‘They’ve a right to be there, those men,’ Danielle said. ‘This is their place.’

  ‘Their place?’ Henry shook his head. ‘God, what is this? Have you had some sort of working-class epiphany?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dani, tell me honestly, do you have anything to do with that woman who the police came round about?’

  ‘No!’

  He sat down on a bollard and looked up at her. He said, ‘Look, I know that this … You and me … Well it’s not ideal …’

  ‘I told you, you didn’t have to do this,’ Danielle said. ‘Having me living with you is your choice, Henry. We both know if it weren’t for the baby …’

  ‘You should’ve had an abortion,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, but I wasn’t gonna do that, was I?’

  ‘No.’

  Inside the pub there was a huge roar. Cheering.

  Henry said, ‘I don’t know what you do. I go to work every day, I come home, make or buy some food and then you go to bed early. What do you do with yourself, Dani?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I mean,’ he continued, ‘for all I know, you could have met this woman.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘And … The old man who lives in that house …’ He pointed at the house with the blue door, just as a large group of men ran out of the pub and knocked on the door. Seconds later someone opened it and they all piled in.

  ‘Do you know what goes on there?’ Henry asked Danielle.

  ‘No!’ Emphatic denial again, and this time she turned away from him too.

  Henry did not believe her.

  The intersection with the sewerage system was behind them now and the men were back inside a narrow, if mercifully tall tunnel this time. By the light of his phone torch Colin Wilkinson could see that above them was a high vaulted stone ceiling, supported by walls made from what appeared to be very old bricks.

  To be vindicated in his belief in this place felt good. But however warm and fuzzy that might make him feel, Wilko was also aware of the fact that none of them knew where they were. They knew they were heading roughly in the right direction for Carter Court but, even if they did make it there, what were they going to find?

  If only his ‘feelings’ about places like this came with instructions. Wilko didn’t know what this was. A baby had been killed in a ritualistic fashion, evil had come to EC4 according to George, and Lee Arnold and his missus had been looking into the disappearance of a boy when she too had gone missing. He didn’t know what it meant. All he did know was that it meant something – which at the present time was fucking useless information.

  ‘John, are you alright?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  Mumtaz could hear he was struggling and her heart went out to him. But she didn’t dare stop, not now. She didn’t know how long rat-bite fever took to come on, much less Weil’s disease. Maybe one or other of these was already making the boy feel weak.

  She heard him say, ‘How long have we been in this tunnel?’

  She said she didn’t know, and she didn’t. Enveloped in such overwhelming darkness, there was no frame of reference whereby time might be measured. And with the exception of John’s rat, their tactile experience of the tunnel had been consistent. Above and to the sides were stone walls; beneath their knees and feet, it was damp and sludgy. With regard to smells, there was an overpowering scent of mustiness, of things made wet and then long neglected. The smell of sewerage had actually become less noticeable. But then maybe that was because they were used to it.

  Once again Mumtaz tried to remember how she’d come to be in this situation. But try as she might, she couldn’t remember anything about being in that house. One moment she’d been outside the blue door and the next she’d been in that room with the well in total darkness. Why had whoever had done this to her, acted in that fashion? If John was right about the Luddites, was it because she was Asian? Or was it just simply because she’d been asking questions? But then how could John be right? Surely if such an organisation existed, someone would know about it? But then maybe someone did and they weren’t doing anything about it?

  She hit her head. Mumtaz stopped. Had the tunnel come to an end? Oh, God no!

  John said, ‘What’s the matter? Why’ve you stopped?’

  To have reached a dead end after so long in the dark was unthinkable. It was also, Mumtaz felt, not really possible. Water had poured in through this tunnel to the well. It had to have an outlet somewhere. But then maybe it was small? Maybe too small to crawl through?

  ‘Mumtaz!’

  He sounded terrified. She said, ‘It’s OK, I’m just seeing where it goes …’

  Up ahead there was just stone. It was the same on her left side. When she moved her hand to the right, at first it met a hard surface. But then as she began to move her hand around she discovered the existence of a hole. Judging its dimensions using only touch wasn’t easy, but she eventually managed to deduce it was big enough for them to crawl through. Just. Even more cramped than the tunnel they had been in before, and she warned John things were about to get rougher.

  ‘Can you manage it?’ she said. ‘Or do you want to go back?’

  She heard him begin to cry.

  ‘John …’

  ‘We must go on,’ he said through sobs. ‘We must!’

  And he was right. Mumtaz ducked down into the even smaller tunnel and began to shuffle her way along. When she’d managed to move away from the entrance she called John to encourage him forward. When he caught up with her, she could feel his body shaking.

  But she only had a moment to give him a few words of encouragement before she suddenly felt that her hands were getting wet.

  Scott Brown didn’t know exactly where he’d got the idea that Manson was engaged in something that night. He’d said nothing and had come out to Bishopsgate as soon as Brown had called. Maybe Brown sensed the extra tension that always accompanied the eve of some big bust or high-profile take-down. But then maybe Manson was always like this. Maybe being in counter-terrorism made you hypervigilant, constantly on edge?

