They were still talking to the Reverend O’Sullivan when Jamila’s phone rang, and she was told that Gemma had arrived in reception, along with Jim Feather and two flushers.
As soon as they had all come upstairs and crowded into their office, Gemma said, ‘Here we are! Ready when you are.’
‘If you can give us just a few minutes,’ said Jamila. ‘We have had a deeply disturbing day today, and we are still trying to recover from it. This, by the way, is the Reverend O’Sullivan. I suppose you could call him our spiritual adviser.’
‘I think that’s just what we need, a spiritual adviser,’ said Gemma. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve been in touch with the contractors digging the Greenwich overflow, Argent Pelle. I know their chief engineer, Dan Beavis. He’s the best in the business, Dan. He was one of the leading engineers on Crossrail. And guess what he told me? They did find a coffin when they were digging under Deptford Park. Two coffins, in fact.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ said Jerry. ‘How come that wasn’t reported?’
‘It wasn’t reported because it happened in the middle of the night, about 2:30 a.m. as a matter of fact. One coffin fell into the tunnel almost as soon as the boring machine had passed by, and the other one approximately twenty minutes later. They were stacked by the side of the tunnel so that they could be picked up and loaded onto the maintenance train the following day. But the following day, they were gone.’
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘That’s what Dan said they couldn’t work out. The tunnellers on the night shift began to think that they might have dreamed it. They weren’t drunk because they’re not allowed to take alcohol down the tunnel, although they have been known to inject vodka into an apple or a banana using a hypodermic syringe.’
‘This gets more loony by the minute,’ said Jerry. ‘Disappearing coffins and alcoholic bananas. I think I need a holiday.’
Gemma said, ‘Dan told me that they didn’t report the coffins, partly because there was no sign of them but mostly because it would have meant stopping work while the police were called to investigate where they might have gone, and the tunnelling contract is on such a tight schedule. Even stopping for a few hours would have cost them tens of thousands. Each tunneller gets paid nearly six hundred pounds a day, plus a bonus if they beat their target.’
‘I’m in the wrong job,’ said Jerry. ‘Mind you, I’m claustrophobic, especially down those sewers.’
‘Dan admitted that he’d put the coffins completely out of his mind. He’d had far too many other things to worry about. When I called him though, he started thinking seriously about where they could have disappeared to. They couldn’t have been lifted out of the tunnel by way of the main entrance shaft at Greenwich because somebody would have seen them. But there’s an overflow duct between the tunnel and the existing Deptford main sewer, which is just about wide enough to push a coffin through. Dan said that if there had been enough people to lift them, they could have been carried out of the tunnel, pushed through the overflow and into the sewer. After that they could have been taken anywhere.’
‘It’s all very well saying “enough people”,’ Jerry put in. ‘But what people? If it was the tunnellers, why would they even do that?’
‘Think about it the other way round,’ said Jamila. ‘What if the people who took the coffins were down in the sewers already? Every one of those tunnellers would have been totally preoccupied with their work, wouldn’t they? Because it’s so hard, and so dangerous, and maybe they didn’t notice them.’
‘You’re right,’ Gemma agreed. ‘When they’re drilling, they need 100 per cent concentration. The chalk and the clay strata that they’re boring through are very undulating and uneven, and they constantly need to make sure that the TBM doesn’t veer off course, not even by a few centimetres. Besides, I can’t see them having the time to carry off two coffins. Or like you say, Detective Pardoe – the motive.’
‘You’re talking about the children, aren’t you?’ Jerry asked Jamila. ‘You’re suggesting it was the children who came and carried them away.’
‘Well, who else? Who else would have wanted a coffin filled with a witch’s smoke?’
‘We’re all ready,’ said Gemma. ‘I suggest we make a start at the Deptford sewer and see where we go from there. I’ve arranged for a team to follow us on the surface with ground-penetrating radar so that even if the coffin’s submerged in sewage or buried in saponified fat, we’ll be able to locate it.’
Jerry said, ‘Good thinking. But there’s something else we need to take with us, and that’s Blizzard. If that witch-woman’s anywhere down in the sewers, Blizzard should be able to find her for us. Apart from which, he’s about the only thing we know for sure that she’s afraid of.’
He looked across at the Reverend O’Sullivan. ‘How about you, reverend? Are you coming with us?’
‘Oh, my God,’ said the Reverend O’Sullivan, and crossed himself.
*
They gathered on the corner of Oxestalls Road and Evelyn Street, the long straight road that runs from Deptford past the Surrey Quays. Three more flushers had already lifted the manhole cover and fenced it off with barriers, and two vans from Crane’s Drains were parked in the bus lane.
It had started to rain, quite heavily. The forecast was that it would continue to rain for the rest of the day, and so the flushers were fixing up a blue PVC-coated tent.
‘Don’t want you getting wet, do we?’ said one of the flushers, with a soggy roll-up cigarette waggling between his lips.
‘We’re going down a sewer, mate,’ said Jerry. ‘We’re going to get wet anyway.’
