by Mark Morris
I handed the card to Frank. ‘What do you think?’
Frank took it and read it. ‘I think it’s an invitation.’
‘I think it’s another trap,’ I said, ‘with Clover as the bait.’
Frank gave the card back to me and shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. ‘Same difference.’
TWENTY-TWO
ISLE OF DOGS
Thanks to the still-expanding Canary Wharf development, the Isle of Dogs had become afflicted with something of a split personality over the past couple of decades. Enclosed within a noose-like loop of the River Thames, some of the most prosperous parts of the capital, if not the country, now stood shoulder to shoulder with some of the most deprived. Not that there was much evidence of the latter when Frank and I disembarked from the Docklands Light Railway at Mudchute, which cut between Millwall to the west and Cubitt Town to the east. After consulting my A–Z beneath a street lamp we began to walk up a road which would eventually bring us to the A1206, which looped all the way around the outer perimeter of the ‘noose’ like an artery serving a major organ, and thence to the dockside developments facing out across the wide stretch of the Thames. The address on the card that had been left for us in the hotel was Commer House, Britannia Wharf. Whether this was an apartment complex, an office block or an old still-to-be-developed warehouse was anyone’s guess.
For an area with a once fearsome reputation, the long, meandering stretch of Spindrift Avenue, which Frank and I were following, was surprisingly quiet, even genteel. The houses and apartment blocks lining the road were neat, compact and modern, all sharp angles, red and black brick and port-holed windows. There was much greenery in evidence – regimented rows of identical trees and little patches of parkland squeezed into the urban sprawl. Yet, preferable though this was to the crumbling, rat-infested hovels and patches of litter-strewn waste ground that had once filled these streets, it was all a bit bland for my taste.
By the time we neared our destination it was creeping towards 11 p.m. We emerged from the tangle of streets on the outer edge of the A1206 to find that a low wall of shiny chocolate-coloured brick was all that stood between us and the rushing Thames. Across the river pinpoints of light combined to form a softly glowing halo above the buildings they illuminated. A cold breeze blew in off the water, freezing my hands and face and making me shiver.
‘This way,’ I said, pointing to the right. Frank and I hurried along a herringbone walkway which followed the course of the river, dwarfed on our right by the imposing, flat-fronted edifices of former warehouses converted into flats, their tiny, myriad windows bedecked with window boxes, their forecourts neatly paved and fenced and lined with shrubs.
Something flapped ahead of us, and I faltered for a moment, imagining the wing of a giant bird or bat. Then the sound came again, making more of a crack this time, and I realised it was only the loose edge of a piece of plastic or tarpaulin, animated by the wind.
Moving closer, I saw that beyond the apartment block on our right was a slightly smaller building, set back a little across a muddy patch of ground, as if timidly squatting in the shadow of its more illustrious neighbour. This building was encased in an exoskeleton of scaffolding, its upper floors wrapped in green netting. A chain-link fence formed a barrier in front of it, from which hung a pockmarked metal sign warning: DANGER! CONSTRUCTION SITE. Beneath, in smaller letters, was another sign: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
Even before I saw the Building Regulations notice stuck to the lamp post a few metres away, I knew that this would be Commer House. I looked at Frank and he looked at me.
‘Here we go again,’ he said.
The double gates, which allowed access to the construction crew and caged not only the building but the diggers and trucks that stood in front of it, were linked by a heavy chain wrapped in thick blue plastic and secured with a padlock. Frank dropped the roll-up he’d been smoking and stepped up beside me. He hunkered down and made a stirrup of his hands. ‘My turn to give you a boost-up this time, mate.’
Before stepping into his linked palms, I reached out and gave the padlock an experimental tug, fully expecting it to be immovable. However at my touch the looped bar at the top of the padlock slid free of the chain and the entire lock fell to the floor with a muddy clunk. I stared at it in surprise, but Frank only narrowed his eyes.
‘Bloody eager for us to join the party, ain’t they?’
