Mind the Gap

chapter Eight

the appointed hour

"Why don't we ever nick anything from the Tube? Seems like easy pickings down here, with people

waiting for the train, minding their business."

Cadge's face grew serious, his wide eyes narrowed with an expression that seemed almost an

imitation of wisdom, like a small boy mimicking his father.

"Harry hasn't given you that speech yet? Surprised at that," he said. "Can't ever nick from the station

platforms. They're our doors and windows, like. Hard enough for us to come and go without drawin' too

much attention. We start snatching bags and wallets down here and too many people will remember our

faces, be on the lookout. An easy place for the law to keep watch for us too. That's why we gotta go

topside."

"Right. Of course," Jazz said. "I should've realized. Sort of a stupid question."

Cadge shook his head sagely. "Nah. Not stupid. You've only been at this a couple of months. You've

got good 'ands and all. Scary good. Stevie said Harry's got big plans for you —"

"What plans?"

Her face flushed, and she couldn't decide if the reaction came from knowing Harry was impressed

with her or that Stevie had been talking about her. He kept to himself so of-ten, but sometimes she caught

him watching her with a kind of veiled curiosity that made her breath catch in her throat. He almost never

came over to talk to her but seemed always to be hovering nearby, as though he couldn't decide if he was

protector or predator.

"Plans," Cadge repeated, as though that was an answer. "Mr. F.'s got grand ambitions for you. For all

of us, I guess. You've inspired him, like. Says we ought to move up in the world, now we've some of us got

good enough to do more than nick a purse here and there."

Jazz wasn't sure how she felt about that. It sounded like Harry's grand ambitions —as Cadge called



them—-would mean engaging more with the upside world, and that didn't sit well.

"Anyway, what I was saying is, there ain't any stupid questions, yeah? Down here's got a whole

different set of rules from up above. And nobody trained you to think like a thief, so you got to learn."

Jazz uttered a soft laugh as they reached the bottom of the steps and strolled into the Tube station.

Over her shoul-der she carried a heavy bag she'd nicked from a tourist foolish enough to put it down while

paying for a newspaper. Inside it were two wallets she'd also filched, as well as a nice linen jacket, a small

sack of groceries, and a plastic bag from Waterstone's with a few suspense novels inside. All stolen. Cadge

carried a small duffel bag he'd brought upside with him that was now stuffed with fruit, drinks, and a heavy

in-dustrial torch he'd grabbed when some workmen had wan-dered off for lunch and left their tools

unattended.

They'd had a very successful day.

"I think I'm doing all right," she said.

"More than all right," Cadge said, with such warmth in his voice that Jazz looked at him. Face a bit

flushed, he glanced away.

On the train platform, Jazz scanned the waiting com-muters. Her constant lookout for the Uncles and

their BMW men had become almost unconscious by now. Half the time she caught herself looking around

warily and only then realized what precisely she'd been looking for. Yet she felt more at ease in the Tube

station than she did above-ground, and the deeper she went, the more comfortable she became.

She worried that she was becoming too comfortable, down there in the dark. But the upside world

held only dan-ger for her, and up there she would be on her own. Better by far to be safe and in the

company of friends. And if she had ever had any real friends, certainly Cadge fit the bill.

The train slid into the station. The exhilaration of thiev-ing and the threat of capture still prickled her

skin as she stepped on and took a seat, setting the bag on the floor be-tween her feet. Cadge sat beside her,

and they kept silent for the brief ride to Holborn.

They stepped out onto the platform. Before the rush of disgorged passengers could subside, they

slipped over the rail at the end of the platform and down to the shadows be-side the tracks. When the train

left the station, they ven-tured into the dark.

"What about that torch?" Jazz asked.

Cadge grinned like it was Christmas morning. She knew he'd been itching to try it out, but he waited

until they'd left the main track, following an abandoned branch out of sight of anyone who might be in

Holborn station, and then un-zipped the duffel. When he clicked the torch on, the light sent rats scurrying

and picked out some of the rust and scabrous growth that covered old piping along the walls and ceiling.

"Maybe less light is better," Jazz said.

