by Barbara Vine
He had a way of speaking to Tom, which Tom had not really noticed before, though it had surely been there, as if he thought him stupid, but as if that stupidity instead of angering or exasperating him, was only a source of boredom. Tom felt his own anger beginning to rise. But he made an effort to control it and helped Axel bolt the rope end to the metal rod which, apparently without purpose, made a division between this section of the roof and the ten-foot-wide perimeter. One end of the rod was attached to the parapet, the other to the side of a small corrugated iron hut. It felt as solid as rock and as safe as the top parallel bar in a gym.
The two sections of the metal ring were joined and bolted together round the rod and Axel turned the nut hard with his spanner. He took the hammer and struck the nut two hard blows with it to tighten it further. Tom, holding the torch for Axel to see by, thought he might as well not have been there, he was no use, he was superfluous – well, he held the torch.
Axel put his gloves on. He put the tools back in the case and the case into his pack.
‘I may need them down there,’ he said when he saw Tom watching him.
He fed the rope into the turret mouth. He's really going to go down there, into the dark, not knowing what's there, Tom thought. The grudging admiration he felt was able to co-exist with his anger. Axel was going down there, sixty feet down that shaft, just for the sake of taking a photograph.
Axel swung one leg over, then the other. He got a purchase for his feet on the brick interior and held the rim of the turret with his hands. The rope hung between his arms and between his legs. As he moved something in the pack made a liquid slurping sound. Tom could tell he had done this before or something like it. He was athletic, he was an expert, and he was excited now. There was a light in his eyes, a gleam of exhilaration, and he was suppressing laughter, the laughter of joy. The upturned face was that of a happy man, a man who has just received a piece of good news or promotion or a promise from a lover. Alice's lover, thought Tom. As if to show his coolness and his expertise, Axel adjusted the strap of his backpack first with one hand, then the other.
‘See you in – let me see – twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five. It shouldn't take more.’
Tom leaned over, bent over, and watched him go down. Axel looked up once, unsmiling, a glare of a look, then dropped his head. His hands passed over each other, over and over, down and down, his feet moved down and down against the brick side of the shaft. He dwindled into the dark. Tom withdrew the torch beam and backed away.
He was alone on the roof, lifting his eyes to the sky.
22
It was twenty minutes to three.
Up on the roof it was very quiet. Most of the traffic down there had stopped. Occasionally cars passed along High Holborn, but the sound was remote. Tom fitted the pieces together, Alice's coolness towards him, her occasional affection – confiding in a kind father or brother when the lover is cruel – her inexplicable absences, the yearning look he now recalled seeing in her eyes when they were all out together and she stared at Axel. That first meeting with Axel at the top of the stairs, that alleged first meeting. He recalled it now as awkward and staged and he seemed to recreate an electric current passing between them. They had known each other before that, there had been secret meetings, there had been meetings here.
He screwed up his face in pain. Until then all his emotion had been involved with Axel. Now he thought of Alice, of Alice herself, and pain passed through his head and through his chest as if claws had seized him. He bent double and rubbed his hands across his chest, stretched his neck and rubbed his head, as if this were physical, as if it was some body blow Axel had struck him. The bed downstairs that he had seen through the half-open door, he knew they had used that bed and knew too that Alice would not have been with Axel as she had been with him, not passive and compliant and smiling, but - Tom found he could not confront the way Alice must have been with Axel. He could not bear the image of Alice naked before Axel. A sound that was half sob, half groan, came from him and he grasped the metal bar, hung on to it, rocking himself back and forward.
The ring-bolt that attached the rope to it caught his eye. He could undo that bolt and let the rope drop down. It would be a fitting revenge on the man who had taken Alice from him and thought so little of him as to bring him here and to trust him. Tom looked around for the tools before he remembered Axel had taken them down with him. No doubt Axel had taken them down because he foresaw just such thoughts as these coming into Tom's mind. That would not prevent him from pulling the rope up and leaving Axel without the means of exit from the disused tunnels.
