The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

39

Security

Arthur Bryant had once shepherded bemused travelers on guided tours around King’s Cross, and had perversely grown to love the area.

It had always been in a state of turbulence, of sickness and health, pleasure and vice, cruelty and grace. In its way, it was the most quintessential and paradoxical part of the entire city. The railway station was constructed on the site of the London Smallpox Hospital, and yet there had once been in its vicinity a pair of iron-rich spa springs and public pump rooms, near to which Eleanor Gwynne, the favourite of Charles II, had passed her summers in an idle procession of concerts and breakfasts.

In 1779, the Bagnigge Wells, as it was then called, had been described as a place where ‘unfledged Templars first as fops parade, and new-made ensigns sport their first cockade’. Its banqueting hall boasted a distorting mirror and an organ, tea arbours draped with honeysuckle, swan fountains and fish ponds, bowling greens and skittle alleys, gardens and grottos. But this most fashionable of resorts could not remain so for long. In 1827 it was written ‘The cits to Bagnigge Wells repair, to swallow dust and call it air’. Highwaymen and whores moved in for the rich pickings; the upper classes sneered at their new low companions and quickly moved on.

Just along the rain-polished road from where Bryant now found himself, the Fleet River broadened into a ford at Battle Bridge, a spot still filled with barges. The brickwork ashes that accumulated on the grounds had been sold to Russia, to help rebuild Moscow after Napoleon’s invasion, but who now could separate fact from fiction? Certainly, the immense octagonal monument to George IV that once sprawled across the road junctions had provided King’s Cross with its name. Here sprang up some of London’s roughest pubs, The Fox at Bay and The Pindar of Wakefield, the smoky homes of gamblers, drunkards and resurrectionists. Here too was the hellish Coldbath Fields prison, infamous for the severity of its punishments.

After the Second World War, the elegant terraced houses were carved into bed-and-breakfast lodgings for the dispossessed. And just as the railway terminus had once brought about the desecration of King’s Cross, the wheel had turned and it was now the area’s saviour, for the rail link to Europe arrived, a new town growing in its wake. The whores and dealers, modern versions of the night flyers and pleasure-mongers who had always flitted around the crossroads, had been scooped from their pitches and dumped elsewhere as chain stores moved in to attract new money.

At the moment, though, the area was still a battlefield of water-filled ditches and workmen’s barriers, tourists clambering past one another with suitcases. Bryant loved towns in transition, and King’s Cross was a core-sample of London at its most tumultuous. The Victorian buildings that had housed laundries, pawnbrokers and watchmakers had been rehabilitated into stripped-back modern offices.

It was here that he found the headquarters of Theseus Research.

Black-painted iron gates sealed a courtyard, beyond which a glass wall separated a security guard from the cold. The desk behind which he sat was so large that Bryant could only see the top of his head. He pressed the entry buzzer and awaited admittance. Instead of the gate swinging open, the guard emerged from the building into the rain and approached him.

“This building is not open to the public, sir,” he informed Bryant through the bars, keeping his distance.

“Hullo there, I run the King’s Cross Rambling Club.” Bryant pressed his official London Tour Guide licence against the railings. “There’s a public right-of-way that runs through the middle of your building, and we want to include it on our tour.”

The guard’s cold dead eyes reminded Bryant of a mackerel he had seen on a Sainsbury’s slab. “There’s no access here. You can’t come through here.”

“Then I’d like to speak with your public relations officer.”

“We don’t have one.”

“Well, whoever deals with your general enquiries, then,” Bryant said, smiling and waiting with more patience than he could usually manage.

“We don’t have general enquiries. It’s Saturday.”

“I thought you did. My grandson works here, you see.”

“Then maybe you should call your grandson and get him to let you in.”

Bryant knew of a few certainties in life. One was that you should never rub your eyes after chopping chilli peppers, another was that you should be wary of using red telephone kiosks after drunks had been in them, and now to this list he could add the fact that the guard on this door was never, ever going to admit him to the building.

“I’m an old-age pensioner,” he said forlornly, looking up at the guard with pathetic, watery blue eyes. “I’ve come from miles away to organise this walk. I thought my grandson would be here, but he’s not. Please, is there at least someone I can call?”

“You could try the general switchboard.” The guard sounded more sympathetic, but none too hopeful. Bryant dug out his cell phone, flicked several liquorice allsorts from its casing and began to punch out a number.

“Hey, you can’t do that from here,” warned the guard.

“Why not?”

“This is a secure area. You won’t get a signal anyway. This is official Ministry of Defence property.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Everyone who works here? They all have to sign the Official Secrets Act. Even the cleaners.”

“But it’s not as if they’re making bombs or chemical weapons inside, is it? This is a built-up area. There are railway stations.”

“No, but they make plans here. For terrorist attacks and stuff like that.”

“Well, in that case, I shall tell our ramblers that they can’t have access. We mustn’t interfere with the government’s plans to protect us. Thank you – ” Bryant squinted at the guard’s nametag, “ – Mandume – you’ve been very helpful.”

It was obvious now that he thought about it. There could never have been any other explanation. They were provided with cover stories because they were working for the Ministry of Defence, thought Bryant as he raised his umbrella and walked back into the rain.