“There's less shit flowing.”
I wish I hadn't asked. Ray Murphy's wife had talked about him working as a flusher. Pete explains how teams of six men, with a ganger in charge, clear blockages by hauling silt out through the manholes.
“I know it sounds pretty antiquated but there's some high-tech stuff, too. They got these little boats—more like hovercrafts really—with cameras on 'em that film the inside of the sewers, looking for problems. You got to watch out for 'em. You don't want to get caught down there.”
The van skids to a halt on loose gravel in a deserted parking lot. As the rear doors open, Moley climbs out first and hands me a pair of overalls and waist-high waders. Next comes a safety harness and Sellafield gloves. Meanwhile, Weatherman Pete opens a yellow plastic suitcase and unfurls a retractable aluminum pole with a tripod and wind cups on the top.
“It's a portable weather station,” he explains. “It gives me wind speed, wind direction, temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, solar radiation and precipitation. Everything gets fed into a computer.” He opens a laptop and taps the keyboard. “Right now, you have a window of four hours.”
Moley adds a safety helmet and an emergency breathing apparatus to my outfit. He scratches his armpits one last time before he shimmies into his waders.
“Any cuts? Cover them up with waterproof Band-Aids,” says Barry, tossing a box toward me. “Weil's disease—you get that from rat urine. It gets into a cut and ends up in your brain.”
He checks my harness. “Let me tell you what can go wrong down there: fire, explosions, asphyxiation, poisoning, infection and rats that can strip the flesh off your bones. Nobody knows we're down there, so we can't guarantee the sewers are vented. There could be pockets of methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, benzene, CO2 and gases I swear don't even have names yet. Don't touch your eyes or mouth with your gloves. Stick close to Moley. Nobody knows his way around like he does.”
He clips a gas monitor onto my harness.
Weatherman Pete gives a thumbs-up and Moley levers open a manhole cover, rolling it to one side. Then he lowers a safety lamp down the small circular shaft. Angus and Phil descend first, climbing down the iron rings. I'm squeezed between Barry and Moley.
The sewer is less than five feet high, forcing me to bend, and the air smells of feces and a putrid dampness. The brick walls curve at the sides and disappear into a shallow stream running down the center. Our shadows are distorted against the brickwork.
“Don't forget to put the seat down,” says Angus, urinating against a wall.
Moley looks at me, the whiteness of his eyes glowing in the lamplight. He doesn't say anything but I know he's giving me one last chance to go back.
Weatherman Pete rolls the manhole cover back into place, sealing us inside.
I suddenly feel nervous.
“How is he going to contact us if it rains?”
“The old-fashioned way,” replies Barry. “He's going to pick up a manhole cover and drop it six inches. We'll hear it miles away.”
Angus claps me on the shoulder. “So what do you think?”
“It doesn't smell so bad.”
He laughs. “Come down here on Saturday morning. Friday is curry night.”
Moley has moved off, wading along the stream. Barry falls in behind me, crouching more than most, as his ample frame is buttressed on all sides by the harness. Water swirls around my knees and the sweating bricks look almost silver in the flashlight beam.
“We call these snotsicles,” says Barry, pointing out the stalactites brushing against our helmets.
Despite the cold I'm already starting to perspire. A hundred yards and a permanent shiver sets in. Every sound is magnified and it makes me edgy. I have been trying to weave Mickey into the various scenarios but it's getting harder.
Another part of me thinks of Ali in the hospital, staring at her crippled self in the mirror, wondering if she's ever going to walk again. I started this. I let her come along when she had far more to lose than I did. Now I'm wading in filth and shit and it seems appropriate. When you consider the state of my life, my career and my relationships, I belong down here.
“The place you showed us on the map. We're under it now,” says Barry, his headlamp momentarily blinding me.
I glance up at a large opening and a side tunnel. The burst water main on the night of the ransom drop sent a thousand gallons a minute flooding through the streets and into the drains—enough to carry a ransom; maybe even enough to carry me.
“If something got washed down here, where would it finish up?”
“It's a top-down system. Operates on gravity,” says Angus.
Moley nods in agreement.
“Go-go-go-got flushed away,” stutters Phil.
Barry begins to explain. “These small local sewers feed into main sewers and the waste is then drawn off into one of five interceptory sewers that run west to east—all fed by gravity. The high-level sewer begins at Hampstead Hill and crosses Highgate Road near Kentish Town. Farther south you got two middle-level sewers. One begins close to Kilburn and runs under the Edgware Road to Euston Road, past Kings Cross. The second runs from Kentish Town under Bayswater and along Oxford Street. Then you got two low-level sewers, one under Kensington, Piccadilly and the City; and the other right under the Thames Embankment, following the northern bank of the river.”
“Where do they all go?”
“To the sewage treatment works at Beckton.”
“And the system gets flushed out by rainfall?”
He shakes his head. “The main sewers are built alongside old rivers that provide the water.”
The only river I know that enters the Thames estuary from the north is the River Lea, which is a long way east of here.
“There are heaps of them,” scoffs Angus. “You can't just wish a river away. You can cover 'em over or divert 'em into pipes but they'll keep flowing just the same as always.”
“Where are they?”
“Well you got the Westbourne, the Walbrook, the Tyburn, Stamford Brook, Counter's Creek and the Fleet . . .”
Each of these names is familiar. There are dozens of streets, parks and estates named after them, but I had never equated them with ancient rivers. The fine hairs on my neck are standing on end. You hear stories about secret cities beneath cities; tunnels that took prime ministers to war cabinet rooms and passageways that carried mistresses for rendezvous with kings, but I had never imagined a world of water, unseen blind rivers, coursing beneath the streets. No wonder the walls are crying.
Moley wants us to keep moving. The tunnel goes straight on with occasional vertical shafts emptying into it from above creating mini-waterfalls. Keeping to the center of the stream, our boots slosh through the sediment and cold grayish water. Slowly the passages grow wider and taller and our shadows no longer stoop against the walls.
Tethered together we descend into a shaft and wade silently along a larger sewer. Occasionally we slide down cement slopes, splashing through several inches of stinking water. At other times we near the surface and faint beams of light angle through iron grates.
I try to imagine the ransom, divided and sealed in plastic, being carried through these tunnels, dropping over waterfalls, floating through crypts.
For another hour we walk, crawl and slide. Eventually, we emerge into a cavernous Victorian brick chamber supported by pillars and arches. It must be thirty feet high, although it's hard to tell in the darkness. White-green water seems to boil at my feet, plunging over a waterfall.
Everywhere there are rusty iron gratings and long chains hanging from the roof. A concrete weir, made up of two large spillways, divides the room. Foaming gouts of waste are swept away by a great culvert that intercepts the flow above the spillway.