Mind the Gap

chapter Ten

finding cruel patterns

Jazz and Stevie Sharpe were sitting on an old bench beneath an oak tree in Willow Square. They

listened to the bustling sounds of rush hour around them, watched people in suits march briskly through the

small park, and purposely did not stare too long at number 23. They pretended to be young lovers, yet

though they sat close, Stevie's shoulder just avoided touching Jazz's, and his thigh was a whisker away



from com-ing into contact with hers. He sat with his arm splayed casu-ally along the back of the bench, but

his hand did not rest on her shoulder. She wished he would touch her, but it was the last thing she was going

to ask.

She turned to him and he smiled, but she knew that he was merely keeping up appearances.

The previous morning, Hattie had sat on the other side of the small park reading a trashy paperback

novel. The morning before that, Gob and Switch had been here, playing Frisbee with a stray dog they had

befriended. They'd fed it well before bringing it here, bought it a collar, brushed its matted fur, and made up

a name that it seemed to like. They said they'd had a lot of fun, and the target had even lobbed the Frisbee

back at them when it sailed out of the park and across the residential street. Harry had been concerned

about that, but Gob had assured him that the target had not made them. Too busy talking into thin air,

he'd said. Thing plugged in 'is ear. Looked like someone out of Star Trek.

"So what now?" Jazz said. She'd been plucking up the courage to ask for several minutes, but Stevie

shot her down.

"He comes out and goes to work the same time as before, and the nick's on."

Jazz sighed. "Don't mean here, this. I mean..." Us, she wanted to say But that sounded so intimate,

and she was not sure there was any intimacy present in Stevie Sharpe. There really was no reason for her

to think of her and Stevie as an us. But sometimes she got the feeling that he wouldn't have minded so

much, and she couldn't deny that he intrigued her.

Stevie shifted on the bench. His hand dropped on her shoulder, light as a bird's touch, and she felt the

warmth of his leg against hers. Was that an answer? she wondered. She shook her head slightly and

smiled ruefully. She didn't want to play games like this.

Jazz stood and stretched, walking a few paces before squatting down and picking some daisies. It

was hot already, even though it was barely nine in the morning. For the first time since going underground, it

felt truly good to be out again. This was a wealthy street, the houses far apart and sep-arated by this small

park, and the windows she could see were too far away to bother her. She did not feel spied upon, did not

feel watched, and the sky above her was almost light enough to lift her away.

She picked another flower and remembered the daisy chains her mother used to make. When she

was a little girl, she'd thought they were magical, and when her mother showed her how they were done,

she remembered being disappointed.

Maybe she'd make one for Stevie.

"Jazz," Stevie said.

She glanced back at him. He was looking at her with lazy, lidded eyes, trying to affect a casualness

that neither of them felt. "Is he out?" Jazz asked.

"Front door's open; he's gone back in to set the alarm."

"Same again," she said. The target had done the same yesterday and the same the day before. Three

days in a row meant routine. And routine meant an easy score.

Jazz looked back at the ground before her, picked an-other daisy, and stood. As she turned around,

keeping her head down, she lifted her eyes to glance across the street. The house's facade was tall and

imposing, three stories high with four windows on each floor, an attic window in the steeply sloping roof,

and plant pots on balconies outside the first- and second-floor windows. The pots held the dried re-mains of

last summer's flowers. There was a large gate in the cast-iron fence around the small garden and a set of

steps up to the front door. Beside these steps, in the shadows, hid a smaller gate that must lead down to a

basement access. The light stonework was darkened from years of exhaust fumes and London smog, and

Jazz wondered at someone who could live somewhere so opulent without caring about its appearance.

The front door stood open, and she saw the shadow of the owner approaching from inside. He'd set

the alarm, and now he had however long the delay lasted to close and lock the front door.

Jazz heard Stevie counting very quietly beside her.

Something about the man caught Jazz's attention. She should be turning away from him, she knew

that —they'd seen enough to know he had his set routines—but as he emerged backward from the house

and slammed the front door closed, she realized what had grabbed her.

He had a ponytail.

Plenty of people have ponytails, she thought. Her heart stut-tered. The first time she'd met the

ponytailed Uncle, he'd said to her, Hello, little Jazz, you can call me Mort. She never had. When they

visited her mother, she always avoided speak-ing to them, if at all possible. But over the past few weeks,

when she thought back to that fateful day, she'd often won-dered whether he had been joking with her even

then. Playing with her. Giving her a clue as to how their relation-ship would inevitably end.

You can call me Mort.



"What is it?" Stevie whispered.

She'd dropped the daisies and grabbed Stevie's upper arms, fingers digging in. She heard his sharp

intake of breath, but she could not loosen her fists.

