The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (37 page)

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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis
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‘No, he won’t,’ said Knocker. ‘He won’t catch me. It’s easier for one to hide than all of us and a horse as well.’ He glanced at the tunnel opening again. Still nothing. He took a deep breath. Now was the time. He felt his heart breaking within him. ‘Napoleon’s dead.’ He blurted it out. ‘Ninch killed him.’
Bingo’s faced drained itself bloodless in a second. His eyes contracted into tiny diamonds of plain. His mouth was a hole of horror. He stepped up to Knocker and grabbed him by the neck with both hands and shook him. ‘You’re lying!’ he screamed. ‘You’re lying! No one could get Napoleon. I love him.’
Stonks put his strong arms gently round Bingo and pulled him away from Knocker. Orococco buried his face in his hands and Twilight turned to look at the tunnel, hiding his tears from eyes that wept as much as his. Vulge’s mouth tightened and dropped into an arc of hate; he shook his head in disbelief. Torreycanyon too wept and swore against the world.
Bingo shook uncontrollably and laid his head on Stonks’s shoulder. Of all the Adventurers Bingo had been the closest to Napoleon, right from the time they had stolen the boat for the Great Rumble Hunt, and later, when they had fought side by side and had saved each other in the fire of Rumbledom library. And now he was gone. His Wendle wit gone. His toughness gone. His scheming brain gone. His rough Wandsworth voice stilled for ever. For death to come so close it was like all the Adventurers dying in the same instant, their hearts skewered up on sorrow.
Knocker was desolate. As he had known earlier, by telling his friends of Napoleon’s death he felt guilty of it; as if he, the bearer of bad news, had been the perpetrator of the deed. But he also realized, now, that he had come to love Napoleon just as much as Bingo did, and that was important because right back at the very beginning he and the Wendle had hated each other much more than any two Borribles ever should have done. And he knew too that Napoleon’s death
had to serve for something; it must not be wasted. It had to be used to persuade the Adventurers not to fight to the bitter end. They had to be convinced that they must hide. They must save Sam and they must live to fight, perhaps, another day.
‘What happened to Ninch?’ said Stonks, still with his arms around Bingo. ‘What happened? I could take him.’
‘Napoleon got him,’ said Knocker. ‘Chalotte made sure he knew … He was still alive afterwards. She was looking after him, in the cabin … The wound was terrible.’
‘Getting Ninch don’t make up for Napoleon,’ said Bingo. ‘Nothing could.’
‘Getting Sussworth might,’ said Vulge. He gritted his teeth and shook his head again.
‘No,’ said Knocker. ‘And if we’re all dead or clipped and Sam is catsmeat, what good will that do? And what good will it do Napoleon Boot? Who will be alive to tell others all about him and what a Borrible he was? Who will give the lie to Sussworth’s lies, eh? Answer me that. Don’t you see? He’ll be really dead if no one knows what he did; and he’ll have died for nothing and we’ll have died for nothing and that’s exactly what Sussworth wants.’
Stonks lowered his head like a big dog baffled before a locked door. Biago looked up, his face creased and worn soft like an old paper bag; he wanted to speak but Knocker stopped him, raising a hand and pointing towards the tunnel. ‘There is no time for argument,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to trust me. Just this once. I know I’m right … There’s a feeling of Spiff about it. Sydney’s found the perfect hiding place; it’s a gift. Dying’s no good. Getting your ears clipped is no good, but saving Sam is and saving ourselves is.’
Somehow there was no argument. Knocker looked at the empty faces of his friends. The immense sorrow had beaten the breath out of them, at least for the time being, and by talking he had managed to prevent the distillation of that immense sorrow into an even greater anger. He could feel his mind dancing, like an electronic chip the size of a hillside, restless with the energy of a million million segments.
‘Orococco,’ said Knocker, and the West Indian turned; Knocker had never seen him so lifeless. ‘I want you and Torrey to guard the tunnel
until the coppers come. When you see them, fire off a lot of stones and shout. Try to hold them for as long as you can.’
Torreycanyon stepped forward, ready to go.
‘But don’t let them get near you. Just slow them down. We need time to brick up the wall and things, that’s all. As soon as they get close scoot off and join the others.’
