Deep Shelter (16 page)

“I believe so. That’s what I’m saying—we were a small cog, and the whole point was we did our thing and didn’t have to know about the rest.”

“Do you know of any underground connections to other bunkers?”

“No.”

“Did you move about underground at all? Beyond the shelter itself?”

“Nothing like that.”

“There was a sign down there that said ‘Red Passholders Only.’ What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would the security services know?”

“Look, I don’t have any more privileged access to the security services than you do. Thirty years ago I was involved in this exercise. I’ve barely thought about it since.”

“There’s something still being kept secret.”

“There’s a lot being kept secret. There are institutions that do not like to think the public will ever get their grubby hands on certain kinds of material.”

Belsey produced his phone and brought up the picture of Jemma taped to the HANDEL machine.

“Recognise this equipment?”

“It’s the Attack Warning System,” she said quietly, but she was looking at the girl, as he’d hoped. Riggs took a deep breath, an intake of humanity. “Wait there.”

She went upstairs. He could hear searching, opening cupboards, dragging furniture. She came back a few moments later with a tattered cardboard folder and dropped it on the table. It was filled with memorabilia: papers, clippings and photographs. The photos weren’t of the exercise, he was disappointed to see: they were protests. There was Riggs—Belsey only just recognised her—long hair and a jumper, serious glasses, the diligent diary keeper, more earnest than she appeared today.

“This is everything I’ve got.” She checked her watch. “Four minutes.”

There were several newspaper clippings:
Civil Defence a “cruel deception” says Lambeth Council
.
Government inducing “war psychosis”—Cook MP
. There were photographs of bearded men marching beneath hand-painted signs. In one photograph a small group gathered with CND placards around a four-storey block of flats. It took Belsey a moment to recognise it: Pear Tree House. The block floated on its windowless concrete. The surrounding trees were saplings, the concrete newer, but the building was unmistakable.

“This is in Gipsy Hill,” Belsey said. “My suspect tried to break into it.”

“Yes. Pear Tree House. It became the site of a lot of protests.”

“What is it?”

“Headquarters of the South-East London Regional Seat of Government. That’s in the basement, beneath the flats. Pear Tree,” she said softly. “I haven’t thought about any of this for years.”

Belsey leafed through fast, searching for clues to the underground network. Riggs, meanwhile, had become wistful.

“What did I keep all this for? I must have been saving it for my memoir. For after I became Prime Minister.” She sifted the pages. As she did, Belsey saw a map of Britain covered in small triangles, similar to one he’d seen beneath the library.

“What’s the map of?”

“It shows Warning and Monitoring Posts. Two- or three-man bunkers. There are more than a thousand of them across the country.”

“What about these?” He lifted another set of maps.

“Civil defence boundaries, the regions into which we’d be divided, the Regional Seats of Government that would rule us, dividing up hell. The grid is so we can chart details of nuclear bursts.” She shook her head in wonder. “Croydon, Kingston—it’s hard to imagine them sounding as forbidding as Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I guess the residents of Nagasaki didn’t feel they were living anywhere special.”

He sifted through the various maps but there were none of the London tunnel system.

“Who’d know if there
was
a way of moving between bunkers underground?”

“Possibly no one. Departments become extinct, knowledge expires. Maybe, when they’re declassified, the files themselves will make it into an archive. Until then I guess they’re in limbo, neither alive nor dead. I remember, when I was in the cabinet, hearing that one of the secret government bunkers had flooded. Turns out it had been built on top of the buried stream of the Tyburn. For three weeks nothing was done. No one could remember who was responsible, you see; no department accepted responsibility.” She laughed. “Most of these contingency arrangements were secret from MPs themselves.”

“Where was this top-secret bunker?”

“I don’t know. Once again, you’ve reached my limits.” She checked the clock.

“So who knew about the shelters back in the day?”

“That group of people who don’t get voted in and out. Government is a frail, transitory thing. You’d need to dig down into the heart of the intelligence service for the people who ran this. These things are passed on, generation to generation, among a very small handful of individuals.”

Belsey was starting to give up. Riggs was enjoying a last moment of nostalgia. She picked up another document.