Turn away, she thought. If it's him, and he glances across here and sees us, it's all over. Cadge

died because those people knew me. I can't have Stevie on my conscience as well.

"Jazz?" Stevie said. "You're hurting, and you're going to draw attention."

The man dug his car keys from his pocket.

Black suit, black sunglasses, like a reject from Reservoir Dogs, and it should look ridiculous,

but it doesn't because I know how dan-gerous these people are.

"Jazz, for f*ck's sake."

The man began to turn around, and when Jazz saw his profile she dipped her head, turned, and buried

her face against Stevie's neck. She gasped, breathed in his scent, and managed to ease her hold on his

biceps.

Uncle Mort, she thought, and any thoughts of revenge or retribution were swallowed by a moment

of outright terror.

"Stevie," she whispered. She put her arms around his waist and held him tight, and Stevie lowered his

own face against her neck and hugged her as well.

"Hey," he said. She felt his warm breath against her ear, and it gave her some comfort. He was no

longer acting the part but playing it for real, and she hoped that later he did not suspect she had put this on.

She wasn't yet sure what she was going to tell him —her mind was a muddle—but she grabbed this

moment as hard as she was grabbing Stevie Sharpe. She felt his dark hair mingling with hers. She let out a

sob, one shuddering exhalation that shook her body.

Jazz raised her head, careful not to turn around. Stevie looked up as well. They were so close that

she could not focus on his eyes.

"Has he gone?" she asked.

"Just getting into his Porsche."

"Porsche," she said. "Tacky. Yeah, tacky suits him, I guess."

"You know this guy?"

Jazz shook her head. "Not yet. Tell me when he's gone. And I mean away, completely out of the

square."

She heard the motor start behind her. A horn beeped and another beeped back, and she sensed

Stevie's expressions change as he smiled.

"He can't drive for shit," he said.

Jazz giggled, and it felt good. There was suddenly some-thing uniquely thrilling about being here,

thirty yards away from a man who had probably spent weeks looking for her and who would likely kill her if

they ever crossed paths. If she'd been on her own it would have been different, but al-though she knew

Stevie would be in danger as well, they were accomplices in this deceit. Tires screeched, and Mort drove

away from the girl the Uncles wanted most.

"He's gone," Stevie said. "We should go too. But we're not going straight back down."

"We're not?" Jazz asked. But she already knew that. Stevie still had not let go of her waist.

Stevie shook his head. "I know a place where we can talk."

They left the square as they had entered an hour before, holding hands and smiling. The smile still felt

false, but now Jazz was sure the holding of hands had meaning. It was hot, her palm was sweaty, but she

did not want to let go.



****

Music blasted from the speakers at about a million decibels, so loud that Jazz felt her stomach and

chest rippling in time with the beat. It produced a wall of noise she thought she could probably climb. She

didn't know who the band was, but the song screamed about rock and roll, drinking, and doing the horizontal

dance. At least two of the three were actively being pursued in here.

Though it was still early morning, the cafe was packed. The front portion of the shop consisted of a

secondhand record-and-CD dealership, but at the back there was a sur-prisingly well-appointed coffee

counter selling coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and a selection of cakes and snacks. A few peo-ple had brought

their potential purchases here to mull them over while having a drink, but most of the dozen tables were

taken by obvious regulars. They sprawled casually across the chairs, drinking something from large mugs

that most defi-nitely did not resemble coffee. It did not steam, for a start.

But though the music was loud and the clientele all seemed to know one another, Jazz felt completely

comfort-able. Part of it was the anonymity, she guessed, but she also felt as though this was somewhere



people came to get lost. Everyone here was doing their own thing, laughing and talk-ing with friends of a

similar bent, and there was no hint of tension or exclusivity in the air. It certainly was not the sort of place

where shoppers popped in for a quiet coffee before their cab home.

"I thought you said we'd come here to talk!" Jazz said into Stevie's ear.

He smiled and shrugged, and leaned close to her. "At least we won't be overheard."

They were both drinking coffee, and Stevie had bought a selection of small cakes, which sat on a

plate before them. Jazz didn't feel at all hungry, but she felt obliged to take a nibble. She chose a caramel

shortbread and it was gorgeous, obvi-ously homemade, rich, and sweet. She smiled in appreciation.

"So he was one of the guys who murdered your mum?" Stevie asked.

Jazz stopped chewing and felt instantly queasy. She lowered the cake and closed her eyes, nodding

slowly. "How did you know?"

"Pretty obvious," Stevie said. "Your reaction. You were terrified."

"He was there," she said. "The day I went home and found Mum... He was there. In my room,

watching for me."

