Martin climbed out of his silver-grey Audi and crossed the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by a Deliveroo rider on a moped. The Deliveroo rider shouted something at him that included the words ‘fucking blind or what?’, but he didn’t catch the rest.
Jim Feather was waiting for him by the barriers, smoking and talking to Newton. As soon as he saw Martin, he flicked his cigarette into the gutter and blew out a long stream of smoke.
‘So, how’s it going, Jim?’ Martin asked him. ‘Hallo, Newton, everything okay? I’ve had a shufti at your videos. We’ve got ourselves a fair old blockage here by the look of it. Where’s Gemma?’
‘She’ll be back in a minute. Just gone across the road to get a coffee and a doughnut.’
‘Blimey,’ said Martin, flapping his hand in front of his face. Even out here on the open pavement he could smell the rancid fumes from the sewer. ‘She must have a stronger stomach than me.’
He kept reminding himself that he was the boss here, but he was acutely aware that his white protective suit was brand new and shiny, without a single dirty streak on it, and that his helmet was new too, and not battered and scratched like Jim’s. He felt the same as he had on his first day at his secondary school, with a blazer that was two sizes too big for him and a stiff new plastic satchel.
Gemma came across Peckham Road from the Payless store, carrying a cup of coffee and a doughnut, as well as two cans of Coke, which she handed to Jim and Newton.
‘Sorry, Martin, I didn’t realise you’d be here so soon. Do you want a drink of anything? Doughnut?’
‘I think I’ll wait until I’ve checked out this fatberg, thanks. Bit of a dicky tummy, don’t know why.’
‘Give yourself a couple more years, and you’ll get used to it,’ Jim told him. ‘You think this is bad? You should’ve gone into the khazi straight after my old man. You’d have needed a bleeding gas mask.’
They waited until Gemma had finished her coffee and eaten her doughnut and Jim had smoked another cigarette. Gemma was trying hard not to appear edgy, but she was still in two minds whether she ought to tell Martin about the white-faced child-thing. If she told him, and it never appeared again, even when they started to blast away the fatberg, he might think that she was cracking up, that the job was too stressful for her. He had already said that he didn’t know what a pretty girl like her was doing down in the sewers. If she didn’t tell him, and the child-thing was injured or killed by their high-pressure hoses, she would feel unbearably guilty. But she had almost completely convinced herself that she had imagined it.
She dropped her empty coffee cup into the nearby rubbish bin, smacked her hands together and said, ‘Right, Martin, we’re ready now.’
Martin caught the tension in her voice and gave her a questioning look, but she turned away.
They all buckled up their helmets and pulled on their protective gloves. Jim Feather would be joining them this time, so that he could give Martin an assessment of the most effective way to clear the fatberg and start the sewage flowing freely again. After that, it would be Martin’s job to work out how much it was going to cost, especially if they decided to attack it from both ends with two clearance crews. Martin knew that their high-pressure hoses would almost certainly damage some of the brickwork too. It dated back to 1865 when Joseph Bazalgette had supervised the construction of London’s first citywide sewer system, and it was always expensive to repair.
Jim lowered himself down into the manhole first, followed by Newton, Gemma and Martin last. The sewage was swirling around at a higher level than it had been that morning, almost up to the top of Gemma’s boots, and floating around on the surface there were tampons and what they called ‘unpolished turds’.
‘This lot should be running through here at full whack,’ said Jim. In the fitful lights from their helmets, his face was lit up like a ghost. ‘Give it a couple more weeks at this rate and we’ll have shite spouting out of the manholes and into the street.’
‘Well, let’s take a look at our fatberg, shall we?’ said Martin. He had been down plenty of sewers, but because of the blockage, the stench in this one was even more noxious than any he had ever smelled before. Not only was it strong, but it had an unusual sharpness to it. As he waded along the tunnel behind Gemma, he sniffed, and sniffed again.
‘Is it just me, Gem, or can you smell something acidic?’ he asked her.