Cadge laughed. "Be it ever so humble..."

Jazz flinched. The down-below had become her sanctu-ary, a hiding place, and the United Kingdom

behaved like a family, but no matter how long she remained there she re-fused to think of it as home. Once,

on the day of her first topside nick, the word had come unbidden into her mind, and she'd vowed to herself

that it wouldn't happen again.

Cadge paused and glanced at her. "Hear that?"

She realized she did hear something —had been hearing it for a couple of minutes already. A

susurrus of low voices like the hush of a flowing river ran nearby. Now that she paid attention to it, the

noise grew louder.

"A crowd, sounds like," Cadge said.

Jazz nodded. They both knew it couldn't really be a crowd —not down here. Which meant it had to

be phantoms.

The ghosts seemed to blossom to life around her. In the darkness they were shadows with a hint of

ethereal illumina-tion, but in the glow of Cadge's torch they were revealed as true specters.

A Victorian carriage rattled by, drawn by a single horse, a lantern swinging from a hook beside the

driver's high seat. Cadge stepped quickly away from the startling sound of horses' hooves but glanced

around as though blinded. He heard the phantom near him but could not see it.

A couple of weeks ago such a vision would have terrified Jazz, but now she caught her breath in

wonder. There was something almost comforting about them. The Underground was a forgotten home to

lost people, and it seemed only right that it would echo with forgotten moments, the dreaming memories of

London itself.

A sweet aroma reached her, a mélange of different scents that made her inhale deeply. She

shuddered with the delicious odors, closed her eyes tightly to shut off all but her sense of smell. When she

opened them again, she stood in a marketplace sprawled across cobblestones. There were carts full of



vegetables and stacks of wooden crates overflowing with fruit. A little girl sold fresh flowers from a basket

to specters who strolled about investigating the wares of the vendors. The smells were invigorating and

such a wonderful change in the damp tunnels whose ordinary odors were rust and sewage.

A man rode by on a creaky antique bicycle with wheels so large and unwieldy it seemed mad to think

anyone could keep such a contraption from crashing.

"You see something," Cadge said.

Jazz had almost forgotten him. She blinked and turned to focus on his face. "What?"

"I saw your eyes. You see them, don't you? The things I'm hearing. You see somethin'. More than

just glimpses, like you said before."

For a moment she did not breathe. Never trust anyone, that had been her mother's advice. Her rule.

But her mother had never had to create a brand-new life in a brand-new world, and her mother had never

met Cadge.

"Sometimes," she said.

Cadge gazed at her with open admiration. "Wish I could see them. Did you smell it too? The fruit?"

Jazz nodded. "Made me hungry."

"I've only got apples and some pears in the bag. We'll go to the market later this week, get ourselves

something juicy —oranges or kiwis."

"A pineapple," Jazz said.

Cadge laughed. "You nick a pineapple, where d'you sup-pose you'll hide it while you're slipping off,

eh? Bit prickly, I'd think."

Jazz gave him an arch look but said nothing. They shared a quiet laugh and then started along the

tunnel again. Around them, the ghosts of London were fading, and Jazz was saddened by their departure.

She shifted the big bag from one shoulder to the other.

"Let's have that, then," Cadge said, gesturing toward the bag. "I'll carry it for a bit."

"I've got it, thanks."

He blinked and looked away, and she realized she'd been too sharp with him. Jazz had bristled at the

suggestion that she might not be strong enough to do her part, but Cadge had just been making a clumsy

attempt at chivalry.

"You've got enough to carry," she added.

Cadge brightened a little. "Yeah. We'll both be glad to set these down. Mr. F.'s gonna love this torch

too."

"We should've nicked some batteries for it," Jazz said.

"Nah. We've got loads, all sizes."

They fell silent then, trudging onward. Cadge led her up onto a platform that had been abandoned for

decades, its walls covered in a thick layer of dust and grime, floor scuffed with years of boot and shoe

marks left behind by the United Kingdom and perhaps other subterranean travelers. They eschewed the

chained gate blocking the way up and instead followed a corridor that led to yet another train track.

