Deep Shelter Read online

  “Is the storeroom open?” he asked.

  “I haven’t locked it.”

  “I need some oil in the Skoda.”

  “Help yourself.”

  Belsey went down to the basement. He took a hand axe, bolt cutters and a twelve-inch Maglite, loaded them into his car and drove to Belsize Park.

  3

  QUARTER TO SEVEN AND THE HIGH STREET WAS packed. Belsize Park had continental pretensions and only a few weeks of sunshine a year to exercise them. Restaurants spilled furniture onto the pavement. People spoiled the effect, sitting on kerbs holding dented cans. Office workers who’d been playing truant were safe now, lost among the crowds of reinforcements outside every pub. Everyone was drunk. Everything was launching unsteadily into the night.

  Belsey parked across from the Costa, took his tools and walked down the alleyway. He stared at the entrance tower and felt it staring back at him. No one could see him from the high street. He knocked on the metal and wondered what he expected to happen. He considered obscuring the CCTV, but if someone somewhere was monitoring this set-up then they knew him by now. He made a final attempt at calling PSA, a gesture for his own conscience. Again it rang without answer. Well, they could try getting in touch with him if they had a problem.

  He cut through the wire fence. Soon there was a gap big enough to clamber through. He took a broken chair from among the rubbish in the high weeds. It was stable enough on its side and got him to what he took to be a boarded-up window. The wood, rotted around its nails, came away easily when he wedged the axe blade in, exposing a black gap.

  Belsey chucked the rotten boards into the weeds and stared through what had been a small window, no glass, some thin, rusted mesh folded down. He shone the torch. He could make out a scattering of dead leaves, curved brick walls and the grille of an ancient lift. Narrow passageways led either side of the lift. He hid the axe and bolt cutters among the brambles, then pulled himself up to the ledge and jumped in. The bare concrete made for a heavy landing. He straightened and tingled. It was dark. A lot cooler than outside. The ventilation slats afforded milky strips of light. The floor was messy with brick dust and bird feathers.

  He peered through the lift’s grille into the endless black shaft. He checked the inside of the front panels that blocked the entrance and saw a brass padlock fastening them, cheap but new. He looked for scratches around the lock; hardly any. He handled the cold metal. Then he walked around the lift to the back of the turret. The torch beam lit a lot of white growth like cotton wool; not cobwebs. He peeled a strand. It was a kind of mould. It stuck to his hands. Then, where the mould had been cleared, he found a wooden door. Belsey turned the handle and it opened, towards him. On the other side concrete stairs spiralled downwards between blackened brickwork.

  “Hello?” he called.

  He felt stupid. He stepped in and eased the door closed behind him, leaving it just ajar. The stairs twisted around the mesh cage of the lift shaft. Dust-furred suspension ropes sunk down inside the cage. Belsey descended five steps, then ten, then committed to reaching the bottom. He followed the torch beam, timing his descent. The blood-like smell of rusting iron and damp stone grew thicker. He felt he was being swallowed—that it was no longer curiosity driving him but some form of peristalsis. The shelter nourished itself on over-curious detectives. Maybe his man in the BMW procured them.

  Two minutes later he paused, still on the stairs, and tried to assess his depth. The earth above him rumbled. So he was beneath the tube. The track between Hampstead and Belsize Park ran almost two hundred feet below the surface. That was a fair slice of London clay above his head. He remembered how much he liked space, being able to move, change location if he wanted. On the two occasions he’d been locked in a cell this was the revelation: he hadn’t thought he was claustrophobic because he was rarely confined. After another minute Belsey reached a corrugated iron panel screwed into the walls either side, blocking the way down. A notice had been pasted over the metal a long time ago: DANGER: NO ENTRY. But someone had decided to ignore the notice, smashing the metal off its fixings. Belsey pushed and it toppled over with a clang.

  “Police!” he said, then forced a laugh to take the edge off the silence. Here was the law: darkness behave. He stepped over the metal. No more stairs. A short corridor led to a brick wall. To his left, a cell of rusting machinery. To his right there was a heavy iron door, painted battleship grey with a handwheel in the centre. It was the sort of thing you might find in a bank vault. Belsey tried turning the wheel, then pulled hard and the door eased towards him on recently oiled hinges.

