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Monk glanced at the sides of the tunnel. The old bricks were set in a close, carefully laid curve, now stained and seeping with steady drips and slow-crawling slime. The smell, unmistakably human waste, was thick in the nose and throat. The skitter of rats’ feet interrupted the slurp of water down the channel in the center. Otherwise there was no sound except their own feet slipping on the wet stone. No one spoke. Apart from the frail beam from their lanterns, the darkness was absolute. Monk felt panic rising inside him almost uncontrollably. They were buried alive, as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist. He could see nothing but dark, wavering shadows and yellow light on wet walls. The smell was suffocating.
Perhaps their journey was no more than a mile, but it seemed endless until they met a junction of waterways. Scuff hesitated only a moment before turning to the right. He led the way into a narrower tunnel, where they were obliged to stoop in order not to strike the ceiling. The gangers couldn’t have been this way recently, because the piled-up sludge beneath their feet was deep and dangerous, catching at them, dragging at their feet, holding them back and sucking them down.
Monk had no idea where they were. They had turned often enough that he had lost all sense of direction. Sounds echoed and were lost; then there was nothing but the steady drip all around them, above, behind, and ahead. It was like endless labyrinths through hell, filled with the odor of decay.
One of the men let out an involuntary cry as a huge rat fell off the wall and splashed into the water only a couple of feet from him.
Another half mile and they emerged into a dry tunnel, where the ceiling was considerably higher. There they met a pair of toshers, roped together for safety. They had long poles in their hands for fishing out valuables—or gripping the sides when caught by a sudden current after a rainstorm. They were dressed in the usual tosher gear: high rubber boots, hat, and harness.
It was Scuff who spoke to them, leaving the River Police in shadows with their lanterns half concealed.
Then they moved on again, probing the darkness with their feeble lights. The thought made Monk’s stomach churn and his throat tighten: What would happen if they dropped the lamps? They would never get out of here. One day, in a week, or a month, some tosher would find their bones, picked clean by rats.
The last tosher they had questioned, half a mile back, had said there were people using this old way to get from one part of the city to another. The man they were looking for, whose name no one spoke, was one of them. In the subterranean world there seemed little of either friendship or enmity; it was simply coexistence, with rules of survival. Those who broke them died.
It seemed an age before Scuff finally led them up a ladder. Their feet clanged on the iron rungs. A few yards later they passed a sluice rushing so loudly they could not hear their own voices. Above, in a dry passage leading to a blind end, a group of men and women were sitting beside a fire, the smoke going up through a hole a little distance away and disappearing into utter darkness.
A short whispered conversation followed between Scuff and an old woman.
“Which way, ma?” Scuff asked her, touching his tooth to remind her whom he was referring to.
She shivered and jerked her head to the left. A younger man argued with her, pointing to the right. Finally Orme agreed to follow the youth one way with Kelly and Jones and return if he found nothing. Monk took the other two men and went with Scuff the way the old woman had indicated.
Half an hour later, after more twists and climbs, they emerged into an open cutting, air fresh and cold on their faces.
“She lied,” Scuff said bitterly. “Scared, I ’spect. Daft ol’—” He stopped short of using the word he had been going to say. “That way.” He pointed back where they had come from. At the next branch in the tunnel they divided again, Monk and Scuff going alone down more iron steps and deeper into the bowels of the earth.
Monk stopped, Scuff close beside him. Their lights showed only ten feet ahead, and then there was impenetrable darkness. Now there was no sound at all except the steady drip from the ceiling. Monk’s anger had worn off, leaving him cold. He could not blame the old woman. He was shivering with fear himself. Had he ever felt this gut-churning terror before? He could not remember doing so. Surely he would never have forgotten it. It was primeval, woven into one’s existence. His skin crawled as if there were insects on it, and he heard every sound magnified. His imagination raced. The river could have been twenty feet away or twenty miles. Was the assassin really somewhere ahead of them, perhaps even waiting? He heard nothing but water, dripping, running, splashing around their feet. This part of the old system was no longer used. The stream was shallow, fed by nothing but rain down through the gutters, but it still smelled of stale human waste. The gangers had not been here for a long time. The piled-up silt of excrement was like stalagmites.
There was a sound ahead. Monk froze. It was not the scratch of rats’ feet but the heavier noise of a boot on stone.
Monk covered his lantern.
“It’s ’im!” Scuff whispered, reaching up and gripping Monk’s hand.
The noise of footsteps came again. Then a light reflected yellow on the ancient, slimy stone of the tunnel. A shadow grew larger, moving, swelling.
Scuff was holding Monk’s hand so tightly his ragged nails bit into Monk’s flesh, and it was all Monk could do not to cry out. He pulled Scuff closer, half shielding the boy behind him. His heart was pounding in his chest, choking him. Had he been aboveground when he was facing the man, however dark the night, he would have been calm apart from heightened senses. He was glad he had a gun, although this was like meeting the devil in his own territory, alien and dreadful, an inhuman evil.
The sound of a boot scraping on stone suddenly vanished as the man coming towards them trod in a drift of silt. There was nothing but the swelling shadow and the dripping of water.
Scuff’s breath hissed in through his teeth, and he clung to Monk.
The man came around the corner only twenty feet ahead of them. He had gone another five or six feet before he realized that the shadows of Monk and Scuff by the wall were human and not detritus heaped against the stone. He froze, his lamp unwavering in his hand, the yellow glare of it lighting his face like a lined yellow mask. He was thin, his hair unkempt and ragged to his shoulders. The black slashes of his brows cut across his face. He had a long, narrow-bridged nose, flared nostrils, a lantern jaw, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. Surprisingly, there was intelligence in the eyes, even humor.
Very slowly he smiled, and Monk saw the sharp, oversized eyeteeth, the left bigger than the right. Monk froze, the picture indelible in his mind.
Then the man turned and with astounding swiftness loped away.
Monk galvanized into action. He tore the cover off the lantern and, still grasping Scuff by the hand, floundered through the silt and water and up into the drier streambed after the man. Scuff was now easily keeping up with him, so he let go of the boy’s hand. The man ahead was forced to keep his lantern high as he splashed, slipping, his huge shadow on the walls and ceiling like the image of a wounded bird trying to fly, arms wide. The yellow light jerked over the black, shining ooze on the walls and the slick surface of the stream.
There was a turn, and then utter darkness. Scuff was so close to Monk he pressed against him.
Monk realized how wet he was. His legs were frozen, but his body was sweating. He could feel the perspiration run down his back and his chest.
There was a noise ahead, a splash. He jerked around to face it. The right tunnel.
“Rats!” Scuff whispered hoarsely. “ ’E’s jiggered up ’em rats. C’mon!” And without waiting to make sure, he plunged through the water.