Jazz had been astonished when, after just a couple of weeks, she had come to know her way around

the labyrinth of abandoned stations, tunnels, and bomb shelters beneath the city.

Across the tracks was a smaller platform, part of the same long-closed station. A rusted metal door

set into the far wall of the platform drew her attention. It had a heavy handle that had been left in a raised

position, the door open just a few inches for forgotten ages.

As Jazz and Cadge dropped down to the tracks, she could not stop staring at that door.

Cadge stopped to glance back at her. "Jazz?"

It felt as though someone had set a hook in her chest and was drawing her in. She took a step and

then paused, fight-ing the urge. Whatever called to her from behind that rusted metal door, it frightened her

in a way the ghosts of old London no longer could.

"What's through there?" she asked without looking at Cadge.

"Through where?"

She pointed to the door.

"Dunno. Stairs, I guess. Some kind of emergency exit. Could just be storage. Or toilets. Never know

what you're gonna find behind a door down here."

Cadge walked back to Jazz and took her hand. That inti-mate contact allowed her to drag her gaze

from the rusty door. She smiled at him halfheartedly, gave his fingers a squeeze, and then pulled her hand

away. The boy was sweet, but he was just a boy. If she'd let her hand linger in his, he might get ideas.

"Want to go over there? Have a look?" he asked.

Jazz blinked. The temptation to say yes nearly over-whelmed her.



"No. No, let's go," she said.

Cadge waited for her this time. When she started walk-ing again, he turned off his torch and stored it

in his duffel bag. Drains and grates high above them let daylight filter down, along with the sounds of the

cars, trucks, and buses growling by above. Somewhere close, a train roared through the Underground. Dust

sifted down from the ceiling and a breeze blew along the tunnel. This track might be closed, but others

nearby remained in regular use.

A hundred yards farther on, they arrived at the door that led into a staircase down to the sublevel.

The circular stairs were quiet as a tomb, the rock closing in on all sides. Jazz shuddered, feeling a

claustrophobia unusual for her.

"What's that?" Cadge said.

Jazz listened, thinking at first that perhaps more phan-tom echoes of London were about to appear.

But then she heard a girl crying out for Harry and recognized the voice.

"Hattie," she said.

They rushed down the last half dozen steps and pulled open the door. The tunnel curved off to the

right. The en-trance to Deep Level Shelter 7-K was just around the bend. Above, dim light filtered down

from screened vents that went all the way to the surface.

There came another scream, followed by the shouts of angry men and the sound of scuffling. Cadge

and Jazz ex-changed a glance, and she saw her fear reflected in his eyes. Turning away, she started along

the tunnel. All that re-mained of the former rail line here were occasional railroad ties on top of dirt and

stone, and she kept close to the wall to avoid tripping over anything in the gloom.

"Vermin!" a man shouted. "Filthy little vermin."

Jazz dropped her stolen bag and all of its contents and started running. The others needed help. From

behind her, she heard Cadge utter her name like a curse and give chase.

She came around the bend in the tunnel and staggered to a halt. Cadge bumped into her and nearly

sent the two of them sprawling. Tendrils of gas roiled along the floor of the abandoned tunnel, crawling as

though with hideous pur-pose. At first glance, Jazz thought the yellow mist another phantom, a glimpse of

some moment out of London's past. But then Hattie came racing toward them, hacking and choking, the

gas parting around her legs.

The girl collided with Cadge. He managed to hold her up, but only barely. She began to retch and

pushed away from him, dropping to her knees and vomiting.

"The others..." Hattie choked out.

"Go on to the door up to the old Holborn tunnel. Hide in there until I come to fetch you," Cadge told

her.

Hattie managed to stagger away.

Jazz pulled her shirt up to cover her nose and mouth and ventured farther into the tunnel, through the

slowly rising fog of yellow gas. Cadge came after her and they picked up their pace.

"Nothing but bloody sewer rats, what you are!" they heard a man shout.

The gas thinned, almost a gauzy film over the shadows. The entrance to the United Kingdom's lair

stood open, the metal door hanging wide, and that ugly gas roiled up from the throat of the stairwell

beyond.

