Catacombs of Terror!

by Stanley Donwood

  CCTV in the city has been run previously by a number of commercial concerns including Rentokil(!). It is now run by ScryTech, who describe themselves as ‘a data gathering service.’ They have a website which looks very cheap and contains no information of interest. I did find them in the Companies House database, but it was one of the most elusive entries I’ve ever seen. Again, their presence here is the result of a contract put out to tender by the area council. The most startling thing about their corporate objectives is that they aren’t pushing for more cameras (i.e., more money) unlike their predecessors. Interestingly, ScryTech also provide CCTV security for KHS excavations.

  I looked out of the window. I could see the rain running down the glass. I put the papers down on my desk, and had a little think about Karen Eliot. I wondered where she was. What she was doing. Sleeping, probably. Next to Barry, probably. I made another instant coffee and sat down again. 4:40 A.M. This was dead time. I started calculating the hours I had left. Christ. I still wasn’t sure whether this was a setup, or what. This all seemed too . . . detailed for Barry. Too clever. Too deep. I remembered what the girl in the Star had said.

  The head will be found on the east pediment. Staring up at the sky. The city will not shrug its shoulders. The city will demand a culprit. And you, Mister Valpolicella, will be the culprit.

  Dismantled skeletons. Bodies. Nasty . . . very nasty . . . .

  Okay. I picked up the sheets of paper again, even though I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to.

  I also dug up something else on KHS. They ended up being responsible for moving all materials from the old city library buildings to a new site. Initially was to be done in-house by the area council. Due to unspecified administrative problems, work was contracted out to an outfit named as Kelley Historical Services(!). This was put to the vote at a council meeting. According to the recorded minutes from the meeting, the motion was carried unanimously with one abstention from a B Eliot. There was and is no Eliot on the council so I don’t know why his name is on the documentation.

  The move from the old library to the new buildings was carried out with no problems. KHS were subsequently employed to control the new computer filing system for the library. Again, no apparent problems. At least none I could find out about. I’ll see if I can do some more on this tomorrow.

  Well, Martin. This all seems a little odd to me. I want to know how bad things are to make you want my help. Maybe I can help you some more. But I think you need to sleep. You really do look terrible. Call me in the morning.

  K.

  I glanced at my reflection in the rain-streaked window and knew that I needed more than a couple hours sleep to make me look any better. I needed a month of unconsciousness. Perhaps a couple of decades of cryogenic suspension would help. But somehow I doubted it. And anyway, it was the morning. Yeah, well. But too early to call Colin Kafka. Too early to call anyone who had any sense at all. But not too early to walk over to Charlcombe to see what might be what. To examine the work of Kelley Historical Services. Not too early. Not for me. I lit another cigarette, shoved the half-bottle of whiskey in my overcoat pocket, and slammed the door behind me.

  Chapter 7

  Things Could Only Get Worse

  It was beginning to be what you might have called a beautiful summer morning. If it hadn’t been raining. Mist shrouded the world, and maybe there was some kind of promise that the sun would be around later on. But maybe not. I walked up through a suburb, and as I left the city behind everything started getting beautiful on me, but I wasn’t in the mood.

  The grass was soaking wet and my breath hung in the air like a dead man. I’d fallen asleep in wet clothes and woken up to a horror story. I’d had almost no sleep and now I was in a sodden field at dawn. And I had a yawning suspicion that things could only get worse.

  The Kelley Historical Services dig was at the top of the footpath, just below the church that lurked in a fold of the valley. Most of the excavations were under big blue tarpaulins stretched over a wooden framework of some kind. There was no one about, so I parted the strands of barbed wire and stepped through. I remembered what Colin had written about ScryTech’s CCTV covering KHS digs.