‘Okay,’ said Orococco. ‘We’ll see if we can’t crack a few skulls. Come on Torrey.’
The two Borribles ran lightly over the rails and took up their positions, one on each side of the tunnel entrance. There they drew their catapults and waited.
‘So what about us?’ said Bingo. ‘Have we got to run away and hide now? You can’t tell us what to do, Knocker, though you like to think you can.’
Knocker dropped his chin to his chest and stared at the ground. ‘Oh, Bingo, you’ll be able to do much more out on the streets in a few months’ time than you will down here with your ears clipped.’
Stonks came up trumps again. He pushed in front of Bingo and refused to let the argument develop. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘I’ll see it gets done.’
‘Right,’ said Knocker. He raised his head. ‘Go back to the control cabin and get Chalotte; she’s been there alone with Nap for far too long already. Then go and find Sid. She should have made the cement by now; she may even have the wall half bricked up. If she hasn’t finished it off, you do it. Just leave a gap of a few bricks. That’s it and all about it. For Pete’s sake go.’
Stonks jerked a thumb and Twilight took Bingo away; Vulge followed. As soon as the three of them were out of earshot Stonks looked at Knocker and squinted. ‘I may be slow,’ he said, ‘but I ain’t daft. What’s the rest of it?’
Knocker returned the look, fair and square. ‘I haven’t got the time, Stonks, honest, but it will work, believe me. And make sure Chalotte goes with you. If she asks where I am, say I’ll be along at the last to brick up the wall. I will come, I promise. Now run, Stonks, run.’
Stonks didn’t like it. He really wanted to argue some more, but he trusted Knocker so he nodded and ran off after the others as fast as his
legs would carry him. There might be a time for talk some other time, there might not. Right now there certainly wasn’t.
The moment he was on his own Knocker sprang into action. He counted the green jackets hooked over his arm; there were two. He ran quickly back to where the victims of the rope trick lay; neither of them moved and he bent and pulled the jackets from their stiffening bodies. That made four. He bent again and heaved the dwarfs along until he had dropped them over the big square rail that had carried the electric current in the old days.
With that accomplished he pulled himself up to an open carriage door, entered the train, crossed a compartment and dropped out on the other side. There he found the bodies of the two dwarfs that he and Chalotte had jumped on and he removed their jackets. That made six.
Still there was more work to do. He must find out if there were any more dwarfs on the battlefield. For his plan to work there had to be the right number; superfluous ones would have to be buried.
Swiftly, with a burst of speed that would have been the envy of any Borrible, Knocker ran up and down between the trains, then alongside one, then alongside the other. He looked underneath, he checked every carriage. There were no more corpses. There was one jacket missing.
Time was getting short. He ran to the front of the trains again. Orococco and Torreycanyon were still at their post, calling out insults and firing their catapults. Beyond them Knocker saw a long hedge of policemen, three or four deep, riot shields at the ready, black helmets on their heads and silver see-behind visors hiding their faces.
‘Okay,’ shouted Knocker. ‘You’d better leg it out of there.’
Orococco waved a hand, and firing a last salvo of stones at the advancing policemen he and Torreycanyon began their retreat. The policemen hardly seemed to notice this alteration and certainly did not bother to change their tactics but continued to walk on at the same steady pace. They did not have to rush and they had no desire to fall into a trap.
Then Knocker saw it, the something that had slipped his mind. Ninch still lay where he had fallen, draped across the power rail. Knocker had already taken his jacket and was in fact wearing it. That made seven. But right close to Ninch was the body of the dwarf that Knocker had tripped, the one who had smashed his head open butting into a rail; his jacket had not been collected.
Knocker laughed. He dashed forward and met Orococco and Torreycanyon by the corpses. He knelt and pulled away the last green garment. That made eight, the magic number.
Orococco jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Don’t hang about,’ he advised. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of coppers coming, like another bloody royal wedding.’
Knocker stood and removed the jacket he was wearing and handed it, together with the others, to Torreycanyon. ‘Take these back to the transformer room and bury ’em deep,’ he said. ‘They must never be found. Tell the rest I’ll be along in a little while. Stonks knows what to do. Now scarper, like lightning.’
