Mind the Gap (11 page)

“What was that? That wind. What just happened?”

“Fuck’s sake, look at him. What’d we…?”

The sound of vomiting followed.

“Couldn’t stop myself,” one of them whispered.

The ladder grated, metal upon stone, as one of them climbed up to the crawl space. Jazz held her breath. She saw the silhouette of a head blocking out most of the ambient light from the tunnel. The BMW man. She could smell the blood on him, could hear the low snarl that came up from deep inside him. The madness of the others might be passing, but not this one. He was broken forever.

“Come on, Philip,” one of the others said. “Girl’s long gone. Work’s done for the day.”

The BMW man hesitated. He reached up to touch his ruined face, but she was far enough back in the darkness that he could not see her with his remaining eye. After a few moments, he descended the ladder.

Jazz could hear them moving off but worried that it was a trap. So she lay there quietly, waiting for some sign that they were really gone, waiting for Cadge to tell her it was time to come out. Dear, sweet Cadge, who’d fancied her so much. She wished now that she’d given him a kiss. Just one. He was so young, but what harm could one kiss do?

Perhaps she could still give it to him.

Maybe he’ll know,
she thought.
Maybe he’ll see. All the ghosts of old London are down here. Now they’ve one more to join them.

Time blurred, and Jazz did not know whether she stayed in the crawl space for long minutes or hours. When at last she overcame her fear and tamped down her grief enough to act, her left arm had gone numb and prickled with pins and needles as she moved. Her neck and hips were stiff and ached to the bone.

A foot from the ledge, she hesitated. The top of the ladder was visible, and if she closed her eyes she knew she would see Cadge’s fingers being pulled away from the rungs. She kept them open.

Something shifted in the tunnel. She heard breathing, which stilled her own. For long moments she considered her best course. The thugs who’d been driven mad by the Hour of Screams knew she had come into the crawl space. They might not have been able to squeeze in there to come after her, but they knew she was there. If they’d stuck around, surely she’d have heard them?

So whoever or whatever was out there was on their own and didn’t know Jazz hid so near. She could try to back up, but that might make enough noise to draw attention. Or she could inch forward just a bit, enough to see who it was.

A low sigh came to her then, and a new thought rose in her mind.
Cadge?

Jazz slid to the edge and looked down onto the platform. Her heart sank when she saw the bloody figure lying there, limbs akimbo like some cast-off marionette. She drew in a shuddering breath.

Someone moved in the shadows on the other side of the tunnel. At first glance she thought it was a ghost. An image crossed her mind of the magician’s specter performing sleight of hand in the midst of old London’s echoes. She half-expected him to emerge, drawing colorful kerchiefs from the sleeves of his jacket.

But the silhouette resolved itself, and she recognized him.

Stevie Sharpe.

He moved away from the wall, stepped over the old railroad ties, and climbed up onto the platform. Stevie pulled out a white rag and knelt to wipe some of the blood from Cadge’s swollen face. One side of the boy’s skull had been caved in. Jazz put a hand to her mouth to hold in a scream.

There had been enough screaming today.

“Are you coming down?” Stevie asked, still gently wiping at Cadge’s face.

He glanced up at her. She was surprised to see tears on his face. Stevie would not cry aloud; Jazz knew that much about him already. His expression seemed carved in granite. But his tears gave him away.

“Jazz, come down,” he said.

It took her a moment to realize that she was supposed to reply. But she couldn’t open her mouth. She crawled to the ladder and stared at the rungs where Cadge had tried so hard to hang on. Cadge, who had a touch of whatever awareness Jazz had found here in the underneath. Cadge, who’d only ever been sweet, who’d tried to make her feel at home.

“Jazz—”

Stevie stuffed the rag in his pocket and went to the ladder. He climbed up, boots clanging on the metal rungs, and gently reached for her, putting a hand on her wrist.

“Come down,” he said.

His eyes always seemed shielded. They were supposed to be the windows to the soul, and while Jazz couldn’t be sure she believed in souls, she did have faith in her ability to read someone’s heart in their eyes. But not Stevie. He hid himself down deep. She supposed they had that in common.

“I’m afraid,” she whispered.

Stevie nodded. “Good. We should be afraid. But you can’t stay here. The others will be gathering at the rendezvous point soon, and we’ve got to check on Harry before we meet up with them.”