“Here you go: public sector workers, the roles we’d be assigned after the bomb. The bin man or park keeper turns up for work to be told his new duties are those of a gravedigger; a director of social services becomes responsible for sorting out refugee camps. Here’s you.” She waved a pamphlet entitled
Police Manual of Home Defence
. “Controlling the movement of subversive or potentially subversive persons,” the MP read. “What do you think that would involve, Detective Constable? Round up the communists, the socialists. No courts necessary; police commanders enforce the law in whatever way they see fit. On the spot if need be. This is war, remember.”

Her phone rang. She got up and spoke briefly to someone, then hung up.

“I’ve got to go. I hope that helped.” Riggs took a hairbrush from her bag. The nostalgia evaporated and she fixed Belsey with a professional stare. “I’m talking to you because you’re a police officer and you’ve told me someone’s in danger. I’d be very uneasy if I thought any of this was going to appear anywhere. As I say, I was a small cog in the machine but I am, like all of us, subject to the Official Secrets Act.”

“Where is Site 3?” Belsey asked.

“I don’t know anywhere called Site 3,” Riggs said.

“Heard of Ferryman?” Belsey tried.

“Ferryman? No.”

“Codename for a spy, someone who leaked information to the Soviets. Maybe about this exercise.”

“You may have misunderstood which part of government I worked in. I don’t know about spies.”

“Who could I speak to?”

Riggs looked at the picture of Jemma. Then she reached into her handbag and took out a pen. She found the order of service from the funeral and hesitated. It was a plush job, more like a brochure for a reputation. Sir Douglas Argyle stared accusingly from a portrait reproduced on the front. She apologised to the dead man, then scribbled a number in the margin.

“This is someone who probably won’t talk to you. But it’s the best I can do. Get a senior officer to call him and don’t, whatever you do, tell anyone where you got it.”

There was a number. No name. Belsey thanked her and left.

He walked to a pub on Vauxhall Bridge Road, innocuous for the passing tourists and businessmen, drank half a coffee while trying to decide what to say, then he stepped outside and dialled the number. A man answered.

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Constable Nick Belsey. I need information about deep-level tunnels beneath London. I was told someone might be able to help.”

There was a second’s pause.

“I see,” the man said, evenly. “Tunnels. Let me get someone to call you back.” He sounded urbane, affable. Someone on leather seating. Belsey gave his number.

“Soon as possible, thanks.”

He took a seat outside the pub and rolled a cigarette. Someone called back in two minutes. Belsey couldn’t tell if it was the same man. He didn’t introduce himself.

“These shelters. I wouldn’t worry about them,” he said.

“Wouldn’t worry about them?” This cheerful rejection threw Belsey. “I kind of need to worry about them. A young woman is in danger down there now.”

“Forget it happened. You asked me for advice, that’s it.”

“I asked you for information.”

“The information is that it’s a good idea to leave it.”

Belsey paused, holding his phone, order of service in hand. What could he say? Sir Douglas looked unimpressed. He sat before his map of Europe and a flag. Belsey stared at the flag, pinned across the wall. It bore the image of a dagger emerging from a cloud of smoke. Beneath the smoke was a scrolled banner containing the word: CAVE.

“Sorry I can’t be of more help,” the man said.

Belsey put the phone down.

CAVE
. The graffiti on the side of Centre Point. He thought of the body being dropped and he looked at the Order of Service again.

He went back in and sipped his coffee. Then he ran a search for obituaries of Douglas Argyle. There was nothing substantial yet, just a death announcement in the
Telegraph
:
Air Chief Marshal Sir Douglas Argyle, Former Chief of the Defence Staff, died peacefully on Saturday night surrounded by his family
. Belsey called the Metropolitan Police control room and asked for a search on the police log for the night of his supposed death. It didn’t record any bodies identified as Douglas Argyle or Sir Douglas. No emergency services attended the Lord’s home. No hospitals reported him dead.

Belsey tried to remember the timing of the corpse dump on the vanished CCTV. Around four thirty Sunday morning. Then something that Riggs had said came back to him.

