The Dead Tracks

Chapter Sixty-five

We jumped down into the space below the floorboards. Everything else was decades old, but the manhole looked new. It had been painted black. There was a T-shaped lever built into its middle, sitting in a hollowed-out space. I reached down, wrapped my fingers around the lever and turned it. A squeak. Then it began to move. On the other side the clicking sound continued, neither of us saying anything.

Finally, the lever hit a buffer and there was a gentle clank.

I looked at Healy, nodded, then lifted it out. It was heavy, but relatively easy to move. I shifted it sideways and placed it gently on the floor, among all the debris. Then we turned back to the hole and looked down.

Immediately inside was a speaker, a crackle coming from it like static. Next to that, embedded in the wall, was a small plastic box, about the size of a ten-pound note. There was nothing on it but two LED lights. One red. One green. It was an alarm system. The green light was on, and the clicking was faster now. The light must have changed from red to green the minute I'd removed the manhole cover, and the faster click was the alarm going off somewhere else.

He knows we're coming.

A ladder dropped down into a circle of darkness. I shone the torch into the space. I could see a polished floor below, but not much else. Maybe a cabinet and a door to the right — but the torch was already struggling. The batteries were old, and the beam was starting to fade from using it continuously at Markham's house. In fifteen minutes, we'd have a light that couldn't define anything clearly. In twenty minutes, we'd have nothing at all.

I looked at Healy. Are you okay? He nodded, but all of a sudden he looked old and ground down. This place; the expectancy of what lay ahead; the confrontations, dead ends and betrayals that had littered his journey: it had all come to a head.

'Healy?' I said softly.

A second's pause, as if he was trying to pull himself out of the funk - and then he did. 'I'm fine,' he replied and, as if to prove it, he shuffled into position at the manhole and started descending the ladder. I put a finger to my lips. Slowly. Even as he dropped down through the hole, I could hear the gentle ching of his shoes against the metal rungs. When he was about halfway down, I started to wonder if that might not be the point: every surface, every movement, made a sound.

After about ten seconds, all I could see of Healy was his head. I leaned down and handed him the torch, a fist coming up from the black circle and taking it from me. Then I got into position myself. Below, I could hear him taking the rest of the steps. Ching ching ching. Then nothing. He must have reached the bottom. I stopped and peered into the dark. The torch swung left and right, picking out walls, another door and the cabinet I'd glimpsed earlier.

I started down after him. There were thirty-eight rungs in all, and each one felt wet to the touch. Maybe it was dew from Healy's boot. Maybe it was oil. It felt thicker than water, but didn't leave any colour on my skin. Once my feet touched the floor, I wiped my hands on my trousers and looked for Healy. He was off to my right, the torch gripped at shoulder height. He was shining it through a big glass panel in a door in the corner. He tried the door but it was locked. Inside it was mostly dark, but the torch revealed what looked like steel medical storage units, the torch reflecting in their surface as he swung it in all directions. In the centre of the room, drilled into the floor — so dark and so deep we couldn't see the bottom — was a hole.

Healy raised his eyebrows: That's where he kept Sona.

Suddenly, a noise exploded around us.

Both of us put our hands to our ears and Healy manoeuvred the torch until he found a second speaker high up on the opposite wall. Then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped. The silence was like a shockwave passing across the room.

Beside me, Healy reached into his jacket and took out his gun.

I followed the circle of light as he moved it around the room. Now he had the torch and the gun, and I had nothing. I was completely reliant on him. I didn't like the lack of control, but I liked ceding it to Healy even less. It wasn't that I didn't trust him to watch my back — it was that I didn't trust him to watch his own.

"What is this place?' he whispered.

It wasn't part of the sewer network. It wasn't a bomb shelter either — or, at least, wasn't built to house people originally. Which meant it could have been a relic from the factories on the eastern edge: some sort of transportation tunnel. Healy shone the torch towards the manhole again. It looked like a new addition, as if it had been hollowed out and drilled through in order to join the area we were standing in. But everything else looked old. I wondered for a moment how Glass had got equipment down here, and how long it had taken him to do it. And then I thought again about him, how meticulous and patient he was. How, ultimately, the time and logistics wouldn't have mattered. He would have got it done, and — as he'd already proved — he would kill anyone who got in the way.

Healy swung the torch around the room a second time and picked out a thick reinforced door. It looked like a submarine hatch, black and rusting, a hole in the centre where the wheel had once been. It didn't seem to fit the frame, or the frame had been made too big. There were gaps at the bottom and at the right-hand edge, faint light trickling through from the other side. Out of the speaker above it came a constant buzz.

We edged across the room, Healy slightly ahead with the torch and gun up in front of him. His finger was tight in against the trigger. He had the air of a man who'd used one before, and not just in a firing range. Police warrant cards were marked with an endorsement if an officer had the right to carry firearms. Healy's hadn't been. Wherever he'd learned to fire weapons, whatever he'd done with them before, it hadn't been within the boundaries of the law.

At the door, he pulled at the hatch. It stuck, juddered in its frame, then came back at us, squeaking as it swung on its hinges. On the other side was a partially lit corridor, a series of glass panels on the right. The walls were tightly packed red brick and the floors polished concrete. At the end of the corridor, the artificial light stopped and there was a vaguely circular wall of darkness. Above us, wires snaked out of another speaker, static buzzing from it, filling the dead air in the corridor. When we stepped through the hatch, we could see the glass panels were windows.

Just like Sona had described.

There were three of them, looking into three small rooms, each one about twenty feet square. Everything had been painted white: the brick walls, the ceiling, the concrete floors, the door on the other side. In the first room there was a small table with nothing on it. We edged further along. The second was completely empty.

A noise from up ahead.

Healy shone the torch into the darkness at the end of the corridor. It kinked right at the end, past four unmarked barrels. As we moved forward, towards the third window, the sound of static increased. Healy directed the light upwards. Three feet above us was another speaker, pumping out sound. A constant, unbroken wall of noise like someone had hit a dead TV channel.

We reached the third window.

In the centre of the room was a hospital bed. A white mattress and white bedclothes on top of that, the bedclothes half covering the legs of the woman lying on it. She was semi-conscious and dressed in a pale blue night dress, lying on her side in the foetal position. One of her hands rested on her stomach. After a while, her fingers started moving gently across her midriff, even as she slept. Tracing the roundness of her belly. The swell of her pregnancy. Eventually she shifted position on the mattress, her head tilting in our direction.

It was Megan Carver.