CHAPTER 20

Holland Park

THE THING about absolute darkness is that you end up doing things very carefully, especially after the first time you nearly brain yourself on a concrete crossbeam. So when I reached the top of the ladder I felt around slowly—I had come up through another floor hatch, I thought. There were no lights visible in any direction.

I made a werelight, which revealed a rectangular concrete room with a high ceiling and a shadowy doorway at the far end.

“I can see a light,” said Reynolds from below.

“Just a moment,” I said.

I fixed the werelight to the ceiling with scindare, in the hope that Reynolds would mistake it for a light fixture, and climbed out of the hatchway and onto the gritty cement floor, freeing it up for her.

“About time,” said Reynolds.

I reached down to help her up. She was shivering and her hands were freezing. She crawled clear of the hatchway and flopped over onto her back, breathing heavily. Kumar followed her up, staggered a few steps and sat down heavily.

“A light,” said Reynolds, staring at the ceiling. “Thank God.”

We could still hear the water rushing away below us.

I gingerly undid my coveralls and felt my chest. The stab vest was still intact but there were three holes in the nylon covering. They were ragged with blackened edges—like cigarette burns. Something dropped from my chest and pinged off the cement floor. I picked it up—it was a pistol-caliber bullet.

“That’s odd,” said Reynolds, who’d sat up to take a look. She held out her hand and I dropped the bullet into it so she could examine it more closely. “Nine-millimeter. It’s barely deformed at all. Are you sure this hit you?”

I winced as I felt the bruises under the vest. “Pretty certain,” I said.

“This one must have gone through the water first,” she said.

I found it remarkably easy not to tell her that it was more likely that the bullet had been slowed by the magical force field I’d conjured up.

“I don’t know what happened to the lamps,” said Kumar. He’d detached his helmet lamp from its bracket and was prizing off its back.

“Maybe they’re not as waterproof as we thought they were,” I said.

Kumar frowned down at the lamp, but LEDs, like most solid state technology, look the same whether they’re broken or not. “Never happened before,” he said, and gave me a suspicious look.

I looked away and noticed that Reynolds was still shivering.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

“I’m freezing,” she said. “Why aren’t you?”

I explained that we were wearing wet suits.

“They didn’t have those at the embassy thrift store,” she said. “I had to make do with Marine hand-me-downs.”

I’d like to have asked what brought her into the sewers in the first place, but her face had gone very pale. I’m not privy to the media policy directives of the Metropolitan Police, but I suspected that from a public relations standpoint a dead FBI agent would be way more embarrassing than a live one.

“We need to find somewhere for you to dry off,” I said. “Where’s your backup?”

“My what?” she asked.

“You’re an American,” I said. “You guys always have backup.”

“Times are hard,” she said. “And resources are limited.” But she looked away when she said it.

Ah, I thought. She’s playing that movie—the one where the pen-pushers block the hero from getting involved and she goes rogue to solve the mystery herself.

“Does the embassy know you’re down here?” I asked.

“Never mind me,” she said. “Where’s your backup?”

“Never mind backup,” said Kumar. “Where are we?”

“We’re still in the sewers,” I said. “We just need to find a way out.”

“What are our options?” asked Reynolds.

“Well, we have hole number one,” said Kumar. “The ever-popular floodwater relief sewer. Or we have a dark and mysterious doorway.” He struggled to his feet and went over to peer inside.

“I vote for the doorway,” said Reynolds. “Unless it goes back to the sewers too.”

“I doubt it,” said Kumar. “I’m not an architectural prodigy like Peter here but I’m pretty certain this is part of the Underground.”

I looked around. Kumar was right, the room had the cement and concrete squatness that I associated with the mid-twentieth-century sections of the Underground. The late Victorians went for brick, and the modern tube stations are all brushed concrete surfaces and durable plastic cladding.

Kumar stepped through the doorway. “It’s a stairwell going down,” he said. “But it’s going to be a bugger to navigate without lights.”

“I’ve got an emergency light,” I said, getting up. I nudged Reynolds with my foot. “On your feet, Marine,” I said.

“Ha-ha,” said Reynolds, but she dragged herself up.

Kumar stood aside as I stepped into the doorway and, keeping my back to Reynolds, made myself another werelight. It revealed a spiral staircase with wooden banisters and a metal core.

Definitely London Underground, I thought.