  I scanned the area under the tarp. There seemed to be three cameras, strategically placed for maximum coverage. I worked out a route that should keep me out of view. There was enough room to walk upright under the tarps, but only just. Under the tarp the mud looked blue, and my eyes took a while to adjust to the strange monochrome. There didn’t seem to be much going on at the edges of the dig, so I walked on further. There were a lot of planks around, which I guessed were for walking on. None of the various trenches and holes held much interest for me. What did intrigue me was a very, very deep hole under the centre of the tarpaulin. Oh no. I was intrigued again. A bad sign.

  It was bone dry under the centre of the tarp. The hole was what, seven or eight feet in diameter. And it was deep. It disappeared into inky darkness. I didn’t care to think how deep it might be. Because I knew there was only one way that I could find out. There were props holding the sides steady. There was a winch built over the hole. There was a ladder. This was not an average archaeological dig that I was looking at. I remembered my watch and gave it a cursory inspection. 6 A.M.

  On a regular archaeological dig no one should be here before 8:30. Especially on a Saturday. But, like I said, it was obvious that this wasn’t a regular dig. It wasn’t a regular anything. Hell, it wasn’t a regular morning. I should have been in bed. So I had a drink of my whiskey. And I started climbing down the ladder.

  It was colder as I went deeper, and there was a peculiar smell rising from the darkness below me. I was badly equipped for this sort of crap. No flashlight. No camera. No idea what the hell I was doing. I carried on climbing down into increasing darkness, foot after foot, hand after hand. Every time I looked up I saw a smaller circle of blue light above me. It was not a comfortable sight. A blue circle floating in a sea of black. I began to feel dizzy, as if the walls were constricting, and I was trapped in a vertical tube and there was nothing else in the world. Nothing else anywhere. Utterly alone. And the stench from beneath was stronger, an almost choking sulphurous stink.

  I leant my head against a cold rung. I had to get to the bottom of this. As soon as the thought came into my mind I laughed aloud, and my laughter echoed hysterically around me until it slowly died out in what sounded like the mutterings of a devil. I took some deep breaths through my mouth. Step after step. Rung after rung. I had a nasty moment when the ladder seemed to disappear, but it was only where two ladders had been roped together somehow. I tried to empty my mind. Think about nice things. I thought about Karen Eliot naked in a bed, but then I started thinking about Barry and then about the Council and then about KHS and then I was back where I was. At the bottom of the hole. I was standing on stone. It was darker than any night. The blue circle that was my only visual connection to the surface seemed impossibly distant. I felt the cold floor beneath my feet. I felt around with my hands. Long cuts, or grooves, separated areas of flat stone. And then I realised. Flagstones. I was standing on a paved floor. Sixty feet or so beneath a rural valley in England.

  I felt around the sides of the hole. It wasn’t continuous. At times the walls just weren’t there. My hands traced nothingness. There had to be tunnels, or at least deep hollows, radiating like spokes from the hole. All of them seemed to be paved, like the floor I was standing on. And no way was I crawling down them. Not now. Not without a light. No way. Not without several more stiff drinks inside me. I fumbled in my pocket and had another swig. Some cocaine would have been good. Lots of it. I suddenly got the fear. Badly.

  I climbed back up the ladder, as fast as my cold arms and legs would take me. I seemed to move as slowly as a child hauling sacks of coal. The blue circle seemed to stay the same size for weeks, but eventually I could see the sides of the hole next to me, faintly illuminated by that eerie light. At long last I reached the surface. And I appreciated it.
It’s a fine place, the surface. I swore I’d never take it for granted again. I stumbled out, hoping that my erratic path would somehow avoid the cameras, and burst out into the open air like someone who’s been underwater for almost too long. Almost long enough to drown.

  It was still raining. The sun had obviously decided to spend the day somewhere else. I wished I had that choice. But I didn’t. Choices were closing down around me like slamming doors. It was nearly 7:30 A.M. I walked back down towards the city as quickly as I could.