Knocker watched them go and a lump rose in his throat. He would never see them again. He pushed the thought from his mind. There in the tunnel, well past the long curve now, the policemen were getting nearer. Knocker licked his lips and looked down at the body of Ninch. ‘Dammit,’ he said. ‘Without you we might have got away and Napoleon would still be alive.’ Knocker frowned. ‘But then again,’ he went on, ‘maybe you and yours will see to it that our lot escapes after all, Ninchy-boy. After all there’s eight of you dwarfs left for dead and that must be a sign because eight plus me and Napoleon makes ten, and ten Borribles is exactly what Sussworth would expect to find.’
And running lightly on his feet, borne up by the thought that he, Knocker, would win in the end, the Borrible slipped silently away between the trains.
Knocker reconnoitred the control cabin from behind the last carriage of the second train. He ducked down suddenly. Had it been his imagination or had someone just darted through the doorway? Knocker bit his lip. He would have to be careful. There might be a Woollie in there, part of an advance guard come in the other way, over from the Marylebone tunnel.
‘Damn,’ said Knocker. He hadn’t expected them so soon. If he couldn’t get into the cabin then his plans would be brought to nothing. Knocker crept closer, his feet sliding noiselessly over the stone dust. He edged up to the window but its panes were thick with dirt. He stepped to the door and peered in.
In the light of the one electric light bulb Knocker saw that the body of Napoleon Boot still lay on the table, his arms folded across his chest like those of a warrior king. Beyond the table was another figure raising its hands to the vast control panel, moving its head, reading the labels on the giant switches: Main Lighting, Secondary Lighting, Link Tunnel Power, Emergency Power, Lifts, Main Rail Power North, Main Rail Power South. Knocker recognized the figure immediately. It was Chalotte.
Knocker gasped and went to call out a warning but his throat was dry with fear. Chalotte’s hands were on the contacts that once thrown into position would send thousands of volts flowing through every byway of this section of the London Underground.
Knocker tried to speak again but Chalotte allowed him no time. There was a solid clunk as she pulled the first of the switches down and the electric current surged eagerly across the metal that now closed the circuit. Then Chalotte threw another switch, then another and another and so on all along the bank; large switches and small ones, all were swung over.
The lights in the tunnels and the one bulb in the control cabin dipped and dimmed, as if electricity needed to take a deep breath before coming to life. From outside, from the power tracks, there came a humming and a murmuring as the new electric force pushed aside the cold resistance of miles and miles of metal, and the black ropes of cable draped along the curving subterranean walls crackled and swelled with death.
And that mysterious force ran everywhere, searching high and low at a speed that was magical. It was a torrent of bursting sparkling power, irresistible, snaking its way into every corner and cranny. It was strong, it was invisible and it was deadly.
Along the rails of steel it ran, into the ancient motors of the two abandoned trains and into the bodies of the defeated dwarfs, breaking
open the soft flesh and lifting it from the bones, searing those bones and baking the marrow black. The bodies jerked and twitched violently as if to escape but there was no escape; the power held them.
Knocker moved at last. ‘Chalotte,’ he cried, ‘don’t!’
Chalotte swung round like a wild thing when she heard her name. Her filthy hair fell across her face, her eyes shone with a brilliant madness as if the electricity had jumped the switches, poured through her hands and was now blazing in her brain. All her muscles were tense, ready to spring. ‘Knocker,’ she cried, ‘I thought you were dead.’
The smell of burning corpses came in through the doorway and Knocker felt his gorge rise. He swayed and put out a hand to hold himself steady. ‘You idiot,’ he gasped, ‘you’ll spoil everything.’
Chalotte took no notice of what Knocker had said but stretched her arms in front of the control panel, ready to defend it with her life. ‘Stonks gave me your message,’ she said, ‘but the more he said you were coming back the less I believed it. He made it sound as if you were done for already … So I swore I’d get Sussworth … Sussworth I said, Sussworth for Napoleon; for Scooter and Knocker. I’ve had enough of running with nowhere to rest. I know there’s no chance of us getting away so I came here to fry a few Woollies before they clip our ears … and though it’s good you’re still alive it’s all the same really.’
Knocker tried to answer. He wanted to tell Chalotte it was all right. He wanted to turn the power off as well. He must. It had never been part of his plan to kill any member of the SBG. On the contrary, he wanted to make them think they had won an easy victory; anything to stop them searching the battlefield too closely and finding the last hiding place of the Adventurers. All this he tried to say but the only words that came out of his mouth were: ‘The power, the power.’
