Scratch Deeper

by Chris Simms

  ‘That’s the main tunnel, the bit before was just an overflow,’ Hidden Shadow explained.

  ‘How deep is it?’ Iona asked.

  ‘Hard to say,’ Cropped-hair responded. ‘Three, four feet? More than enough to sweep you off your feet.’

  ‘What if one of you slipped and fell in? Where would you end up?’

  ‘Just don’t slip,’ Hidden Shadow laughed.

  The footage cut again, Hidden Shadow on the ledge, peering upwards, bathed in a shaft of daylight. It looked for a moment like he was in the beam of space ship and Iona could imagine him rising into the air. The camera drew closer and tilted up. A shaft, one side of it lined by a row of rusty rungs. Sheets of cobwebs stretched across it, dead leaves and twigs causing them to droop. The top of the shaft was capped by some kind of perforated cover through which the sunlight was shining. Hidden Shadow made a spider with one hand and crawled it through the air towards the camera’s lens.

  The next scene was him approaching a circle of bright light – the mouth of the tunnel. The song came to a stop as he turned and saluted. The picture faded out.

  Iona stared at the screen for a moment longer before handing the iPhone back. ‘You’re mad.’

  They were clearly delighted by her comment.

  ‘So, back to Cornbrook,’ Hidden Shadow said. ‘Which, by the way, makes the Bunker look like a Sunday stroll. In fact, we nearly gave up after four-and-a-half clicks. Backs were killing us. Only reason we carried on was we couldn’t shift any liddage to get the fuck out –’

  Iona shot him a questioning look. ‘Liddage?’

  ‘Man-hole covers.’

  ‘You mean,’ she said, voice slightly hoarse, ‘you could have been trapped down there?’

  ‘No way we wanted to turn back,’ Cropped-hair continued. ‘Plus, our GPS told us, if we did surface, it would be in some rather on-top locations. Busy areas with traffic and cameras, you know? So we pressed on to the finish, finally popped a manhole only to find a dome cam directly above us.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hidden Shadow laughed. ‘Not wanting to outstay our welcome, so to speak, we got moving. Had to schlep right across town to our dry gear, sun coming up, head-to-toe in the most acrid gunk imaginable.’

  They looked proudly at each other.

  Iona dropped her gaze to her notes. What a pair of weirdos.

  ‘When he tried it, our man clocked up a fail a few hundred metres in,’ Hidden Shadow said. ‘Started pouring down and the poop-flow got too strong for him.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Iona said. ‘There’s a danger of these things flooding while you’re down there?’

  ‘Well,’ Cropped-hair said, looking amused, ‘they are storm drains.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Hidden Shadow added, ‘you pick a dry spell to do them. Which he didn’t. Then, a few weeks after that, he posted something that really got our attention. He made it up on to the town hall roof. Took some amazing photos across the city, many from the top of the clock tower.’

  ‘I thought you were only into below-ground stuff?’

  ‘Primarily, yes. But we’ll go up cranes or on to a roof if the opportunity presents itself.’

  Iona pictured the neo-Gothic architecture of the civic building. The clock tower was frighteningly tall. ‘He’s got a head for heights, then.’

  Hidden Shadow sat forward. ‘Also an ability with locks.’ The other two nodded. ‘That’s not an easy building to access. Majorly difficult, in fact.’

  ‘Doing it was deserving of respect,’ Cropped-hair stated.

  ‘So we contacted him,’ Hidden Shadow continued. ‘We met in the student union on Oxford Street. He was really keen to visit the tunnels under the cathedral at first. But they’ve been well gone through.’

  ‘They have?’ Iona asked, giving them her wide-eyed look again. ‘Are there many?’

  ‘Under the cathedral?’ Hidden Shadow looked bored. ‘It’s riddled with them. They spread out in all directions. Get to most via the crypt or the passage below the main tower. It’s hardly a secret. Next, he wants a look round the Victoria Arches.’

  Confused, Iona looked at him.

  ‘Dug out originally to store goods being transported up and down the River Irwell. No one’s quite sure when. Then they were used as air-raid shelters during World War II. Right in front of the cathedral, they are. You can see them looking back across the river from Bridge Street.’