  He couldn’t understand what he was seeing at first: iron racks, long rows of metal shelving, which he realised, after a moment, were beds. Three-tiered bunk beds. The dormitory was low with a rounded ceiling formed by arched sections of metal. The walls glistened in the torchlight. Belsey walked in. The beds stretched endlessly down each side. To the left was a door with a tin sign: Warden’s Post. The warden’s post was a small square room with a wooden seat and a desk supporting one empty champagne bottle. Evidently the warden had been celebrating. Belsey lifted the bottle: 1970 Krug. He sniffed it and could still smell the alcohol. There were fresh fingers marks in the dust.

  A porcelain sink at the back of the warden’s post contained flakes of plaster. Above it was a cabinet. Belsey opened the mirrored doors and found a heap of tiny bones and a mouse skull, like parts from an assembly kit. On the top shelf were two brown pharmaceutical bottles. One was labelled “Evipan,” the other “Dexedrine.” They were empty. No date, no patient name. They weren’t standard pharmacy labels.

  He checked his watch. It was five past seven but this felt as if it related to somewhere far away. Belsey walked back into the dorm. He tested a bunk with his hand then lay down on the metal. It was comfortable enough when his weight settled. He switched the torch off. The darkness was so thick it had its own texture. It bristled. The mind rebelled and projected images, then patterns, then tried to come to terms with the total absence of sight. This is death, he thought. He could smell old blankets. There was a wave of stale fear left by the original shelterers, then boredom, then both passed. He began to feel an astonishing sense of calm, as if someone had just explained that the world above ground was an elaborate hoax.

  He sat up and switched the Maglite back on. There were the curved ribs of wall, like whale bones. A faded sign: Put out all lights before leaving at night. Then his torchlight hit glass, low down: bottles glinting on the floor between the bunks. He stepped closer. Champagne bottles. They had been arranged like skittles. These ones were unopened. There were more cases stacked against the sides: sealed 1970 Krug, seven cases, six bottles each. Then, further in, smaller, unmarked boxes. Belsey tore them open. Taylor’s Vintage Port and Hennessy cognac. It was all old: labels in styles he recognised from framed adverts on pub walls. The boxes were marked For Dispatch: Red Lion. Which Red Lion had lost this haul? There were also cartons of Embassy cigarettes and three plastic cases marked with a first-aid cross. Belsey opened one and whistled: eleven bottles of pills. They had the same neat, bare labels as the two he had seen in the warden’s cabinet, only these were still brimming: hexobarbitone, modafinil, sodium amytal, Evipan, Pentothal, benzylpiperazine. He’d stumbled upon a treasure trove.

  Belsey stuffed a couple of medication bottles into his jacket pocket, then took the foil off a Krug and popped the cork. The champagne ran over his hands and fizzed in the dirt. He swigged. It was fine champagne. Even at room temperature—subterranean temperature. There were many Red Lion pubs, many he knew and had enjoyed, few with a wine list like this. The bubbles crackled around his shoes; then all was silent with secret joy. He swigged again. It was peaceful. He tried to remember the last time he’d been out of the earshot of sirens.

  7:20 P.M. AND BELSEY hauled himself out through the window, blinking at the shine of the present day. He brushed Blitz dust off his suit. It was remarkably unstained, which seemed to accentuate the ease, and therefore o
pportunity, of the whole thing.

  He called a contact as he drove back to the station: Mr. Kostas, proprietor of Diamante’s on the Seven Sisters Road. They went back years, and Belsey knew Kostas could do with some help. He’d started talking about torching the place.

  “Mr. K. I’ve got a few crates of bubbly going cheap, if you’re interested.”

  “How cheap?”

  “Champagne at twenty. It’s genuine Krug. Also cognac at ten, which is robbing myself. I’ll throw in five cartons of cigarettes, maybe a bottle of port.”

