Underlife by Robert Finn (different e readers txt) 📕

looked pleased with him. “So even if the trog asks everyone on the network to look out for you, you could still be anywhere. And even if they alert someone on every ticket barrier in London you could still get out using one of the fire exits or the old tunnels or through a substation. Mind you, there’s a couple of stations where jumping on a train might not help.” Plainly he wanted Clipper to work it out.

“Right before the end of the line,” Clipper said, cheerily.

“Good,” Gary said. “So look average and keep clear of platforms that lead you to the end of the line. Apart from that, if you’ve got the wind up, always choose a train over a platform.”

They’d never got round to talking about how to improve the iPod lift Gary had demonstrated earlier and Clipper decided Gary wanted to ‘leave it as an exercise for the reader’, as he used to say — which meant Clipper was supposed to think it through on his own time.

*

Back in the present, the train had pulled in and Clipper was relieved to realise that Warren was no longer staring at him; he was scrutinising the train, scanning the passengers as they started to emerge. For a moment, Clipper took this as a sign: they were obviously not interested in him; they were after someone else, probably someone leaving the train. But then he glanced over his shoulder to see the other fake cop creeping up on him and he bolted. Always choose a train over a platform, Gary had taught him. Since Warren was hiding himself from the passengers behind one of the platform’s massive pillars, Clipper headed for the other side of it and sprinted for the rear of the train.

Everyone else had finished getting on or off and Clipper had a clear path to the doors. He dashed for the rearmost double-set, and he’d almost made it when a thin man carrying a heavy briefcase came rushing out at the last minute and the two of them nearly collided.

Muttering an apology, Clipper skidded around him, scrambled inside the train, and looked nervously behind him for signs of pursuit. He couldn’t see either of the fake coppers.

The thin man had slipped and was recovering himself. He leant on the edge of the door and peered out while adjusting his glasses, and tried to follow Clipper’s gaze to see what he was running from.

“Is someone chasing you?” he asked, looking pretty unhappy about the possibility.

Clipper didn’t respond immediately; he was much more interested in Warren and his sidekick than the man in front of him. The beeping sound that warned passengers that the doors were about to close was sounding as he absentmindedly answered, “Cops. Only they’re not cops.”

The slim man with the bag looked startled, and as the doors began to close, he pulled himself back inside the train, clutching the big, old-fashioned briefcase to his chest.

He was in his late twenties or early thirties, with wiry red-brown hair and he looked like a late-blooming grad student. His pale, checked shirt and scuffed corduroy jacket were from an earlier era — probably acquired from a previous generation of students by way of a charity shop. Fleetingly, Clipper wondered what his story was. Perhaps he was the fake-cops’ real target and Clipper needn’t have bolted. On the other hand, in Clipper’s mind, Warren was high up on the list of people who might be behind Gary’s disappearance (death? murder?) and therefore someone very much to be avoided. Better safe than sorry. If he’d bolted unnecessarily he could have a laugh about it once he was about twenty miles away sipping a cappuccino.

The doors closed with a bump, and Clipper and the weedy grad student both relaxed a little. Clipper realised their expressions were mirror images of each other and it almost made him laugh. But then a second later, Warren slammed heavily into the doors, stuck the fingertips of both hands into the rubber seal where the doors met, pulled them towards him and hauled them open again. Clipper hadn’t thought you could do that. Some part of the door mechanism agreed and was groaning and squealing in protest.

Clipper backed away, but the grad student was even more rattled. He ran to the back of the carriage, as far to the rear of the train as it was possible to get. The seats in that section were all empty, but the few passengers over on the far side of the doors were looking up in surprise, unsure what was going on.

Clipper wondered what the driver would do, whether he’d stop the train, but then he remembered that the driver relied on the platform cameras to be working to see what was going on. And for whatever reason, they were suddenly all out of action.

Warren’s gaze was now fixed very firmly on the grad student. Warren may or may not have recognised Clipper earlier, but his reason for being there was obviously the thin man with the glasses and the battered briefcase.

Then the second fake-cop pounded up, stopping just behind Warren. Clipper considered the possibility that it was only Warren who was the fake, but he couldn’t imagine a real copper teaming up with an impostor and not figuring it out. Surely they were both crooks.

“Tian, hold the doors,” Warren said, slipping in through the gap he’d opened and leaving it to the man behind him to prevent them from closing again.

An announcement came over the train’s speakers: “This is the driver speaking. I can’t see who’s playing silly buggers, but would whoever is preventing the doors from closing kindly stop it so we can all get on our way. Thank you.” The ‘thank you’ was delivered in what Clipper thought of as textbook tube drivers’ sarcasm.