Not far from the door, four men stood around Harry, who lay on the ground. They spat on him,

shouted obsceni-ties, and kicked his back and legs and ribs, even as he tried to protect his face and head

with his arms, pulling himself into a fetal ball.

"Don't belong down here, rats. Gotta flush you out," one of the men said.

The four of them wore white filter masks over the lower parts of their faces. They'd thrown

something down into Deep Level Shelter 7-K —tear gas or worse—to drive Harry and the kids out of

there. Jazz didn't know what had hap-pened to the others, but she could only hope they'd gone out the

emergency exit while Harry'd gone up the hatch to buy them time.

Harry let out a shout of agony as a heavy boot caught him in the back. He arched his body, letting a

fusillade of profanity loose upon his attackers. But words would not drive them off. They only kicked him

again, harder. They hadn't yet noticed the two witnesses in the deeper shadows of the tunnel.

"What do we do?" Cadge whispered.

Images of her mother's corpse flashed through Jazz's mind. She saw the blood again, and the

message scrawled on the bedroom floor. Her mother's last thoughts had been of her survival. But if she'd

reached home while the killers were in the midst of murder, she would never have chosen to run. Nor could

she now.

She bolted toward them. One of the men heard her ap-proach and looked up. Jazz stopped short, just



near enough to taunt them with her presence.

"Oi! Leave off, f*ckers!"

All four of them looked up, and for the first time she got a decent look at them. Three were dressed

in boots and work clothes, sleeves rolled up as though they'd just come from the docks. The other wore

black trousers and a thin black tie that hung over a white shirt. With the right cap and jacket, he'd have

looked like a rich man's chauffeur.

In the eyes of all four of those men, Jazz saw sudden recognition. One by one, they focused not on

her and Cadge but on her alone, and they knew her.

The phantoms of the London Underground might not frighten her anymore, but the look in the eyes of

those men sent ice shooting through her and dread skittering down the back of her neck. She caught her

breath and stood staring back at them.

They stepped away from Harry. On the ground, the old thief coughed and spat up blood and bile. The

men watched her with a terrible malice.

"Well, now," said the man with the black tie. He reached up and pulled down his mask —most of the

gas had dis-persed—and Jazz uttered the smallest sound, a kind of whimper that she despised.

She recognized him. He had been one of the men the Uncles sometimes sent to watch over her and

her mother, to pick up groceries or do a bit of repair on the pipes or the electric. And he had been standing

outside her house, on guard, while her mother's killers had been inside. Jazz didn't know his name. In her

mind, he was simply one of the BMW men.

He took a step toward her.

"Cadge, run!" she cried.

Jazz turned, caught her foot on a railroad tie, and stum-bled. She risked one glance over her shoulder

and saw the men running. One of them tripped and fell, but the others did not hesitate.

She ran. Her breath sounded too loud in her ears, and the walls of the tunnel seemed to be closing in.

They gave chase, shouting to one another as though on a foxhunt. And Jazz knew what happened at the

end of the hunt. The cop-per stink of her mother's blood rushed back to her as though she had returned to

that death room. Her breath came faster.

Cadge ran just ahead. The only noise he made was his footfalls. As they rounded the bend, legs

pumping, dancing amid the remnants of train track, Cadge snatched up his duffel bag.

"Nowhere to run down here, kids!" one of the men called.

Jazz had been thinking almost exactly that a moment be-fore, but now she realized how wrong he

was. There were an infinite number of places to hide in the down-below. The men had beaten Harry and

scared off the others, but the United Kingdom had scattered. They'd be hiding now, like the rats these men

thought they were. Like Hattie. The girl had passed them only moments ago, but Jazz ran by the stairs she

and Cadge had come down and the door was now closed firmly. In the shadows, it looked unused.

"You're slow and old, you ugly shits!" Cadge called to their pursuers. "I hope you all have heart

attacks and die down here."

"Christ, Cadge," Jazz rasped, running, chest burning with the effort. She'd already been exhausted

when they'd walked into this chaos. What was Cadge doing?

