Whispers Under Ground

unusual although one had thought that he’d heard piano music a couple of evenings back. I asked what kind of piano music.
    ‘Old-fashioned,’ said the neighbour, who was white, thin and nervous in an expensive kind of way. ‘Rather like a music hall in fact. Do you know, now I think of it, I believe there was singing.’
    I noted that as ‘some evidence that the premises had been in use the week previously by person or persons unknown’ which could go in the report and ‘heavy magical activity’ which would not. I sat in the Asbo with the engine running and wrote out a first draft of my statement. You need to get this stuff down as soon as possible, so you can make a clear distinction between what you plan to write down and what really happened.
    I was just detailing the statue and trying to remember where I’d written down its evidence reference number when my phone rang.
    I checked – the number was being withheld.
    ‘PC Grant?’ asked a man.
    ‘Speaking,’ I said. ‘Who’s this?’
    ‘Simon Kittredge CTC,’ he said. ‘I’m Special Agent Reynolds’ liaison.’
    CTC is SO15, Counter Terrorism Command, which, despite the name, does all the spook-related stuff for the Metropolitan Police. Including providing experienced minders for friendly foreign ‘observers’ to ensure they don’t observe anything that might upset them. I couldn’t think why he was calling me, but I doubted it was good news.
    ‘What can I do you for?’ I asked.
    ‘I wondered if Agent Reynolds has made contact with you recently?’ he said.
    If he was phoning strangers it could only mean that Reynolds had given him the slip.
    ‘Why would she want to talk to me?’ I asked.
    A definite pause this time as Kittredge weighed up his embarrassment at needing my help against his need to find his wayward American.
    ‘She was asking after you,’ he said.
    ‘Really? Did she say why?’
    ‘No,’ said Kittredge. ‘But she’s picked up the fact that you’re not part of the regular team.’
    Bloody hell, that was fast – she’d only just got off the plane.
    ‘If she makes contact what do you want me to do?’ I asked.
    ‘Call me straight away.’ He gave me his number. ‘And give her some flannel until I can get there.’
    ‘Yeah, well, I’m good at flannel,’ I said.
    ‘So I’ve heard,’ said Kittredge and hung up.
    Heard from who, I wondered.
    I checked my watch.
    Time for some culture, I thought.
    Onward to point C – in this case Southwark, the traditional home of bear baiting, whorehouses, Elizabethan theatre and now the Tate Modern. Built as an oil-fired power station by the same geezer who designed the famous red telephone box, it was one of the last monumental redbrick buildings before the modernists switched their worship to the concrete altar of brutalism. The power station closed in the 1980s and it was left empty in the hope that it would fall down on its own. When it became clear that the bastard thing was built to last, they decided to use it to house the Tate’s modern art collection.
    I parked the Asbo as close to the front entrance as I could get and trudged through the ankle-deep snow that covered the forecourt running from the gallery to the Thames. At the other end of the Millennium Bridge a floodlit St Paul’s rose out of a white and red jumble of refurbished warehouses, the spire brushing the bottom of the clouds. In the distance I saw a couple of Lowry figures scuttling across the bridge.
    The central chimney of the museum was a blind wall of brick a hundred metres tall and the main entrances were two horizontal slots either side of its base. An approach path had been swept clear of snow recently but was already starting to refill, and there were plenty of fresh footprints – obviously James Gallagher hadn’t been the only one with a flyer in his AtoZ and a yen for culture.
    Inside, it was merely chilly rather than freezing and the floor was wet with snowmelt. There was a temporary rope barrier and a very genteel-looking bouncer who waved me through without asking for an invitation – I suspect they were glad of all the bodies they could get.
    A painfully thin white girl in a pink wool minidress and a matching furry hat offered me a glass of wine and a welcoming smile. I took the wine but I avoided the smile, what with me being on duty and everything. Amongst the crowd most of the women were dressed better than the men except for the ones that were gay or dressed by their partners. My