Deep Shelter (36 page)

“Keep going, slowly, towards St. Paul’s.”

He looked out at the surface of the world with a familiar sense of frustration. Jemma had called from somewhere near here. Under Merrill Lynch itself? Down wherever Kyle Townsend had turned up? He could see at least five security guards anxiously guarding the front of the building.

“Stop here,” Belsey said, when they were a few metres away.

“What do you want to do?” Craik asked.

“Ahead—by the ruined church—that’s the old Post Office headquarters. It has tunnels underneath it. I need to get in. I know she’s around here. I don’t have any other leads.”

“I can distract the guards.”

“Give it a shot. If we get separated try to get in touch with Tom Monroe on the
Express
. He knows what’s going on. He knows lawyers.”

They both got out. Belsey took Strathmore’s Webley Revolver and the torch. Kirsty ran over to the guards, badge raised. She led them away from the door, pointing at something supposedly going on a hundred metres from the entrance and very urgent.

Belsey didn’t get close. He was halfway across the square when he was spotted by police standing next to the Stock Exchange across the road. They consulted with a man in a suit with a two-way radio clipped to his belt then began moving towards Belsey.

He tried Jemma’s phone as he ran. No answer. Belsey jumped down the stairs into St. Paul’s underground station. It was open, trains running, so no one had been in the tube tunnels recently. There was nothing suspicious going on apart from himself. He got attention from some Transport Police officers. They pressed their radios to their ears, then began to follow him through the ticket hall. Belsey exited on the south side. They were thirty seconds behind. Keep moving. He slipped in among the tourists by the cathedral just as two squad cars parked across the top of Ludgate Hill.

He was going to have to take sanctuary. Belsey stepped up the cathedral stairs, moving through the revolving doors into the cool shade, paid an extortionate entrance fee, helped himself to an audio guide. The hush inside the cathedral was startling. Belsey searched for alternative exits. He saw what looked like suited silhouettes in the north transept doorway. Play it safe. He fell in line with a guided tour as they headed downstairs into the crypt, past dark slabs of stone and moth-eaten flags. Where were hiding places? There was a gift shop, a cafe area, then, at the end, hidden away from the masses, a restaurant. Belsey smiled at the waitress.

“Table for one. At the back, please.”

She led him through to the back. Belsey lifted a large menu in front of his face. The menu said
Connoisseur
.

“Any drinks?” the girl asked. Her apron also said
Connoisseur
. Belsey lowered the menu. He thought back to Easton’s bank statements, the payments in. The waitress’s voice dipped as she saw his expression. “Are you OK, sir?”

“Did a Michael Easton ever work here?”

“Michael? Yes, but not for a few weeks now. Are you a friend?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” she asked.

“What happened to him? No. Why?”

“He just walked off mid-shift. Never saw him again.”

“Did you see him walk off?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you see him walk
out
of the restaurant?”

She looked puzzled. “No.”

“I’ll get a Bloody Mary. Not too much Tabasco. Do you have horseradish?”

“Yes.”

“Plenty of that, and a slice of lemon.”

She went over to the bar. Belsey went to the kitchen. The chefs were busy over their pans. He saw an arched, wooden door in the corner.
Staff Only
. He moved for it before anyone could stop him, through to a very tight spiral of stone stairs worn to undulations. He ran down them, past a storeroom with boxes of vegetables, past a passageway crowded with mops. The stairs continued, unlit, scratched with antique graffiti. They descended another twenty feet to a dented steel door speckled with rust.

Easton wasn’t working here for the money. He wanted access to what lay below.

“Hello?” Belsey’s voice was dulled by the stone. A sign on the door had been painted over at least once, but through the layers he could make out the words:
No Unauthorised Personnel
. He got his fingers around the edge and scraped it open.

A dank corridor, walls brick, floor dirt. Jemma’s phone lay on the ground. He picked it up: dead. The narrow passageway led beyond it for ten metres or so. He shone the torch. A white arrow painted onto the bricks pointed deeper in, to where the passage turned a corner.

Belsey walked to the end and looked around it—another stretch. Only, now, the cathedral stone became breeze block. A sign on the wall said
Cathedral: Congregation Zone C
. Then, in smaller letters:
Red Passholders—One Item of Luggage Per Person
.