He raised a hand and stumbled further into the cabin. As he did he heard a terrifying noise of groaning and clanking. The fluorescents flickered again and there came the clamour of steel grinding on steel. Lights sprang up in the carriages outside and slowly their great wheels turned. Smoke poured from the brake pads. One of the Underground trains was moving. ‘It’s the SBG,’ screamed Chalotte. ‘They’ve switched on the power too. They must be moving the trains out so they can search the place better.’
This new danger brought Knocker to his senses. ‘Quick then,’ he said. ‘We must get to the others. Hurry! And watch out for the live rail, whatever you do.’ And Knocker threw an arm around Chalotte’s shoulders and the two weary Borribles passed through the cabin door and made their way across the workshop area, disappearing at last behind one of the huge piles of rubbish.
Knocker could not know it, and nor could anyone else, but there was no one driving the train; it was driving itself, mindless and invincible, the wheels spinning on the tracks.
In the driver’s cab where Orococco and Twilight had fought hand to hand with the two dwarfs, fists and feet and truncheons had struck and smashed the buttons and switches; short circuits had been made and terminals joined. As soon as the electric power found itself free it urged the old train to advance, only slowly at first but then faster and faster, and, as the metal brakes worked themselves loose, so the long line of carriages steadily gathered momentum.
 
Inspector Sussworth, Sergeant Hanks and Constable Blume stood on the platform at Swiss Cottage and listened to the shouts and insults of Orococco and Torreycanyon as they came curling out from the tunnel.
‘I tell you, Hanks,’ said Sussworth, ‘it is only the courage of despair. There can’t be many of them left alive after that battle with the dwarfs. By the way, Blume, did you pay the dwarfs off and get rid of them?’
‘Oh yes, sir, paid them very handsomely too.’
‘And did you check very carefully that none of them were Borribles?’
‘Of course, sir. Very carefully.’
‘Good,’ said the inspector. ‘I’m very glad to have those dwarfs out of the way at last. They made me very nervous. It would have been the end of my career you know if the DAC had found out we were using auxiliaries in these encounters. Do you hear that, Hanks, Blume? On no account must this classified information come to the ears of the upper echelons. It is far too sensitive and would only upset them.’
‘No sir,’ said Blume. ‘You told us, sir, and we have not forgotten.’ He stood to attention and clutched his clipboard more tightly under his arm.
Hanks wrinkled his nose twice in quick succession as if trying to
dislodge something juicy and substantial. ‘Cost a lot, them dwarfs,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn some of ’em were going back to the end of the line to get paid twice. Couldn’t tell one from the other though with all that dirt and grease and blood on ’em. You could see they’d been in a scrap.’
‘Worth every penny we paid them, Hanks,’ said Sussworth, rubbing his gloved hands together with contentment. ‘They’ve flushed out the Borribles; killed most of them too, by all accounts. All that remains for our men is to walk in and pick up the pieces … There won’t be one policeman injured. Our operation will be a complete success. Wonderful!’
‘It seems to me,’ said Blume, after giving a discreet cough to engage his superior’s attention, ‘that the noise of shouting has ceased. I should think that our men have completed their task by now and rounded up the survivors, if any. Would you like me to go and see, Inspector? I could put a call through on the radio.’
Sussworth stretched himself to his full height and looked up at Blume as if he were looking down. ‘Blume,’ he said, twisting his arms behind his back as if he possessed some vital information that he wished to extract from himself by torture, ‘Blume, you have captured my very thought as I was about to give it utterance, I have been informed that at the end of that section of loop line which lies before us there is a small marshalling yard where a couple of old trains are kept in reserve. Beyond, they say, it connects with the Marylebone railway tunnel. As you well know I have men guarding that possible escape route and some more advancing along it to join with those that departed from this platform. Our Borribles are in the middle, caught in a pincer movement. The old left hook as Monty used to say when he was jousting with the Desert Fox. Loonieberg Heath, gentlemen. Loonieberg Heath. This is my Loonieberg Heath.’