Gemma sniffed too. ‘You’re right. I noticed it before. More lemony, really. It’s like verbena, isn’t it?’
‘More like Cif lemon toilet cleaner to me,’ said Jim.
They waded along in single file until they reached the fatberg. Newton lit up the sheer wall of saponified fat from a variety of different angles so that Martin could see how dense it was, and how thickly laced it was with tree roots. Gemma couldn’t stop herself from glancing up at the narrow gap between the ceiling and the fatberg, just in case the white-faced child-thing was watching them.
She showed Martin how much effort it took to prise the fat away from the bricks, and how it was beginning to form craggy stalactites on the ceiling, which would eventually occlude the sewer completely.
‘Actually, Gem, it’s a damn sight worse than I thought it would be, even after seeing your samples. I think we can only attack it from the north end though. Obviously we could get it flushed out quicker if we could attack it from both ends, but think how much water the crew will be pumping out to clear this lot away. We’ll never be able to drain it away fast enough from this end. It won’t take five minutes and they’ll be drowned.’
‘It’s effing rock-hard too, some of it,’ said Jim. He was hacking with a broad-bladed chisel at the fat on the wall beside him. ‘Even at Whitechapel it wasn’t as hard as this.’
He broke off a large yellowish lump, which must have weighed at least four kilos, and it tumbled into the thick beige sewage with a splash.
‘Look at this. There’s so much rag mixed up in it, as well as roots. And stuff you don’t normally see – not just your teabags and your Tampaxes and your rubber johnnies.’
He dug into the fat with his chisel to expose something that looked like a flat black stick. He tugged at it and waggled it from side to side with his fingers, and after a few seconds, he pulled out a tarnished dessert spoon.
‘I mean, who throws their cutlery down the crapper? I ask you.’
He started digging again, but this time, he stopped suddenly.
‘Whoa,’ he said, wading back a step. It was noticeable now that the sewage was rising. It was at least five centimetres deeper than when they had first entered the sewer.
‘What’s up?’ asked Martin.
She didn’t really know why, but Gemma’s first instinct was to glance up at the gap again. There was no sign yet of the white-faced child-thing, if it existed at all. But then she looked down and saw why Jim had backed off. Half buried in the fat was a severed human hand – a woman’s hand by the look of it, greenish-grey because it was partly decomposed. Its nails were painted with chipped orange polish and there was a thin gold wedding ring on its third finger.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Jim. ‘That’s enough to make a maggot gag. Wonder where the rest of her is?’
Martin didn’t come any closer. He felt nauseous enough as it was. He swallowed, and he was sure that his saliva tasted of lemony sewage.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he said. ‘We’re well and truly buggered now. We’ll have to notify the police before we start flushing, and God alone knows how long they’re going to hold us up. You remember what they were like in Catford last month, when we found that missing kid’s trainer. They’ll want to dig out all of this fatberg, inch by inch, in case the rest of her body’s buried in it, too.’
Jim thought for a while, frowning at the woman’s severed hand as if he were trying to put a value on it. Then he said, ‘Not necessarily, guv.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean if it wasn’t for this fatberg, her hand wouldn’t be stuck here, would it? It would have floated down to the Thames and out to sea by now, along with any other bits and pieces of her, if there are any other bits and pieces of her dotted around.’
‘So?’
‘So we could just give nature a hand, no pun intended. Dig it out, take it up to Butler’s Wharf, drop it in the river and think no more about it. That’s where it would have been anyway if half of Peckham hadn’t poured their bloody cooking fat and coffee grounds down the sink and wiped their arses with Washlets.’
Martin shook his head. ‘No, Jim, sorry, we can’t do that. That would be, what-do-you-call-it, tampering with evidence.’
‘All right, guv. You’re the boss. I’m only trying to think of a way to save us time and money. And she’s brown bread anyway.’
‘Yes, but think of the poor woman’s family. Supposing she just disappeared and they have no idea what happened to her. They’re going to be desperate for closure, aren’t they?’