It all ended at a single door. Belsey’s foot buckled as he approached it. He was on a grille of some kind. He shone the torch through the grille and felt dizzy. It was a steep drop, over fifty feet. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing.

A long, ghostly white form, like a train. A train formed from strands of cotton wool.

He got down onto the grille and shone the torch along the length of whatever it was down there. The white was mould. Beneath the mould was an old British Rail passenger train, flat-fronted, six coaches stretching towards a tunnel at the far end. It stood beside a platform with a row of shuttered bays, their concertina doors open to expose stacks of cardboard boxes. There were more boxes across the platform, some open: first aid boxes, ration packs, glass bottles.

Rail track, Belsey thought: the FOIs Easton had rattled off: he’d asked about MOD purchase of rail track . . . Something was starting to occur to Belsey but he didn’t have time to pursue the thought.
One item of luggage per person . . .

Then the door back to the cathedral stairs slammed shut. He ran to it. It wouldn’t open. He could feel a padlock rattle on the other side of the door. Belsey shouted through but there was a lot of noise starting in the restaurant, drowning him out. People screaming.

He ran back, over the grille, to the single door, and it opened—stairs went down to the platform, but there was a floor between, a red-brick passage into what must have been the embryonic St. Paul’s deep shelter, with the familiar ribs and rivets. Belsey searched through. Not unlike the one beneath Belsize. But at the end of the main dorm there was a low entrance into a maintenance tunnel of some kind. The metal panel that had once sealed it bore blowtorch scars.

Belsey squeezed in. Bricks scraped his shoulders and knocked the bullet wound. For a disorientating moment he was between paler stone, an old crypt or Roman foundations. Then he emerged at another tunnel, crossing the first, this one with narrow-gauge rails. He could tell from its height it was the Mail Rail. He followed the tracks left and arrived at a platform with ornate, glazed tiles reflecting his torchlight. They spelt
King Edward Street
. He knew his way around a Mail Rail station now. Belsey climbed up to the platform, through the loading bays and up the concrete stairs.

After two floors he found himself in a low, dark space crammed with sealed boxes marked
For Shredding
. Metal bins overflowed with rubbish bags. There was a small door in the corner. Belsey opened it. It was a cupboard. The cupboard contained a man sleeping. He was old, in a cleaner’s uniform. The walls of the cupboard were decorated like an improvised shrine, beads and plastic flowers and a hologram of the Virgin Mary. Belsey shook him gently by the shoulder.

“I was looking for the way out,” he said. “I’m lost.”

The man barely opened his eyes. He pointed Belsey towards the end of the corridor, past the bins, then settled back again.

Belsey found a shabby service lift. It took him up one floor and then he was in a brighter corridor with humming servers behind frosted glass walls. He caught his reflection and saw he was still wearing the cathedral audio guide. Belsey hung it around a fire extinguisher. He turned a corner, passed a gym, then numbered doors. He tried doors until one opened. It was a boardroom, empty, with platters of sandwiches under cling film, a pack of papers in front of each seat. Belsey took a pack and marched a little more confidently.

A smarter lift took him two more floors up to ground level. Now there were open-plan offices with Bloomberg screens and a lot of employees in headsets. Belsey gave a nod to a woman, winked at a man, ran towards the barriers at the front and jumped them. He dropped the file and circled back towards the cathedral in time to see a crowd gathering with the hesitant air people have after witnessing drama, unsettled and wanting a bit more. They were all staring at the front of the cathedral as if waiting for a headline act. Belsey joined the crowd.

“What happened?” he asked as police pulled up with a lot of noise and lights.

“Guy with a gun,” a man in pinstripes said.

“Which way did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

An American woman with a tourist map turned. “He had a hostage with him. A girl.” She didn’t know where he went either.

Belsey walked back to his car. No sign of Kirsty. He found the news on the radio. Nothing on what had just happened in EC4. He checked the news websites on his phone to see if things had got worse for himself. They’d got a lot worse.

