Whispers Under Ground

Stephanopoulos gave a little wave with her hand. We don’t generally explain how we do things to the rest of the Met – apart from anything else because we make most of our procedures up as we go along. As a result senior officers like Stephanopoulos know we do something but they’re not really sure what it is.
    I stepped away from the body and the waiting forensics types swarmed past me to finish processing the scene.
    ‘Who is he?’ I asked.
    ‘We don’t know yet,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘Single stab wound to the lower back and the blood trail leads back into the tunnel. We can’t tell whether he was dragged or staggered up here himself.’
    I looked down the tunnel. Cut-and-cover tunnels have their tracks running side by side, just like an outdoor railway, which meant that both tracks would have to stay shut down while they were searched.
    ‘Which direction is that?’ I asked. I’d got turned around somewhere back on the mezzanine level.
    ‘Eastbound,’ said Stephanopoulos. Back towards the Euston and King’s Cross. ‘And it’s worse than that.’ She pointed down the tunnel where it curved to the left. ‘Just past the curve is the junction with the District and Hammersmith so we’re going have to close down the whole interchange.’
    ‘Transport for London’s going to love that,’ I said.
    Stephanopoulos barked a short laugh. ‘They’re already loving it,’ she said.
    The tube was due to reopen in less than three hours for the day’s normal service and if the tracks at Baker Street were closed then the whole system was going to seize up on the opening Monday of the last shopping week before Christmas.
    Stephanopoulos was right though, – there was something off about the scene. More than just a dead guy. When I glanced up the tunnel I got a flash, not of vestigia but of something older, that instinct we all inherit from the evolutionary gap between coming out of the trees and inventing the big stick. From when we were just a bunch of skinny bipedal apes in a world full of apex predators. Back when we were lunch on legs. The warning that tells you that something is watching you.
    ‘Want me to have a look down the tunnel?’ I asked.
    ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Stephanopoulos.
    People have a funny idea about police officers. For one thing they seem to think we’re perfectly happy to rush in to whatever emergency there is without any thought for our own safety. And it’s true we’re like fire fighters and soldiers, we tend to go in the wrong direction vis-à-vis trouble, but it doesn’t mean you don’t think. One thing we think about is the electrified third rail and just how easy it is to kill yourself on it. The safety briefing on the joys of electrification were delivered to me and the waiting forensics types by a cheerful-looking BTP sergeant called Jaget Kumar. He was that rare breed, a BTP officer who’d done the five-week course on track safety that allows you to traipse around the heavy engineering even when the tracks are live.
    ‘Not that you want to do that,’ said Kumar. ‘The principal safety tip when dealing with live rails is not to get on the track in the first place.’
    I went in behind Kumar while the rest of the forensics team hung back. They might not be sure what it is I really do but they understand the principle of not contaminating the crime scene. Besides, that way they could wait and see whether Kumar and I were electrocuted or not before putting themselves in danger.
    Kumar waited until we were safely out of earshot before asking whether I really was from the Ghostbusters.
    ‘What?’ I asked.
    ‘ECD 9,’ said Kumar. ‘Things that go bump in the night.’
    ‘Sort of,’ I said.
    ‘Is it true you investigate,’ Kumar paused and fished around for an acceptable term, ‘unusual phenomena?’
    ‘We don’t do UFOs and alien abductions,’ I said, because that’s usually the second question.
    ‘Who does the alien stuff?’ asked Kumar. I glanced at him and saw he was taking the piss.
    ‘Can we keep our mind on the job?’ I said.
    The blood trail was easy to follow. ‘He kept to the side,’ said Kumar. ‘Away from the centre rail.’ He shone his torch on a clear boot print in the ballast. ‘He was staying off the sleepers, which makes me think that he had some variety of safety training.’
    ‘Why’s that?’ I asked.
    ‘If you have to walk the tracks with the juice on then you stay off the sleepers. They’re slippery. You