The Underground works all day and all evening, which means the brave men and women in high-visibility orange who keep it running have to work all night. The depot is so full of people banging bits of metal together and scraping things to make sparks that if you squinted you’d swear they were about to launch a last desperate attack against the Death Star.
Fortunately Abigail had a list of trains that had been running in the relevant area and a sombre-looking engineer called Hiran to point us in the right direction. In proper Scooby Gang fashion we split up, with me and Jaget taking one side of the depot while Nightingale and Abigail took the other. We got the third rail safety lecture first, even though the sidings we’d be checking were powered down.
“Always assume the power is on,” Jaget said. “Because you don’t want to find out the hard way.”
And since the power was off we had to climb in through the driver’s emergency access door at the front of the train. Hiran warned us again to be on our best behaviour and went off, sensibly, to keep an eye on Abigail.
With only the amber yard lights filtering through the windows on one side and no power it was amazingly dark and still. Tube trains are like clubs—they’re well creepy with no people and without the hum of the motors and air conditioning.
“What are we looking for anyway?” asked Jaget.
“Just see if you can feel anything strange,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like something that doesn’t belong,” I said. “But isn’t your imagination.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“Practice,” I said.
Not that we got any practice in that train.
We went back to the front where, as we had been strictly instructed, we waited for Hiran to come back and escort us to the next train along.
Which was darker, stiller and emptier.
It wasn’t until the fifth train that we found something. Three carriages down Jaget pointed at one of the transverse seats near the end and said—“There.”
“What?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Something.”
And it was something. I knew that once I got within half a metre. The smell of horse sweat and the sound of distant shouting. I told Jaget he was right and he nodded sagely.
“I’m getting the hang of this, aren’t I?” he said.
I told him he was, but asked him not to ever do anything magical without checking with me first. I called Nightingale and told him I was going to do some magic and asked him to see if he could watch for a wider reaction. Then we switched our phones and airwaves off and I conjured up a werelight.
I opened my palm and let the light hover. Jaget had assured me that all the power systems on the train were off so there was no chance of my wrecking five million quid’s worth of rolling stock.
Normally when you feed a ghost it appears all in one mass, taking on the illusion of solidity as it noms up the magic. This one was like a glitch in a computer game, its torso bent over backwards at the waist, legs pumping spasmodically, arms outstretched, head held vertically on the end of an obscenely elongated neck. Despite the contortion, we could see that he was a young man dressed in a red eighteenth century riding jacket and knee breeches. His mouth moved and formed words but they were hard to catch, like when someone is trying to talk over loud music in a club.
“Where is the postmaster?” he said.
I checked my werelight, which was burning yellow. This was odd, because they usually turn red as the ghost sucks up the power.
“I have a letter,” he said, the voice wavering in and out. “An urgent letter.”
His head twisted on the neck, so that it faced us, and both me and Jaget unconsciously bent sideways to keep it right way up.
“But I can’t find the postmaster,” he said. “And I have a letter.”
“Who is the letter from?” I asked.
“It’s from the palace. Where is the postmaster? Where is the magistrate? I have a letter for the magistrate.”
“Give me the letter,” I said. “I can deliver it to the magistrate.”
The ghost frowned and for the first time his eyes focused on us.
“Are you his servants?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” I said. “You can trust us.”
The ghost’s right arm twitched in our direction as if he was trying to reach for us, but couldn’t get control of his limbs. His eyes closed in resignation.
“Alas,” said the ghost. “I have run my course.” And with that his head fell off, just dropped off his shoulders and straight through the floor of the carriage. And, before we could react to that, his arms and legs separated from his torso and fell away. For a moment his torso hung on its own and I could see the chest moving as if he was still breathing, before it too dropped out of sight.
“Okay,” said Jaget after a pause. “That’s the second most freakiest thing you’ve ever shown me.”
I snapped off the werelight.
“That was really odd,” I said.
“Yeah, even by your standards of odd that was odd,” said Jaget. “What next?”
I opened my notebook. “We record it,” I said. “And then we move on.”
That’s one of the golden rules of police work—just because you’ve found one body doesn’t mean there isn’t a second a couple of metres further on. Finish whatever search you started even if it’s just so you don’t have to come back and do it all again later.
I turned my phone back on and told the engineer that we were ready to board the next train, which turned out to be a bust, as did the next two. In the fourth I felt not one but two separate hot spots at opposite ends of the train. I gave both the werelight treatment, but neither responded. We dutifully made a note of the carriage and moved on.
In our whole line of trains I only found one more ghost—that of a plump white woman in a low-cut Jane Austen dress. Even with me pumping up the werelight she remained so transparent I couldn’t tell you what colour the dress was. She appeared aware of us and her mouth moved, but there was no sound. She only lasted thirty seconds before, scowling and with her fists bunched in frustration, she shattered, falling to pieces as if she’d been made of porcelain.
Once we’d written her up and checked the last of our trains I turned on my mobile and called Nightingale. It went straight to voicemail, so we jumped down and Hiran walked us across the yard towards the side Nightingale and Abigail were supposed to be working.
We found Nightingale under a raised floodlight by the hangar-sized maintenance building, jotting down notes.
“Where’s Abigail?” I asked.
Nightingale pointed down the side of the building.
“She popped off down there,” he said.
“To do what?” I asked. Nightingale is often aghast—his word—at the restrictions we put on young people and he feels modern adults are far too overprotective. But even given that background, he still had way more faith in Abigail’s common sense than I did.
“She’s up to something clandestine, I’m sure,” he said.
I left Jaget with Nightingale and stalked off to find out what Abigail had got into now. There was a raised platform running the length of the workshop. Hiran had told us that we were fine as long as we stayed on these and I hoped Abigail hadn’t wandered off.
I walked the length of the platform, and as I reached the end I heard Abigail speaking.