There were two platforms facing each other across ancient tracks. It was a tube station, but nothing like one I had ever seen. The platforms were made of wood and I could see the remains of what had once been advertising posters on the black-and-white tiles of the walls. They had rotted away a lifetime ago. It reminded me of photographs I had seen of Londoners seeking safety underground during the Blitz. On a large red circle, the name of the station was written in black letters on a white background.

B L O O M S B U R Y

I shook my head in disbelief.

There is no tube station in London by that name.

I stared at the ghost station and knew I could wait for a hundred years and there would be no passengers and no trains passing through this place.

I felt a shudder of pure terror and wondered if I had died in the room with the tiles stained green by time.

Then I touched the livid weal that had been burned into the flesh around my neck and I flinched with the pain.

I was not dead yet.

I heard sounds coming from deep inside the tunnel.

I walked to the edge of the platform and stared into the blackness but I could see nothing. But the sound was real. It wasn’t just in my head. I looked down at the tracks. There were four lines, two of them with insulators. I thought about that for a while.

The station was dead but that didn’t mean that the lines were dead.

I was aware that in a working tube station the lines with insulators are live and will kill you instantly, and that the trains run on the other lines. But I also knew it was a myth that no electricity runs through the non-insulated train tracks – they carry enough voltage to power the signals. The fact is that making contact with any tube rail is likely to ruin your whole day.

I steadied myself on the edge of the platform, took a breath, and jumped down between the nearest two tracks.

And that was when I heard the train coming.

I quickly scrambled back up onto the platform, feeling the Glock scrape against my spine as it slipped from my jeans. I looked down at it, just about visible on the tracks, as a rat the size of a neutered tom cat skittered across it. Then the train was much closer. Lights blazed deep in the tunnel, twisting towards me and then away as the train snaked through the bowels of the city. I stood drenched in cold sweat on the platform as the train hurtled towards me like an avalanche.

It never reached the station.