles and handles that look like ripcords for a nonexistent parachute.
Having coaxed him to sit on a packing case, he watches me suspiciously. I marvel at his makeshift furniture.
“I like your place.”
“Keeps the rain off,” he says, with no hint of sarcasm. His sideburns make him look like a badger. He scratches his neck and under his arms. Christ, I hope it's not contagious.
“I need to go into the sewers.”
“Not allowed.”
“But you can show me.”
He shakes his head and nods at the same time. “No. No. No. Not allowed.”
“I told you, Moley, I'm a police officer.”
I light the oil lamp and set it on a box. Then I spread a map on the floor, smoothing the creases. “Do you know this place?”
I point to Priory Road but Moley stares at it blankly.
“It's near the corner of Abbot's Place,” I explain. “I'm looking for a storm-water drain or a sewer.”
Moley scratches his neck.
Suddenly, it dawns on me—he can't read a map. All his points of reference are below ground and he can't equate them to crossroads or landmarks above ground.
I take an orange from my pocket and put it on the map. It rolls several times and rocks to a stop. “You can show me.”
Moley watches it intensely. “Follow the fall. Water finds the way.”
“Yes, exactly, but I need your help.”
Moley is still fixated by the orange. I hand it to him and he puts it into his pocket, zipping it closed. “You want to see where the devil lives.”
“Yes.”
“Just you.”