Whispers Under Ground

to see that the two half-houses were held up by a series of wooden beams. They were old, black with soot and spanned the width of the trackway, bolstered at the ends with diagonal beams that had been fitted into the brick walls of the cut. Attached with iron bolts to the nearest beam was a long flattened contraption made of iron, dark-coloured wood and brass. It took me a bit of squinting but I finally realised that it was a staircase in the manner of a folding fire escape neatly concertinaed and stowed to the underside of the house.
    Within easy reach of the hatch was a brass and leather lever with a clutch handle like those you find on vintage cars and steam engines. I reached out to see if it would move.
    ‘What’s down there?’
    I turned my head to find Lesley staring down at me.
    ‘A folding staircase I think,’ I said. ‘I’m just going to see if I can unlock it. It should drop straight down onto the tracks.’
    I reached once more for the lever, but as I did so a Circle Line train clattered directly beneath me on its way to Bayswater Station. It took about thirty seconds to go past.
    ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ asked Lesley.
    ‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘it would be better if we call BTP first. What do you think?’
    ‘I think you may be right,’ said Lesley.
    So I got to my feet, closed the hatch and called Sergeant Kumar.
    ‘You know you said that the whole point about secret access points is that they weren’t secret from you?’ I asked. ‘Care to make a bet on that?’
    He asked me where and I told him.
    ‘I’m on my way,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’
    ‘What did he say?’ asked Lesley.
    ‘He said not to do anything stupid until he gets here,’ I said.
    ‘We’d better find something to keep you occupied then,’ she said and made me call the Murder Team to let them know what we had found and ask whether they’d traced the owner of the warehouse on Kensal Road yet.
    Three minutes later Lesley got a phone call. ‘That’s right,’ she said and then looked at me. ‘Not so far,’ she said and then. ‘I’ll tell him – bye.’ She put her phone away.
    ‘That was Seawoll,’ she said. ‘Stephanopoulos is on her way down and you’re not to do anything stupid until she gets here.’
    You burn down one central London tourist attraction, I thought, and they never let you forget it.
    Stephanopoulos arrived ten minutes later with a couple of spare DCs in tow. I met her at the front door and showed her around. She stared gloomily down the hatch as another train rumbled underneath. Despite the noise the room stayed remarkably steady.
    ‘Is this our case, your case or BTP’s case?’ she asked.
    I told her that it was probably related to the James Gallagher murder, likely to have ‘unusual’ elements and had definitely spilled into the bailiwick of the British Transport Police.
    Stephanopoulos looked abstracted. She was thinking about her budget – I could tell from the way she bit her lip.
    ‘Let’s say this is your case until we know for sure. Although CTC are going to have a fit if they think person or persons unknown have had unrestricted access to the Underground,’ she said. ‘You know how sensitive they get.’
    Having hived her budget problems onto the Folly, Stephanopoulos gave me a grin.
    While we were waiting for Kumar we got the finished pool check on the warehouse. Apparently it was owned by a company called Beale Property Services who, as a matter of interest, had owned it under one company name or other since the nineteenth century.
    ‘Is that significant?’ asked Stephanopoulos.
    ‘I’d like to know who’s been using it,’ I said.
    ‘See if you can’t set up an interview at Beale Property Services, the more senior the better,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘I’ll come with.’
    Before I could do that, a BTP response vehicle screamed to a halt outside and Sergeant Kumar came running into the half a house with two uniformed BTP officers. I showed them the hatch and they looked down it.
    ‘Bloody hell,’ said Kumar.

16
    South Wimbledon
    B eale Property Services were located on a dreary industrial estate off the A24 in Merton. From the outside, the HQ was an equally dreary two-storey brick-built utility office enlivened by cheap blue cladding and festooned with security cameras. Inside it was surprisingly pleasant, with pastel-coloured sofas, glass-walled offices rather than cubicles and at least two articulated lorries’ worth