  Iona clicked her fingers, picturing the steep walls dropping down to the dirty water. ‘They look like giant bricked-up windows? Set a few metres above water level?’

  ‘That’s them. Over three-and-a-half-thousand people used to shelter in there during the Blitz.’

  ‘Really?’ Iona said. ‘That’s a lot of bodies.’

  ‘Each archway leads into a cavernous great hall, all interconnected by narrow corridors.’

  ‘You’ve been in them, too?’

  ‘Plenty of times.’

  ‘How do you get in?’

  He looked at her. ‘Trade secret. There used to be wooden stairs going down to them from Bridge Street, but they were torn down when the council decided to brick the entrances up. There are other ways in, though – including where the wardens’ posts used to be. You just need to know where to look.’

  Cropped-hair raised a finger. ‘All this stuff? You’re not teasing anything out of us you can’t read about on our website. Hope you realize that.’

  Iona looked at him. Damn, that was starting to go really well. ‘I wasn’t trying to. So, what’s down there now?’

  ‘Not a lot. Part of a tramway gantry. Bits of old pipes, broken bricks – the usual stuff. There’s meant to be a way through to the cathedral tunnels but we’ve never had any luck finding it. We might have done if Hidden Shadow here isn’t always so keen to get out.’ He smirked at his mate.

  ‘Sometimes, you hear things,’ Hidden Shadow said uncomfortably. ‘Moaning sounds. The back part of the arches must be almost touching the cathedral crypt, we reckon.’

  A little smile had appeared on Toby’s lips. ‘Like there’s a ghost trapped down there.’

  Hidden Shadow was staring at his feet. ‘Take the piss. You wouldn’t think it was so funny if you actually heard it. Not down there in the pitch black, just the sound of dripping water all around.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘leaving the haunted stuff to one side. This person’s interested in the areas below the cathedral . . .’

  Across the table, Cropped-hair held up his finger again. ‘At first he was. Then he starts trying to pump us for information about the Deansgate tunnel – which, of course, he gets no joy with.’

  Iona paused again in her note-taking. ‘You’ve lost me again. Deansgate tunnel?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a legend.’

  Iona thought about Deansgate’s wide lanes. How the little old lady had been stranded at the mid-point with the four-wheel drive edging towards her. ‘And what? It goes from one side to the other?’

  ‘Not across it,’ Hidden Shadow said. ‘Under it.’

  Iona blinked. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘And it’s big enough to drive a coach and horses through.’

  Iona sat back. ‘You’re saying there’s a tunnel beneath one of the city’s major roads and no one can actually find a way into it?’

  Hidden Shadow rocked his bottle from side to side. ‘We didn’t say no one can get into it. I made it into a short section once – but it had been bricked up after about forty metres. The council are bound to be aware of it – but life’s far easier if they just deny it exists.’

  ‘But surely something like that couldn’t be covered up? Pardon the pun.’

  From the sudden way they all shifted in their seats, Iona sensed she’d touched a collective nerve.

  Hidden Shadow swigged the last of his beer down before speaking. ‘You’re trying to tell me, the authorities don’t try and keep stuff secret from the public? We’re in the age of WikiLeaks, dude. Calling people like us conspiracy theorists won’t wash any more.’
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  Fair point, Iona said to herself. She was aware of a few cover-ups herself. Like a couple of years ago when the big screens that had been erected in Piccadilly Gardens to show the UEFA cup final had suddenly gone off. It wasn’t, she knew, because of any technical fault as official announcements had claimed. It was because senior brass had taken the decision to cut the power when crowds swelled to dangerous levels. They just hadn’t anticipated the thousands of infuriated Glaswegians who then rioted through the centre of the city.

  ‘So which bit of Deansgate is it meant to be beneath?’ she asked.

  ‘Which bit?’ A wry smile was on Cropped-hair’s face. ‘It doesn’t run under just part of it – the thing goes its entire length.’

  Iona wasn’t sure if she’d heard correctly. ‘From one end to the other?’

  ‘Correct.’

