Lost

The sewer is less than five feet high, forcing me to bend, and the air smells of feces and a putrid dampness. The brick walls curve at the sides and disappear into a shallow stream running down the center. Our shadows are distorted against the brickwork.

“Don't forget to put the seat down,” says Angus, urinating against a wall.

Moley looks at me, the whiteness of his eyes glowing in the lamplight. He doesn't say anything but I know he's giving me one last chance to go back.

Weatherman Pete rolls the manhole cover back into place, sealing us inside.

I suddenly feel nervous.

“How is he going to contact us if it rains?”

“The old-fashioned way,” replies Barry. “He's going to pick up a manhole cover and drop it six inches. We'll hear it miles away.”

Angus claps me on the shoulder. “So what do you think?”

“It doesn't smell so bad.”

He laughs. “Come down here on Saturday morning. Friday is curry night.”

Moley has moved off, wading along the stream. Barry falls in behind me, crouching more than most, as his ample frame is buttressed on all sides by the harness. Water swirls around my knees and the sweating bricks look almost silver in the flashlight beam.

“We call these snotsicles,” says Barry, pointing out the stalactites brushing against our helmets.

Despite the cold I'm already starting to perspire. A hundred yards and a permanent shiver sets in. Every sound is magnified and it makes me edgy. I have been trying to weave Mickey into the various scenarios but it's getting harder.

Another part of me thinks of Ali in the hospital, staring at her crippled self in the mirror, wondering if she's ever going to walk again. I started this. I let her come along when she had far more to lose than I did. Now I'm wading in filth and shit and it seems appropriate. When you consider the state of my life, my career and my relationships, I belong down here.

“The place you showed us on the map. We're under it now,” says Barry, his headlamp momentarily blinding me.

I glance up at a large opening and a side tunnel. The burst water main on the night of the ransom drop sent a thousand gallons a minute flooding through the streets and into the drains—enough to carry a ransom; maybe even enough to carry me.

“If something got washed down here, where would it finish up?”

“It's a top-down system. Operates on gravity,” says Angus.

Moley nods in agreement.

“Go-go-go-got flushed away,” stutters Phil.

Barry begins to explain. “These small local sewers feed into main sewers and the waste is then drawn off into one of five interceptory sewers that run west to east—all fed by gravity. The high-level sewer begins at Hampstead Hill and crosses Highgate Road near Kentish Town. Farther south you got two middle-level sewers. One begins close to Kilburn and runs under the Edgware Road to Euston Road, past Kings Cross. The second runs from Kentish Town under Bayswater and along Oxford Street. Then you got two low-level sewers, one under Kensington, Piccadilly and the City; and the other right under the Thames Embankment, following the northern bank of the river.”

“Where do they all go?”

“To the sewage treatment works at Beckton.”

“And the system gets flushed out by rainfall?”

He shakes his head. “The main sewers are built alongside old rivers that provide the water.”

The only river I know that enters the Thames estuary from the north is the River Lea, which is a long way east of here.

“There are heaps of them,” scoffs Angus. “You can't just wish a river away. You can cover 'em over or divert 'em into pipes but they'll keep flowing just the same as always.”

“Where are they?”

“Well you got the Westbourne, the Walbrook, the Tyburn, Stamford Brook, Counter's Creek and the Fleet . . .”

Each of these names is familiar. There are dozens of streets, parks and estates named after them, but I had never equated them with ancient rivers. The fine hairs on my neck are standing on end. You hear stories about secret cities beneath cities; tunnels that took prime ministers to war cabinet rooms and passageways that carried mistresses for rendezvous with kings, but I had never imagined a world of water, unseen blind rivers, coursing beneath the streets. No wonder the walls are crying.

Moley wants us to keep moving. The tunnel goes straight on with occasional vertical shafts emptying into it from above creating mini-waterfalls. Keeping to the center of the stream, our boots slosh through the sediment and cold grayish water. Slowly the passages grow wider and taller and our shadows no longer stoop against the walls.

Tethered together we descend into a shaft and wade silently along a larger sewer. Occasionally we slide down cement slopes, splashing through several inches of stinking water. At other times we near the surface and faint beams of light angle through iron grates.

I try to imagine the ransom, divided and sealed in plastic, being carried through these tunnels, dropping over waterfalls, floating through crypts.