When he glanced at her and she saw his expression in the gloom, she understood. He wasn't taunting

the men out of amusement, but to make sure they knew he and Jazz hadn't gone through that door. If one

of them opened it and found Hattie there, she was dead.

Well done, Cadge.

He started to slow, the extra burden of the duffel weigh-ing on him. Jazz glanced back and saw

they'd lengthened the distance between themselves and the thugs. She couldn't even see them now around

the bend in the tunnel —could only hear the clomping of their boots. But if Cadge slowed...

"Drop the bag," she whispered.

He shot her a look of terror. "But the torch —"

Jazz tore the duffel from his hands and let it fall to the floor of the tunnel, hoping one of the bastards

would trip on it. Cadge wanted the torch in case they had to hide some-where that the light from above

didn't filter in and where there were no electrical lights still siphoning power from the upside world. But they

couldn't afford to lose a step.

Better to live in the dark than die in the light.

Her face burned with exertion and hatred, not only for these men but for herself. The BMW man

proved it, and she'd seen that recognition in all of their eyes. They were here for her. Jazz had brought

blood and perhaps even death to Harry and his United Kingdom. Her heart tightened into a fist in her chest.

She couldn't let them catch her. The pain they would inflict on her would be terrible, but far worse would be



the knowledge that her mother had spent so many years preparing her to survive and that she had failed at

the task.

She had to live for Mum.

"Here," Cadge said.

The only light came from vent shafts twenty yards in ei-ther direction, but her eyes had become used

to the dark in the past couple of months and she saw immediately what Cadge pointed to. A small narrow

platform was set into the left side of the tunnel. Against the far wall were thick pipes that thrust deeper into

the Underground and ran up to the ceiling of the tunnel. They branched off there, some follow-ing the

tunnel both ways and some going straight up through the ceiling toward the surface. Others, however,

turned and vanished into a crawl space atop the platform wall, no doubt once having carried water or power

into other tunnels and stations from here. Many of the pipes had large wheel valves, but it was the ladder

that mattered.

She gave Cadge a push and they ran for it together.

As they climbed onto the platform, the men rounded the bend in the tunnel.

"Where d'you think you're going?" one of them called, and then laughed.

As the laugh died out, Jazz heard another sound. Cadge had reached the ladder ahead of her, but he

turned and stared back down the tunnel —not at the men but beyond them, as though he could see the

source of the distant shriek that came whistling up the tunnel, building in volume.

"F*ck me blind," Cadge whispered.

The BMW man reached the platform first and leaped up onto it. He lunged at Jazz. She turned and

squared off, letting him come, and then swung her leg to kick him in the balls. He was ready for the attack,

as she'd figured he would be. It had been a feint.

She drove her fingers into his eyes.

He screamed, reached for his face, and Cadge slammed a shoulder into him, knocking him off the

platform. The others tried to catch him, but the BMW man slipped through their hands and hit the ground.

"Jesus, my eye!" he cried. "It's bleeding. Bitch popped my eye!"

The words were a shout of fury and pain; otherwise, Jazz would never have been able to hear them

—not over the shrieking wind that came hurtling along the tunnel. The howling noise grew louder. To her

ears it sounded like a train derailing and the terrified screams of the passengers, all merged into an infernal

chorus.

The Hour of Screams.

A hundred rats ran along the tunnel, all in the same direc-tions, ignoring the humans and seeking

darkness once again.

"Jazz, a song!" Cadge shouted, his lips right beside her ear.

Her hair whipped past her face. The wind buffeted her, and now she saw that it had spectral texture.

She nodded and huddled with him at the base of the ladder. Jazz clapped her hands against her ears to

block out as much of the noise as she could. The banshee wail of the Hour of Screams grew louder, grating

on her mind, stripping away her thoughts.

Harry had said to pick a song but hadn't elaborated much. Jazz knew it had to be something that she

felt in her heart, that meant something to her, or she wouldn't be able to concentrate on it. But as she tried

to focus, tried to choose, the Hour of Screams grew so loud she could barely think, and nothing came to

mind. Snatches of lyrics, but she couldn't think how any of those songs went.

