Lowering myself into the channel, water soaks my trousers and fills my shoes. My chest is submerged and my back scrapes against the roof. Holding the flashlight in my mouth, I crawl forward. The darkness pushes back at me.
Mud sticks to my knees and shoes. Three or four inches deep, I feel like I'm wiggling through it like an earthworm. The grunts and groans belong to me but echo back as though there's someone ahead of me . . . waiting. After fifteen feet the channel begins to slope downward, getting gradually steeper. My hands slip and I fall on my face into the water. The flashlight is submerged. Thank God it still works.
The steeper gradient and the force of the water behind me push me forward. If the tunnel gets any narrower I'll be wedged inside, trapped. My back scrapes against the ceiling. The water seems to be rising. Perhaps I'm being paranoid.
I slip again and shoot forward, pushing mud, gravel and water ahead of me. Convulsing and trying to retreat, I can't stop. My legs are useless. I rise over a hump and then feel myself in midair, falling. I land with a splash in water and muck. The smell is unmistakably a sewer. My first impulse is to vomit.
A poultice of dark mud covers my eyes. I scrape it off, trying to see, but the darkness is absolute. The flashlight is gone, either washed away or water-damaged.
Sitting up, I check that nothing is broken. My hands are shaking from the cold and I can't feel my fingers. Water cascades from the opening above my head. I have to get out of here.
Taking stock, I try to plot where I might be in relation to Dolphin Mansions. I can't read my watch so I don't know how long I've been down here. The ledge was narrow and my progress slow. I might only have traveled a few hundred yards. I heard traffic. I must have passed under a road. I listen again. Instead of a distant rumbling I feel a faint breeze against one cheek.
Standing too quickly, I smack my head against the roof and curse. Don't do that again. Crouching, I spread my palms against the curved brick wall and edge my way forward like a blind man in a maze. Occasionally, I pause and try to feel the breeze again. My mind wants to play tricks on me. Either the breeze disappears or seems to be coming from the opposite direction.
I can feel the desperation rising in me, scalding my esophagus. In the darkness I could plunge into a shaft and never get out. Maybe I should turn back.
Suddenly, a faint glow appears ahead of me. The shaft of light looks like a ghostly hologram in the center of the tunnel. I step inside and raise my face. I can see the sky through a rectangular grate. The edges are softened by turf spilling over the sides. I see football boots, shin guards and muddy knees. A handful of schoolboys and teachers are watching the game. Someone shouts, “Press forward.” Someone else bellows, “Offside!”
Nearest to me a lone teenager appears to be reading a book.
“Help me!”
He looks around.
“I'm down here!”
He peers at the grate.
“Help me get out!”
Dropping to his knees, he puts an eye against the bars.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“I'm a police officer.”
I know it doesn't answer the question but it seems to be enough. He goes to fetch a teacher. I can hear him.
“Sir, there's someone in a hole over there. I think he might be stuck.”
A new face appears at the grate, older and in charge.
“What are you doing down there?”
“Trying to get out.”
More faces arrive and stand around the drain. The football game appears to have been forgotten. Most of the players are now scrabbling to get a look at “this guy stuck down a hole.”
A crowbar is summoned from a car trunk. Turf is kicked away from the edges. The grate is pulled aside and strong hands reach inside. I emerge onto a patch of English autumn, blinking into the sunlight and wiping the remains of the sewer from my face.
Reaching into my sodden pocket I retrieve the last of the morphine capsules. Magically, the pain lifts and a wave of emotion passes over me. I don't normally like emotion. It's a wishy-washy, moist-eyed, soft-in-the-head state, good for postcoital bliss and rugby reunions, but you know something, I love these lads. Look at them, all dressed up in their school scarves, kicking a ball around the place. They look so cute. They even let me shower in the pavilion and someone lends me a shirt, tracksuit bottoms and a pair of sneakers. I look like a senior citizen on a power walk.
The Professor is summoned and finds me in the pavilion. Straight off he treats me like a patient, taking my face in his hands and holding my eyelids open.
“How many did you take?”
“The last two.”
“Jesus!”
“I'm fine, really. Listen to me. I've been down there . . . in the river. We should have seen it years ago.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know how they got her out of Dolphin Mansions. She went down the hole—just like Alice in Wonderland.”
I know I'm not making sense but Joe perseveres. Finally, I tell him the story but instead of getting excited he gets angry. He calls me stupid, foolhardy, rash and impulsive, but each of the criticisms is prefaced by the term “with all due respect.” I've never been so politely told off.
I look at my watch. It's almost eleven o'clock. I'm due in court at midday.
“We can still make it.”
“I have to stop off somewhere first.”
“To change your clothes.”
“To see a boy about a light.”
25
The Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand are composed of a thousand rooms and three miles of hallways, most of them lined with dark wooden panels that soak up the light and add to the gloom. The architecture is Victorian Gothic because the courts are meant to intimidate the crap out of people, which they do.
For Eddie Barrett, however, it's just another stage. Striding along corridors, he pushes through doors and scatters the clusters of whispering lawyers. For a man with short legs and a bulldog swagger, he moves surprisingly quickly.
Barrett is to the legal profession what hyenas are to the African plains—a bully and a scavenger. He takes cases according to how much publicity they generate rather than the fees and he uses every legal loophole and ambiguity while grandly extolling the British judicial system as “the finest and fairest in the world.”
In Eddie's mind the law is a flexible concept. It can be bent, twisted, flattened and stretched until it becomes whatever you want it to be. He can even make it disappear when turned sideways.
A dozen steps behind him comes Charles Raynor, QC, known as “The Rook” because of his black hair and beaked nose. He once made a former cabinet minister cry under cross-examination about his taste in women's underwear.
Eddie spies me and swaggers over. “Well, lookie see who's here—Inspector Roooeeeez. I hear all sorts of stories about you. I hear your wife is banging someone else—his dick, her pussy, making whoopee. I'd be pretty pissed if I caught my missus shagging her boss. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, isn't that what they say? No mention there of giving it up for the firm's accountant.”
My jaw clenches and I feel the red mist descending.
Eddie takes a step back. “Yeah, that's the temper I heard so much about. Have fun in court.”
I know he's winding me up. That's what Eddie does—gets under people's skin, looking for the softest flesh.
Spectators are crammed into the public gallery and there are three full rows of press, including four sketch artists. The furnishings and fittings predate microphones and recording equipment so cables snake across the floor, pinned beneath masking tape.
I look around for Rachel, hoping she might be here. Instead I see Aleksei, who is watching me as though waiting for me to instantly disintegrate. To his left is the Russian and to the right a young black man with loose limbs and liquid eyes.