  “How much have you got?”

  “Forty bottles thereabouts.”

  “Saturday I’ve got a hen party coming, Nick. You do something that looks classy at fifteen a bottle I’d get the lot.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  Belsey made a quick calculation: fifteen a bottle, six bottles a crate, make two or three trips up and down, plus a hundred quid for the cigarettes, then the meds—benzylpiperazine was an upper, so was Dexedrine; he didn’t know modafinil; hexobarbitone was presumably a barbiturate. Say five hundred for the drugs at a very conservative estimate and he was looking at over a grand.

  He got back to the station and sat at his desk. The office was empty, fan still turning. The real world felt disappointing after his adventure. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a pill bottle, studying it in the light. It was real. Belsey wondered when he could go back down. Live his Blitz fantasy. Take shelter. What did he know about London in the War? He saw the dome of St. Paul’s, indomitable, surrounded by destruction. He’d been told that in Regent’s Park there was rubble from bombed houses buried ten feet deep. In summer the grass died above it because the bricks couldn’t hold water.

  He turned his computer on, typed Blitz into his browser and clicked I’m feeling lucky. A black and white photograph appeared. It showed a group of people standing next to a fresh bomb crater. A Crowd on Walbrook, 2 May 1941. The caption stated that one and a half thousand people had been killed in raids the previous night. Belsey looked at the faces of the crowd, expecting numb shock. But some were smiling. They had formed an orderly queue, waiting to peer down. He read the caption fully. Members of the public queued to see the temple of Mithras, a Roman temple forgotten beneath the City of London, revealed by the overnight bombing. Belsey tried to see the temple in the blackened crater. He printed a copy and folded it into his jacket.

  Maybe he could go down tomorrow. He should have brought up a bottle of champagne for his date. That would have been cute. And then he had a better idea.

  He put the pill bottles away in his desk then took one out again. He dropped half a benzylpiperazine. If it was stale it wouldn’t kill him, if it was still lively it would knock the dust off and get him bright-eyed and articulate. He stood up and checked the window. The late shift was arriving. There was some impressive sunburn; no one looked very happy. Sirens came from every direction as the evening began to curdle. London was turning edgy with undelivered promises.

  Late shift, which meant it was almost 8 p.m.

  Belsey shaved in the CID toilets. The swelling had gone down, which looked more appropriate for a date, if less heroic. There was no time to get home first, not that it was ever tempting. Home, currently, was the crumbling Hotel President on Caledonian Road. The arrangement had been a stop-gap while Belsey looked for a flat and had extended to six months now. It meant he could pay by the week and never had to worry about running out of soap. He didn’t spend more time there than he had to. He shaved, showered, splashed on some of Trapping’s Calvin Klein aftershave, found a box of condoms at the back of his desk drawer.

  Halfway out of the station he saw Kirsty Craik, alone in the canteen. The canteen’s shutters were all down. Belsey stopped. He felt a pang of guilt about the shelter, a pang of lingering disbelief that she should have reappeared in his life. He brushed his suit again.

  “Working overtime already.”

  She looked up, a little weary, not ungrateful for distraction. In front of her were personnel files.

  “Just pausing before home. It’s cooler down here.”

  “Where are you living?”

  “Kentish Town.”

  “Good area.”

  She nodded and studied him with an expression he remembered: contemplative, undecided.

  “Do we need to talk?” Craik asked.

  “We’re OK, I think. As far as I’m concerned you’re the new DS. I’ve seen you in action and you’re good. Professionally, I mean. I’m looking forward to it.”

  She smiled, then softened her smile.

  “You’re on restricted duties.” Belsey nodded. So she’d checked his file. What kind of journey would she imagine he’d been on, reading that? “How are you finding it?” Craik asked.

  “Restrictive.” He wondered what else she’d been told, pictured her face as she was warned about him: Oh, he’s trouble, is he? “Things are fine, though. Much better. But when full duty wants me back I’m ready to serve. Restricted sometimes feels like being a Community Support Officer.”

  “You could visit schools, give talks.” Craik smiled.