Jazz wrapped her fingers around his wrist and they gripped each other’s arms for a moment. From the first, she’d seen that Stevie differed from the others in some intangible way. She still didn’t know what it was, beyond the age difference, but Jazz felt certain she had not imagined it.

The contact went on a beat longer than was comfortable. Stevie pulled his hand back and averted his eyes, then started down the ladder.

“Let’s go.”

Jazz took a breath and spun around. She scooted over the edge and began to climb down after him.

“Did you see them?” she asked as she came off the ladder onto the decrepit old train platform, purposefully avoiding looking at Cadge’s body.

Stevie nodded. “I sent the others away, but I doubled back to see if I could help. After the Hour of Screams went by, I heard them shouting and I knew what had happened. I hid when they ran past, then came as fast as I could. Did you see anyone else?”

“Hattie. If she’s still where we left her. And Harry. They did a job on him. We should check on him.”

They knew me,
she wanted to say.
They recognized me, and one of them I’ve seen before. They were here for me. What they did to Cadge…it’s my fault.

But she couldn’t say any of that, no matter how true it felt. She’d sometimes gotten the feeling that he didn’t trust her, didn’t want her there. If she told him the truth, he’d never let her stay with them.

“Let’s have a look,” Stevie said. “But quietly. No telling if they’re really gone or if there might be others. Nowhere’s safe down here now, until we’ve had a proper look around to make sure it’s clear.”

Jazz had been avoiding looking at Cadge too closely, but when Stevie turned to jump down from the platform, she did not follow. Almost robotic, she forced herself to look.

This time her anguish did not rip into her as it had before. Her eyes did not burn with tears. Instead, a cold fury spread through her. Slowly, she went and knelt by the ruined boy. He looked so small, and his wrecked face was gruesome to behold. But she did not allow herself to look away. Cadge deserved that much, at least.

“Let’s go,” Stevie said, though there was kindness in his urging.

She kissed the first two fingertips of her right hand, then pressed the kiss to Cadge’s bloodstained cheek. Something had shifted in her, just in those few moments. Jazz had had enough of grief and enough of fear. Enough of running.

“Enough of hiding,” she whispered to the dead boy.

She stood and turned to Stevie, holding out her hand. “Give me your jacket.”

He frowned but slipped it off and handed it to her without question. Jazz placed Cadge’s arms over his chest, then covered his corpse with the jacket. The others might need her, and Cadge was beyond anyone’s help now. Beyond fear. Beyond the painful memories of his father’s disdain.

Of them all, he was the only one who was safe.

“What are we going to do with him?” she asked, looking down from the platform at Stevie. “I won’t just leave him here.”

The older boy—almost a man, really, though his dark, narrow features still had a child’s aspect—cocked his head, studying her. “You’ve been down here for a few months, but you haven’t learned much. We take care of our own, Jazz. You should know that.”

For a moment they indulged their anger by glaring at each other. Then Jazz dropped down to the remnants of the train tracks. So close to Stevie, she had to look up at him and felt his nearness keenly. An awkward tension rippled between them. She thought he might take her into his arms to comfort her, and as much as her mother had taught her never to rely on anyone—especially a bloke—the thought gave her a feeling of warmth inside.

But Stevie did not embrace her.

Wrapping her arms around herself, shivering now with the cold and damp of the tunnel, Jazz turned and started retracing her steps. When she reached the metal door to the stairs that she and Cadge had descended earlier, it hung partway open.

“Hattie was supposed to wait in there,” she said.

Stevie pulled the door wide, revealing nothing but darkness within. He swore, but Jazz didn’t waste time staring at the emptiness of the stairwell. She picked up her pace, jogging around the bend toward the entrance to Deep Level Shelter 7-K. The chemical smell of the gas the bastards used still lingered in the air. From behind her, she heard the sound of the metal door closing tight—they’d been taught to leave as little trace of their presence as possible—and then Stevie’s footfalls as he pursued her.

When she came in sight of the door to the United Kingdom’s lair, she staggered to a halt. Hattie knelt on the ground where the thugs had beaten Harry. For the first time since Jazz had met her, the girl was without a hat. The cute little cap she’d been wearing fashionably askew had been left behind, and Hattie hadn’t noticed.

Harry lay beside her on the ground. Jazz couldn’t see his face—Hattie blocked her view—but the man wasn’t moving. Not at all.

