Gray arranged for an unmarked car to be left in Milton Road, not far from Acton Central. It had taken time to get there, giving his MI5 contact in Acton time to get what Gray needed. Acton itself was an area of west London, situated in the wider London Borough of Ealing. It was also the planned starting point for the Thames Tideway Scheme, running west through to Abbey Mills in the east.
The main tunnel extended from Acton Storm Tanks, already working as a Thames water pumping station and storm water tanks site. The option should have been there to take Martin back, but with the main tunnel connected to a working flush system, the potential threat for an accident was... calculable, making getting there the priority.
From the boot of the car, out of sight of the row of houses, he pulled out two red sewerage suits. They came with working gloves and full-face protective masks, enough to look the job and give Gray all the anonymity he needed. After slipping off his jacket and putting it in the boot, he eased into the suit.
Martin watched, that smirk to his face. “I found your no-go area with kink.” He picked up the other suit. “No scat-play, according to that level of protection.”
Gray ignored him as he pulled on his gloves. The protective boots would be needed when they got to the site. The gun he kept close, and Martin’s constant look up and down his body wasn’t anything sexual, just an attempt to find out where he kept the secondary device to the electronic tagging. And no doubt which pocket he also kept his Merc keys in. He turned away slightly.
“You have serious trust issues.” Martin zipped up his suit, making it slow and with a lowered gaze that said Did I upset you at some point, princess?
Gray kicked at the back of his knee, forcing him to kneel. The Merc had been pulled up close to Martin’s left, and Gray forced him down, his cheek now just inches from the back exhaust still simmering with heat.
“Remember, you follow my lead.” Gray pushed him a little closer, forcing Martin to try and push back from the hot exhaust pipe. “For all your mouth and intelligence.” Gray came down close to his ear, “you have none of Jack’s skill when it comes to fighting me.”
He pushed him away, closed the boot, and got in the unmarked car.
Martin followed a moment later, rubbing at his cheek. “What,” he said as he got in. “Still no shafting after a fuck-over like that?”
Gray looked him up and down. “Seatbelt. It’s the law now.”
Martin gave a half smile. “You use it when it suits, huh? That law shit?”
Gray shifted into gear. “Sometimes.”
From Cobbold Road, Gray took a right onto Warple Way and found his way onto Acton Pumping Station. Residential homes and industrial units could be seen in the distance, but the site itself was nothing compared to the stench. The small blue and white plaque apologising for anyone “...experiencing odour” from the pumping station didn’t quite do the scent any justice either.
“Romantic.” Martin wrinkled his nose. “Those work boots are big in the boot, yeah? I mean, if you’re getting me deeper into the shit, I at least want work boots big enough to measure the depth.”
Gray looked at his watch, keeping an eye on the workplace and the men and women coming out and getting ready for lunch.
“I really hope they wash their hands.”
Gray snorted. That almost sounded like Jack. Almost. It had taken them two hours, via the stop point and wait for the car, to get here. Andrews should already be knee-deep. Gray hadn’t wanted the commotion with extra agents on site but understood that Andrews would have called in help. It would have been help from close... friends, the sort to not question why one man would be left and another taken from a field job, and that was fine by him.
His mobile phone made itself known, and Gray unzipped his suit to get it out of his shirt pocket.
“Tunnel and surrounding area clear of potential threat. I’m bringing out the boy.”
Andrews. Gray pulled up the schematics of the site. The unmarked car came plain enough, but it had MI5 mod cons. “Is the boy okay?”
“Shaken, naked, but he’s adamant that he wasn’t touched.”
“How far in did you find him?”
“Construction had been stopped on the new Thames Tideway tunnel,” said Andrews. “They were about half a mile in, the second still is. I’ve given management warning to make sure the tunnel is kept clear whilst it’s inspected further.”
Gray studied the layout and found an access point from one of the existing combined sewerage overflow tunnels. It was a work shaft that would keep them away from the sewerage tanks but would allow them to get close enough to the half-mile point.
“Make sure we’re not stopped,” said Gray as he pushed out of the car, the hood of his suit covering his face. He sent over details of the access points they’d be using.
“Department of Social and Environmental Health Research papers have been issued. They know you’re due on site.”
Rachel knew what cords to pull, and when. “Good. Get the boy back to Thames House home, give him a debrief, then take him to mine. You won’t be allowed on site until I’m there, so wait with him by security.”
“Understood.”
“Any news on our MI6 ops?”
“One found. Reports coming in says he is clear. The second, female, left for dinner but never showed up.”
“If Kidon has her, we’re looking for a body. Run stops at Gatwick and other airports. Get her picture out.”
“Grantham’s on it, sir.”
“Good. Thank you.”
Martin appeared next to him, and after Gray pulled on his protective boots, Martin followed suit, also making sure his full protective face-mask was on.
He’d fallen quiet now, but so too had Gray. What lay in the tunnel had been too long in coming.
Even the new construction tunnel had every hallmark of being under development... cables running underfoot, scaffolding kept up here and there to offer extra support joints to the brand new circular concrete works, and the stench from the existing tunnels that still seeped through the walls. More money and so-called class, they still smelt the same as the man who lived on the council estate, but this is where they’d hid the connection since 1858, when an open sewage system had forced MPs out of the Houses of Parliament, with delicate handkerchiefs held up to their noses to escape the clash of the classes via their asses.
Dust particles glinted in the beams of their helmet lights. They’d made it out of the workway into the main tunnel fifteen minutes ago, and the long walk now was dark, dank, and eerily quiet; sometimes intercepted with a low rumble of traffic over the manholes. Any other tunnel, the slow trickle of rainwater would run into a thicker sludge now, and flushers would be down here trying to sort out what humanity could force down into the toilet: nappies, nylon tights, mobile phones... the bullets would be cleaned and sent over to the Met. They had yet to find any alligators, though.