  When they were alone, Brown said to Manson, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘From your point of view? Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘On what basis—’

  ‘Because I’m telling you to do nothing,’ Manson said.

  There was a belief amongst some coppers, men and women along the lines of Wilko Wilkinson mainly, that all the Special Branch and counter-terror top brass were psychopaths. The thinking being that you had to be one to catch one. Manson’s marble-like eyes gave some credence to this theory.

  ‘So what do I do with the clerics, the QC?’

  ‘You send them home,’ Manson said. ‘They have reported their concerns.’

  ‘What about the young priest?’

  The Reverend de Vere had described his relationship with a man called Arthur Hobbs, who lived close to the cathedral in Carter Court. While the reverend’s original aim had been to try and disabuse Mr Hobbs of the deeply racist views he had espoused to him, it seemed that Harold de Vere had become too close to this elderly man. A change of heart had, it seemed, taken place at some point. And while the Reverend de Vere still didn’t hold with Mr Hobbs’s views, he had been both convinced and intrigued by the fact that Hobbs claimed to be part of an ancient movement committed to feudal values. As the youngest son of a baronet, there was an argument that the Reverend de Vere could be particularly sensitive to such a suggestion. That aside, whether or not de Vere had left the gates to the cathedral churchyard open deliberately on the night of the baby’s death was still unknown. Canon Palmer had admitted that on that occasion de Vere had been the person who should have shut them. It seemed that everyone in the cathedral had anxieties about de Vere’s frequent meetings with Hobbs. However, de Vere, who appeared genuinely distressed, held to the notion that he had forgotten. He’d had an appointment to meet his mother for dinner at Claridge’s later that evening and in his rush to get away fell down on his duty to his employer. It happened.

  Then there was crazy Father George’s brother and the tunnels. Scott Brown had heard Wilko bang on about tunnels underneath London, but he’d never taken much notice. Now Barry Feldman was saying that his brother might have gone underground to look for them, and this had something to do with the cathedral. The young priest had spoken of tunnels too. Apparently Arthur Hobbs knew about them. His ancient society or whatever it was used them. What was true and what wasn’t?

  But Manson had been interested enough to bring himself over to Bishopsgate when he clearly had other things on his mind. Manson and his team had intervened when City Police had started staking out The Jolly Sailor pub, where they had been treading unwittingly on the toes of Counter Terrorism. They’d been staking out the pub because the father of the dead baby, Colin Macbeth, may have met the mother of the child at the venue. Macbeth, while denying DNA evidence of his paternity, was nevertheless not averse to one-night stands with women he picked up in pubs. Or so it seemed.

  The Jolly Sailor was a low-level right-wing hang-out and now there was this intel from the priest about an ancient society dedicated to British feudalism. Scott Brown had anxieties about things like this. One thing he had in common with Father George was his belief that society was breaking down. Like the priest, Brown believed that part of the reason for this was misinformation spread via the Internet, specifically through social media outlets. Suddenly everyone had a voice – including those who shouldn’t, ever. He also knew that within the ranks of his own officers, that perception was an unusual one. In addition Brown knew that one of the few people who shared this view was Wilko Wilkinson.

  When Manson had gone, Brown tried to call Wilko but he wasn’t picking up.

  ‘It was never gonna work,’ Danielle said as she folded her clothes into her suitcase.

  Henry didn’t know how to feel. When it had first happened he remembered thinking, I’ve made my secretary pregnant. I am a living cliché. And when she’d told him, he’d had to run away and think about what to do next. He’d gone to his parents’ villa in Greece where he’d managed to convince himself he could live with her. Not marry her. That had never crossed his mind and, as they had journeyed into their experimental partnership, that notion had appealed less and less. He didn’t love her, they had nothing in common and her sulky response to his friends upset him. But while his affection for her had receded, his love for their child had increased.

  ‘I don’t want you to do this,’ Henry said.

  ‘Well I want to,’ she said.

  Should he have just left her there outside that pub without comment? Maybe he should. Maybe she got some sort of comfort from being around people who resembled her own family. Not that his one experience of her father had left Henry with anything other than a positive feeling. Raymond Saint was a quiet, gentle man. Henry had felt quite sorry for him, a lone man in a house full of loud and opinionated women. He had rather liked Danielle’s immediate family, even if some of her more distant relatives had given him the cold shoulder.

  ‘Dani …’

  ‘I can’t be done with the snobbery,’ Danielle said. ‘Like there’s people I should mix with and people I shouldn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I’m pissed off getting looked down at,’ she said. ‘That couple next door …’

  ‘Zander and Pippa. What about them?’

  ‘They don’t even look at me!’

  ‘You said you’re fed up with people looking down at you, which is it?’ he snapped.

  ‘Oh, fuck off!’ she said.