Stevie caught up to Jazz but didn’t slow. “Harry, no!” he shouted as he rushed toward the old thief.

Hattie spun around, eyes wide with fear. When she saw them, the girl shook with relief.

Then Harry moved. He reached up one hand to pat Hattie’s arm, a gesture of fatherly comfort. His legs shifted and he tried to sit up but couldn’t. Stevie reached them and dropped down next to Hattie. Jazz had been frozen with indecision, not knowing where her life would go from here. But for the moment, at least, such thoughts would have to wait. Harry had been kind to her. Cadge might be dead, but Harry was alive.

Jazz ran to them. She stood behind Stevie, looking down at the bruised, bloody face of Harry Fowler.

“I thought…” she said.

“The worst,” Harry said. “I thought the same, love. But I’ll be all right. Need some rest. Cracked some bones, I think. But a few weeks and I’ll be right as rain.”

“Think they’ll be back?” Stevie asked.

Harry nodded. “Might be.”

“So what do we do?” Hattie asked, her voice a desperate whine.

At that, Harry beamed, though he winced with the pain the smile caused him. “Why, Hattie, dear, what do you suppose we do? When the big bad wolf blows down the house, the smart little pig moves somewhere safer.”

Hattie and Stevie nodded, but Jazz felt a darkness enveloping her, a grim hopelessness that she feared she could never escape.

“They caught Cadge,” she said.

Harry frowned deeply. “Is he bad off?”

“He’s dead.”

At those words Harry—who’d made himself both monarch and jester of the Underground—began to cry.

And Jazz thought she loved the old man, just a little.

“What is this rendezvous point, anyway?” Jazz asked. “Nobody ever mentioned it to me.”

Hattie led the way. Jazz and Stevie helped Harry as best they could, the old thief’s arms around them for support. At first he’d had to lean on them quite a bit, but as the minutes passed and some of his stiffness retreated, he seemed to need them more for balance than anything else. Jazz stretched her own neck and arms, glad to have his weight off her.

“Couldn’t be sure about you at first, Jazz girl.” Harry coughed, spat a wad of bloody spittle, and kept walking. “If you were just passing through, it wouldn’t do to give up all our secrets.”

“And now? You’re sure I’m not just passing through?”

“I’m not sure of anything except that those bastards attacked my family in my home, killed one of my children, and are going to pay for it.”

Harry stepped on a loose stone that shifted beneath him, and he stumbled a bit. Jazz and Stevie caught him, but she saw the pain in his face and wondered how many bones were cracked or broken and whether he had damage inside him that none of them could see. Losing Cadge had gutted her. She wondered what would happen to the United Kingdom if Harry died as well and decided not to think about it.

“As to the rendezvous, here we are. You’ll see for yourself.”

Jazz narrowed her eyes. Hattie had gone down into the bomb shelter and fetched one of the heavy-duty torches. Its illumination shone into the tunnel ahead, but the darkness seemed to swallow it up. There were no shafts here to bring light down from the surface. Jazz couldn’t have said how long they’d been wandering through the various tunnels and corridors that made up the labyrinth of London’s true Underground, but she thought nearly an hour had passed.

The torchlight glinted on the tracks—there were still rails here—and on the walls and roof of the tunnel. But after a few more steps, the darkness seemed to yawn before them and they stepped into what had to be a vast subterranean cavern.

“What the hell?” Jazz whispered.

“Stevie, get the lights,” Harry said.

The old thief released both of them, moving gingerly ahead. Stevie slipped off to the left, and Hattie aimed the torch just ahead of him. Jazz saw a platform. She and Hattie kept up with Harry as they came to a set of steps that led upward. At the top of those stairs, they stopped and waited.

“Stevie!” Harry called, one hand pressed against his side. “Let’s have those lights.”

“Give us a minute,” Stevie replied, his voice floating to them from the darkness.

As promised, a moment later there came a loud clank and the hum of electricity, and lights began to flicker on high above their heads. Jazz turned slowly, mouth open in amazement. She had never seen a Tube station so beautiful. The pillars were marble and chandeliers hung from the ceiling high above. Frescoes had been painted on that vaulted surface. It seemed to her more like a cathedral than a train stop on the Underground.

“You’ve got to be joking,” she said. “Who builds something like this and then abandons it?”