It was hard to pinpoint the sound: the whole vault was an echo chamber, and that far underground she’d lost all sense of direction. But if the crypt was built to the plan of a church, then the far end, where the Saint-Lazare vault lay, must be east. The door would be west, and the right side of the aisle — looking towards the door — would be north.
Ellie was pretty sure the Central Line ran to the north of the Monsalvat building.
She ran to the crossing where the four arms of the church came together and listened, turning slowly, testing. The noise was definitely loudest from the north transept. She walked along it to the far end. There were three vaults here, each with a coat of arms painted on its door and a steel keypad embedded in the wall beside it.
Choosing at random, she examined the crest on the centre vault. A blue shield divided by a wavy line, with silver crosses above and below.
Azure a fess engrailed Or between four crosslets Argent.
She consulted her paper again, matching the colours with their numbers, then punched them into the keypad. A bolt clicked; the door loosed. Ellie pulled it open and shone the torch inside. She saw a narrow room about six feet deep, ironbound boxes piled on the floor. The throbbing noise was louder in here — but the walls remained strong, unyielding.
She tried the door to the right. Ermine two chevrons Argent. The code didn’t work the first time: you needed to count the two chevrons separately, she realised. She tried again, and this time the door opened to her tug.
She knew at once it was the right room. The noise was louder, carrying through the bricked-up hole in the rear wall. A skein of red light played over it from a sensor screwed to the ceiling. An alarm, she thought. But she wasn’t worried about alarms now. She wondered if her father had got this far, if it was he who’d smashed the original hole.
She found the pair of the candlestick she’d used in the trap doors and used it as a battering ram, swinging it against the wall until her arms ached. The bricks were strong, but not impenetrable — and she was desperate. Whoever had sealed the hole had obviously trusted more to the alarm than the barrier — or perhaps they’d meant it as a trap, another snare to tempt the unwary. The wall cracked; the bricks crumbled. A dark tunnel loomed beyond. She squeezed through, crawling on her stomach and pushing the bag in front of her.
After a few metres, the passage ended in a slitted grille, alternating bars of greater and lesser darkness. Ellie wriggled herself around and kicked at it until it came loose. She pushed off, slithered through the mouth of the hole and landed on her feet.
She looked around. By the light of her head-torch, she could see twin rails curving into the darkness, with a third rail gleaming silver between them. She stepped back, pressing herself against the wall. Somewhere nearby, the throb of a jackhammer filled the tunnel.
The tracks hissed and began to glow. A white light appeared from around the bend, bearing down on her.
By the time Destrier reached the bank, he was as close to panic as he’d ever been in his life. He left his car in the alley, behind the two Range Rovers that had already arrived, and went straight to the fifth floor. He’d no sooner reached his office than he had the Claridge’s concierge on the line, wringing his hands down the phone as he described finding Mr Blanchard passed out on his bed. ‘He is breathing normally,’ he assured Destrier. ‘We have summoned the doctor as a precaution and he will be here very soon.’
‘Any signs of violence? A burglary?’
The concierge sounded shocked. ‘Of course not.’
Destrier rang off and despatched two of his men to Claridge’s to get a better picture. ‘If he can open his eyes, bring him here at once.’
He was about to check the security log, when the phone rang again. He almost ignored it, but the sixth sense that had kept him ahead of trouble so long warned him to check the number. The moment he saw it, he knew it couldn’t wait.
A mechanical voice, inhuman. ‘Do you know who this is?’
Destrier swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘Tell me what has happened.’
Destrier told him as much as he had guessed. ‘I can’t be sure until we speak to Blanchard. And get hold of Ellie Stanton.’
At the other end of the line, there was a sucking sound like a valve opening and closing. ‘There are only two keys to that vault, and one of them is around my neck. Presumably the other is in Miss Stanton’s hands. Inside the vault.’
‘Can you —?’
‘I will be on my plane within half an hour. Stay there.’
Even deadened by the electronics, the threat in his words was evident. Destrier felt a sudden, urgent need to justify himself.
‘If Blanchard hadn’t —’
‘Blanchard knew what he was doing. You were supposed to protect us.’
The line went dead. Destrier was still staring at the phone when one of his men walked in.
‘We can’t get into the vault until the old man gets here,’ Destrier told him.
‘Don’t we have a plan for if someone gets in?’
‘The plan is anyone who actually reaches the sixth floor doesn’t make it past the fucking booby prize. There isn’t a plan for this.’
‘At least she won’t be going anywhere.’
Destrier turned back to his computer and opened the security log. In the monitor’s pale glow, his face was blue as a corpse.
‘Oh my Christ.’
02:01 >> FLOOR 6: VAULT 26: OPENED
02:02 >> FLOOR 6: VAULT 27: OPENED
02:04 >> FLOOR 6: VAULT 27: INTRUSION DETECTED
‘Another intrusion?’
‘It isn’t an intrusion, you stupid fuck. She’s broken out.’
Steel hissed on steel. The white light brightened, rushing forward along the tangle of dust and cables that ribbed the tunnel walls. Ellie knew she should move, but there was nowhere to go. The shaft she’d crawled out of was too high to get back in; the deep tunnel too narrow to get out of the way. She stood on the track and let the light blind her with its brilliance. It seemed to be taking a long time. Was this the last thing her father had seen?
She closed her eyes. The light drummed through her eyelids. She heard a screech and the heavy protest of metal — the driver must have seen her, but she knew it would be too late.
The noise faded away, echoing down the tunnel. Was this what dying was like? She hadn’t felt the impact — but then, she supposed at that speed she wouldn’t.
She opened her eyes and winced. A few metres away, an angelic radiance shone straight at her face. Was this her judgement? What should she say?
A shadow moved in front of the light, blocking it out.
‘What the hell are you doing? You almost got yourself killed.’
Ellie shielded her eyes with her hand. A black man in yellow overalls and a white helmet was standing in front of a flat-bedded dolly. He sounded angry, though there was a softness in his voice that evoked warm places far away. He looked her up and down.
‘Where’s your vest and helmet?’
‘I —’
‘Bloody contract staff.’ He turned away. ‘You can explain this to the Bank manager.’
The Bank manager was a grizzled man with a sharp face and a badly fitted suit. Ellie had prepared a story while she waited outside his office, but he wasn’t interested. He just pointed to a shelf above his head, sagging under a collection of vinyl-bound booklets.
‘Do you know what that is?’
She shook her head.
‘That’s the contract for this job. It tells me everything: how long the screws have to be, how many rats I have to kill, how many sheets of bog roll I’m allowed to wipe my arse.’
He pressed his fingertips together and stared at her.