  I had a flat on a street north of the city centre. It wasn’t one of my favourite streets, but the rent was cheap. I let myself in. I showered and dumped my muddy, soaking clothes on the floor. I gave the flat a cursory glance. What a tip. I put on a suit, one of my less threadbare numbers. I had an idea, and I guessed that I needed to look at least semi-presentable for it to work. Then I called Kafka on his mobile.

  “Who is this?” he asked. Just woken voice. Not too pleased. But I couldn’t afford to worry about that. Things were getting too strange, too quickly.

  “It’s Martin. I need to meet you right now.”

  “Jesus. It’s—what—eight-thirty on fucking Saturday morning.” He muttered a few choice phrases then seemed to pull himself together. “Okay, okay . . . I’ll see you at, oh, I dunno . . . .” He fumbled with words for a while, then mentioned a café. “You know it? I’ll see you in, what, about half an hour. You’re buying the coffee. Bye.”

  I strode briskly in the rain through town to where the café was. It was a fairly civilised place, but it was near the city Baths, and as I passed them I shuddered. The head will be found on the east pediment. Staring up at the sky. I thought of the hole at Charlcombe, the paved floor, and the tunnels. This morning, anything seemed possible. Murder, mutilation, my arrest—anything. Anything at all. Twenty-four hours and my world had been turned upside down. Back to front. Any which way but right.

  Chapter 8

  No Messages

  I arrived at the café at the same time as Kafka, which I took to be a good omen. I needed some good omens. We took a table at the back of the café, ordered a couple of coffees.

  He raised his eyebrows, lit a cigarette, and asked me to tell him everything. I filled him in on what had happened since I last saw him—I told him about Charlcombe. He was a good listener, even though I didn’t much like the expression that gathered force on his face as I related my tale.

  “It stinks, Martin. This whole thing reeks. KHS obviously have an agenda that goes far beyond archaeological research. The fact that they also control the city’s library is suspicious, especially when coupled with the fact that they suddenly acquired the contract to move the books from the old site to the new one. I don’t like the ‘no significant finds’ bit from the digs they’ve already done either. It begins to seem like they’re not after relics at all. At least, not the kind of relics you’d expect.”

  I took a slurp of my coffee.

  “I don’t ‘expect’ any fucking kind of anything. Where do I fit into this? Why am I being fed this information? I mean, they practically drew me a map. I was expressly told to check out the Charlcombe dig. Whoever is doing this knows all the answers already. Why do I have to find them out all over again? And, more to the fucking point, why can’t they leave me the hell out of it?” I said wearily.

  “I’m not sure, but it could be that someone in KHS has broken ranks. They’re too scared—of something—to do anything about it themselves so they’ve picked you to do their work for them. Maybe the bit about you getting arrested is just to get you sufficiently self-interested to basically do their bidding. Maybe the arrest—your arrest—is a lie.” Kafka raised his eyebrows.

  “I like that idea. I like it a lot,” I growled.

  “Who was the woman you met with at the Star?”

  “She didn’t say. I asked. She didn’t tell. I asked her about Eliot—Barry Eliot—but she didn’t seem to know who he was. As far as I could tell.”

  “Okay, but his is the only name we have. And you say that he knows that you’ve been—sleeping—with his wife. Interesting. What does he do for a living?

  “He’s a property developer. A bigshot. He’s connected with most of the grandest projects around here. He’s—fuck, he’s connected with everything important. Shit. I bet he’s been involved with all the sites that KHS have worked on, before the building started. And I’ve been sleeping with his wife.” I sat back in my chair and exhaled deeply. Something was adding up to something. The trouble was I had very little idea what any of the somethings were. All I knew was that I didn’t like any of them.

  “So.” Kafka was pensive. His mouth twisted. “So. This Barry Eliot guy is connected—somehow or other—with KHS. Someone has been spoon-feeding you information about KHS. They’ve threatened you with the possibility of arrest—for murder. They’ve described a murder scene that is connected with a heritage site. The body is supposed to be discovered on the morning of the 13th July. Your arrest is supposed to be scheduled for that afternoon. They’ve even given the arrest a time of day, which is, on the face of it, unbelievable. KHS seem to work almost exclusively with heritage sites, and with libraries or books. What’s going on?”

