B L O O M S B U R Y

I watched Wozniak disappear off the end of the platform and hobble into the darkness. There was a light deeper down the tunnel. It was getting closer. It twisted and turned in the darkness. I watched him limp towards it, a giant of a man who could hardly walk now.

I stood on the edge of the platform but I went no further as I watched him disappear into the black. The light of the approaching tube train hurtled still closer and although I knew it would never reach this abandoned station, I understood that it would reach the man hobbling in the darkness.

‘Wozniak!’

He was gone now but I heard the tube train twist and turn and speed away to light and life and some station where the commuters and tourists were waiting, and I heard the wheels of steel screaming with protest as the driver applied the emergency brakes as he saw, far too late, the man who shuffled towards him in the darkness.

But I did not see him die and if he made a sound, then I did not hear it.

33

What remained of Newgate Prison was a crime scene now.

Deep in the bowels of the Old Bailey, our people waited at the perimeter that Whitestone had decided should begin at the boiler room. CSIs, photographers, forensic scientists, geo-forensic specialists were all struggling into their white Tyvek suits, overshoes and masks, waiting for the go-ahead from the Senior Investigating Officer. TDC Billy Greene was helping a young uniformed officer put up the barrier tape, a major incident scene log form in his hand, ready to sign them in and out.

Inside the square room with the rotting tiles, Whitestone and I stood on forensic stepping plates. Above her face mask, the eyes behind her glasses roamed the room.

‘So this was the holding cell,’ she said. ‘Where they kept the condemned before they took them outside to hang them.’ She took off her glasses and polished them. She was thinking about the perimeter of our crime scene. ‘I know where it begins,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know where it should end.’

A figure in a white Tyvek suit squeezed through the gap in the wall that led into Dead Man’s Walk. A stray strand of red hair fell across Edie Wren’s forehead. She pushed it away.

‘The tunnel at the end leads from here – Newgate – to St Sepulchre’s church across the way. It dates from 1807. Hangings were massive crowd-pullers – twenty-eight people died when a pie stall overturned – so they built the tunnel to allow the priest to minister to the condemned man without having to force his way through the crush.’

‘There’s at least one staircase leading off the tunnel,’ I said. ‘But I’ve been down there. It goes on forever.’

Whitestone thought about it for a moment.