Tom found himself shaking at the thought of it. If there were no London Transport staff down there at present there would be by six. Axel would be discovered, arrested, maybe charged with spying, sent to prison.
‘“Mr Someone, who by a mystic accord of temperament and necessity, had been set apart to be a secret agent all his life.”’
He had never been much good at learning by heart, but he could remember that, all of it but the name. It sounded in his head like a prophecy. He stood there in doubt, grasping the rope with both hands, thinking of Axel now, imagining him down there in the dark, with his torch and his camera and flash, by this time approaching the Signals and Communications Room.
Would there be lights on? Were lights always kept on, even in those distant, unused reaches? And how far was it that Axel had to go? Half a mile or only a hundred yards or less? Tom imagined the room that was his destination, seeing it as some vast CD player, panelled with rows and rows of control buttons.
The kind of revenge he contemplated did not appeal. It was not revenge he wanted, or not only revenge. He thought of Alice waiting for the imprisoned Axel. He imagined her talking to him about Axel, confiding in him, talking about their love and what they would do when Axel came out. That was certainly how it would be, he knew that. He did not want Axel in the role of martyr.
She is my life, he thought, I can't live without her, she has saved me but I have to go on being saved, I'll need saving all my life. I need to be kept in the safe place she makes for me. Alice, Alice… He spoke her name aloud to the night. His anger was delayed but it was there, it was rising. He felt it begin to spread through his veins, the way strong spirits seem to do. There was no room for Axel in this world while he and Alice were in it. He envisaged life without Axel and it appeared like a happy vision, the two of them joyous and innocent again, the serpent driven from the garden. In a double sense they would make music together again, for it seemed that even their music had been corrupted and diminished by Axel's presence. It was not only revenge he wanted but the end of Axel, his abolition, his destruction.
As soon as the thought took form and stood before him, Tom knew what he had to do. But do it how? He looked at his watch, brought it close to his eyes and made out the time: twelve minutes to three. If he was going to do it he must act quickly. Uselessly, he struggled with the ring-bolt again. It was tools he needed and had no means of getting. If not a spanner, the next best would be a weapon.
Tom played the torch beam across the roof. There was nothing, only the pipes and chimney-like projections, ventilators which even at this hour kept up a steady hum, the hut which he guessed was the shelter for a hatch and a ladder going down into whatever building this roof covered. What had he expected? A toolshed for someone employed below to come up to in his lunch hour and do a little useful carpentry?
Axel was a strong, athletic man, very probably a man who had undergone the kind of physical training the SAS are said to be put through, ‘… set apart to be a secret agent all his life’. The idea that came to Tom, of bending over the mouth of the shaft as he came up, of striking at him, punching his face and attempting to prise open his hands, very likely would not work. Axel would go on climbing up, weathering the rain of blows, and once out would exact his own revenge.
Unless Tom had a weapon. A blunt instrument was what they called it. Or perhaps even a sharp instrument. Then he re
membered the kitchen. A fleeting picture had come to him of Axel and Alice, entwined in each other's arms, making their way to that kitchen to pour wine or even, incongruous but perhaps apt, make tea. The kitchen. He saw a heavy pan or a rolling pin. Could he get back down there and up here again in the time? It was nine minutes to three. Axel would be back a minute or so before three.
He went across the roof the way they had come, across the low wall, the raft that sailed on the sea of dim lights, past the television dish and the aerial, the chimneys. The moon had gone, had set or else been swallowed up in cloud. The sky looked red, a dirty dark red, from reflected chemical light. Tom found the door, let himself in and went down the steps. There was a light switch and he put the lights on. What did he care? He wasn't going to waste time with a torch.
He passed the lift with the lettering facing it, the lettered name that had told him, and came to the kitchen, where he switched on the light. Last time he had seen it he had not known, he had been secure in Alice's love. The premonition had come immediately afterwards. A terrible urge came over Tom to break things, to tear the place apart, overturn the table, pick up the big china bowl from that shelf and smash it to the floor. He breathed deeply, briefly clenched his fists.