‘We’d better not disappoint them then,’ I murmured, and unwound the chain, which was so cold it numbed my fingers. I tugged it free, then pushed the gate open just wide enough for the two of us to slip through.
As we entered the site I peered anxiously up at the building looming over us. If we had been observed squeezing through the gate there was no indication of it. The windows were black, and the only movement I could detect, aside from the billow and flap of the netting, was the restless prowling of a pigeon in a sagging gutter high up near the roof. Frank had moved ahead of me, and Commer House’s shadow was already swallowing him as he picked his way delicately over the mud-churned ground. I followed, glancing nervously at the silent construction vehicles as if they were sleeping dinosaurs. By the time I reached Frank he had already wrapped his hand around the brass knob of the big front door and was pushing it open.
‘Unlocked,’ he whispered, glancing over his shoulder and raising his eyebrows.
I stayed him with a hand on the arm. ‘They might as well have left a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow.’
He paused. The blackness revealed by the wedge of open door looked every bit as profound as that which Frank could conjure out of himself. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘Let’s not make it easy for them. Why don’t we try round the back?’
‘You’re the guv’nor,’ Frank said, and pulled the door closed again, as carefully and quietly as he could.
Picking our way through the ruts and puddles, we trudged round the side of the building. As soon as the side wall blotted out the waterfront lights we were plunged into darkness. I halted a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Above me the green netting rustled like something big turning in its sleep.
‘Don’t suppose you can see in the dark, can you, Frank?’ I whispered.
‘Why would I be able to do that?’
‘Well, you have a… unique relationship with darkness. And back at Benny’s house you kind of… glowed. I just wondered.’
He chuckled drily. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I ain’t a bleedin’ owl.’
Using the light from my phone, I was able to make out vague shapes ahead. Stepping around the icy metal scaffolding poles, I crept along the side of the building, the illuminated display screen angled towards the ground in order to avoid my stepping into holes or tripping over unseen obstacles. Even so, it wasn’t easy; the phone-light wasn’t great, and the side of the building was a higgledy-piggledy mass of abutments and recesses, which probably made perfect sense in the daytime, but in the dark was a confusing nightmare. And the ground was choked with debris: rocks, timber, clumps of weeds and nettles, chunks of metal and machinery.
At last we edged around the corner of the building, to find that the ground opened out at the back into a patch of wasteland, a tall fence marking the boundary at the rear of the property. All we had to do now was find a way in; I hoped that wouldn’t prove too difficult.
As it turned out, it didn’t prove difficult at all. Within a minute we came to a doorway across which a number of planks had been nailed. On the wall beside the doorway was another of those DANGER! CONSTRUCTION SITE signs. After tugging at the planks and finding they were nailed on too tightly for our fingers to dislodge, Frank wandered off in search of a makeshift tool and returned a minute or so later with a couple of sharp-edged rocks. For the next few minutes we battered and prised at the edges of the planks until, one by one, the nails came loose.
Beneath the planks was a rickety door, the wood warped, only a few jagged, grime-smeared fangs of glass jutting from the upper frame. B
y the light of the phone we saw nothing but a patch of blank floor, beyond which air so cold it seemed refrigerated drifted from the darkness. I grasped the sticky, dirt-encrusted handle and gave the door an experimental push. It juddered open a few inches with a horrible squealing, grating noise. I winced and gritted my teeth as though that might encourage it to fall silent.
‘Maybe we should sing the national bleedin’ anthem to drown out the racket,’ Frank muttered.
‘So much for the element of surprise,’ I said, and gave the door a harder shove in the hope it would reduce the friction.
The warped wood still protested, but less vociferously this time. Frank and I slipped into the building, my hand again slipping instinctively into the inside pocket of my jacket, my fingers seeking the cool surface of the heart. In the phone’s light I saw the pale ghost of my breath curling on the air as I exhaled.