  She did a mental scan of the city. Deansgate started adjacent to the cathedral and then ran in a straight line all the way to Deansgate train station. In between those two points lay such city landmarks as The John Rylands Library, Kendals department store and the Great Northern Railway Terminal; now a leisure complex housing a cinema, gym and several bars. She realized the convention centre was located not far to the side of Deansgate, at the train station end of it. The alarm bell that had rung in her mind when talking with Sergeant Ritter started up again, more loudly this time. ‘Talk me through when you saw this person again.’

  Hidden Shadow let out a burp. ‘OK, so you know he walked right past me outside Central Library?’

  Iona gave a nod.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if it was him, at first. The way he was dressed was so different. Then again, he may not have recognized me with a tie on and my hair all neat—’

  ‘Can you give me a physical description?’ Iona cut in.

  Hidden Shadow looked momentarily irritated at being interrupted. ‘He’s quite tall – kind of gangly. Yeah?’ He looked at his companion for confirmation.

  Cropped-hair nodded. ‘About six feet, maybe just over. Probably ten stone, maximum. Thin shoulders, long neck. Quite a sharp face, high cheekbones, jaw – you know – angular.’

  Toby tapped his throat. ‘Big Adam’s apple.’

  ‘Yeah, big Adam’s apple,’ the other two chorused.

  ‘Hair?’ Iona asked.

  ‘Black and thick,’ Hidden Shadow replied. ‘Swept over in a side parting. Imagine a fast bowler in the Sri Lankan cricket team – that would be pretty much him.’

  Iona noted everything down. ‘You said he was dressed differently. What was he wearing? A suit?’

  ‘No – chino-style trousers,’ Hidden Shadow replied. ‘And a shirt. Sensible clothes, certainly not the jeans and hoodies he usually wore. So I follow him in and up to the second floor – where they have a good look at those architectural plans.’

  ‘They being the one calling himself Muttiah and his companion?’ Iona realized her businesslike tone was now destroying the interview’s laid-back approach she’d so carefully cultivated. ‘Can you describe the other one?’

  Hidden Shadow thought for a moment. ‘Shorter, for a start. And he was wearing a baseball cap. He took it off inside the library and I could see he was a bit older. Meaner-looking, too.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Just the expression on his face – he looked angry. Similar features, just older and angrier.’

  New voices caused the volume of noise in the bar to suddenly increase. Iona glanced to her side: a group of people were filing in, creating a wall of bodies between her and the bottom of the stairs. A sense of being trapped suddenly flooded her and she felt the muscles in her legs tense. Looking down, she fought back the urge to jump from her seat and barge her way out. ‘How old, would you say?’

  ‘About thirty, at the most. Hair was short – looked like it would have been curly if it was longer.’

  ‘And about how tall?’

  ‘Oh, five-and-a-half feet, maybe less.’ He focused on Iona. ‘Not that much taller than you. And he looked in good shape. Wiry sort of build to him, like a rock climber. When they got to the stairs in the library, he was up them like a shot. Two at a time, proper I-mean-business style. That’s when I first realized he’s not calling the other one Muttiah. He looked back at the first landing and goes, “Vasen!” Then he beckoned, like he was saying to hurry up.’

  Sounds like this other guy was in charge, Iona thought. Maybe a more senior person in whatever organisation they’re part of – if any. ‘And they’re not speaking English?’

  ‘No – not sure what it was. But once they’re at the book shelves, it’s Vasen this and Vasen that.’

  ‘Would you recognize the language if you heard it again?’ Iona wondered how easy it would be to get hold of a Sri Lankan audio tape. Probably simplest to go on YouTube and have a search there.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘But – previously – Muttiah claimed to be from Sri Lanka.’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Which would make him more South Asian than Middle Eastern.’

  ‘I suppose. But, no offence, if the person’s wearing Western clothes, how can you easily tell? I mean, his skin was quite dark, hair black, eyes brown. I don’t mean to sound racist, but you get my point?’

  Iona nodded, aware her heart was beating more quickly than normal. The new arrivals were speaking too loudly, filling the place with a barrage of sound. ‘The companion,’ she said more loudly. ‘You said facially, they were similar.’