Meanwhile Warren was advancing on the terrified grad student who was pressed against the back wall of the carriage. The only thing behind him was the rear driver’s cab of the train, which would be empty at the moment, and beyond that open track. He looked very much like he wanted to push himself through the locked doors behind him and sprint away down the tunnel into the darkness.

“You’re Kieran, aren’t you?” Warren said, addressing the terrified man. “We’re not here to hurt you, Kieran. We want what you’re carrying and we want you to come with us.” Then he glanced over his shoulder at the concerned passengers watching him and added, “Down to the station.”

Kieran said nothing. So Warren took a step forwards. “Realistically, Kieran, you don’t have anywhere else to go,” he said pleasantly.

Kieran slipped a hand into the open top of his old-fashioned briefcase and began rummaging around, his search complicated by the fact that his eyes never left Warren’s face.

Warren smiled, albeit without much warmth, and began to advance upon Kieran, who was thrashing his hand around inside the bag, desperate to locate something. A moment later he had it, and he withdrew his hand to reveal a fist clamped whitely around the grip of a gun. He snatched back the slide, chambering a bullet and raising the hammer. Several of the passengers on the far side of Clipper drew in their breath sharply enough that it sounded like a collective sigh. Someone whispered to herself, “Oh my god.”

The driver was once again trying to close the doors and automated beeping filled the carriage as Warren adjusted to the presence of the gun. His smile finally gained some real warmth.

“What,” he asked, “do you imagine you’re going to do with that?”

Clipper, who was still in the little standing area by the doors, had lowered himself so that most of his body was screened by the row of seats nearest him. There was a piece of plate glass above him which gave standing passengers something to lean against and he peered cautiously through it now. He was aware that he was only a metre or so from the other fake-cop, but couldn’t think of anything better to do than kind of cower where he was. It was what everyone else was doing.

Warren was apparently unconcerned, possibly even amused, at having a gun pointed at him. But at the same time he looked like he’d lost patience with the conversational approach; he took several brisk steps towards the armed man just as the annoyed train driver began making another announcement.

Kieran flinched at Warren’s approach and simultaneously fired his gun, sending a bullet ricocheting off the roof above Warren’s head; Clipper had no idea where it ended up. A moment later Kieran composed himself and fired point blank at Warren, who seemed to stagger slightly, but gave no sign that the bullet had penetrated his flak jacket. You can’t hurt them, Clipper found himself thinking.

Surely the driver would hear the gunshot. Inside the carriage the sound of the shot had been tremendous. But the driver was several hundred feet away, in his own little cab, in the middle of making another announcement. Clipper realised that whatever sound made it through the gap in the partly-opened doors would probably be swallowed by the vast space of the station. From where the driver sat, the gunshot would have all the volume of a distant door slamming or a shutter coming down.

As Clipper watched, Warren had almost reached Kieran. Then Kieran fired a third time, his composure gone, this shot even wilder than the first. Glass exploded and Clipper gave an involuntary moan of fear, recoiling as splinters of shattered plate glass sprayed across his face and shoulder, pattering into his hair and rattling across the floor around him.

But it wasn’t the partition on Clipper’s side of the carriage that had been hit; it was the one by the partly open doors. And now Clipper was turning his head and looking up at the second fake copper who’d been twisted around by the impact of the bullet, which looked to have caught him somewhere around where his neck met his shoulder. As well as being shot, he’d also been raked by pellets of glass as the bullet punched through the plate glass screen beside him. Beneath one of his eyes blood welled like red tears. He made a slow deep sound of surprise and pain, like a groan.

Warren looked round and yelled, “Sebastian!” as the driver’s announcement concluded — no one had heard a word of it — and then Sebastian toppled sideways and slammed to the floor beside Clipper, allowing the doors to clatter shut behind him.

Warren threw a murderous glance at Kieran, who visibly recoiled, and then he rushed to Sebastian’s side while Clipper tried to shrink further into the corner, willing himself to be invisible.

Warren crouched by Sebastian’s side. He was oblivious to Kieran, who’d taken a halting step forwards and kind of let himself half slump into the seat nearest him. Kieran looked like he was deciding whether to have a heart attack or not. His face was difficult to read, a blend of fear and uncertainty, and maybe some surprise at what he’d just done. He was still holding the gun in his outstretched arm and he looked twitchy enough to do just about anything. He was also… Clipper wasn’t sure, but he watched, his gaze operating on autopilot, as Kieran’s free hand moved across the upholstery of the seat beside him while his eyes stayed fixed on Warren. There was something in Kieran’s hand, a tiny blade of some kind, that was slicing into the heavy fabric. Clipper’s eyes seemed to track Kieran’s clandestine movements of their own accord while his thoughts remained jumbled and panicky, thrown into a tangle by the shooting.

A metre or so from Clipper, Sebastian was trying to speak. Warren held his