Peter May - Extraordinary People

‘Come in, quick.’ He glanced into the street and closed the door behind them. ‘It’s one thing when we’re open for business, Samu. But it looks pretty damned strange to have all my lights on at this time of the morning.’

‘Turn the fucking things off, then.’ Samu took a white envelope from an inside pocket and handed it to him. ‘You’ll get the rest when Monsieur Macleod gets back.’

The gallery owner glanced nervously at Enzo. ‘How long will you be?’

‘As long as it takes,’ Samu said. ‘Come on, take us down. And turn out the lights when you come back up.’

The cream-painted walls of the gallery were hung with movie poster originals by Alain Lynch. There was an exhibition of Ellen Shire abstracts, and several of Gilbert Raffin’s stylised Paris-scapes. Enzo wondered briefly if the artist was related in some way to Roger.

‘This way.’ The little man led them down a steep, narrow staircase to the basement of his shop. It was dry and cool down here. Dozens of paintings were stacked against the walls and draped with cloth. He took out a bunch of keys and unlocked a door beneath the staircase. It opened into blackness. He reached into it to find a light switch, and a single yellow bulb brought sudden hard light to a narrow passage with brick walls and an earthen floor. There was a smell of damp and the sound of small creatures scuttling into the shadows. Old cobwebs hung in folds, draped from the ceiling like fine-spun gossamer curtains. ‘You know your way from here.’

‘I do,’ Samu said, and he stepped into the passageway, stooping to avoid a rusting steel beam. Enzo followed and shivered. It felt cold here in the dark and damp. The basement door slammed shut behind them, and he heard the key turning in the lock. Samu said, ‘Mostly these cellars are used to access the sewer system, but if you know where to look you can get right down into the catacombes . Come on.’ And he set off briskly along the passage. They hurried past locked doors leading to the basements of shops and apartment blocks. And as the light faded behind them, they switched on their helmet lamps, sharp beams cutting through damp air, swinging left and right with the turn of their heads.

Samu seemed to know his way by heart, taking right turns, or left, without hesitation. To Enzo, one turn looked like any other. Brick walls and steps and narrow openings. Rusting steel doors. Samu delivered a breathless commentary as they moved through the dark. ‘We just crossed under the Rue de Médicis. If we turned right we’d come up against the wall of the car park beneath the Sénat.’ He opened a door and they went down a short flight of steps into a huge tunnel that arched above their heads and roared with the sound of rushing water. Drips fell like rain from the brickwork overhead. The beam of Enzo’s lamp flashed across the black streaked surface of what looked like an underground river in spate. A narrow walkway with a rusted iron rail ran along the side of it. It was slippery like ice underfoot. ‘Jesus!’ he heard Samu’s voice rise above the roar of the water. ‘I’ve never seen it like this before!’

‘Where the hell are we?’ Enzo shouted back.

‘We’re in the sewers! But don’t worry, the shit’s all in the pipes. This is just rainwater draining down from the streets.’ They slithered along the walkway for twenty or thirty meters. ‘We’re under the Jardins du Luxembourg now.’

‘Maybe it would have been easier climbing the fence,’ Enzo shouted.

Samu grinned and turned off into a feeder tunnel. The water was calf deep, and the power of it was almost strong enough to take Enzo’s feet from under him. They waded against the flow of it to a flight of steps leading up to a metal door set into the wall. Samu heaved it open and they climbed into a dry, circular, concrete chamber. Metal rungs set into the wall ascended into blackness. Even with his head tipped back and the beam of his lamp pointed straight up, Enzo could not see where they went. The darkness above them seemed to snuff out the light. When Samu slammed the door shut, the roar of water in the sewers became a distant rumble. He produced from somewhere beneath his waterproofs an iron crossbar with metal lugs at one end, and knelt on the floor. Enzo tilted his head to direct the beam of his lamp downwards, and saw that there was a circular IDC metal plaque set into the concrete. Samu slipped the lugged end of his crossbar into a slot beneath the letters and turned it like a key to lock it in place, and then he braced himself to pull the lid aside. He strained and grunted as the cast iron slipped out of its circular groove and dragged across the concrete. The darkness it uncovered was profound.

Samu stood up, breathing hard and grinning triumphantly. ‘ Et voilà . You’re in.’ Enzo could see the first rungs gleaming dully in the light of their helmets. ‘It’ll take you straight down into a little antechamber right off the main drag. There’s a short stretch of tunnel. It’ll take you west about fifteen meters. When you get to the end you turn left. That’s south. You’ll be right below the Grande Avenue du Luxembourg, and then you’re following the map.’ He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out what looked like a wristwatch with a velcro strap fastening. He held it out. ‘Put that on your right wrist.’ Enzo took it and realised that it was a compass. ‘You’ll find that you get pretty disorientated down there. That should keep you straight.’ He went into an inside pocket and brought out a tarnished silver cigarette case. He opened it to retrieve a pre-rolled cigarette and lit it, his lighter bringing fleeting colour to a bloodless face. ‘What are you going down there for, man?’

But Enzo just shook his head. ‘You don’t want to know.’

Samu shrugged. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s just after one-thirty. How long are you going to be?’

‘I don’t know. Two, maybe three hours.’

‘I’ll be back here at three-thirty. I’ll wait till five. If you haven’t shown by then, you’re on your own.’

Enzo nodded.

‘ Bon courage .’ Samu extended a hand. It was cold and limp when Enzo shook it.

Enzo crouched on all fours and dropped a leg into the hole to find the first rung. He tested his weight on it before lowering himself carefully to reach the next. It was a tight squeeze. By the time he was a dozen rungs down, the hole had swallowed him entirely. The sound of metal dragging across concrete forced him to crane his head back and look up. He saw the light of Samu’s helmet extinguished as the iron plaque slid back into place above him. For a moment, he panicked, crushed by darkness and claustrophobia. He wanted to shout, like a child at bedtime whose parents have turned out the light. He was breathing too rapidly and knew that he was in danger of hyperventilating. He fought to control it, holding down the acid in his stomach until the first flush of panic passed. He had to get to the bottom as fast as possible.

With arms and legs trembling, he climbed down as quickly as he could, and found himself standing in a small space crudely hacked out of the rock and shored up with brick. A narrow tunnel stretched ahead of him. It looked as if it had been bored out of the rock by a giant drill. Bent almost double, and bracing himself with hands and feet against its curving walls, he made slow forward progress until he reached a barrier crudely constructed from rough-cut blocks of masonry. Some of them had been knocked out. He peered through the hole to see that he would have to climb backwards through it to get down into the wide, square tunnel which crossed at right-angles beyond. He heard his cagoule tear as he eased himself through the gap, its hood catching on a jagged edge of rock. He cursed and yanked himself free, jumping, almost falling backwards into the tunnel. He steadied himself against the brick, legs quivering from the effort, and found himself looking at a street sign painted on a smooth stone slab set into the opposite wall. G.DE AVENUE DU LUXEMBOURG CôTé DU COUCHANT. It was covered in graffiti, red and blue and silver arrows, the letter A inside a circle. Already he seemed to have lost his bearings.