‘Freezing,’ I said, thinking of how the presence of the supernatural was said to be accompanied by a drop in temperature. I was about to mention this to Frank when it struck me that he might be offended.
We peered ahead, my phone-hand moving slowly from left to right. Though the light didn’t penetrate far, I got the impression of a large open space with occasional pillars or stanchions supporting what must have been a vast expanse of ceiling. Whether this had once been the shop floor or a series of offices which had been knocked through I had no idea.
‘Where now?’ I whispered.
As if in answer I heard a faint sound so fleeting that I couldn’t tell whether it was a sob, a groan or a cry for help, and froze.
‘Did you hear that?’
‘I did,’ Frank confirmed. ‘I reckon it came from down below.’
‘A cellar?’
‘Could be.’
‘But how do we get down there?’
Frank sniffed. ‘Whoever that was, I reckon it weren’t far away. There must be some stairs somewhere. But we’d better be careful. We don’t want to fall through no hole in the floor.’
‘You realise that sound could have been made deliberately as a lure?’ I said.
‘Course I do. But that don’t mean we can ignore it, does it?’
We crept forward, spreading out a little, though not so far that we couldn’t see one another in the darkness. As before I shone the phone-light ahead of me, my toes also probing the floor like a blind man’s stick in case the boards were rotten. Sure enough, the wood creaked beneath my weight a couple of times, but otherwise seemed solid. After a minute or two, Frank said, ‘Psst.’
I peered across at him, holding up the phone. Back at Benny’s house he had been visible in the darkness, as if generating his own light source, but now – I guess in order not to give us away – he was nothing but a vague dark shape.
‘What is it?’
I saw his arm moving and realised he was pointing at the ground. ‘Stairs.’
I made my way over to him. As I got closer I saw metal stair rails emerging from the gloom, either side of a flight of steps descending into darkness. The first half-dozen steps were visible, but beyond that the light was swallowed by an impenetrable black pool that looked like liquid tar.
More freezing air drifted up, like the breath of something vast and ancient.
‘Fuck,’ I whispered. ‘Doesn’t look too inviting, does it?’
‘We have the means to fight if needs be,’ Frank said.
Feeling only minimally reassured by this, I gripped the metal stair rail with my free hand and picked my way down. A couple of the stairs creaked as I descended, and I paused, clenching my teeth, certain that the sound would encourage something to come howling out of the darkness. But the void beneath me remained silent, and the only movement was the occasional swirl of icy air.
Eventually, instead of illuminating the next few steps, the meagre light from my phone spilled out across a stone floor below, the coldness of which seemed to seep up through the soles of my boots as I stepped down on to it. A moment later Frank was standing beside me, his face wan, his cheekbones jutting and angular in the phone-light. The scent of his hair cream and roll-ups in the darkness was comforting, reassuring.
‘Where now?’ I wondered, angling the phone around and seeing only gloom beyond its range.
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
The words were barely out of his mouth when we heard a scuffle of movement from somewhere ahead of us and what sounded like a low groan of pain.
‘That way,’ Frank said unnecessarily, raising his right arm to point, and shoulder to shoulder we ventured into the gloom. My right hand was in my jacket pocket, clutching the heart, my left holding the phone out in front of me. Eventually we came to a stone wall, which loomed out of the darkness. Frank gestured to his left and hissed, ‘Shine the light that way.’
I did so, and was able to make out the black arch of an opening. We moved towards it, treading cautiously. We were no more than a couple of metres from the arch when Frank whispered, ‘Turn off the light a sec.’
I did so without question, plunging us into darkness.
No, not quite darkness. From the depths of the arch came the faintest of glows.
‘The light at the end of the tunnel,’ Frank murmured drily.
‘Maybe I should keep my phone off from now on,’ I suggested. ‘We don’t want to give ourselves away.’
