"Oh." Scuff swallowed. He thought about it for a moment or two while they both stood in the rain getting steadily wetter. "Not nob'dy's?"

"Nobody's at all," Monk assured him. "Even those I don't like much, such as Clacton, never mind those I do."

"Oh," Scuff said again.

"So don't do it," Monk added. "Or you'll be in trouble. I'll let you off this one time."

Scuff grunted. "So yer wanna know w'ere 'e lives, then?"

"Yes, I do… please."

" 'E lives down the Blind Man's Cuttin', wot leads inter the old sewer an' tunnel. There's lots o' folk live down there, but I can find 'im. I'll take yer. 'E's a bad 'un, mind. An' 'e knows them sewers like a tosher, exspecial the old ones down near the Fleet."

"Thank you. I think we had better take some men with us. We'll go to the station and find them." Monk started to walk.

Scuff remained where he was.

Monk stopped and turned, waiting.

"I in't goin' there," Scuff said stubbornly. "It's all rozzers."

"You're with me," Monk said quietly. "Nobody will hurt you."

Scuff looked at him gravely, his eyes shadowed with doubt.

"Would you rather wait outside?" Monk asked. "It's wet, and it's cold. But it'll be warm in there, and we'll get a drink of hot tea. There might even be a piece of cake."

"Cake?" Temptation ached in Scuffs eyes.

"And hot tea, for sure."

"An' rozzers…"

"Yes. Do you want me to send them all out into the rain?"

Scuff smiled so widely it showed his lost teeth. "Yeah!"

"Imagine it!" Monk replied. "That's as good as you'll get. Come on!"

Hesitantly Scuff obeyed, walking beside Monk until they reached the steps, then hanging back. Monk held the door for him and waited while he took smaller and smaller steps, then stopped altogether just inside, staring around with enormous eyes.

Orme looked up from the table where he was writing a report. Clacton drew in his breath, caught Monk's eye, and changed his mind.

"Mr. Scuff has information for us which may be of great value," Monk told Orme. "He will give it to us, of course, but it would be pleasanter over a cup of tea, and cake, if there is any left."

Orme looked at Scuff and saw a wet and shivering child. " Clacton," he said sharply, fishing in his pocket and pulling out a few pence, "go and get us all a nice piece of cake. I'll make the tea."

Scuff took another step inside, then inched over towards the stove.

Two hours later Monk, Scuff, Orme, Kelly, and Jones, the men armed with pistols, descended down the open workings and along the sodden bottom between the high walls of Blind Man's Cutting. As it closed overhead, they lit their lanterns.

Monk glanced at the sides of the tunnel. The old bricks were set in a close, carefully laid curve, now stained and seeping with steady drips and slow-crawling slime. The smell, unmistakably human waste, was thick in the nose and throat. The skitter of rats' feet interrupted the slurp of water down the channel in the center. Otherwise there was no sound except their own feet slipping on the wet stone. No one spoke. Apart from the frail beam from their lanterns, the darkness was absolute. Monk felt panic rising inside him almost uncontrollably. They were buried alive, as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist. He could see nothing but dark, wavering shadows and yellow light on wet walls. The smell was suffocating.

Perhaps their journey was no more than a mile, but it seemed endless until they met a junction of waterways. Scuff hesitated only a moment before turning to the right. He led the way into a narrower tunnel, where they were obliged to stoop in order not to strike the ceiling. The gangers couldn't have been this way recently, because the piled-up sludge beneath their feet was deep and dangerous, catching at them, dragging at their feet, holding them back and sucking them down.

Monk had no idea where they were. They had turned often enough that he had lost all sense of direction. Sounds echoed and were lost; then there was nothing but the steady drip all around them, above, behind, and ahead. It was like endless labyrinths through hell, filled with the odor of decay.

One of the men let out an involuntary cry as a huge rat fell off the wall and splashed into the water only a couple of feet from him.

Another half mile and they emerged into a dry tunnel, where the ceiling was considerably higher. There they met a pair of toshers, roped together for safety. They had long poles in their hands for fishing out valuables-or gripping the sides when caught by a sudden current after a rainstorm. They were dressed in the usual tosher gear: high rubber boots, hat, and harness.

It was Scuff who spoke to them, leaving the River Police in shadows with their lanterns half concealed.

Then they moved on again, probing the darkness with their feeble lights. The thought made Monk's stomach churn and his throat tighten: What would happen if they dropped the lamps? They would never get out of here. One day, in a week, or a month, some tosher would find their bones, picked clean by rats.

The last tosher they had questioned, half a mile back, had said there were people using this old way to get from one part of the city to another. The man they were looking for, whose name no one spoke, was one of them. In the subterranean world there seemed little of either friendship or enmity; it was simply coexistence, with rules of survival. Those who broke them died.

It seemed an age before Scuff finally led them up a ladder. Their feet clanged on the iron rungs. A few yards later they passed a sluice rushing so loudly they could not hear their own voices. Above, in a dry passage leading to a blind end, a group of men and women were sitting beside a fire, the smoke going up through a hole a little distance away and disappearing into utter darkness.

A short whispered conversation followed between Scuff and an old woman.

"Which way, ma?" Scuff asked her, touching his tooth to remind her whom he was referring to.

She shivered and jerked her head to the left. A younger man argued with her, pointing to the right. Finally Orme agreed to follow the youth one way with Kelly and Jones and return if he found nothing. Monk took the other two men and went with Scuff the way the old woman had indicated.

Half an hour later, after more twists and climbs, they emerged into an open cutting, air fresh and cold on their faces.

"She lied," Scuff said bitterly. "Scared, I spect. Daft of-" He stopped short of using the word he had been going to say. "That way." He pointed back where they had come from. At the next branch in the tunnel they divided again, Monk and Scuff going alone down more iron steps and deeper into the bowels of the earth.

Monk stopped, Scuff close beside him. Their lights showed only ten feet ahead, and then there was impenetrable darkness. Now there was no sound at all except the steady drip from the ceiling. Monk's anger had worn off, leaving him cold. He could not blame the old woman. He was shivering with fear himself. Had he ever felt this gut-churning terror before? He could not remember doing so. Surely he would never have forgotten it. It was primeval, woven into one's existence. His skin crawled as if there were insects on it, and he heard every sound magnified. His imagination raced. The river could have been twenty feet away or twenty miles. Was the assassin really somewhere ahead of them, perhaps even waiting? He heard nothing but water, dripping, running, splashing around their feet. This part of the old system was no longer used. The stream was shallow, fed by nothing but rain down through the gutters, but it still smelled of stale human waste. The gangers had not been here for a long time. The piled-up silt of excrement was like stalagmites.

There was a sound ahead. Monk froze. It was not the scratch of rats' feet but the heavier noise of a boot on stone.