“See,” said Kumar. “It used to go up but it’s blocked off.”

Crudely bricked up with breeze blocks, in fact.

“Could we break through?” I asked.

“Even if we had the tools,” said Kumar, “we don’t know if the top of the shaft is still open. They often just plug them up when an old station site is redeveloped.”

“Down it is, then,” I said.

“How are you doing that?” asked Reynolds, suddenly behind me.

“Doing what?” I said as I started down the steps, increasing my pace.

“That light,” said Reynolds. “How are you doing the light?”

“Yes,” said Kumar. “How are you doing that?”

“It’s just a plasma ball,” I said. “It’s just a toy.”

She turned and walked back into the room. She was checking the werelight on the ceiling to see if it looked the same. Why couldn’t I have got a stupid FBI agent? I asked myself. Or, if not stupid, then at least someone stolid and law abiding—but then, Reynolds wouldn’t even have been down there.

I proceeded down the stairs in the hope of forestalling any explanations.

“I’m not sure I like the fact that we’re going down,” said Kumar.

“At least we’re out of the sewers,” I said.

“Have you smelled yourself?” he said. “We’re taking the sewers wherever we go.”

“Look on the bright side,” I said. “Who’s going to complain?”

“Useful toy,” said Reynolds. “Does it come with batteries?”

“That reminds me,” I lied. “What made you come underground in the first place?”

“If I recall correctly,” said Kumar, looking at her, “you owe us an explanation.”

“His mom showed me his emails before I flew over,” she said. “He talks about being involved in London’s underground art scene, ‘literally underground,’ he says in one.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “For that you climbed into the sewers?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “There was the forensic work you people did on his boots. That showed he’d been walking in the sewers.”

“It’s a big system,” said Kumar.

“That it is,” said Reynolds, obviously enjoying herself now. “But I did a survey of the manhole covers in the vicinity of the victim’s house, and what do you know, one of them was much looser than the others. Had fresh marks around the edge—I suspect from where someone had used a pry bar on it.”

“You were looking to break Zachary’s alibi, weren’t you?” I said. “See if he sneaked past the cameras using the sewers.”

“Among other things,” said Reynolds. “How far down do you think this is going to go?”

“If it descends to the same level as the Central Line,” said Kumar, “it could be as deep as thirty meters.”

“That’s a hundred feet,” I said.

“This may come as a surprise to Constable Grant, but I am conversant with the metric system,” said Reynolds.

“Can you hear that?” asked Kumar.

We stopped and listened. Just on the cusp of hearing I detected a rhythmic pounding, more a vibration in the concrete than a sound.

“Drums,” I said, and then because I couldn’t resist it, “Drums in the deep.”

“Drum and Bass in the deep,” said Kumar.

“Someone’s having a party,” I said.

“In that case,” said Reynolds, “I’m so glad I dressed for it.”

The base of the stairway would have been familiar to anyone who’s ever had to schlep down the stairs at Hampstead, or any other deep-level tube station. At the bottom was a gray-painted steel blast door that much to our relief creaked open when me and Kumar put our shoulders to it.

We stepped into what I at first thought was an empty tube tunnel, but that I realized a moment later was too big for that—twice the diameter, about the same as a standard platform tunnel. The concrete forms lining the walls were free of the usual tile cladding, but there was a flat cement floor that was shiny.

“I know where we are,” said Kumar. “This is the deep-level air raid shelter at Holland Park.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Because it’s a deep-level shelter and the nearest one is Holland Park,” he said.

Back at the start of World War Two the authorities forbade the use of the Underground as an air raid shelter. Instead Londoners were supposed to rely on hastily built neighborhood shelters or on the famous Anderson shelters, which were basically rabbit hutches made from corrugated iron with some earth shoveled on top. Londoners being Londoners, the prohibition on using the Underground lasted right up until the first air raid warning, at which point the poorly educated but far from stupid populace of the capital did a quick back-of-the-envelope comparison between the stopping power of ten meters of earth and concrete and a few centimeters of compost, and moved underground en masse. The authorities were appalled. They tried exhortation, persuasion, and the outright use of force, but the Londoners wouldn’t budge. In fact, they started to organize their own bedding and refreshment services.

And thus in a cloud of official disapproval the Blitz spirit was born.

A couple of thousand preventable deaths later, the government authorized the construction of new purpose-built deep-level shelters constructed, according to Kumar, using the same techniques and machines as the tube system itself.

