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They clattered through the streets. The long whip curled over the horse’s back, and water sprayed from the wheels on either side. It took them nearly half an hour to get there, even at this time of night, when there was no traffic. As Orme scrambled out, Monk paid the driver too generously, then followed Orme into the darkness and the rain. Ahead of them, a maze of lamps was moving jerkily as men stumbled over rubble and broken beams as carefully as they could to avoid falling.
Monk was aware of shouting, the sting of wind and rain, and—somewhere, though he could not see where—the thrum of one of the big engines for lifting the rubble. Beyond the periphery of the disaster area there were carriages waiting, and ambulances.
“Bloody awful mess!” Crow emerged into a small pool of light. His black hair was soaked. If he had ever had a medical bag, he had lost it. His hands were covered with blood. Judging by the gash on his left forearm, at least some of it was his own.
“How can we help?” Monk said simply. “Can we get anyone out?”
“God knows,” Crow answered. “But we’ve got to try. Be careful, the ground’s giving way all over the place. Watch where you put your weight, and if it goes, yell! Even in this noise, someone may hear you. Throw yourself flat—that’ll give you at least some chance of finding a beam or a piece of something to hang on to. Stand straight and you’ll go down like an arrow.” As he spoke he was leading the way towards a group of lanterns about a hundred yards further on, which were swaying as the men carrying them picked their footing to go deeper into the cave-in area.
“What happened?” Monk asked, having to raise his voice now above the thud and grind of the machine digging and unloading the rubble.
“Must have dug too close to a small river,” Crow shouted back. “London’s riddled with them. All this burrowing and digging around, and some of them have moved course. Only takes a couple of feet, a change from clay to shale, or striking an old culvert, a cellar or something, and the whole thing can turn. Sometimes it just goes around it and back to the—Watch your feet!”
The last was a shout of warning as Monk’s foot sank into a squelching hole. He pitched forward, only just catching Orme’s arm in time to pull himself upright and haul his foot out. His leg was now coated in sludge up to his knee. Shock robbed him of breath, and he found himself gasping even after he had regained his balance.
Crow slapped him on the shoulder. “We’d better stay together,” he said loudly. “Come on!”
Monk leapt up with him. “Someone must have known this was going to happen,” he said.
“Sixsmith?” Crow asked, keeping moving.
“Havilland, actually,” Monk replied.
Crow stopped abruptly. “Murdered because of it?” There was surprise in his voice, and but for the wavering lights his expression was invisible. “I don’t know. If he had sense enough to listen to some of the older toshers, maybe. Some of them knew things that aren’t written down anywhere. Just lore passed from father to son.”
They were at the edge of the crater, which seemed a fathomless pit. Monk felt his stomach clench, and his body shook even though he tensed every muscle to try to control it.
A little man, broad-shouldered and bow-legged, came towards them. He had a lantern built into his hat, so both his hands were left free. There was too much noise of clattering earth and the thrum of the great machine for him to try to be heard. He waved his arms for them to follow, then turned and led the way down.
Monk lost all count of time, and finally of direction also, even of how deep he was and the distance he would have to go upwards to find clean air or feel the wind on his face. Everything was wet. He could hear water seeping down the walls, dripping, sloshing under his feet, sometimes even the steady flow of a stream: a sort of thin, wet rattle all the time.
Someone had given him a short-handled shovel. He ignored his painful shoulder and worked with Crow to begin with, digging away fallen debris by the dim light of lanterns, trying to reach trapped or crushed men. Then Crow went up again with bodies, and Monk found himself beside a barrel-chested navvy and a tosher with a broken front tooth that made his breath whistle as he heaved and dug.
The light was sporadic. One moment the lantern would be steady, held high to see an arm or a leg, distinguish a human limb from the timbers or a head from the rounded stones of the rubble. At others it rested on the ground while they dug, pulling, hoping, and then realizing there was nothing to find, and moving on, going deeper.
At one point they broke through into a preexisting tunnel and were able to go twenty yards before finding another slide and starting to dig again. It was under this one that they found two bodies. One was still just alive, but even with all they could do to help, the man died as they were trying to move him. His injuries were too gross for him to have stood or walked again, and yet Monk felt a crushing sense of defeat. His mind told him the man was better dead than facing months of agony and the despair of knowing he would remain a cripple, in shattering pain and utterly helpless. But still, death was such a final defeat.
He returned slowly, his body aching, to the heap of waste. He held his lantern high to see if the other man could be brought up for identification and burial, or if it would jeopardize more lives even to try. He picked his way carefully, even though he knew it by now, and bent, holding the light towards where he thought the head was. He pulled away pieces of brick and mortar until he had uncovered the body as far as the middle of the chest. It would probably not be too difficult or dangerous to get the rest of him free. He was so plastered with clay and dust Monk could distinguish very little of his features beyond that he had long hair and a thin, angular face.
There was a rattle of pebbles behind him and the bow-legged tosher appeared at his elbow. Silently they worked together. It took some time but eventually they freed the body and half-carried, half-dragged it along the old sewer floor. They had to pass through one of the small streams dribbling out of the side wall. It was ice-cold and erratic, but at least smelling of earth rather than sewage.
When they at last reached the top, Monk held the light to look at the man. The question of who he might be froze on his lips. The stream they had passed through had cleaned off the mud, and he saw the face clearly. It had stared at him in the lantern light of another sewer only two and a half days before. The black hair and brows like a slash across his face, and the narrow-bridged nose were etched in his mind forever. With a shaking hand he touched the lip and pushed it back. There were the extraordinary eyeteeth, one even more prominent than the other. What irony! His hiding place had been the cause of his death! The very stream he had killed to conceal had in turn killed him.
“Oo is ’e?” The tosher looked at Monk, frowning. “I seen ’im somewhere afore, an’ I can’t ’member where it were.”
“He’s a man who killed other people for money,” Monk replied.
“The police are looking for him. I need to find Sergeant Orme. Can you send someone to fetch him? It matters very much.”
The tosher shrugged. “I’ll put out the word,” he promised. “Are you goin’ ter leave ’im ’ere?”
“I’m going to stay with him, at least until the police can take him away,” Monk replied. Suddenly he was aware of the cold, of the numbness of his feet. Would this be in time to make a difference to the trial? It would at least prove that Melisande Ewart had seen a real person. Might that be enough to swing the jury? Or to frighten Argyll?
He waited, crouching in the dark beside the corpse, hearing shouts and seeing lanterns waving in the distance across the rubble. It had started to rain again. The light shone yellow on the faces of the rocks and black pools of water between. The giant machine roared in the mist like some monstrous, half-human creature, still grinding and thumping as more debris was hauled up. Monk was not sure if it was his imagination, but it seemed to be settling deeper into the earth.
It was about half an hour when at last Orme appeared, waving a lantern, Crow on his heels.
“You got ’im?” Orme asked, bending to look at the dead body.
