Tom Knox: The Genesis Secret

Alan Greening was drunk. He'd been boozing all night in Covent Garden: starting at the Punch, where he had three or four pints with his old friends from college. Then they'd gone to the Lamb and Flag, the pub down that dank alleyway near the Garrick Club.

How long had they lingered there, sinking beers? He couldn't remember. Because after that they'd gone to the Roundhouse, and they'd met a couple more guys from his office. And at some point the lads had moved from pints of lager to shorts: vodka shots, gin and tonics, whisky chasers.

And then they had made the fatal error. Tony had said, let's go and look at some girls. So they'd laughed and agreed and ambled halfway up St Martin's Lane and bribed their way into Stringfellows. The bouncer hadn't been keen on letting them in, not at first: he was wary of six young guys, obviously out on the lash, swearing and laughing, and way too boisterous.

Trouble.

But Tony had flashed some of his ample City bonus, a hundred quid or more, and the bouncer had smiled and said, Of course, sir…and then…

What had happened then?

It was all a blur. A blur of thongs and thighs and drinks. And smiling naked Latvian girls and ribald jokes about Russian furs and a Polish girl with unbelievable breasts and endless amounts of money spent on this and that and the other.

Alan groaned. His friends had departed at various times: collapsing out of the club and into taxis. In the end it was just him, the last punter in the joint, tucking multitudes of tenners into the G-string of the Latvian girl who gyrated her tiny little body as he stared at her helplessly, worshipfully, dumbly, idiotically.

And then at 4 a.m. the Latvian girl had stopped smiling and suddenly the lights were up and then the bouncers had him by the shoulders and they were firmly escorting him to the door. He wasn't quite thrown into the street like a bum in a saloon, in an old-fashioned western-but it was pretty close.

And now it was 5 a.m., and the first throb of the hangover was needling him behind the eyes; he had to get home. He was on the Strand and he needed to be in bed.

Did he have enough cash left for a taxi? He'd left his cards at home but, yes-Alan sorted groggily through his pockets-yes, he still had thirty quid left in his wallet; enough for a cab to Clapham.

Or rather, it should have been enough. But there were no taxis. It was the deadest hour of the night: 5 a.m. on the Strand. Too late for clubbers. Too early for office cleaners.

Alan scanned the streets. A mild April drizzle was falling on the shiny wide pavements of central London. A big red night bus was trundling the wrong way-towards St Paul's. Where could he go? He fought through the boozy fog in his head. There was one place you could always get a cab. He could try Embankment. Yes. There were always taxis there.

Collecting himself, he turned left: down a side road. The sign said Craven Street, and he'd never heard of it. But that didn't matter. The road headed downhill towards the river: it must take him directly onto Embankment.

Alan walked on. The street was old: lots of serene Georgian buildings. The drizzle was still falling. The first hint of a spring morning was bluing the sky above the ancient chimney tops. There wasn't a soul around.

And then he heard it.

A noise.

But not just a noise. It sounded like: a groan. A human groan: but somehow clogged, or distorted. Weird.

Had he imagined it? Alan checked the pavements, the doorways, the windows. The little side street was still deserted. All the buildings around here were offices. Or very old houses converted into offices. Who could be here at this time of night? A junkie? A homeless guy? Was it some old drunk, lying in a gutter, down there in the shadows?

Alan opted to ignore it. That's what you did if you were a Londoner. You ignored. Your life was hassled enough in this huge, frenetic, and bewildering city without adding to your daily stress by investigating odd groans at night. And besides, Alan was drunk: he was imagining it.

And then he heard it again: distinct. A terrible chilling moan of someone in pain. It almost sounded like someone saying 'help'. Except the word came out as 'eeeeelllbbbb'.

What the fuck was that? Alan sweated. He was scared now. He didn't want to know what kind of person-what kind of thing-could make a sound like that. And yet he had to find out. All his moral reflexes were telling him to help.

As he stood in the gentle rain he thought of his mum. What she would say. She would tell him he had no choice. It was the moral imperative: Someone Is In Pain: Therefore You Help.

He looked left. The voice seemed to come from a row of old Georgian houses with dark purple bricks and elegant old windows. One of the houses had a sign up at the front, a wooden placard shining with rain in the lamplight. The Benjamin Franklin Museum. He had no proper idea who Benjamin Franklin was. Some Yank; a writer or something. But that didn't really matter. He was fairly sure the moan was coming from this house: because the door was open. At 5am, on a Saturday morning.

Alan could see a dim light beyond the halfopen door. He clenched his fists once, then twice. Then he went to the door, and pushed.

It swung wholly open. The hall beyond was quiet. There was a till in the corner, a table stacked with leaflets; and a sign that read: Video Presentation This Way. The hall was illuminated, barely, by some nightlights.

The museum seemed undisturbed. The door was open but the interior was perfectly still. It didn't look like the scene of a robbery.

'Errrrlmmng…'

There it was again. The curdling groan. And this time it was plainly apparent where it came from: the basement.

Alan felt the talons of fear grasp his heart. But he stifled his nerves, and walked determinedly to the end of the hall, where a side door led to some descending wooden stairs. Alan creaked his way down them, and stepped into a low cellar room.

A bare bulb hung from the ceiling. The light was soft, but bright enough. He gazed about. The room was unexceptional-apart from one thing. A corner of the floor had been recently and comprehensively dug up, the earth was turned over-to leave a big black hole going down a metre or more into the dark London soil.

It was then that Alan saw the blood.

He couldn't not notice it: the big sticky stain was vivid and scarlet, and spattered over something very white. A pile of whiteness.

What was this whiteness? Feathers? Swan feathers? What?

Alan walked over and prodded the whiteness with the toe of his shoe. It was hair: human hair maybe. A pile of shaved white human hair. And the blood was spattered luridly across the top, like cherry sauce on lemon sorbet. Like a sheep's miscarriage in the snow.

'Errrllllbbbbb!'

The groan was very close now. It was coming from the room next door. Alan fought back his fears one last time and went through the small, low-slung door that led to the next room.

Inside, it was very black, apart from the narrow slant of light thrown by the bulb behind him. The ominous moan reverberated around the room. Fumbling to the side of the door, Alan slapped at the switch and flooded the room with brightness.

In the centre of the room, on the floor, lay a naked old man. His head had been completely shaved. Brutally shaved-judging by the grazes and cuts. Alan realized that that was where the hair must have come from. They had shaved his hair. Whoever they were.

Then the old man moved. His face had been averted from the door, but when the lights came on he turned and looked at Alan. The sight was unnerving. Alan flinched. The terror in the old man's eyes was unspeakable. Wide and red, his eyes stared out, frenzied with pain.