Frank nodded in agreement, and we entered the arch and crept down the tunnel or corridor beyond it. I felt my way along the wall in the dimness, which was damp, sometimes slimy, to the touch. Gradually the tiny square of light at the end began to get bigger and brighter. It was orangey-yellow and a little unsteady; not electric light, but a gas lamp or candle flame. We were about three-quarters of the way along the tunnel when again I heard the scrape-scuffle of movement. This time it was accompanied by a brief metallic tinkling sound. Coins, I thought. Or chains.
The sound made me pause. I glanced over my shoulder to check that Frank was still close. He was, his thin face sickly in the flickering glow.
‘What’s the plan, chief?’ he whispered. ‘Over the top, all guns blazing?’
I forced a smile, though I was so nervous I could barely get my facial muscles to respond. ‘I think discretion may be the better part of valour.’
He nodded, and together we tiptoed to the end of the tunnel. All I could see through the opening was part of what seemed to be a large stone chamber, dimly lit, with further arched openings inset into the far wall, maybe fifteen or twenty metres away. I smelled damp earth and burning wax. The subterranean air was so cold it made my bones ache. Flattening my body against the wall, I peered around the corner.
The room stretched away from me. It was long, relatively narrow and high-ceilinged. At the far end was a cage, like the kind you might have seen rattling on carts in days gone by, designed to transport circus animals from one location to another. It was surrounded by fat white candles, their wavering tulip-flames exuding grey smoke like long, curling threads of spider-silk. Slumped in the cage, dark hair hanging over its face, legs tucked under its body, was a human figure. The figure’s wrists were shackled in heavy manacles attached to chains set into the floor. Because of the glow of light and haze of heat from the flames the figure seemed to shimmer and blur.
I leaned further forward, and as though sensing my presence the figure raised its head. As its hair fell away from its face I saw that it was Clover. I was shocked, but not surprised. She looked exhausted, defeated, her eyes half-closed, her mouth half-open. I looked around the room again – at the expanse of floor between me and the cage; at the arched openings, evenly spaced, containing nothing but shadows; up at the high ceiling. If this wasn’t a trap I’d be amazed, but it made no difference; I couldn’t not attempt to rescue Clover.
Turning back to Frank I quickly explained what I had seen and what I was planning to do. He nodded his compliance and promised he’d watch my back. I took a deep breath, and then stepped out of the cover of the dark corridor and into the room. Clover saw me and her
eyes widened. I put a finger to my lips, warning her not to call out, then began to run towards the cage.
It wasn’t much of a tactic, but I figured that if there were potential assailants waiting in ambush in the dark arches, they would be expecting me to be cautious rather than reckless. It might only wrong-foot them temporarily, but any advantage was better than none. I gripped the heart in my pocket as I ran, hoping it would burst into life, perform its magic and spirit Clover and me out of there. However, it remained stubbornly inactive, a lump of hard, cold stone in my hand.
I reached the cage without being intercepted and threw myself against it. Letting go of the heart, I gripped the bars with both hands and tugged at them, more out of desperation than any real belief that I might prise them apart. The chains attached to the manacles around Clover’s wrists jangled as she struggled to her feet. She looked tired and scared, but unharmed.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
She nodded rapidly. ‘I’m fine. But you’ve got to get out of here, Alex. This is a trap. They want the heart.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I guessed as much. They left us an address card.’
‘But you still came?’
‘Course I did. I couldn’t just leave you here, could I?’
She looked tearfully grateful and at the same time full of despair. Her eyes sparkled and her chin dimpled as her bottom lip began to tremble. Then she stiffened and her gaze shifted.
‘Behind you,’ she whispered.
I turned to see Frank standing in the middle of the room, looking warily left and right. ‘Don’t worry, that’s just Frank. He’s a friend. He’s here to help.’
She shook her head. Her maroon hair was ratty and tangled, as if she had washed it, but had been interrupted before being able to dry and style it. In a tiny, scared voice she said, ‘No one can help us.’
‘Don’t be too sure. The heart won’t surrender itself that easily and Frank’s got a few tricks up his sleeve. Remember the darkness at Benny’s house?’
