Above His Station (5 page)
I took a bottle of mineral water from my satchel and poured some of it over my wounds. Once the blood had been washed away, I took some gauze and bandages from the first aid kit and wrapped them around my thigh tightly. It itched something chronic, but it was better than nothing. Hitching up my trousers, I grabbed hold of the bars by my seat and pulled myself up. My wounds were sore, but only mildly uncomfortable – until I put all my weight on my right leg and found myself flopping back down into my seat with an indecorous yelp. I could have done with a crutch or walking cane, but as neither was to be found, I ground my teeth on the pain that burrowed into my bones.
‘I need to get up to street level,’ I told the rat.
‘Bad idea, Gramps. You won’t like what you find once you get up there.’
‘Even so,’ I said. ‘I need to phone my daughter and let her know that I’m okay. Plus, I need to report that whole business with the tiger.’
‘Report it to
who
exactly?’ asked the rat.
‘To my employers, of course! To the TFL head office if need be!’ I limped from the train and back out onto the platform. ‘I just don’t understand how a tiger could get loose and no one’s even looking for it. It doesn’t make any sense at all.’
‘Nothing makes sense this morning, Gramps,’ said the rat.
‘I mean…all this doesn’t exactly bode well for my future employment, does it? First the train to pick me up is late, then nobody turns up to meet me like they were supposed to, then the only exit out of here is locked…and that’s before we’ve even got to the part about the exploding tiger. I must admit, I find all of this
highly
irregular!’
‘I’d be more worried if you didn’t,’ said the rat. ‘But I think I might be able to help you out with at least one of your problems. I found these amongst the driver’s clothes.’
I spun around, elated to see the rat holding a bunch of keys.
I snatched them from its tiny hands and couldn’t get over to the gate fast enough, my fingers trembling as I tried the keys in turn. The first three wouldn’t even fit in the lock, the fourth went in but wouldn’t turn, but the fifth – well, the fifth gave a confident ‘SNAP!’ and as I pushed on the gate, to my delight, it opened! I wanted to do a little jig right there and then, had my leg not been throbbing so badly. My nightmarish morning was finally at an end!
‘Well? Are you coming or not?’ I asked the rat.
It didn’t budge. ‘You do remember I said that was a bad idea, right?’
‘Yes, but I don’t have much of a choice, do I?’ I insisted. ‘I told you, I have to report what’s happened. I can’t just leave a dead tiger lying about the place, can I?’
The rat puffed out its furry little cheeks. ‘Okay…well, in that case, I’d better tag along. At least then I’ll be there to say I told you so…and I will, by the way…but things topside might be pretty scary for you, man.’
I grinned. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s all rather exciting, really.’
‘It is?’ asked the rat.
‘Of course!’ I said, gleefully. ‘After all, it’s not every day you get to meet the Queen, is it?’
I decided to leave my heavy suitcase behind and stowed it underneath one of the benches on the platform. It should be quite safe as long as I locked the gate behind me, which I did, before entering Regal Street station proper. Feeling sorry for the rat on account of its tiny little legs, I scooped it up and let it sit on my shoulder where it could get a decent view of things. The cleanliness of the platform (before the tiger had made such a mess of it, of course) extended throughout, with pristine walls and spotless floors, and quite unlike all other Tube stations, Regal Street was completely devoid of any advertisements plastered over the walls. The escalator still wasn’t functioning, so we walked up the stairs with a brisk stroll and through the station’s winding tunnels. I seemed to instinctively know my way about the place. Once again I paid particular notice to how clean everything was and I hoped I wasn’t going to get the blame for the tiger. That was the nudist train driver’s fault, not mine. The last thing I wanted was to get a black mark against my name on my first day in the job. At least I had the rat as testament to my innocence…as long as talking vermin are accepted as character witnesses at an industrial tribunal.
‘I wonder where that beast escaped from,’ I mumbled, not really to my rodent companion; the recipient by circumstance only. ‘Tigers are awfully expensive, so surely somebody will be out of pocket. I still can’t believe that no one was looking for it. Tigers don’t usually wander into a Tube station in the middle of rush hour and go for a little stroll along the tracks unnoticed, do they?’