‘And what about whoever it was who cut her hand off?’ Gemma put in. ‘He could still be roaming around, couldn’t he, looking for vulnerable women to chop up? You know, like Jack the Ripper.’
‘Take a few pictures, will you, Newton?’ said Martin. ‘We’ll run them straight along to the cop shop and see what they have to say. They may want to dig around this end of the fatberg, but that shouldn’t necessarily hold us up from making a start on the other end.’
Newton waded forward with his camera, switched on its lamp and began to take bursts of photographs of the severed hand. The light was so bright that even with her tinted goggles, Gemma had to lift her forearm in front of her face to shield her eyes.
Then, with no warning at all, the light went ping! and went out. A split second afterward, their helmet lamps went out too, and they were plunged into total, seamless blackness.
‘What the hell just happened?’ said Martin.
Newton said, ‘Hold on – I’ve got a spare flashlight.’
‘Don’t anybody move,’ Martin told them. ‘I don’t want you slipping over.’
They waited without speaking for almost half a minute. The only sound was the lapping of the sewage against their boots. But then Newton said, ‘The flashlight don’t work neither. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. I’ve only just put a new battery in it too.’
‘Oh, bollocks,’ said Martin. ‘Listen – we’re going to have to make our way back to the manhole. But let’s take it slowly, shall we? Newton, you go first; Gemma, you put your hand on Newton’s shoulder, and Jim, you put your hand on Gemma’s shoulder, and I’ll bring up the rear.’
Gemma reached out into the blackness with both hands, trying to remember exactly where Newton had been standing. She took three cautious steps forward through the sewage but even with her arms held out straight in front of her, she couldn’t find him.
‘Newton, say something,’ she said.
‘I’m here,’ he told her. ‘I haven’t moved.’
‘Where’s “here”? I’m waving my arms around, but I still can’t feel you. Keep talking.’
‘I haven’t moved since the lights went out. Keep coming. I think I can hear you splashing. That’s it, keep coming.’
‘I’m sure you weren’t that far away from me. Keep talking. Anything.’
The blackness was so total and so overwhelming that she was beginning to panic. She had been terrified of the dark when she was younger. She had always insisted that her parents left the landing light on at night. In her early teens though, she had gradually grown out of her fear, and she no longer believed that witches were hiding in her wardrobe or that her dressing gown was going to drop off the hook on the back of the door and come scuttling under her bed. But this was different. This was underground and the stench was stifling her, and she could feel by the pressure on her boots that the sewage was rising – slowly, but relentlessly, and she knew that at this time of day it wouldn’t subside.
Suddenly, she felt Jim’s strong hand on her shoulder. He gripped her firmly and gave her a reassuring squeeze.
‘Got you, love. Have you found Newton yet?’
Now that Jim was holding on to her, Gemma felt confident enough to take a sloshing step forward, and then another, and at last she felt the slippery back of Newton’s protective suit. She grasped his collar and held on to it tight.
Newton said, ‘Gah! Strangle me, why don’t you?’
‘Sorry, sorry, but I thought you’d vanished.’
‘Martin? You there?’ Jim called out. ‘Newton and Gemma and me, we’re all ready to go.’
‘Hold on,’ said Martin, somewhere in the blackness. ‘I can feel the wall but I’m kind of disorientated here.’
‘Just keep walking forward,’ Jim told him. ‘We won’t move until you catch up with us.’
As they waited for Martin, Gemma saw a flicker of light further down the sewer. It was thin and pale, and it appeared only for the briefest of moments, but she thought it looked like a slender figure twisting itself around and throwing up its arms.
‘Did you see that?’ she asked Newton.
‘What? I can’t see sod all.’
‘It was kind of a light, but I don’t know… it looked like a child, dancing.’
‘Phosphorus, probably.’
‘No. Phosphorus is green. This was white.’
‘You’re not seeing things again, are you?’
‘I still can’t find you!’ said Martin. He was beginning to sound anxious. ‘Are you sure you haven’t started walking off?’
