She spun her desk-computer screen around so they could all see it and stabbed at her keyboard with two fingers, her cigarette-holder jutting grimly from one corner of her mouth. The first witness was a man in his late forties, neat City suit, respectable. You’d have believed anything he said in a court of law. But his face was grey and shocked, and his mouth was slack, as though he’d just been hit. His eyes were frightened, desperate.

“Trains were running when none were scheduled,” he said, in a voice that sounded on the edge of tears. “Bad trains. They didn’t stop, only slowed down as they passed by, so everyone on the platform could get a good look. Strange trains with strange markings, in the kinds of writing you see in dreams. The metal of the cars steamed, blazing with unbearable heat, and inside . . . there were things, terrible things . . . awful shapes, not human . . . beating fiercely against the closed doors and windows, fighting to get out, to get at everyone waiting on the platform. We all screamed. Some turned and ran. The things in the cars laughed at us and beat on the windows with their fists. They would have killed us all if they could. I won’t go back into the Underground again. It’s not ours any more.”

The next witness was a woman in her mid thirties. Her face was calm and relaxed, and her voice was quite steady, and entirely reasonable. But blood had dried all down one side of her face from where she’d yanked out a chunk of her own hair. She played with the bloody mess while she talked.

“I was on the northbound platform when the train came in. It was pretending to be an ordinary train, but it wasn’t. There were people trapped inside. As the cars rolled to a halt, we could see men and women, screaming soundlessly, as they tried desperately to escape; but the cars wouldn’t let them out. Some of us tried to help, but the doors wouldn’t budge. Up close, we could see the bloody trails left on the windows by broken fingers and torn-away nails. The train moved off again and took them all away. And I know . . . it would have taken us, too, if it could. It wanted to, but it was already full. That downbound train, bearing them off to Hell . . .”

The third witness was a child. Maybe eight or nine years old, in a pretty party dress. She laughed at the camera, but it was an adult’s laugh, not a child’s. And all she would say was Look who’s come to see you! over and over again.