I knew all about the shelters at Belsize Park and Tottenham Court Road—it’s not like you can miss the huge fortified concrete pillboxes that marked the ventilation shafts—but I’d never heard of one at Holland Park.

“There used to be a top secret government agency down here,” said Kumar. “Only I heard they got relocated to Scotland.”

The opposite end of the tunnel was far enough away to be in shadow. I was tempted to brighten my werelight, but I was getting worried about the amount of magic I’d been using. Dr. Walid’s guidelines, endorsed by Nightingale, were to refrain from doing more than an hour of continuous magic if I wanted to avoid what he called thaumatological necrosis, and me and Lesley called cauliflower brain syndrome.

“They did a good job stripping this place,” I said. It was completely empty. I could even see where light fittings had been prized out of the concrete walls. The bass rumble was louder, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from.

“This is the intersection,” said Kumar.

You could see the circular outline where a tunnel of similar size to ours had formed a crossroad and then was walled off with concrete and cement. There were four doors on each side, two at our ground level and two halfway up the wall servicing a floor level that had either been stripped out or never installed.

The doors were of normal size but made of steel, with no obvious handles on our side.

“Left or right?” asked Reynolds.

I put my ear against the cold metal of the nearest door—the bass rumble was loud enough for me to identify the track.

“Stalingrad Tank Trap,” I said. “By Various Artiz.”

I like a bit of drum and bass to dance to, but Various Artiz were notorious for cranking out one identikit track after another—they were as close to mainstream as you could get on the club circuit without turning up on the BBC’s Golden Oldies playlist.

“Don’t look at me,” said Kumar to Reynolds. “It was all jungle when I was younger.”

“It sounds like they’re speaking English,” muttered Reynolds. “And yet—”

I knocked on the door and hurt my knuckles.

“Well, that’ll work,” said Reynolds. She was jiggling up and down to keep warm.

I took off my helmet and banged on the door with that.

“We’re going to have to strip you off,” said Kumar.

“You’re kidding me,” said Reynolds.

“We need to at least wring out your clothes,” said Kumar.

I banged a couple more times while Reynolds expressed her disquiet about disrobing in a public place. I can, when I have to, burn through something like a bike chain or a padlock. Nightingale, according to his war stories, can punch a hole in ten centimeters of hardened steel. But he hadn’t taught me how to do that yet. I examined the hinges on the door and wondered if they’d prove a suitable weak point.

I decided to do it quickly in the hope that Reynolds was too distracted to notice. I quickly ran through the formae a couple of times to line them up—lux aestus scindare. My mastery of aestus, which intensifies lux, was not brilliant, but I really wanted out of the Underground.

“Are you praying?” asked Reynolds.

I realized I’d been muttering the formae under my breath, number six on Nightingale’s list of my bad habits.

“I think he’s going to do a magic spell,” said Kumar.

Making a note to have a word with Kumar later, I gritted my teeth as Agent Reynolds asked exactly what he meant by “magic spell.”

Oh well, it’s not like she wasn’t about to get a demonstration.

I took a breath and silently readied the formae.

Then the door opened and a white boy stuck his head out and asked if we were from Thames Water.

Thank God for that, I thought.

The instrument of the Lord was topless. He had a DayGlo orange sweatshirt wrapped around his waist, half covering baggy electric blue shorts, a whistle hung on a string around his neck, and sandy hair slicked down to his forehead with sweat. Despite some muscle, he still had his puppy fat. I figured he was in his mid-teens. Automatically I checked out the bottle in his hand for alcohol, but it was just water. A gust of warm damp air rolled out from behind him, and with it the thumping backbeat of Various Artiz seeking to prove that you really can dance until your brains dribble out your ears.

I considered showing him my warrant card but didn’t want to risk him closing the door in our faces.

“We’re here about the plumbing,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, and we trooped inside.

It was another double-width tunnel, but this one had been converted into a club, complete with a professional-level light gantry over the dance floor and a bar that ran down one wall. We were far enough from the sound system to hold a conversation, which is why our shirtless friend had heard us banging on the door. We squelched our way through a dim area given over to sofas, chairs, and snogging couples, and moved toward the dance floor, which was heaving with clubbers, mostly white, dancing mostly in time to the music. There was a lot of furry leg warmers, Lycra shorts, and halter tops fluorescing in the UV light. But for all the bare belly buttons and spray-on hot pants, I was getting a definite high school dance vibe from the crowd. Probably because none of them seemed old enough to vote.