‘Ah, but you ain’t been down a sewer when it’s flooded in a rainstorm. That is your definitive definition of getting wet.’
While Jamila and Jerry and the Reverend O’Sullivan were pulling on their waterproof suits and gloves and fitting on their plastic face masks, one of the radar team opened up the tent flap. He was an earnest-looking young man in a fluorescent yellow jerkin, with oversized spectacles and a tiny brown moustache.
Gemma said, ‘You look as if you’ve found something.’
‘You said you were looking for two coffins, didn’t you? We’ve located a metallic object in the sewer about eight hundred metres north of here, under Chilton Grove. It’s rectangular, about two and a half metres in length and one metre wide. I’ll have a print-out for you in a minute.’
‘Only one?’
‘We’re still scanning. We’ve come across a doll’s pram too, although how that got down into the sewer, God only knows.’
‘I’m sure He does,’ said the Reverend O’Sullivan. ‘But I doubt if He will trouble to tell us.’
Almost as soon as the radar surveyor had left, the tent flap opened again, and PC Maitland appeared.
‘Got here as soon as I could. Blizzard had to finish his lunch. I normally take him for a walk after he’s eaten, but since we’re going down a sewer…’
One of the flushers handed PC Maitland a waterproof suit and a splash-proof face mask.
‘What about Blizzard?’ asked Jerry, as PC Maitland zipped himself up.
‘Blizzard’s got his own waterproof suit, with legs. He hates wearing it, but that may be a bonus if we come across that smoke thing again, because it makes him twice as aggressive. I’ve brought that towel with me, the one from the hospital with the smoke-smudge on it, and I’ll give him another sniff of it before we go down the sewer. I’ll go and fetch him. He’s in the back of the van, sulking.’
He returned after a few minutes with Blizzard on a short lead. Blizzard was wearing a black vinyl one-piece dog coat with only his head and his tail showing. His tongue was lolling to one side and his eyes were bulging, and he looked as if he fiercely resented being dressed to look foolish.
When everybody was ready, they climbed down the manhole into the sewer. In the bright swivelling beams from the LED lamps, Jerry could see that it was about the same diameter as the sewer that ran underneath Southampton Way, but the sewage was only ankle-deep because no fatberg was blocking it and it was able to flow more freely. When he inhaled for the first time though, he found that the smell was equally pungent. He looked around at Jamila and wrinkled up his nose, but she ignored him. For her, this hunt for the spirit of Adeliza Friendship was too frightening and too serious to be making jokes. She was looking for a woman possessed by the Devil from another culture and another religion than her own, and that made her feel strangely defenceless, as if none of her prayers could protect her.
PC Maitland splashed along the sewer first, with Blizzard straining at his lead, and Jerry and Jamila followed closely behind him. Behind Jamila came Gemma, since she was familiar with the layout of the sewers and would immediately recognise if something was wrong, such as the sewage starting to back up, or if there was any sign that the brick walls were in danger of caving in.
After Gemma came Jim Feather, and then the Reverend O’Sullivan, with two burly flushers bringing up the rear. One of them was Nigerian, and a Catholic, and he kept his hand resting on the Reverend O’Sullivan’s right shoulder to make sure that he didn’t slip and to reassure him that he was being looked after.
It took them nearly a quarter of an hour to wade their way as far as the junction with Chilton Grove. As they came nearer, Blizzard began to grow more and more excited, and to yap and splash and tug at his lead.
‘He’s picked up a scent,’ said PC Maitland, over his shoulder.
‘Really?’ said Jerry. ‘He’s not the only one.’
It was then that Jamila said ‘Yes’ and ‘yes’ on her RT, and tapped Jerry on the back.
‘The GPR team think they’ve found the other coffin. It’s up at the end of Chilton Grove. It looks as if it’s badly damaged, but they’re fairly sure that it’s a coffin.’
‘Looks like we’re in luck then, if you can call it luck. You know – finding two coffins down a sewer.’
They reached the corner of Chilton Grove, and there it was, lying at an angle against the right-hand wall. Blizzard was dancing in the sewage with excitement, and PC Maitland had to snap at him to calm him down. Even then he stood quivering and sniffing and trampling his paws up and down.
‘It’s her coffin, isn’t it?’ said Jerry. He approached it cautiously and reached out his hand, but something told him not to touch it, even with his thick protective gloves.
The coffin was made of dark grey metal with greenish corrosion, probably bronze. It was completely rectangular, like a box, not coffin-shaped, and all around its lid dozens of open padlocks were dangling like earrings.
Blizzard could hardly contain himself and urinated into the sewage. At the same time, the Reverend O’Sullivan came forward, holding up a large silver crucifix. Behind his protective mask, his face was ashen.
‘It’s heating up,’ he said. ‘I’ve read of this before, but never witnessed it myself. It’s so hot that I don’t know if I can hold on to it much longer.’
Blizzard barked, and barked again, and kept trying to jump up onto the coffin, his claws scrabbling against its sides.
‘She’s in there,’ said PC Maitland, in a haunted voice. ‘She’s only effing in there.’