  Questions were coming thick and fast. Answers weren’t in the building.

  “I’m getting more interested in this ScryTech outfit,” I said. “I saw their cameras at the Charlcombe site. I’m pretty sure I avoided them though. ScryTech are in deep with KHS. Now, Colin, I had a little idea that I could check them out. Go see them. As a journalist doing a story. A little piece for your newspaper. A puff job. How CCTV cuts street crime, that kind of shit. Obviously I’ll need a press pass. And I’ll need the interview to be booked from a phone line in your offices. I know that it’s a Saturday. Make something up about overtime.”

  “What?” He suddenly looked unhappy. I didn’t care.

  “Come on, Colin. You can do it.”

  Kafka squirmed. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll arrange an interview and call you to tell you when it will be. I’ll lend—lend—you my press pass so you can copy it. Put . . . er . . . ‘Bob Jones’ on it. I’ll find out what I can about Barry Eliot. But listen. I do not, repeat not—want my job fucked up in any way whatsoever.”

  “When have I ever fucked anything up?” I asked, pulling on my ‘I’m hurt’ face. Kafka just stared back at me. He dug in his pocket and flicked me his press pass. He got up.

  “I’ll call you,” he said, and walked out into the rain. I stared blankly into space for a couple of minutes, and then I left, too.

  I let myself into the office and checked my answerphone. More out of habit than anything else. It beeped and robot-voiced away while I poured a smallish whiskey and sat down. No messages. That was good. I lit a cigarette. The rain splattered against the window with a force that seemed close to anger. No messages, huh? I felt a small relief. So, I had a little time to think. Well. Okay. My plan was to get into the ScryTech CCTV control room. The city had plenty of their cameras around, swivelling and tracking events on the streets below. The idea was that the cameras deterred or prevented crime. The practical reality, I suspected, was entirely different. There had to be a reason why ScryTech and KHS had taken over significant chunks of the Area Council’s operations at roughly the same time. ScryTech’s stated job description was ‘data gathering.’ Surveillance. Watching, recording. KHS’s purpose was digging, excavating, revealing. The library was, I reasoned, a repository of data. Somewhere in this maze there was a centre, an objective. A purpose.

  Something told me that whoever was behind all of this hadn’t got what it was that they wanted. Or maybe they had. Maybe they had what they wanted, had it all along. But I was being thrust into events, for a reason that remained obscure. I had a hunch that, despite what I had said to Colin Kafka, I was about to fuck things up. And it wasn’t my fault. Honestly. Swearing under my breath, I pulled Kafka’s press pass from my inside pocket and set about duplicating it. It wasn’t hard. It didn’t
need to be a perfect copy. I was only going to flash it and slide it back in my wallet.

  Kafka’s call came at 10:40 A.M. I was ready. I’d already burnt a book of matches one by one, made lots of holes in a piece of A4 with the hole punch, and stared with blank eyes at the rain for a while.

  “Martin? Have you done the press card?” Kafka sounded busy. Efficient. I grunted affirmatively. “Good. They’ll want ID. I’ve set up an interview for ‘Bob Jones’ at eleven thirty this morning. You’ve got half an hour because crime fighting is, as we all know, a full-time job. Don’t ask wrong questions. Okay?”

  “I’m indebted, Colin,” I spat. “What, exactly, constitutes a ‘wrong’ question? Don’t tell me. I know. One that might get you into trouble. Well, don’t worry. You know me. But yeah, well, thanks. So where do I go to meet with ScryTech? And should I let you know what gives?”

  “Do that, Martin. I’m hoping to get some sort of story out of this. Assuming you don’t upset too many people. You’ll meet a Council official called Mario Murnau in the lobby of City Hall.” He hung up.