Whispers Under Ground

cylindrical shaft six metres across and twenty metres deep. The door gave in at the top, from where a modern metal staircase with sensible handrails spiralled around the circumference down to the base. It had been hiding in plain sight, marked on the construction blueprints as an emergency access shaft for the far end of the Crossrail passenger platforms. What it looked like to me was an inverted wizard’s tower, but I kept that to myself. There was an open-frame lift, like the ones used on building sites, that nobody wanted to be the first to use – just in case of booby traps.
    The shaft was adjacent to the smaller shaft located at the end of Dean Street that Graham Beale’s brother had been found at the bottom of.
    ‘No floors,’ said Lesley.
    ‘They haven’t been installed yet,’ I said. ‘You can see the points where the load-bearing beams were going to slot in.’
    ‘What’s with him?’ asked Guleed.
    ‘He once arrested an architect,’ said Kumar.
    At the bottom, placed in the exact centre of the bare cement floor. was a double-sized inflatable mattress of the type people take camping. It had been neatly made up with blue and white striped sheets and pillow cases, a duvet in a matching cover, clean, crisp – meticulously turned over. Next to it was parked an empty wheelchair and under the covers was Albert Woodville-Gentle, my personal number one suspect for the first Ethically Challenged Magician – the Faceless Man’s mentor. He was lying on his back, eyes closed, hands folded across his chest. Dead for about three days, Stephanopoulos reckoned – a timeline confirmed by Dr Walid, who rushed down from Oban the next day.
    ‘Natural causes,’ he reported after the tests came in. ‘Exacerbated by severe hyperthaumaturgical necrosis.’ Which was the next step up from hyperthaumaturgical degradation. So magic had put him in that wheelchair. He made a point of having Nightingale, Lesley and me in the lab when he did his brain transects – presumably as an awful warning. Nightingale said that Dr Walid always got excited when he had a new brain to play with.
    But all that came days later. While we were still waiting for the forensics people Lesley asked the question that had been bugging me. ‘Why no demon traps? If it had been me, I’d have left a nasty surprise in hope of taking us all out.’
    Nightingale looked around. ‘Our ethically challenged magician is far too careful to return here,’ he said. ‘Whatever plans he may have had regarding this place I suspect he changed them shortly after your derring-do on the roof top in Soho.’
    ‘He didn’t seem that worried,’ I said. Contemptuous, yes. Worried, no.
    ‘As I said,’ said Nightingale. ‘Careful. I suspect he instructed the nurse to bring Old Albert here and then abandon him – a message to us I suppose.’
    ‘Do you think we can find the nurse?’ I asked.
    ‘She’s dead,’ said Lesley. ‘Or worse. He’s not going to leave any loose ends.’
    That wasn’t going to stop us looking.

28
    Biggin Hill
    B iggin Hill Airport is far enough out of London for there to be fields and woods and snow on the ground. Once a famous RAF base, it’s now the favoured landing spot for the private jets of the kind of people that Ryan Carroll believed drove the art market. A close friend of the senator had lent him his private jet so he could fly his son home on the day after Boxing Day. Agent Reynolds was hitching a lift with the senator and I drove down that morning to see her off. I found her in the severely monochrome departure lounge, all white furniture, grey carpet and frosted-glass tabletops. Her suit was neatly pressed and she looked rested and alert. She offered to buy me a drink with the last of her sterling so I had a lager.
    ‘Where’s the senator?’ I asked as I sat down.
    ‘He’s in the RAF Chapel,’ she said.
    ‘His son’s not—?’
    ‘No,’ said Reynolds and sipped her drink. ‘He’s already safely on board the jet.’
    ‘How is the senator?’ I asked.
    ‘Better for having his son’s murderer caught,’ said Reynolds.
    ‘I won’t use the word closure if you don’t,’ I said.
    ‘Do you think he was mentally unstable?’ asked Reynolds.
    ‘James?’ I asked. ‘No—’
    ‘Ryan Carroll,’ she said. ‘James had that book, perhaps he was worried about Ryan, not about himself.’
    ‘It’s plausible,’ I said. ‘But I wouldn’t tell his father. I doubt he wants to think his son’s death was