A slight curve came ahead, and in the distance, a sniff filtered through, as though someone was crying but trying to hide it.
Martin went to push ahead, but Gray pulled him behind as they rounded the bend.
The man who knelt facing the curve of the tunnel wall was dressed in a light grey Westwood suit, hands held out wide. Feet were bare: no shoes, no socks, and both marked Andrews’ typical trademarks. Debris would cut into the pads of the feet, leaving traceable blood specs to follow if the subject tried to escape. So no shoes, no socks, but the snivelling suggested something had also been whispered in the man’s ear that scared him enough to keep his arms out wide long after Andrews had left. Or perhaps since Kes had left. The suit, although a fine class, was days’ old and full of grime and tears.
If this man had started in control, something said he hadn’t finished that way.
He wore a blindfold, and every now and again, the long tie drifting over heavyset shoulders and down his back would shift with the man’s sobs. The material looked silk. Foreign.
The scuff of debris next to where the man knelt showed Sam had been kept there, facing the wall. Clothes were tagged and bagged in a sack not too far away, showing he’d been stripped. A second blindfold was tied to some exposed wiring overhead and Gray reached up and tugged it down.
“Puh-please...”
Gray looked down as he slipped the silk blindfold in his suit pocket and took away the man’s too.
“I know why you’re here, Raoul.”
Martin shifted first, grabbing the man and forcing him up to face him.
Gray understood why Martin backed off a few paces, that confusion lacing his eyes.
“I don’t know you.” Martin looked at Gray. “I don’t even know this fuck.”
The man cocked his head slightly, almost trying to get a look inside the dark visor covering Martin’s face; he even stepped forward a little. “Your voice hasn’t changed... I still remember it... Martin. You—”
Gray took his feet from underneath him and made sure the man found his ass amongst the debris when he tried to get a little closer to Martin. Gray knelt, studying the older man’s face, how the light from his own helmet forced worried and tear-streaked eyes into rapid blinks. Gray understood Martin’s confusion, because he didn’t know him either.
“He... he said I should tell you.” A hand came up to try and block out the torchlight from the masks. Fingers were black, but not because of any dirt. Blisters bubbled on each digit, some on the pads, others lower down near the knuckle, as if he’d had both hands held down in hot fat. “He said if I told you, you’d kill me.” A nod was given, more tears shaken free down a bruised and battered face. “And that would be the end of it. He’d let my wife go. I... I trusted the bastard, but he... he....”
Gray reached down and started to search his pockets. No ID was on the man, no wallet, nothing. “Name.”
“He knew I’d found out who Martin was and he was such a gentleman to help work out plans to get at the codes. He even subsidised most of the financial backing. The rest came from the buyer he set up; the money he offered..... I brought Kes in... but didn’t know... didn’t know he wanted the codes for himself.”
“Not his name. Yours.”
The man faltered, trails of slime from his nose running over his lips. A shaky hand wiped it away. “You... you don’t know me?” Amongst the tears shone a touch of insult, as though Gray should know him.
“Should I?”
“I pay your MI5 wages.”
Gray raised a brow. “The Government pays my wages, which would make you....”
“A wanker.” Martin sniffed. “Sorry, manners. A Government banker. A fucking banker did this?”
Gray studied him for a moment. “One that came across an MI6 list of ops and decided to sell them on. You no doubt needed the money back then... young family? Wife? Struggling on government wages? But today... your suit suggests you don’t need the money, so you must have been selling on other information from MI5 too. Hm, and just how did you avoid the Inland Revenue with this new influx of money? I know the security checks that the government run on their own. Did you get help with diverting funds?” He leaned forward slightly. “Tell me, was the money worth it?”
“Back then.... Wrong place, it was the wrong time for all of us.” The banker flicked a look up to Martin. “MI6 codes were to be sold later that night, with the money changing hands that would set my family up with a lovely Villa like Richards Junior. But I needed the funds that the Richards’ woman held first, the money that would get the codes to where they needed to be abroad. The money wasn’t stolen; Mr Richards Senior was meant to launder it from Matheson. Richards’ son took after his father for massaging numbers.”
Matheson. Gray eased back. The man who had recommended that Jan go to Jack’s garage, and no doubt the brains behind shifting money around so the banker’s spending wasn’t noted as a concern by the Inland Revenue. A report from Andrews said that Matheson had left the country and was... untraceable. He’d be found eventually.
“But you...” Hate was spat out as the banker focused back on Martin. “You had to turn your head and look back that night. You—”
Martin shifted, a boot coming in for the banker’s head, but Gray grabbed his foot in the same instance that the banker crumpled into a protective ball. Martin found his ass as the banker cried out.
“Fucker,” snarled Martin, but he was soon up and the banker scrambled back, scuffing up his suit.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” the banker cried again. “Those working for me, they were upstairs when you... you...” He looked sick. “When you did what you did to that young man and his dad, and they waited, just waited for you to leave. But you heard, and you... you had to look back, to come upstairs.”
Martin shook off Gray’s touch. “So you were there.”
“I’m a banker; it’s London, we’re everywhere here. But not there in person that night, no. I got to hear about you. I always get to read everything through banking and numbers... even Mr Raoul’s personal account... the funding for the MC, then later how they’d both taken a sociopath under their wing.”
“Psychopath.” Martin sniffed and shifted his hands down his body to highlight the finery. “Born this way, fuckturd. Jack’s the made in the UK sociopath. Don’t you know the fucking difference?”
Gray eased to his feet as the banker’s face curled in anger. “After the Richards woman was left unconscious, they said you took the codes and sat on that desk, looking so... so...”
Martin ran a hand along the man’s jaw, stilling him. “Oh...” He tilted his head. “I remember you now.”