  ‘Yeah – I’d say related. Like an older brother or something. I actually thought he could have been there for the Muttiah bloke’s graduation ceremony – it would have explained the smart clothes.’

  Iona tried to cut out the surrounding noise and think. The foyer of the library had to have CCTV. ‘And you first saw them outside the library?’

  ‘Yeah. The front steps. I was coming down, they were going in.’

  ‘Can you remember when exactly this was?’

  ‘End of my lunch break. Last Wednesday.’

  ‘Which is when, sometime around two o’clock?’

  ‘Yup – five to.’

  That’s my first task for tomorrow morning right there, Iona thought. Try and get a CCTV image of them. Until then, they remain faceless. She checked herself from thinking too far ahead: it might not be so easy to arrange another meeting with these guys. Just because it’s bloody noisy and cramped down here, she thought, is not an excuse to rush things. You know Wallace will be looking for any gaps in the interview. ‘Anything more you can tell me about Muttiah? Did he ever mention where he lived, what he did when he wasn’t with you, places he liked to eat at? That kind of stuff.’

  Cropped-hair shook his head. ‘Looking back, it was always strictly tunnels with him. No idle chit-chat, just questions about if we’d seen this place, do we know a way into that.’

  ‘He never hung around after a trip? Came down here for a drink?’

  ‘We offered, but he said he didn’t touch alcohol. And he couldn’t stand loud places. We didn’t pressure him.’

  ‘You never asked him about Sri Lanka? What it was like over there?’

  ‘I did once,’ Hidden Shadow replied. ‘You know, about the Tamil Tigers and the civil war. He definitely wasn’t keen to talk about it. I thought maybe he’d lost his family. Something horrific like that.’

  ‘OK.’ Iona put her pen down and surveyed the group with what she hoped was a calm, controlled expression. She realized the wall behind them was glistening; condensation, from all the people squashed in. Her chest felt tight. ‘If you remember anything else – and I mean anything – here’s my number.’ She placed three of her freshly printed cards on the table. First I’ve handed out, she thought. Apart from the ones to mum and dad. ‘Call me anytime.’

  As the leader lifted one off the table, Iona stole a glance at the exit sign. ‘Thanks for taking the trouble to see me. You did the right thing here.’

  Cropped-hair s
at back and crossed his arms. ‘You think it could be something? A bomb plot?’

  Iona put her notebook away, now just wanting to get out. ‘Any report like this has to be followed up.’

  Hidden Shadow made a hissing sound through his teeth. ‘That’s not what he asked.’

  She glanced at him. ‘I can’t say at this stage. I’ll need to contact the university for details about foreign students. But, initially, yes; it does give me cause for concern.’

  The admission seemed to go down well, like they could be involved in something serious. Talking fodder for their next trip.

  ‘Obviously,’ she added, ‘our arrangement to keep this between ourselves works two ways. Quid pro quo, as Doctor Lecter said to Clarice Starling.’

  Cropped-hair’s face lit up. ‘Like it,’ he smiled. ‘Yeah. Of course.’

  His eyes went to Hidden Shadow and, from the glance they shared, Iona wasn’t sure if they’d be keeping their side of the bargain. She got to her feet and looked at Toby. ‘If anything else comes up on my side, more questions or the need for photo identification, do I go through you?’

  He turned to Cropped-hair, who nodded.

  ‘Yup,’ Toby replied.

  ‘OK. Thanks again.’ She reached into her pocket, took out a tenner and put it on the table. ‘And have another drink on me.’

  The three of them looked delighted as she burrowed her way across the packed bar and jogged thankfully up the steps. Back out in the open air, she placed a hand on the railings, breathing deeply as she looked up at the night sky. Seems like I’ve been down there for hours, she thought, a light breeze making her damp shirt feel suddenly cold.

  As her heartbeat returned to normal, her mind turned to how she could access the footage from any cameras overlooking the library’s entrance. Her mobile beeped and she realized there would have been no signal in the subterranean bar. Looking at the screen, she saw the message was from Jim. Hang on, she thought. Jim. He’s just been through the exact process with the drug-dealing case. His parting comment rang in her head and another thought occurred: I’m not sure if I can face speaking to him. Not tonight, anyway.