I’m not going to peddle gossip
. . .

In what situation do ageing Lotharios have heart attacks?

Belsey decided to risk a call to Monroe, to see what Fleet Street knew about the gossip. His phone vibrated before he could dial. A Hampstead landline. Belsey answered.

“Hey.”

“There’s a gun trained on you.”

Belsey cast an eye over the nearby windows.

“Is that right?”

“I don’t know. It’s the sort of thing they do. Now that we’re working together there will always be a gun trained on you. Like an eye.”

“Are we working together?”

“So it seems.”

“As colleagues, shall we lay down a few ground rules about abducting each other’s dates?”

“It’s too late for that.”

“Did you kill Douglas Argyle?”

“Apparently not. What would happen if I killed you? Maybe they’d sweep it up. Then would you be dead?”

“What do you want?”

“What do they want? It’s a predicament, Nick. She’s started complaining—doesn’t like the restraints. I’ve got to go back, check she’s OK. Think outside the box.”

“Is that what you called to say?”

“London is a jigsaw puzzle.”

“Give me a clue. What am I meant to be doing exactly?”

The caller laughed.

“You can’t give a clue to a jigsaw puzzle, Nick. You just put the pieces together.” Then he was gone.

Belsey finished his coffee and walked to the river. Vauxhall Bridge rose up as it left the north bank, so that it looked like it was heading into clear blue sky. Then you saw the buildings on the other side: glass apartment blocks, MI6.

He looked at his phone, at the call. He could trace it. But there was no point. The forensic caution—the wiped receiver at the phone box this morning—suggested his target was already on the system. Or suspected he might be.
Where has he had contact?
He was being careful, but no one’s careful all the time. People leave prints when they’re off guard, in situations where it’s difficult to use gloves. Fiddly things.

Like turning pages.

Belsey took the diary out and angled it in a square of sunlight. It was covered in fingerprints. They didn’t look thirty years old.

HE WALKED INTO THE ANODYNE HOME OF PGC
Forensic Services on Hammersmith Road, ready to hustle. Since the government closed down its own Forensic Science Service, work had been outsourced to innumerable companies cashing in on Britain’s contact traces. PGC did most of the jobs for Camden Borough. They had access to the relevant databases. They were also the easiest to squeeze for prompt results. And they’d headhunted his favourite scientist, Isha Sharvani.

The front desk liked to make him wait. The building was cold, fierce air-con obliterating any whiff of the unsterile life going on outside. Belsey sat in reception, studying the diary in the light of the halogen bulbs. The paper itself was speckled with blue spots of damp but the prints overlaid the damp. They were made with what looked like the same residue of dirt and grease that coated the tunnels. But it wasn’t Belsey’s print. After ten years in CID he knew his own whorls. Someone else had been leafing through, past the commencement of war and the destruction of London, trying to find out how it ends.

After five minutes he was sent up. He knew the lab would tell him it would take a couple of hours to process. He didn’t have that time. The more he looked at the print the more confident he felt that it was his man. At the third floor he put on the regulation overalls, then found Sharvani’s lab. She was alone. Up on a large screen was what looked like a tree that had been struck by lightning: a blackened, exploded stump. Belsey checked the microscope beneath it and saw a hair. Isha Sharvani was using tweezers to portion the rest of the strands into small bags marked
Hampstead Station
. If she knew about the hair, Belsey reasoned, she knew why the hairdresser’s print might require fast-track attention.

“Was she alive when it was cut?” Belsey asked.

Sharvani turned.

“Jesus, Nick. How did you get in?”

“I told them I was a detective.”

“You’re a nuisance.” She straightened and took her mask down. Then she saw he was serious. “Was she alive? I don’t know. You’re not the first to ask.”

“Who was first?”

“We’ve had press calling.”

“What press?”

“Press press.”

“When?”

“The last couple of hours.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing, of course.” Sharvani put the tweezers down and adjusted the microscope. “If she’d been dead for a while you’d see death rings: decomposition in the follicle. We don’t have many follicles and no banding on the ones we do have. It doesn’t mean she was alive, just not dead for ages.”