The kitchen was very small. He had been stupid imagining cooking equipment, fire-irons. There were just three drawers beneath the counter, above cupboards. The first one was empty, the second full of paper sheets with printing on and diagrams that looked like instructions for using equipment, the third held cutlery. There was nothing very suitable but time was running out. Tom hesitated, then took out a long serrated knife.
At the door to the roof he looked at the time again: four minutes to three. He put out the lights behind him and ran across the roof, vaulted the low wall. It would have been no surprise to see Axel there waiting for him, but Axel was not there. His eyes went to the ring-bolt. The rope hung inert. When Axel began to climb there would be a twitch on the rope.
Time had never passed so slowly. Tom went to the turret, the mouth of the well, and looked down. He switched on his torch and thrust it as deep as he could into the shaft. The light penetrated a long way down but after a short distance showed nothing, became a bleary yellowish fog. The brickwork which, well-like, should have been covered with lichen or even ferns, was smooth, brown, darkly stained. Tom withdrew the beam, lifted his face to the sky. It had become a slightly ruffled, smoky canopy, the dirty red of blood-soaked cloth.
It occurred to him then that Axel might not come up. He might find another way out, an unlocked door, a negotiable shaft, a usable stairway. Tom knew Axel would have no compunction about leaving him up here. The thought was intolerable, the idea of Axel's escape, of going home and finding the smiling Axel there. Tom was for the first time aware, in memory, of the bright blueness of Axel's eyes. As he imagined himself baulked of retribution, he saw the rope twitch.
He not only saw it twitch but heard the metallic clatter the ring made as a weight on the rope pulled it against the bar. Tom grasped the saw. The point of it looked sharp, efficient enough to stab at Axel as he began to surface.
But there was a better way. Tom gasped because he had not thought of it before, because thinking of it now might be too late. He took hold of the rope in his left hand, his weak hand. It was not too late. Doing it now might even be too early. He must time it right, wait for Axel to reach as high as the lowest point the beam of his torch had reached.
Tom began to saw.
He paused and looked over the edge, shining the torch down. The rope twitched and pulled, slackened, twitched, pulled, as down there, silent, unseen, Axel ascended. Would he speak? Tom hoped that he would speak so that he could answer. It would be good to answer Axel's hail with a cry of what he was doing, what fate he had in store for the man on the end of the rope. He was halfway through the rope, it was hard going with the now-blunted saw edge, and the thought came to him that the knife might break or buckle on the toughness of it.
The rope twitched and pulled, slackened, twitched, pulled. Then something happened very fast. The last threads, at least a third of the rope's thickness, pulled, strained, unravelled with a creaking sound and snapped. Before the last strand gave, Tom managed to grasp the rope end in both hands and hang on. Axel's weight dragged him to the turret and the well mouth. It would have pulled him over but for the protective wall.
Tom held on in this desperate tug-of-war. His bad hand burned. He pushed his toes against the wall, leaned back, wishing he need not lean back, wanting to look over, see Axel and then, when they were face to face, let go.
It was impossible unless he wanted to go over too. Both hands were burning, his heart pounding. His body had become a great throbbing pulse. He opened his mouth, let out a roar which seemed to echo and reverberate off the sky and, with this sound, this expression of hatred and rage, let go of the rope and threw up his hands.
He did not see the tail of it go over. He had shut his eyes. The cry Axel made was louder than his own. It was the most terrible sound Tom had ever heard and something he thought he would remember all his life, a scream of terror and despair, which did not stop but seemed infinitely prolonged, curling and throbbing up the shaft, reverberating on many desperate notes, at last dying away on a thin wail of anguish.
Tom had passed his arms round himself, was clutching his body as if to prevent its disintegration, its falling apart. He rocked himself from side to side, held his breath, waiting for the sound of the man on the end of the severed rope striking the ground. He heard nothing, it was too far down. But he waited, finally opening his eyes long after this impact must have taken place.