‘All evidence to the contrary,’ said the rat. ‘But then today’s not exactly what you’d class as ‘usual’, is it? So are we really going to see the Queen?’
‘We might bump into her,’ I said, feeling a bit cautious, for I could lose my job if I revealed too much. ‘This station is reserved for the private use of the Royal Family. The tracks were formerly used by the Royal Mail to deliver post all over London until the mid-forties, but when World War 2 broke out, it became necessary to ensure that the Royals could get safely out of London. King George VI was forced to use it several times during the Blitz, apparently. All of this is top secret, you understand. It wouldn’t do for people to hear that the monarchy had their own personal escape route, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.’
‘Has the Queen ever used it?’ asked the rat, appearing to be genuinely interested and so I found myself rambling, spilling secrets that I knew I should not.
‘Several times. The last time I think was in the 80’s when we had all those IRA bomb threats. Of course, that was long before this al-Qaeda business.’
‘So…it’s your job to look after this secret station that no one knows about?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, unable to hide my pride. ‘Well, at least I think so. I’ve got the confirmation letter, so it’s all done and dusted as far as I’m concerned.’
‘So what are you hiding from, Gramps?’
Despite becoming begrudgingly attached to the little rat, there were times when its insight was damned well annoying. It knew exactly the wrong question to ask at the right time. Or should that be the wrong time?
‘Who said I’m hiding from anything?’ I asked it.
‘Does anyone know where you are right now?’
‘Well, hopefully my employers are fully-’
‘I don’t mean your employers. I mean friends…family. Do they know where you are?’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything,’ I said, obstinately.
The rat folded its arms, outdoing me in the obstinate stakes by a considerable margin. ‘You take a job you’re not allowed to talk about, in a place you’re not allowed to say where, and you’re going to be living somewhere you’ve never even seen. Sounds to me like you’re either hiding from something…or running away from it.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ A speck of spit escaped my lips. Had the rat been a human, I might just have given it a fat lip. ‘All I want to do is telephone my daughter! If something dreadful really has happened, I know she’ll be worried.’
‘She’ll be even more worried when you tell her about the tiger,’ said the rat, ‘and just out of curiosity – what
will
you tell her? My guess is you’ll keep your trap shut so you don’t spook her…but there are scarier things up there on the streets than tigers.’
‘Now see here!’ I snapped at the thing. ‘You keep going on about how bad things are up on the streets, but you won’t tell me a damn thing about it. I thought you said once I’d sorted my leg out, you’d explain!’
‘I did…but then I changed my mind.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because there’s no way you’d believe me.’
I was feeling light-headed and I really didn’t need a rat giving me an ear-bending so I gave it an offhand wave, signalling my desire to talk about something else and my mind returned to what was important.
‘I’m going to find someone in charge, and with any luck they’ll direct me to the nearest telephone. Now…you can either come along, or scuttle off to wherever you came from, I really don’t care. All I want to do is get this business sorted out.’
‘In that case…lay on, Macduff.’
‘Pardon me?’ I enquired.
‘It’s Shakespeare, dude.’
‘I know it’s bloody Shakespeare!’ I said. ‘But it’s “
Lead
on, Macduff”.’
The rat rolled its eyes. ‘Humans…there are none so blind as those that will not see.’
Now, allow me to lay all my cards on the table.
I don’t have an OBE, a CBE or even an MBE. I don’t have any medals at all, as it goes. I have done nothing for the betterment of my fellow man, I am not currently employed by the armed forces, nor do I perform any notable work for a charitable organisation (other than a monthly stipend of £2 to the
Save The Tiger Foundation
that I have every intention of cancelling). In short, I have never had any call to visit Buckingham Palace before now. Even though Regal Street station was housed directly beneath it, I never actually expected to meet any of the Royals face-to-face. Considering that the station was only to be used in the most dire of circumstances, I had hoped that I would never
have
to. I would have been quite content to idle away my time in care of Regal Street without brushing shoulders with royalty. My small, grey-furred companion was quickly becoming adept at reading my thoughts, for as we strolled through the tunnels back towards the escalators, it said:
‘I guess it won’t be easy getting inside the palace.’