  “I’d happily visit schools and give talks.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to be sending you to any schools, Nick.”

  She was watching him, calculating something. Old flame was a strange expression, Belsey thought. Maybe that was the point. It was all made more complicated by the way memory gets thick with fantasy. And they had liked each other. That had been the problem, although he couldn’t put his finger on the logic of it right now.

  “This must be odd for you,” she said.

  “Odd for both of us. But there are odder things in life. Last month I attended a scene where someone had broken into a vet’s surgery and OD’d on Euthasol. They were there, stretched out on the operating table. We work well together, you know that. I said you’d rise fast.”

  He prepared to leave before the conversation got deeper. Then she surprised him.

  “Where’s good for a late bite around here? Dark rum and dry roasted peanuts—that was your dinner of choice, I seem to recall.”

  The late hour had turned the gleam of her eyes opaque. Good CID eyes, hard to read. But the offer was clear enough. Part of him would have loved to. There would be time, he thought. If this was how it was going to go.

  “On the high street head to La Traviata. It’s better than it looks. Or try Carluccio’s. Skip Nights of India. Believe me.” He smiled again, didn’t offer to accompany her, and she cast a detective’s gaze across his suit and fresh shave. He felt the reek of Calvin Klein coming off him.

  “You’ve got a date.”

  “Just meeting a friend.”

  “OK, Nick. Don’t be late for your friend.” She turned back to the paperwork but not quick enough to hide her blush.

  “See you tomorrow. Bright and early to catch the library robbers.”

  He left, amused by a faint regret. Then his phone buzzed, and all thoughts evaporated: On way, three kisses.

  Jemma with a J, as she’d introduced herself in the custody suite. Someone who was all future. His chat-up line: “You take three grams of cocaine on a political protest? How much fun is it meant to be?” Third date, three kisses. Time to put a plan into action.

  He visited the florist’s by Belsize Park station and bought a bunch of carnations with cream petals and crimson edges. The Co-op only had birthday candles, but they were better than nothing. He bought a box of twenty. He bought new batteries for the Maglite, paid ten pence for an extra-large shopping bag to hide it all in. He went into the Haverstock Arms and ordered two glasses of cava, drank them, placed the glasses in the bag with the torch and flowers.

  Jemma with a J was twenty-two years old: a student of art, a tequila girl and a political protestor. Three noble ways to pass the time. She’d love it. She’d get to know him a little better. And it would save him the embarrassment of explaining his current living arrangements. So far he had visited the club where she wor
ked a couple of times, paid for one dinner together, then last weekend she invited him to some free drinks at a gallery launch. Still no bed time. She’d asked for a glimpse of his life, perhaps in that misguided belief that police detectives roll with some kind of glamour. Other than the glamour they make for themselves. He was going to show her his art.

  4

  JEMMA WAS WAITING OUTSIDE BELSIZE PARK tube station, dressed for heat: cut-off shorts, vest top and sandals, large shades pinning down long black hair. They kissed and he forgot a lot of potential complications.

  “What’s in the bag?” she asked.

  “A surprise.”

  “Grab a coffee?”

  They sat for a moment in the Costa with the shelter turret at its back, talked about their days, the bank robbers he’d caught, criminal empires brought down; then her work, sleazy men in the club, an art piece she was making with Lego and broken glass. She had wry mascaraed eyes and a smile that gave the lie to them, excitable, too young for him.

  “Jemma, are you up for an adventure?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to show you something.”

  Belsey took her hand. They left the coffee shop and turned into the alleyway beside it. He led her towards the shelter. She looked at Belsey, puzzled.

  “What is it?”

  “A space ship.” He directed her to the cut fence and the chair, still in place beneath the window. “Are you OK climbing through?”

  “Sure.” She shifted her handbag around and climbed in, making it look easy. “What the hell is this?” she asked from inside.

  “This is where I live,” Belsey said. He dropped down beside her.

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m joking.” He gave her the Maglite and pointed towards the stairs. “Lift’s out of order.”

  “What’s down there?”

  “Monsters.”

  She led them down.