A profound silence succeeded Axel's scream. Even the distant traffic and the whispering, humming ventilators seemed hushed.
For quite a long time after it was all over Tom sat on the tank, bent over, with his head in his hands. He was shaking and his heart was behaving strangely. At one point he thought his heart had actually stopped but then it began again with a lurch he felt like a punch in the ribs.
The shaking took a long while to stop. He knew he was recovering when he began to feel cold. It was a mild night, very mild for the time of year, but the cold had reached him now, slipping on to his skin through his clothes. As soon as he got up, came back to life really, stood and looked about him, his eyes fell on the ring-bolt.
He began to think. The sight of the ring-bolt made him start thinking, he had to. It was almost painful. He pressed his fingers against his temples, as if rubbing at his brain. He must think.
Some time, though possibly not for a day or two, Axel's body would be found and beside it the backpack containing the smashed camera and also the rope. The assumption might be made that Axel had the rope for some quite other purpose and had entered the tunnels by one of the doors, with the help perhaps of an accomplice, but they would certainly suspect he had come down the shaft and investigators would soon be up here.
Tom thought, I have done murder, I have killed someone, I am a murderer. It made him feel dizzy. What he had done seemed to set him apart, and now the first shock was past, it exhilarated him. The weak do not do what he had done. It seemed to show him the unwisdom of tampering with people like himself, of the folly of coming between such a one as himself and the woman he loved. But even as this passed through his mind Alice's image came before him and quelled this self-congratulation. Alice, he said aloud, Alice. He shut his eyes on the picture, shook it away, looked at the ring-bolt.
If there had been a way of undoing the nut he would have done it rather than saw through the rope. But there had been no means of doing this. On the other hand, he had not searched, he had not had time. Two things appeared to Tom highly significant. If the ring-bolt was found they would know Axel had come down on the rope and that an accomplice had cut the rope. They had only to find out where Axel had lived and whom he knew, which they rapidly would, and then he, Tom, would be found. Alice would know and that seemed to him the worst thing. Without the ring-bolt and the fr
ayed rope-end protruding from it they might very likely assume, when they found the body and Axel's possessions around him, that their owner had brought the rope with him for some other purpose.
He returned to the door and the stairs. This time he was afraid to turn lights on. He had killed a man and the world was changed. Already the world was hunting him. Back in the kitchen he searched the drawers and the cupboards underneath them but failed to find a spanner. No one, after all, keeps spanners in kitchens.
Nor in bedrooms. Tom could not have brought himself to go into that bedroom. He went down a flight of stairs by torchlight and on the floor below found a suite of offices. It was in one of these, no doubt, that Alice worked. The scent of citrus was strongest here. On the wall facing the lift doors Angell, Scherrer and Christianson was lettered once again. He searched the offices one after the other. There was not going to be a spanner. If he found one he was convinced it would not be an adjustable spanner and it would be the wrong size.
The last door opened on to a pair of lavatory cubicles, two wallbasins and a hand-dryer. Tablets of orange-coloured soap lay on the side of each basin and he knew it must be from here that the smell emanated. On top of the dryer, left behind perhaps by a plumber, lay a hammer. Tom put the light on in there. It was windowless and in the middle of the building. The fan that started up automatically made him jump, it roared so loudly.
The light revealed no more tools. Tom took the hammer and went back. A lot of time had passed, he could not imagine what he had done with the time, so much of it flashing away while the minutes during which he had waited for a twitch on the rope had lingered, infinitely drawn out. His watch showed him a quarter past four.
Once, years ago, he had seen his father loosen a nut with a hammer. There was a knack to the way you struck one of the facets of the hexagon. Axel had tightened the nut that way. Tom balanced his torch on the wall of the turret, its beam directed on the ring-bolt, and began to attack the nut. Nothing happened. He thought he could have got a better purchase, something to hold on to, if the rope had still been there, but if the rope had still been there he would not have been doing this.