‘We’re right here, guv,’ Jim told him. ‘Haven’t budged an inch.’
It was then that Gemma saw another flicker of light, closer this time, and this time, it didn’t immediately disappear. It looked like the child-thing – pale, with an elongated head and smoke-black near-together eyes, and arms that waved disjointedly, as if they were broken.
Newton must have seen it too, because he said, ‘Shit!’ and stumbled backward, so that Gemma lost her grip on his collar. By the dim light that the child-thing gave off, she saw him hit his shoulder against the greasy sewer wall, lose his footing and splash onto his knees with sewage almost up to his waist.
‘What’s that?’ he screamed. ‘What the fucking hell is that?’
Jim said, ‘Gas, it’s just gas!’ but then the child-thing began to move toward them, with its boneless arms waving, and it opened its dragged-down mouth and let out a harsh, high-pitched cry.
‘Christ almighty, no it’s not!’ Jim shouted. ‘What is it?’ He kept his grip on Gemma’s shoulder with his left hand but he raised his chisel defensively in his right.
As the child-thing came closer, its waving arms were reflected in the rippling sewer water. The reflections flickered on the brickwork so that the whole sewer was filled with stroboscopic patterns of light. Then Gemma saw more reflections, further down the tunnel, and more shining figures began to materialise out of the darkness, at least five or six of them. Two of them were slender, like the child-thing, with stick-like limbs, but the others were distorted in different ways. One was hunched, with a low, deeply dented forehead, and it dragged itself toward them, chin-deep through the sewage as if every step was a hideous effort. Behind it came a girl-child, who appeared to be disembowelled. Her looped intestines were hanging down and trailing in the sewage, and the bones of her ribcage were exposed. Above her clavicle though, her neck was white and swan-like, and she had a face of bleached Pre-Raphaelite beauty, with wavy reddish hair that defied gravity and flew up almost to the ceiling.
Gemma was desperate to call out, Who are you? What do you want? But she couldn’t take enough air into her lungs to utter a word, and all she did was open and close her mouth and let out a tiny froglike croak. She was so frightened by these deformed, radiant figures coming toward her that she couldn’t even work out how to move her legs so that she could back away.
Martin said, ‘Jim! I can see you now! Hold on!’
Gemma turned her head and saw Martin wading his way up behind Jim, but before he could reach him, the sewer was abruptly plunged into darkness again. Utterly, totally, seamlessly black. Something as tensile and slippery as a snake struck Gemma across the shoulders, and she yelped and tried to duck away from it, but then a claw-like hand groped in the darkness at the back of her helmet, as if it were trying to lever it off her head. She ducked forward again, colliding with Newton, who was climbing back onto his feet.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Gem?’ he shrieked at her, but then Jim shouted, ‘Get off me! Jesus, get off me!’ and then, ‘Newt! Gemma! Guv’nor! Let’s get the hell out of here!’
More claws snatched at the crumpled folds of Gemma’s polypropylene suit and scraped and squeaked against her helmet, clearly trying to wrench it off her. She struck out against them as hard as she could, over and over, and as she beat them off, the child-thing let out another high, weird cry, half baby and half animal.
Newton grunted and swore and Gemma could feel his arms flailing around, so he was obviously fighting off the tentacles too. He hit her arm, and as soon as he did, and realised it was her, he seized her wrist and shouted, ‘Come on!’ He pulled her into the darkness, back along the sewer toward the manhole, tugging her so forcefully that she almost fell over.
‘Jim!’ shouted Gemma, as Newton dragged her along. ‘Martin!’
‘Right with you, love!’ Jim panted. She could hear his boots splashing in the sewage close behind her, and feel it splattering up against the back of her legs.
They jostled and stumbled through the blackness, and it seemed to Gemma to take forever before they saw the autumnal daylight gleaming down through the open manhole, although it couldn’t have been more than three or four minutes. They reached the bottom rungs, all of them gasping, and Gemma started to climb up first. Halfway up though, she stopped and said, ‘Martin! Where’s Martin?’