‘I imagine not,’ I said, wondering where I’d put my identity badge. Sod’s law it was right at the bottom of my bloody satchel. ‘I’ve completed all the necessary security checks – which were numerous, by the way – but even so, I still wouldn’t expect to just stumble across an unlocked door.’
‘I’ll bet they’ve got the dog’s bollocks when it comes to security. Retinal scanners, infra-red, ID card readers, big burly guards on every door and all that stuff?’ said the rat.
‘I should imagine so, yes,’ I said, wincing at the pain in my leg as I ascended a staircase parallel to the static escalator.
‘You think the guards will have guns?’
‘If they do, they’ll be awfully discreet about it. They’re British, after all,’ I replied.
‘How about those cool scanners that can tell if someone’s lying?’
I frowned. ‘I’ve not heard about them.’
‘They’ve got them at the Pentagon.’
‘Really?’ I said, not overly interested, but never one to be rude.
‘Oh, yeah,’ said the rat. ‘They’ve even got pressure-sensitive flooring, so if anyone breaks in this big metal cage drops down from the ceiling and traps them. The CIA or FBI or whoever will be there in, like,
seconds
.’
‘I’m pretty sure they don’t have those at the palace,’ I said.
‘Shame.’
‘Isn’t it,’ I said.
At the top of the stairs our (I say “
our
”, but I really mean “
my
”) next obstacle was a thick glass partition that sealed off the entrance to the next tunnel, the direction that I presumed we needed to go, seeing as there wasn’t any other choice.
‘Crap,’ said the rat.
‘Indeed,’ I agreed, inspecting the partition with due care and attention.
It was rubber-sealed all the way along the bottom and the sides were slotted into very thick metal runners set into the walls. The partition obviously descended from the tunnel ceiling, as I could see a thin shaft of light through the gap above my head.
‘I can’t see any sort of control mechanism to raise it,’ noted the rat.
Nor could I, but beyond the glass and fixed to the wall was a security camera.
‘Maybe if we wave our arms about they’ll see us and open up,’ I said, glancing down at my companion. ‘On second thoughts, maybe you should leave the waving bit to me. They might think you’re rabid.’
‘None taken,’ mumbled the rat.
I placed both my satchel and my companion on the floor and proceeded to look like a professional simpleton as I waved my arms up and down, desperately trying to get the camera operator’s attention. There was no response at all. I banged my fist on the glass several times, but still nothing. I jumped up and down on the spot, but still nothing.
‘And you were worried they’d think
I
was rabid?’ said the rat.
‘It’s not as if I do this very often!’ I said, brusquely. ‘Can’t you squeeze through that gap up there and see if you can open it from the other side?’
‘Why don’t
you
squeeze through the gap up there and open it from the other side?’
‘Because I’m not a bloody rat, am I?’ I said, quite accurately as far as I was aware.
‘What’s being a rat got to do with anything?’
‘Your lot are well-known for getting into tight spaces, aren’t they?’ I said.
‘Wait – “
your lot”?
Do you have any idea how offensive that is?’
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ I snapped. ‘If you’re not prepared to contribute-’
I was cut off as a screech of static echoed around the confined tunnel. It sounded just like a voice. A bit robotically disfigured, but a voice for sure. It was then that I spotted a tiny panel inset to the wall. It contained just the one button and a metal grille, through which I presumed the voice had just emanated. I stepped over to it and pressed the button.
‘Hello?’ I enquired.
“
Hello?
” replied the voice through the control panel.
‘Oh, thank the Lord!’ I said. ‘Pardon me, but my name’s-’
“
Hello?
’ said the voice once more.
‘Hello, yes. Listen, I’m the station guard and there’s been an accident! If you could just raise the barrier for me, it’s terribly important that I speak with my superiors.’
“
Superiors?
” asked the voice.
‘Yes, a tiger has been squashed by one of our trains and I need to-’
“
Tiger?
” asked the voice.