“Somebody’s parents are away for the weekend,” said Reynolds. “I feel overdressed.”

The crowd quickly parted as the clubbers realized we weren’t the cabaret act.

“Maybe you can find a change of clothes here,” said Kumar.

“I don’t think they’ve got anything in my size,” said Agent Reynolds primly.

Three people covered in sewage will have a dampening effect on even the most ardent clubber, and it wasn’t long before a ripple passed through the crowd and two young women stalked through the dancers toward us.

They weren’t identical twins but were definitely sisters. Tall and slender, dark-skinned, narrow-faced, flat-nosed, and with sly black eyes that pinked up at the corners. I could just about tell them apart. Olympia was a tad taller and broader of shoulder, with her hair currently in a weave that cascaded expensively around her shoulders. Chelsea had a long neck, a narrower mouth than her sister, and was sporting what I judged to be about thirty-six man-hours’ worth of twisted hair extensions. They were wearing identical hot pink knit minidresses that I knew their mother wouldn’t have approved of; I kept my eyes on their faces.

“You better have a really good reason for this,” said Olympia, folding her arms.

“Agent Reynolds, Sergeant Kumar, let me introduce the goddesses of Counter’s Creek and the River Westbourne,” I said, and bowed for good measure. The girls shot me a poisonous look but I figured they owed me for that time they left me to sink or swim in the Thames.

“You know we’re Olympia and Chelsea,” said Chelsea.

“Although,” Olympia said to Kumar and Reynolds, “we are goddesses and expected to be treated as such.”

“I could arrest you if you like,” I said. “I mean, is there actually anyone down here who’s old enough to purchase alcohol?”

Olympia pursed her lips. “Well, Lindsey’s boyfriend, Steve, is eighteen,” she said. “Does that help?” To be honest I was too knackered to banter. I checked whether they’d seen strange white guys in hoodies prowling around the tunnels, but the sisters said they hadn’t. So I asked if they had somewhere we could wash up, and a working landline.

Chelsea laughed. “Landline,” she said. “We have Wi-Fi down here.”

They also had a full-on locker room and shower that was last fitted out, judging by the brass taps and stainless steel fittings, sometime in the 1960s. I guessed it was a leftover from Kumar’s secret government agency. The girls even managed to dig out a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms for Reynolds, who glared at me and Kumar until we remembered our manners and left. We found ourselves waiting in a storeroom filled with bottled water and catering boxes of fun-sized chocolate bars. We washed our faces with the water and had an argument about Mars bars versus Milky Way and then more water after the taste test. When I judged that Kumar was all sugared up I asked him the difficult question.

“Is it a total coincidence that you were assigned to this case?”

“Meaning what?” he asked.

“I magic up some lights and introduce you to a pair of river goddesses—”

“Teenage river goddesses,” said Kumar. “And it’s not like either of them have done anything particularly religious.”

“What about the lights?” I asked.

“Was that magic?”

I hesitated. “Yes,” I said.

“Really magic?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck me!”

“Now you’re reacting?”

“Well I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the American,” said Kumar.

“So you’re not from the BTP version of the Folly?” I asked.

Kumar laughed and said that British Transport Police had plenty of other demands on its budget.

“But there is a certain amount of weird shit that goes on down here,” he said, “and people got into the habit of asking me to keep track of it.”

“Why was that?”

“Watched too much X-Files growing up,” he said. “Also I’m a bit of an urban explorer.”

“So, not your first time in the sewers,” I said. Urban explorers liked to climb into secret and abandoned nooks and crannies. That a lot of this involved illegal trespass merely added to the attraction.

“It’s the first time I ever went surfing in one,” he said. “I come from a family of engineers so I like poking my nose in and seeing how things work. I kept volunteering to do the weird stuff and in the end it became semiofficial.”

And thus another arrangement was born.

“If you ever meet Lady Ty,” I said, “don’t tell her. That sort of things drives her berserk.”

“Speaking of X-Files,” said Kumar, gesturing back toward the locker room. “Do you think Agent Reynolds …?”

I shrugged. “What do I know?” I said. I was thinking of making it my family motto.

“Maybe we should ask her,” said Kumar.

“And destroy the mystique?” I said.

