I could hear them shouting again.
Scream. Shouts. Cursing.
They were on me, pulling on my legs, and I couldn’t understand, then I saw they were trying to drag me down and get it done, finally get it done, get me over with forever.
And it revived me enough to kick out at their masked faces.
And I raised my right hand one last time.
Because I saw what I had been doing wrong. The range had to be point-blank. Nothing else would work. Everything else was useless. Point-blank or nothing. Point-blank or death.
I felt the barrel of Jackson’s Glock 17 press against the rope, press so hard that I could feel the impossible tightness around my neck become even tighter.
Then I pulled the trigger.
I was aware of the crack of gunfire, a sound that seemed to rip the air apart, and then I was falling, my feet and elbows connecting with human flesh and bone.
I hit the ground hard, the gun still in my hand.
My vision was blurred with what felt like blood and tears. But I could see they were running towards a broken gap in the wall. I pointed at the back of the big man as he squeezed through the gap and screamed a hoarse curse as I pulled the trigger, my eyes streaming.
I heard the metallic click of an empty magazine.
I pulled it again and again, even after the last of them had disappeared through the hole in the wall. White noise filled my head.
I got up, spitting out a bloody scrap of synthetic material that must have come from a Nomex tactical face mask.
I stuffed the Glock down the back of my jeans, hearing a mocking voice deep inside my head.
You’re not going to shoot yourself in the arse, are you?
I took a painful breath.
And then I went after them.
I was sick to my stomach with pain and exhaustion but the rage inside was bigger than both of them. I went through the crack in the wall, stepping over scraps of rotted wood, and down the low-ceilinged tunnel until I found a stone staircase, going down even deeper into the ground. I went down the stairs slowly, moving in total blackness, afraid of falling, afraid they were waiting for me, smelling what seemed to be soot and sewers.
From somewhere I could hear the sound of heavy machinery but it became fainter as I went lower. Down and down until I reached an open space where a series of corridors met, the meeting point of a labyrinth of tunnels.
I stopped and thought I could hear voices in one of them. Then I went on, the ground always sinking beneath me. And just when I thought about turning back, when I thought I could sense the men waiting for me silently in the darkness, the stairs ended.
Ahead there were four identical tunnels, each with a rounded arch, wide but not high, built to process large numbers of people at once. They felt like they were all heading in the same direction. I carried on more carefully now, treading lightly, straining for sound.
But all I could hear was my own breathing.
And then I stepped into what looked like the train station at the end of the world.
There were two platforms facing each other across ancient tracks. It was a tube station, but nothing like one I had ever seen. The platforms were made of wood and I could see the remains of what had once been advertising posters on the black-and-white tiles of the walls. They had rotted away a lifetime ago. It reminded me of photographs I had seen of Londoners seeking safety underground during the Blitz. On a large red circle, the name of the station was written in black letters on a white background.
B L O O M S B U R Y
I shook my head in disbelief.
There is no tube station in London by that name.
I stared at the ghost station and knew I could wait for a hundred years and there would be no passengers and no trains passing through this place.
I felt a shudder of pure terror and wondered if I had died in the room with the tiles stained green by time.
Then I touched the livid weal that had been burned into the flesh around my neck and I flinched with the pain.
I was not dead yet.
I heard sounds coming from deep inside the tunnel.
I walked to the edge of the platform and stared into the blackness but I could see nothing. But the sound was real. It wasn’t just in my head. I looked down at the tracks. There were four lines, two of them with insulators. I thought about that for a while.
The station was dead but that didn’t mean that the lines were dead.
I was aware that in a working tube station the lines with insulators are live and will kill you instantly, and that the trains run on the other lines. But I also knew it was a myth that no electricity runs through the non-insulated train tracks – they carry enough voltage to power the signals. The fact is that making contact with any tube rail is likely to ruin your whole day.
I steadied myself on the edge of the platform, took a breath, and jumped down between the nearest two tracks.
And that was when I heard the train coming.
I quickly scrambled back up onto the platform, feeling the Glock scrape against my spine as it slipped from my jeans. I looked down at it, just about visible on the tracks, as a rat the size of a neutered tom cat skittered across it. Then the train was much closer. Lights blazed deep in the tunnel, twisting towards me and then away as the train snaked through the bowels of the city. I stood drenched in cold sweat on the platform as the train hurtled towards me like an avalanche.
It never reached the station.
At the last moment it veered into the darkness and away from me, a blur of speed and steel, a silver train with red doors and blue trim and a driver who caught a glimpse of me for a fraction of a section.
And stared as if I had been raised from the dead.
The driver must have called it in immediately.
I knew that any 999 call from the public about a possible armed or terrorist incident would be forwarded instantly to the Tactical Firearms Command desk where someone with the rank of inspector or above would assess the information to see if it fit the criteria for armed officers to respond. And I did.
By the time I climbed the tube station’s long and winding staircase up to the street, they were waiting for me.
Armed officers from SC&O19.
They didn’t think I was a ghost.
They thought I was a terrorist.
As I stepped out into the warm summer night, they started screaming at me. I could not tell where the voices were coming from but I could feel the adrenaline in the air. Then I saw their raised weapons. The Glock pistols. The Heckler and Koch submachine guns.
‘Hands in the air and get down on your knees!’
‘I am DC Wolfe of West End Central and I am complying with your command,’ I said, as calm and clear as I could make it.
‘Do it now! Do it now!’
I raised my hands and got down on my knees, the pavement surprisingly cold in the warm summer night.
Then I saw them.
Edging towards me, fingers on the triggers.
‘There’s a wallet in my right pocket which contains my warrant card,’ I said, still as calm and clear as I could make it, but finding it harder to sound like the voice of reason with my face pressed against the pavement.
Someone pushed a boot heel against the back of my neck. A pair of hands patted me down and another pair of hands went through my pockets. I lifted my lower body very slightly so they could remove my wallet.
‘Don’t move! Don’t move!’
I felt the barrel of a Glock screw itself into my ear.
I held my breath. I did not move.
But even after they saw my warrant card they kept my face pressed to the pavement and my limbs spread wide. Even after they clocked my photo ID they kept me face down on the ground with a size-12 boot heel pressed firmly against the back of my neck.
And they kept me there for a long time.
It was as if nobody could be trusted any more, as if the world had gone insane, as if you never knew who might want to dance on your grave.