Recent photographs of him now, everywhere. The
Express
led the charge:
Sick Cop and Seven Lovers
. There was the picture of Jemma taped to HANDEL, which only Monroe had received.
Nick Belsey came close to prosecution in his time at Borough police station. Express reporter Thomas Monroe was there
. With a picture of the two of them ten years ago, down in the Ship, Belsey holding a wooden crutch like it was a rifle.

He called Monroe’s mobile. Monroe wasn’t answering. Belsey tried his office line and got a recording. “This is Tom Monroe’s desk. Please leave a message.”

“Hi Tom, it’s Nick Belsey. Here’s a message for you, you prick—”

The phone was lifted. A woman said: “Hi there. You want the Advertising Department. Please call this number—”

“I don’t want the fucking Advertising Department. I want Tom Monroe. Put him on.”

“I can’t help you from this desk.” Her voice was unnaturally cheerful. “The offer is for jigsaw puzzles. If you have any complaints regarding the promotion please call this number.” She gave the number. Belsey wrote it down. It was a mobile number. She hung up. He waited for a moment then dialled.

Someone answered but didn’t speak—heels clipped fast down a corridor, then a door opened, a tap ran, a second door was bolted.

“Nick Belsey?” she said. Same woman.

“What’s going on?”

“They’re going through the office. We’re not allowed to leave.”

“Who is this?”

“Jill Banner. I work with Tom. They’ve taken his computer. But he wasn’t researching you, I’m sure. He said he’d found something to do with a thing called JIGSAW.”

“What did he have?”

“I don’t know. This is just from a note he left. There’s an arrest warrant out for him now.”

“For what?”

“Conspiracy to breach the Official Secrets Act.”

“You know the stuff about me is crap.”

“I don’t know anything. Just that Tom said you were working on something big. This JIGSAW thing. He was researching something for you. That’s all I know. Someone from the Cabinet Office just visited the editor. I don’t know what’s going on. All this attention on Tom, it’s not coming from within the paper.”

“What do you know about JIGSAW?”

“Just that he left a note—that’s what he was working on. Honestly, that’s all.”

“Where is Tom now?”

“I think Kew.”

“Kew?” The name startled him. Those lines, towards the end of Easton’s sessions with Green.
New interest in nature . . . Has been spending time at the Botanic Gardens in Kew. Says they are teaching him patience . . . Everything breaks through eventually
. An attraction to Kew was one of the remaining mysteries of Easton’s last months. “Why Kew?”

“I don’t know.”

Belsey was already finding the case notes and bank statements, searching through the torn pages.

“The gardens?”

“I really don’t know. When I last spoke to him he was driving to Kew. Please, that’s all I can tell you. Someone’s coming.” The call ended.

BELSEY DROVE TOWARDS KEW,
tuning his radio to the channel for Kew Constabulary. Sure enough, by the time he was on Chiswick High Road he picked up arresting officers. It seemed if you threatened to break the Official Secrets Act, you got the executive service—custody in minutes, and nowhere to hide.

“Yes, a Mr. Thomas Monroe. A journalist. What exactly are we meant to do with him, sir?”

“There are instructions to hold him. Just keep him detained while we clarify the situation.”

“He’ll be at Kew police station, sir. By the gardens.”

“OK. Apparently a Gabriel Bennington is on his way.”

Belsey sped over Kew Bridge, swinging left towards the police station. He was there in two minutes. He felt some relief seeing the place: it looked halfway between a cottage and a large shed; a keep-warm area for the handful of constables assigned to the Botanic Gardens. Its own front garden was in full bloom.

But it was outside of its comfort zone. Belsey could tell as he approached. A sergeant stood in the car park. They’d put a plastic cone down for their special visitor. A couple of officers glanced out of the windows. Belsey aimed for the cone and crushed it. He lifted his mobile as he got out of the car.

“Yes, of course,” he said loudly into it. “It’s a police station not an embassy, sir. We’ll be with you shortly.” He walked past the Sergeant into reception. There were framed photographs of plants on the wall, no officers under fifty. “Sir, the Attorney General can speak to him when we’ve got him. I’m at the station now.” Belsey moved the phone an inch from his ear.

“Where is he?”

A nervous, moustached officer put his cap on and led Belsey through to the secure holding area. Monroe’s name was up on an old blackboard. Belsey wiped it off.