Skeleton Key

the two of them there. Above them, on the surface, there would be people everywhere, milling about in the sunlight. Alex was grateful for the carpet, which muffled the sound of his feet. It seemed that the guard was in a hurry. So far he hadn‟t stopped or turned round. The guard reached a wooden door marked RESTRICTED. Without stopping, he went through. Alex paused for a moment, then followed. Now he found himself in an altogether grimier environment, a cement corridor with yellow industrial markings and fat ventilation pipes overhead. The air smelled of oil and garbage, and Alex knew that he had arrived at the so-called Buggy Route, a supply lane that forms a great circle underneath the club. A couple of teenagers in green aprons and jeans walked past him, pushing two plastic bins. A waitress went the other way, carrying a tray of dirty plates.
    There was no sign of the guard and for a moment Alex thought he‟d lost him. But then he saw a figure disappearing behind a series of translucent plastic strips that hung from the ceiling to the floor. He could just make out the man‟s uniform on the other side of the barrier. He hurried forward and went through. Alex realized two things at the same moment. He no longer had any idea where he was—and he was there on his own.
    He was in an underground chamber, banana-shaped, curving round, with concrete pillars supporting the roof. It looked like an underground carpark and there were indeed three or four cars parked in bays next to the raised walkway where he was standing now. But most of the space was taken up by trash. There were empty cardboard boxes, wooden pallets, a rusting cement mixer, bits of old fencing and broken down coffee vending machines, thrown out and left to rot on the damp cement floor. The air smelled bad and Alex could hear a constant whine, like an electric saw, coming from a garbage compactor just out of his sight. And yet the area was also used for the storage of food and drink. There were beer barrels, hundreds of bottles of fizzy drinks, gas cylinders and, clustered together, eight or nine massive white boxes—refrigerators, each one carrying the label RAWLINGS REFRIGERATION.
    Alex looked up at the roof. It was slanting upwards and the shape reminded him of something.
    Of course! The raked seating around Court Number One! That was where he was—in the loading bay beneath the tennis court. This was the underbelly of Wimbledon all right. This was where all the supplies arrived and where all the trash Left. And right now, ten thousand people were sitting just a few metres above his head, enjoying the game, unaware that everything they consumed throughout the day began and ended here.
    But where was the guard? Why had he come here and who was he going to meet? Alex crept forward carefully, once again feeling very alone. He was on a raised platform with the single word DANGER repeated in yellow letters along its edge. He didn‟t need to be told. He came to a flight of steps and went down, moving into the main body of the chamber, on the same level as the refrigerators. He walked past a stack of gas cylinders, pressurized carbon dioxide. He had no idea what they were for. Half the things down here seemed to have been dumped for no good reason.
    He was fairly sure now that the guard had gone. Why would he want to meet anyone down here?
    For the first time since he had left the Complex, Alex played back the telephone conversation in his mind.
    I‟m going to meet him now. Yes … straight away. He‟ll give it to me…
    It sounded ridiculous, fake, like something out of a bad film. Even as Alex realized this and knew that he had been tricked, he heard the screaming sound, saw the dark shape rushing out of the shadows. He was in the middle of the concrete floor, out in the open. The guard was behind the wheel of a fork-lift truck, the metal prongs jutting out towards him like the horns of an enormous bull. Powered by its forty-eight volt electric engine, the truck was speeding towards him on pneumatic tyres. Alex glanced up and saw the heavy wooden pallets, a dozen of them, balanced high above the cabin. He saw the guard‟s smile, a gleam of ugly teeth in an uglier face.
    The truck covered the distance between them with astonishing speed then came to a sudden halt as the guard slammed on the brake. Alex yelled and threw himself to one side. The wooden pallets, carried forward by the truck‟s momentum, slid off the forks and came clattering