Hanks stared at the station sign which said Swiss Cottage in letters two feet high. ‘It says Swiss Cottage, sir,’ he said.
Sussworth ignored this remark and continued his speech while trying to give himself a half nelson at the same time. ‘I have no wish to miss my greatest moment of triumph. I want to see this surrender, relish it. I want to see those Borribles grovel in the gravel at my feet. I
want to sit in a folding canvas chair whilst I watch the police surgeon remove the pointed tops of their ears. I want to hear the crunch of the world settling back into its normal groove. In a word, Hanks, Blume, I propose to walk along between the rails and go to my men, personally, myself.’
Suiting his actions to his words Sussworth began to pace along the platform, his legs jerking before him, stiff and straight. Hanks rolled forward beside the inspector, right index finger in right nostril, a smile forming on his face. There was something good up there. Blume, still clutching his clipboard, walked a respectful yard behind Sussworth, imitating his superior’s manner in every detail. He dearly wanted to succeed.
At the end of the platform, just where it sloped down to the permanent way, Sussworth twirled on his heel, changing direction as abruptly as a dodgem car. His overcoat flared out like a bullfighter’s cape and revealed his polished boots, gleaming like gloss paint.
‘Constable Blume,’ he said, ‘when I telephoned to the surface just now I gave instructions that the DAC was at last to be informed of our success. I am expecting his arrival at any time during the next half hour. I want you, Constable, to be here, on this platform, when he arrives. You will inform him of our complete success and, if I am not returned and he is indeed willing, you may bring him to the forward battle zone where he may witness the surrender of the Borribles and the culmination of the magnum octopus of Inspector Francis Sussworth.’
‘Francis,’ said Hanks. He removed a green bogey from his nostril and studied it. ‘Never knew his name was Francis.’ Disappointed at the harvest hanging from the end of his finger he shoved it back where it belonged so that it might grow larger and more colourful. As he did so Sussworth performed a rapid about-turn on one foot like a wind-up tin soldier, and faced the other way. ‘Come on, Hanks,’ he said.
Hanks waddled across to join his master and together the two men descended the short slope that took them down to the level of the track. There was only one line in this link tunnel and so the inspector and the sergeant walked along side by side between the rails. The walls were close together and curved low overhead to form the ceiling. Every word spoken echoed, every footstep sounded like ten, and in spite of the fluorescent lighting there was a morbid feel to the place.
The tunnel’s glazed bricks were glistening all over with a clammy and poisonous sweat.
This intimidating atmosphere did not inspire conversation and both men walked in silence for some time. After they had covered a quarter of a mile or so, Sussworth spoke. ‘Tell me, Hanks,’ he said, ‘what is the distance appertaining to the points A and B in this case, and how long is this curve? I can no longer see Swiss Cottage behind me, nor our destination in front.’
Hanks was almost breathless by reason of the unaccustomed exercise his body was undergoing; he had never walked a quarter of a mile in his whole life. Nevertheless he managed to pant out an answer for Sussworth’s benefit. ‘Ah … I think it must be … ah … about half a mile, sir, but I’m not sure … But I am sure that I could murder a nice cup of tea and a bacon sandwich.’
‘Shush,’ ordered Sussworth, and he held up his hand. ‘I hear something unusual emanating from point B. Listen and lower your breathing, Sergeant.’
Sussworth and Hanks listened, and as the sound of their breathing diminished and the echo of their footsteps receded the conductor rail on their right flexed itself and spat orange sparks, and the lights in the tunnel roof dimmed and rose and dimmed again. From far away came faint shouts: the shouts of SBG men calling to one another in distress. But behind those desperate calls there was another sound, more frightful and more forbidding. It was the slow rumble of steel wheels advancing, and it was the rumble too of a whole train on the move. Beneath their feet the two policemen felt the sleepers shift and the rails writhe as tons and tons of rolling stock gathered momentum in the distance.
Hanks looked nervously over his shoulder. Sussworth took a sharp step forward, thought better of it and took an even sharper step back.
‘There seems to be a train on the move, Hanks,’ said the inspector, his voice more clipped than usual as he tried to hide the mounting apprehension in his breast. ‘This is out of order, Hanks. I assure you I gave strict orders that no trains were to move from A to B, or even from C to D, until such times as I rescinded the order in person.’

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