They looked back into the darkness. It was suddenly quiet, except for the wallowing sound of the sewage that they had run through, and the swishing of traffic from Peckham High Road above their heads.
‘He was right behind me, I could swear it,’ said Jim. He lifted off his helmet, and shouted out, ‘Guv’nor! Are you there, guv? Guv’nor!’
Gemma climbed down from the rungs and took off her helmet, too.
‘Martin! Can you hear me, Martin? Martin!’
‘Maybe he fell over,’ said Newton. He was holding on to one of the rungs as if he were desperate to climb out of the sewer and back up into the fresh air.
‘Try your lamp again, Newt,’ said Jim. ‘There’s no point in going down there after him unless we’ve got some light.’
‘And those things,’ said Gemma. ‘What do you think they are? One minute they were all lit up and then they went dark. And it was like they were trying to tear us to bits. Look at me, I can’t stop shaking.’
‘I haven’t the first fucking clue what they are, love. Not the foggiest, and I’ve seen some strange-looking animals down the sewers in my time. I saw a rat with one head and two bodies once. And down Chancery Lane I came across a bloke with no legs. I tried to catch up with him, but he went swinging off so fast on his hands I couldn’t keep up. For all I know he’s still down there somewhere.’
Jim paused, and then he said, ‘P’raps that’s how that woman lost her hand. P’raps those things ripped her to pieces. Blimey. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’
Suddenly, Newton’s lamp blinked on again. Two or three seconds later, the lights on their helmets lit up again too. They stood looking at each other, and they all knew what they were thinking.
Jim said, ‘I’m going in after him. You coming?’
‘What if the lights go out again?’ asked Newton.
‘Then we’ll have to turn around and come back, won’t we? But we can’t just leave him there, can we?’
‘Come on,’ said Gemma. ‘If the lights go out, we’ll have to bring down some portable LEDs and make a daisy chain, but with any luck, we won’t need to.’
‘But what if those things are still there?’
‘Newton!’ Gemma almost screamed at him. ‘I’m as scared as you are, but Martin’s still there, and he could have broken his ankle or God knows what!’
Newton didn’t answer, but Jim had already started to make his way back along the sewer, and after a moment’s hesitation, Newton followed him, holding his lamp up high so that the brickwork was lit up as far ahead as possible. Gemma waded after him, her mouth dry and her heart beating hard, trying not to imagine what those child-things might have done to Martin. They had tried to pull off her helmet; why had they wanted to do that?
Their lights stayed on, and at last, they reached the wax-white cliffs of the fatberg. There were several deep scratches in the fat, and on the right-hand side, large lumps had dropped into the sewage, and the woman’s severed hand had dropped in with them. But there was no sign of Martin.
‘Where the hell’s he disappeared to?’ said Jim. ‘There’s no side tunnels… and don’t tell me he managed to climb up there.’
He shone his helmet lamp up to the gap in between the ceiling and the fatberg. Its edges were scored with sharp triangular grooves, which they hadn’t been before, but it still seemed unlikely that Martin had climbed up the fatberg and crawled right into it.
‘Not unless those things pulled him into it,’ said Gemma.
Newton shone his lamp into the gap, but it lit up only the same fibrous tree roots and fatty stalactites that Gemma had seen before. Beyond the range of the light, there was only darkness.
‘Guv’nor!’ Jim shouted, into the gap. ‘Guv’nor, can you hear me? Guv’nor!’
They waited, but there was no response.
‘Right,’ said Gemma, her voice trembling, ‘we need to go right back and call 999. I’ll call Michael too, and get him to bring over the GPR.’ She meant the ground-penetrating radar equipment they used to trace underground pipes and cables.
Jim said, ‘I’ve got a bad, bad feeling about this, Gem. I really have. It’s the spookiest thing I’ve ever come across, ever.’
‘You and me both, Jim. But let’s go. It doesn’t matter how spooky it is, we don’t have any time to lose.’