The stars, she thought. Something about the stars.

And then she had it, a song she could never forget, a melody that would never leave her.

Are the stars out tonight?

I don't know if it's cloudy or bright.

I only have eyes for you, dear.

Jazz sang the words softly at first and then louder, defiantly. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but

she felt Cadge at her side, huddled against her. Fear cradled her and she sur-rendered to it. Her sanctuary

had been shattered. Her blood would soon stain the Underground, and the vanishing that had begun the day

of her mother's murder would be com-plete.

The Hour of Screams bore down upon them. Jazz shook, breath hitching in her chest. Things slipped

past her that might have been gusts of wind but were not. They caressed her, and she knew these were not

ghosts like the phantoms she had encountered before.

"I only have eyes for you," she sang.



Beside her, Cadge shouted as though to drive the screams away and then began singing louder. She

forced her-self to open her eyes against the buffeting winds to make cer-tain he was all right. Cadge had

his own eyes screwed shut and hands clamped over his ears. His lips moved along with a song, but over her

own singing and the howling of the Hour of Screams, Jazz couldn't make out the words or the tune.

Motion on the tracks caught her eye. She looked and saw the men crumbling to their knees. Ethereal

shapes whipped around them, darting in close and then drawing back, pulsing in the air. The men beat their

arms uselessly against the wind. Their eyes were wide with terror, and their shrieks joined the symphony.

And then it passed. The wind began to diminish and so did the volume of the screams, until moments

later it lin-gered as nothing more than a distant whistle, just as it had been the first time she'd heard it from

so far away with Harry and Cadge.

The men did not rise immediately, nor did they curse or shout. One by one, they looked up, eyes still

wide. One of them wore a grin that seemed slashed into his face. He started to laugh and the BMW man

slapped him, which only made the thug laugh harder.

The BMW man's gouged eye bled down his cheek. He glanced around with his one good eye and

spotted her, then he bared his teeth and growled like an animal. His upper lip curled back to reveal crooked

teeth.

One by one they rose, driven mad by the Hour of Screams.

"Rats," one of the men muttered, staring at Cadge and licking his lips. "Drive 'em out."

"Jazz," Cadge whispered.

The men were moving slowly. The first one reached the platform and began to haul himself up.

"Jazz!" Cadge shouted. He grabbed her arm and whipped her around, shoved her toward the ladder.

"Climb!"

Heart thundering in her ears, she grabbed hold of the rungs and scrambled upward. Cadge shouted

after her, urg-ing her faster. Jazz caught his face with the heel of her shoe, so quickly was he following.

"Go! Go!" he yelled.

At the top, hands sliding over dust and grime, she pulled herself into the crawl space between the

thick pipes. It couldn't have been more than two feet high but wide enough that she twisted sideways and

rolled into the dark-ness. Turning around to face the way she'd come, she reached out to grab hold of

Cadge's hand as he topped the ladder.

He froze, clung tightly to the top rung, and she saw a terrible understanding in his eyes: they had

him.

Cadge knew he wouldn't be getting away.

The BMW man roared in triumph as Cadge's fingers were torn away from the rungs.

Jazz screamed for him. And for herself.

At the edge of the crawl space, she could see down onto the platform. The BMW man dropped onto

his knees on Cadge's chest and began to beat him. There was a cracking of bone and the wet slap of skin

on skin, growing slippery with blood. The others pulled him off, desperate to have their turn. They had been

sent down into the underneath to hurt or even to kill, but they were madmen now. They kicked Cadge in the

side and the head.

In the dim gloom of the tunnel, she thought she could see the life go out of his eyes. But Jazz knew it

before the men did, and so her own screams turned to numb horror and she edged backward through the

crawl space, deeper and deeper. Eventually, it would lead to some other tunnel or passage, but she would

be the only one to emerge.

The BMW man still growled like an animal, but soon the wet noises and the thumps of their blows

ceased. One last smack echoed through the tunnel and into the crawl space, and then she heard them.

"What was that? That wind. What just happened?"

"F*ck'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 pass-ing, 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 mo-ments, 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.