  ‘Those people who hang around that pub …’

  ‘They’re the people who’ve always lived here!’ she screamed. ‘People always trying to push them out of places to make flats for people like your mates and their fucking hand-made, fucking thousands of pound bloody cooking pot kits from the rainforest! Then using them to cook bloody seaweed! I do not want my baby to eat weird food, I don’t want a doula at the birth and I don’t want you throwing my Auntie Pat out of Mum’s house because she smokes!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘I can’t stand it here any longer! If you want to do something useful then you can call me a cab.’

  Henry lowered his head. This had all come on so quickly, he didn’t really know what to think. Maybe if they had some time apart, it would do both of them some good. Clearly Danielle had been harbouring this resentment against him and his lifestyle for some time. He hadn’t thought that he’d pushed his views and his friends at her – exactly. But then maybe she felt that he had?

  Quite where what he said next came from, Henry didn’t know. It just blurted out of him.

  He said, ‘So that woman the police were asking about yesterday? Did you speak to her or didn’t you?’

  Danielle stopped what she was doing.

  John was quite a way behind her now. As soon as she’d felt water splashing around her hands and knees, Mumtaz had picked up her pace. There was no choice but to just keep going forwards now. If they stopped or tried to find their way back, they were dead. Now that the tide was rising, they were in competition with it. Either they outran the river or it killed them.

  ‘John,’ she called out as she scuttled forwards through what was now mud, ‘can you swim?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘River’s coming in now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Can you see any light or anything up ahead?’

  ‘No I can’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t think about that, just keep going.’

  But then as she lowered a hand to place it again in the rising slush, she suddenly realised there was nothing there – and she just dropped, like a stone.

  NINETEEN

  To begin with, Jordan just thought that what he was hearing was an echo of their own voices. But as they moved forwards, he began to think that what he was hearing was actual other voices. He stopped and told the others to be quiet.

  While none of them could make out words, they all heard voices which seemed to be coming from their direction of travel.

  Eventually George said, ‘Who could that be?’

  Lee, ever the pragmatist, said, ‘Could be flushers. As we all saw, we’re right near the sewers.’

  ‘Or it could be them,’ George said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘People from the house.’

  ‘If you’re right …’

  ‘Well if I’m not right, then what are we doing down here!’

  ‘To be quite honest with you, Father, I don’t really know.’

  George turned to look at Lee and said, ‘Well, if you feel that way …’

  ‘Ssshh!’

  They all fell silent.

  ‘I think it’s getting closer,’ Jordan said.

  Wilko, whispering, said, ‘Can you make anything out, boy?’

  ‘Not if you keep wanging on,’ Jordan said.

  They all listened. At first all they heard was drips and then a man’s voice said, ‘Here. Footprints.’

  She seemed to fall for ever. Through blackness and a vast drop in temperature. When she momentarily landed she felt first a deep, sludgy softness envelop her fingers and her knees. There was something hard underneath it which caused her body to bounce and she was once again airborne. Had she been able to, Mumtaz would have screamed, but no sound came out of her mouth and the next thing she knew she was underneath water.

  Deep, and due to the fact that her body was continually buffeted by things she couldn’t see in what was now a watery darkness, she fought to close her mouth as she imagined a vortex of raw sewerage aggregating around her. They’d been close to the sewers all along and now the tunnel she had so stoically trudged through with the boy had disgorged them into one. As she fought to hold what remained of her breath, Mumtaz willed herself to open her eyes, but she couldn’t. If she was in a sewer then the water had to have a top surface! Except that it didn’t. Maybe the water level, now that the tide was coming in, was up to the ceiling. But a gap of some sort was her only hope of survival! She pushed and fought and battled her way up.

  When her head emerged from the water, she opened her eyes expecting to see or feel a roof above her head. But there was no roof. Panting and treading water to keep herself afloat, she looked up into the star-streaked, street-lamp-flooded sky over the River Thames. Laughing with relief she looked towards the shore, where she saw the figure of a screaming human being emerging to join her from a cascade of filth erupting from a pipe.

  He didn’t know what to think. Something was afoot which might or might not include his brother and Barry was anxious. He’d got the cab just outside the police station and was now heading for home. The DI with Brown had unnerved him. He’d seen people like him give witness statements behind screens used to protect them from retaliatory action by criminal gangs and terror organisations. Usually little better than the people they hunted, these robocops as he called them were a necessary but uncomfortable evil.

  Evil made him think about his brother again and Barry frowned. George had always been odd. Not just when he’d been a child but all through his life. Involvement with the miners’ strike in the eighties hadn’t helped. Half or more of those who went up to Yorkshire to support the miners had been unhinged. Loony lefties. George had broken down after the Battle of Orgreave. After that was when God had intervened.

  The cab was travelling along New Change, which skirted the eastern end of the cathedral, when Barry noticed that there were a lot of police vans around. Something was going on; he didn’t know what but he reasoned it had nothing to do with his brother. He’d only just reported the bugger missing and it was hardly as if poor old George was ‘anyone’. A half-mad priest with a penchant for ghosts was all he was. And yet the thought of life without George, annoying though he was, made Barry want to cry.