Kumar wanted to know how magic worked but I told him I was supposed to keep it secret. “I’m already in a ton of shit for opening my mouth.”

Despite that, he asked whether it was element-based—fire, water, air, and earth. I said I didn’t think so.

“So no Earthbenders kicking rocks around,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “Or Airbenders, or Waterbenders, or He-Man, or Captain Planet.” Or any other character from a kid’s cartoons. “At least I hope not. What kind of stuff do you get down in the tunnels?”

“Lots of ghost reports,” said Kumar, and started digging through the catering boxes. “Not as many as we get from overground tracks.”

I thought of Abigail’s deceased tagger.

“Anything else like the guy with the machine gun?” I asked.

“There are always rumors that there’s people living in the Underground,” he said.

“Think it’s likely?” I asked.

Kumar gave a happy grunt and emerged from the box with a multipack of cheese and onion crisps.

“I wouldn’t have said so,” he said. “The sewers are toxic. It’s not just the risk of infection or disease—”

“Or drowning,” I said.

“Or drowning,” said Kumar. “You get gas buildups, methane mostly but other stuff as well. Not very conducive to human habitation.”

I thought of the big eyes set in a pale face. Too pale perhaps?

“What if he wasn’t entirely human?” I asked.

Kumar gave me a disgusted look. “I thought I was used to investigating weird shit,” he said. “I really had no idea, did I?”

“No idea about what?” asked Reynolds from the doorway. “Shower’s all yours by the way.”

We showered and then stripped, which is how you do it when you’re covered in sewage. I had a row of spectacular bruises across my chest that I knew were going to come up good and purple in the next twenty-four hours. Kumar showed me how to wring out coveralls and then we put our still-damp clothes and kit back on—including the stab vest. Especially the stab vest.

Me and Kumar agreed that I’d talk to the sisters while he checked in with his boss, my boss, my other boss, Seawoll, and finally Lesley. This is why nobody likes joint operations.

Smelling only moderately bad, we went into the storeroom to discover that Reynolds had gone exploring. We found her back in the club talking to Olympia and Chelsea. As we walked over she returned Olympia’s chunky black mobile phone, the kind favored by people who might have to spend a certain amount of time underwater. Reynolds had obviously taken advantage of our shower to make contact with the surface world. I wondered who she’d called. Somebody at the embassy, or perhaps the senator? Was it possible she’d lied about not having any backup?

I checked my watch and found it was six-thirty in the morning. No wonder I was feeling so knackered. The club looked like it was winding down, drifts of teenagers piling up around the chairs and sofas at the end of the tunnel, while those who were still dancing had that frantic quality you get when you are absolutely determined to wring the last bit of excitement from the night. I also noticed that the DJ had stopped talking over the tracks, and any DJ tired of the sound of his own voice is tired indeed.

I caught Olympia’s eye and beckoned the twins over. They didn’t even try to look reluctant. Our FBI agent had piqued their interest and they wanted to know what the gossip was.

“Your rivers …” I said.

Chelsea gave me a dangerous look. “What about our rivers?” she asked.

“They run … mostly underground,” I said. “Right?”

“We can’t all go frolicking through the suburbs,” said Chelsea. “Some of us have to work for a living.”

“Though Ty’s got plans,” said Olympia.

“Ty’s always got plans,” said Chelsea.

“You’d know if there were people living in the sewers?” I asked.

“Not away from our courses,” said Olympia. “It’s not like we spend that much time in the dirty bits.”

Chelsea nodded. “Would you?”

Olympia waved her hands vaguely about. “Sometimes I get a kind of itchy feeling, you know like when there’s a thought in your head and you’re not sure it’s one of yours?”

“I think it’s more like when your leg twitches,” said Chelsea.

“Your leg twitches?” asked Olympia. “Since when?”

“I’m not saying it twitches all the time,” said Chelsea. “I’m saying that sense of involuntary movement.”

“Have you seen a guy called James Gallagher down here?” I asked. “American, white, early twenties, art student.”

Olympia nodded at Reynolds. “Is that what she’s here for?”

“Is he important?” asked Chelsea.

“Murder victim,” I said.

“Not the guy they found at Baker Street?” asked Olympia.

I told them it was the very same, which was when I glanced over and saw Zachary Palmer tending bar.

“How long has he been working for you?” I asked the sisters.

