Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

As he sat at his desk the next morning, sipping at a cup of vile instant coffee, Gray flicked through the case files in his in-box. He had a feeling that had become increasingly commonplace during the course of the last few months. It was that the investigations to which he had been assigned were effectively a waste of effort. The assault that he’d suffered months ago during the arrest of Montrose the serial rapist had left him hospitalised for weeks and resulted in internal ruptures that would, he had been advised by the surgeon, require a much more sedate lifestyle. The Yard had done the best they could under the circumstances and found him a role, albeit desk bound, but although his initial assignments had been current Gray discovered that as time passed he was being asked to examine cases that had little chance of being solved. The bulk of these were missing persons.

Scarcely sociable before, Gray had turned further inwards after the beating. It had affected his mind just as much as his body. Somehow he had allowed his old friends to drift away and found excuses not to keep in touch with them. He felt himself to be little more than an empty shell and contact with others only served to reinforce the impression. The Yard offered Gray counselling to help him come to terms with the trauma caused by the Montrose incident, but he found the idea even more repellent than his doctor’s suggestion that he take a course of anti-depressants. When fate worked upon him he intended to adapt to it and not resist. Even so, he felt like a missing person who had himself been assigned to trace other missing persons.

Gray ran his tongue over his scalded lips, again cursing the too-hot and foul-tasting coffee, when his attention was taken up by a communiqué that had come in only a few hours earlier. Although a missing persons report is not usually filed until some days after a disappearance (except where children are involved), this one had been “fast-tracked” due to there being no question of the subject having absented himself deliberately. The missing individual was a tube train driver (or “operator” as they were now called). His name was Adam Drayton. The curious thing was this: he had abandoned his train between the Camden Town and Kentish Town stations on the Northern Line. It had been the very last service of the night, due to terminate at High Barnet at 1:30 a m. Moreover, if there had been any passengers in the carriages then they too had vanished.

Early in the morning a replacement driver had shunted the train into a siding. On the front of the case file a joker in the office had scrawled the words “Mary Celeste Tube? A Case for the Weird Detective?” with a marker pen.

But Inspector Gray, through some bizarre coincidence, was one of the few people who would recognise the name “Adam Drayton” in another connection. For it was also the name of the author/editor of that outré book of urban legends published under the title The Secret Underground , whose cover preyed upon his mind.

Gray spent the afternoon interviewing Drayton’s colleagues in the staff mess room of the train depot just outside Finchley Central Station. This was where the tube drivers spent their time between shifts, sitting around drinking coffee, smoking their cigarettes and reading newspapers. They were a talkative bunch although the inspector could not help noticing their mistrust and fear of him as a representative from an outside authority. Some of them even seemed to believe that Drayton’s disappearance was an internal matter and should be left to the union to investigate. Outside interference, whether from the law or elsewhere, was certainly not welcome. Still, there were one or two who retained a sense of individuality and were able to realise that Gray had not come in order to apportion any blame, merely to discover what may have led Drayton to act in the manner that he did.

One of the drivers, Carlos Miguel, a Castilian, was particularly communicative. He had settled in this country after leaving Madrid in the early 1990s. He had been almost alone in befriending Drayton, who had been regarded by the others as an oddball whose political views were not sufficiently radical. Miguel was a tall, distinguished man in his forties with a shock of jet-black hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. He had shared Drayton’s enthusiasm for the recondite and whilst the others talked of union activities or the football results, the two men had retreated to a corner and held their own discussions.

Had Gray not been aware of Drayton’s editorship of that paperback The Secret Underground he doubted that he would have achieved quite the same rapport with Carlos Miguel.

“So,” the Spaniard declared, “you know of el libro de Drayton ?”

“Yes,” Gray replied, “I think it’s a bit garish but the cover’s particularly . . .”

Miguel cut in.

“ Señor , you know that Drayton only applied to become a train operator so that he could travel the tunnels of the Northern Line and examine their mysteries?”

Gray looked blank and shook his head.

“Well,” Miguel went on, “you must understand that it would not be mistaken to say that he was obsessed with them. Drayton told me that the Northern Line has the longest continuous Yerkes tunnel on the network, over seventeen miles long. The stretch between East Finchley and Morden. Also it has the deepest. At Hampstead 900 feet below ground. He had numerous theories about what was down there; fantástico, ¿no ?”

“Speculations, rumour, hearsay,” Gray responded, “amounting to nothing more than fiction. He was just an editor of a horrible series of urban legends. I confess that the parallel between his disappearance and obsession is striking but . . .”

“ Perdón, señor , but it is more than that simple fact. Drayton was my friend; it was in me that he felt he could confide. Las estaciónes fantasmas , you know of them? In English: the ghost stations? North End, City Road, South Kentish Town and King William Street? These were what obsessed Drayton.”

“The abandoned stations?”

“ Sí , abandoned. Pero in Drayton’s eyes, no . Taken over he would have replied. No longer safe to use. Señor , if you are operating the last train on the line it is easier to slow down when you wish, no? Perhaps while travelling through one of those stations and even bringing trains to a complete stop. There are not so many passengers and they are too drunk or sleepy to complain at that time of night, ¿tú comprendes ?”

“Are you suggesting that Adam Drayton stopped his train and got out at one of these ghost stations?”

“ Como una palomilla atraída por la llama . . .”

“I don’t understand.”

“. . . like a moth drawn to a flame.”

That evening, once Gray had got back to his cramped flat in Tufnell Park, he sat down in his easy chair with his copy of The Secret Underground . He flicked back and forth through its yellowed brittle pages, glancing at them over and over again. The book was divided into several chapters, each specialising in a subterranean urban legend: (1) Cases of Posthumous Mutation in London Cemeteries (2) Derelict reverse Skyscrapers 1936–57 (3) Mass disappearance of Persons sheltering in the Underground during the Blitz (4) Graffiti or Occult Symbolism? (5) Suppressed Eyewitness accounts during the Construction of the Underground Railways 1860–1976 (6) The Fleet Line extension to Fenchurch Street must be Halted (7) Secret Bunkers or Extermination Centres? (8) The deep level Platforms of the proposed Express Tube: Why they caused Insanity (9) The Hidden Shafts that connect Subterranean London.

There was one paragraph in the final chapter that seemed to be the inspiration for the uneasy dreams Gray had experienced. It ran as follows: