‘Black Earth?’ he asked. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’m hoping I’ll be able to find out.’
‘You sure you understood him correctly?’
‘My Russian’s excellent. That’s what he said.’
The Colonel stepped over to the door of his office and began shouting along the corridor, demanding the file of someone under the codename of ‘Otter’.
‘And you say we’ve got a dead body dumped somewhere?’
‘Yes. I’d have followed him to find out where, but I didn’t want to leave the post unmanned.’
‘Someone’s going to get a surprise when they take the bins out. Oh well, at least the night’s not a total failure…’
‘I need to look into the warehouse,’ I said, hoping to get the conversation back on track.
He nodded.
Maggie appeared in the doorway. ‘Otter’s file. You need anything else?’
‘Aspirin and coffee. For God’s sake put your back into it this time. I swear the last cup tasted of nothing more than the china it was poured into.’
She sighed and walked off, not gracing him with a reply.
After leafing through the file, he looked up at me.
‘Off you go then,’ he said. ‘Give the warehouse a once-over.’
‘I could do with a few more hands,’ I ventured. ‘I can’t run a surveillance operation and go wandering around the docks for the day. A couple more men would make all the difference.’
‘Can’t spare them,’ the Colonel said. ‘You’ll have to manage. Bring me something more concrete and I’ll see what I can do.’
I knew better than to argue, but I was still fuming when I left the building.
d) Shad Thames, London, 20th December 1963
These days, Shad Thames has become a plasticised representation of the place it used to be. A place of delicatessens and wine bars with walls so clean you could safely lick them. Back then it was in its death throes. A once-vibrant world of warehouses, the creak of ropes, the splinter of wood, the shouts of industry, had been turned into a ghost town by bombs and fickle economics. Everywhere you looked there were echoes and memories, crumbling bricks and shuttered doors. Here and there dwindling groups of workers fought on, beleaguered soldiers in the battle against free trade. I worked my way along the narrow streets, trying to look like a man with a purpose. Invisibility is all about confidence: act as if you own the place and people will rarely give you a second thought.
Given what we had heard, Krishnin’s warehouse had to be somewhere nearby. I had to hope that I’d pin it down before I became such a familiar face in the area that my usefulness as an intelligence officer would be lost.
Nowadays I’d drag in a charming young lady called Eleanor. As a diviner she’s second to none: she’d have picked up its location the minute she stepped off the Tube. But back then we relied on shoe leather and amateur dramatics.
Circumnavigating the boring details of how I found it – it was tedious enough doing it the first time, without reliving it – I found myself facing what I had decided was my best bet. The place was trying its hardest to seem as abandoned as those around it but failing in important details: the hinges on the main gate had been recently oiled and the chains that secured it, were new; the wooden struts that boarded up cracked windows were tight and secure. Abandoned buildings shrug up their secrets, and wear their ignoble state with carelessness. This was a building that wished to avoid attention and keep out intruders. It loomed on the street, an ancient wooden hoist jutting out above its gate like an old gibbet.
I took care to give it minimal attention and walked back to the river. I had a couple of hours before I was due to replace O’Dale, so there was time to explore further. Still, broad daylight was no friend to housebreakers, so a little extra insurance seemed in order. I walked until I came upon a phone box and put a call through to O’Dale.
‘Just wondering who was home,’ I asked.
‘Father’s currently reading the riot act,’ O’Dale replied, keeping his answer vague as per protocol. ‘His naughty boy is complaining about having had to take out the rubbish.’
‘Then he’s too busy to worry about me at the moment.’
‘I would have thought so. Still, who’s to say when he might want to pop out and do chores?’
‘Understood.’
I put the phone down and made my way back towards the warehouse. I had no idea how many men might be over here under Krishnin’s control but at least he was absent for now.
During the five minute walk I came up with a plan.
While the warehouse I was interested in was faking its emptiness, the building next door wasn’t. It truly was a crumbling ruin of red brick and corrugated metal.
I stood in a doorway, several feet away, pretending to do up my shoelace but really ensuring I was unobserved as I walked the last few steps and slipped past the broken door and into the abandoned building.
The air inside was a soup of smells: captured carbon from old fires, urine, dust, rot and, somewhere in the recipe, the faint scent of stale flour. The light creeping in from fractured windows fell in thin beams, patterning the floor like scattered white poles. The shadows were dense enough to hide anything but I moved as quietly as the dusty concrete floor would allow. I reached the side of the building that was adjacent to the real source of my interest, and ran my fingers across the old brick, hoping to pick up a sense of what might lie beyond.
As I inched my way along, keeping my ears close to the wall on the off-chance of hearing signs of occupation, I made a potentially fatal mistake. You know that in our line of work we need to cast the net of our attention wide. If we focus on any one thing we’re likely to miss something important. As I centred my entire attention on the building next door I ceased to pay attention to the one that I was actually in.
All around me, shifting from those deep shadows and pulling themselves free from beneath their junk castles, the tenants of that warehouse had realised they had an intruder in their midst. I had considered the place uninhabited but it was not. I should have known that any building so easily accessed would draw in the homeless.
Turning around I saw several indistinct shapes shuffling their way towards me. Their humanity was hidden beneath layers of shabby clothing and shadow. For a moment I was struck by the thought that whatever I had aroused was something unearthly. The sign, no doubt, of reading far too much M.R. James. It was only as one of them stepped close enough for me to catch the shape of the eyes and mouth within the dank hood of their hair that I realised what I was looking at.
‘Terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m from the council, you see. They send us to check these places out from time to time.’
They kept advancing.
‘Just for the sake of safety, you understand,’ I continued. ‘The last thing anyone needs is for one of these old walls to come tumbling in and crush some poor chap to death.’
If they had any interest in what I was saying they showed no sign of it and I was once again struck by the impression that what was surrounding me was more – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say less – than simply a gang of homeless people.
The closest was nearly on top of me so I moved to one side, determined to keep a little space between us. It was a mistake, as I was now further away from the door and had cut off any chance of a quick escape.
‘There’s no need to worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to turf anyone out. Who am I to deny a man a roof to keep the rain off, eh? You’re welcome to the place; it’s no concern of mine.’
I continued to back away, stuck now with only one route of retreat, moving further and further away from the door.