“Who?” asked Olympia and looked over at Zach. “Oh, Goblin Boy.”

“Is he a goblin?” I asked. “He said he was half fairy.”

“Same thing,” said Chelsea. “Sort of.”

“I can’t keep them straight,” said Olympia.

“It’s all the same to us,” said Chelsea.

“But he does work for you?” I asked. “Full-time?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Chelsea. “He’s the neighborhood odd job guy.”

“Yeah,” said Olympia. “If the job is odd he’s the goblin for you.”

I looked over to find Zach was staring back at me. I was tempted to go ask him some questions but felt I’d been underground long enough.

“I can’t be bothered to deal with you two now,” I said. “But don’t think I won’t check with your mum.”

“Oh, we’re quaking in our boots,” said Olympia.

“Relax, magic boy,” said Chelsea. “We keep it all strictly contained.”

I gave them my sternest look, which bothered them not at all, and went off to join Kumar and Reynolds.

Apparently we had two options: a long climb up a set of spiral stairs, or we could go through the now open Holland Park tube station, where at least we could take the lift up—as if that was a contest. We were just heading for the passageway to the station when Zach intercepted me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I told Kumar and Reynolds that I’d catch up.

“We heard the ambience was brilliant,” I said.

“Yeah, no, look, listen,” said Zach. “I thought you might be looking for other tunnels.”

“No,” I said. “I’m looking for a change of clothes.”

“The old post office tunnel goes right past this place,” he said.

I heard the whistle the second time. Given the thump, thump, thump of the bass beat and the fact that Zach was trying to shout over the music, it’s amazing I heard it at all. On the third whistle there was no mistaking the non-studio-processed nature of the sound, and I looked across the dance floor to see Kumar waving for my attention. When he had it he pointed at his eyes and then at the far end of the club. I turned back to Zach, who had a strangely frantic look on his face.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

“What about the tunnels?”

“Later,” I said.

I pushed my way through the crowd as quickly as I could, and as soon as I was close Kumar yelled, “He’s here!”

No need to ask who. “Where?” I asked.

“Going out through the station exit.”

Out among the innocent bystanders, I thought.

“Could you see if he still had the Sten gun?” I asked.

Kumar hadn’t seen it.

We headed out through the exit into Holland Park station—at a walking pace, thank God. Reynolds had been shadowing him and we found her crouched at the bottom of a flight of stairs trying to get an angle on anyone at the top without being seen.

“He just went up,” she whispered to us.

I asked if she was sure it was him.

“Pale face, big eyes, that weird round-shouldered posture,” she said. “Definitely him.”

I was impressed. I hadn’t even noticed his posture. The sisters had said that after the stairs there was a short corridor and then a fire door out into the station proper. We reckoned he’d hear our boots if we ran up behind him. So we walked up, having a casual conversation in the hope we’d sound like weary clubbers. In the course of the first two flights I learned that Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds was from Enid, Oklahoma, and had gone to university at Stillwater and thence to Quantico.

Sergeant Kumar, whose first name was Jaget, was from Hounslow and had studied engineering at Sussex University but had fallen into policing. “I’d have been a terrible engineer,” he said. “No patience.”

I had a jazz anecdote about my father all ready to go when we very clearly heard the sound of a door slamming shut up ahead—at which point we legged it.

It was an ordinary fire door, heavily spring-loaded, presumably so Olympia and Chelsea’s friends could leave without letting the commuter traffic leak back in. We went through it slowly and quietly and found ourselves in an alcove tucked away near the station’s lifts. Our suspect wasn’t among the passengers waiting to go up in the lift, and according to them, they’d been waiting at least a couple of minutes, which was too long for him to have gone up earlier.

“Stairs or platforms?” asked Kumar.

“He likes to stay underground,” I said. “Platforms first.”

We caught a break when I spotted him through the grilled windows where the corridor cut across the top of the east-bound platform. We ran as quietly as we could down the next flight of stairs and piled up like cartoon characters at the entrance to the platform. I was just nerving myself to have a look around the corner when Kumar pointed at the convex mirror at head height opposite. This was a holdover from the days before CCTV, when station staff and BTP had to scope out stations with the mark one eyeball.

I spotted him, small and oddly shaped in the mirror, at the far end of the platform.

“If he’s still armed,” said Kumar, “we’ll never get close.”

I felt a puff of air on my face and the rails began to sing. It was too late—a train was coming.