Stevie frowned and drank more coffee. He looked around the cafe, up at the concert posters on the

walls, down at the scratched table —anywhere but at her.

"And now we're going to do his house," she said.

"We are?" He looked at her, the expression of surprise honest and open.

"Bloody right we are!"

"But... you said they were still looking for you. You were scared to come up here for the first few

weeks."

Jazz nodded. Yes, he's right. I was scared and I still am. But there's something more here,

something far beyond what I know.

"And now you want to go and do his house?"

"Harry chose the place," Jazz said. "It's got something to do with Mayor Bromwell, and he's the one

responsible for Cadge, so there's no way I'll pull out. Not now. And as Harry keeps telling me, without me it

can't be done."

Stevie smiled at that, nodded. "He's not far wrong. You're f*cking good."

At Stevie's words, Jazz felt a flush of pride —and the heat of something else entirely. Without

making it too obvious, she picked up another cake and slid sideways as she started eating, leaning against

Stevie. He did not move away. She took that as a good sign.

"Are we going to tell Harry?" Stevie asked.

"No. No need for him to know." And I want to get inside, she thought. She was confused, she

couldn't find the big pic-ture, but there was something behind and beyond all this that connected things.

Don't believe in chance, her mum had always told her. Don't trust in coincidences. They do exist, but

they're best held in suspicion. Things happen for a reason, life has a pattern, and sometimes that

pattern is cruel. So watch out, and see meaning in everything.

"What if you're caught?" Stevie asked. His concern was very real, even though he managed to

maintain his cool ex-pression, and Jazz felt so grateful for that. Cadge's death had done something to all of

them; it wasn't weakness but a closer tie among the kingdom members that put more emphasis on danger.

With one of their number killed, everyone else had realized how fraught their existence really was.

"I won't be," Jazz said. "I can do this."

Stevie nodded, frowning.

"Don't tell Harry," she said. "Please. Afterward I'll tell him, talk to him. Ask him what's going on. But

if you tell him now, he'll stop what's happening, and..."

"And there's stuff you need to know," Stevie said.

Jazz nodded. Yeah, she thought. And you understand that, don't you?

"You ever think about later?" she asked.

"Later?"

"The future, I mean. I suppose it's all right for Harry. He's on in years, isn't he? But d'you really think

you'll spend your whole life underground?"

Stevie frowned at that, but then his expression softened. "We're not all hiding from killers, Jazz, but

we're all hiding from something. Not sayin' I haven't thought about it, though. I owe Harry a lot. For now

that's enough. But I don't think I'll be down there forever, no. Got to make a life, haven't I?"

As though realizing he'd said too much, his gaze sharp-ened and he studied her. "You won't say

nothing, will you?"

Jazz shook her head. "Course not."



He hesitated a moment, and she had the feeling he was weighing whether or not he could really trust

her. Then he nodded, smiling at her in a way that gave her a pleasant squirm.

They finished their coffee and cakes without saying any-thing more, and when they left, nobody

turned to watch them go. Outside, they split up, both of them heading back below-ground. Stevie left Jazz

and headed for an alternate station. He seemed reticent about letting her travel on her own, but she nodded

and smiled and said that she'd be fine. In truth she'd have preferred if he had traveled with her, but Harry

would have questions about that, because he drummed cau-tion into them all the time. And right now she

didn't want Harry suspicious.

Besides, he was still on the mend. She didn't want him to worry. The mayor's men had done a good

job on him, broken several ribs and cracked his wrist. For a day or two after the attack, he'd been coughing

up blood, though only Hattie, Stevie, and Jazz had known about it. A rib had scraped his lung, he said, and

however much they begged, he refused to go aboveground to find a doctor. It was almost as if, once he

depended on someone other than himself again, his time down here would be finished.

Jazz descended out of the sunlight and into the station. She moved far along the platform and waited

beside one of the chocolate vending machines that no one ever seemed to use, and when the train arrived

she dashed on first. She was lucky to find a seat, and she stared down at her shoes as they rattled away

into the tunnels.

As she traveled, she thought about what she had seen. Had that really been Mort? She had already

decided it was, but there was always the possibility that she'd been mistaken. Her mother's words about

coincidence and chance came back to her, but her mother was dead, and it was up to Jazz now to translate

events. If it was Mort, then he was connected to Mayor Bromwell somehow, and that meant the Uncles

were as well. What that meant... she was not sure. But Harry had chosen this house —the third posh place

they'd have hit in as many weeks—for a reason: revenge.

Maybe the time had come to double up on vengeance.

When she got off the train, she stood on the platform for a minute, fumbling in her pockets for

change and pretending to use the chocolate machine. When the platform was empty, she dashed to the end,

slipped over its edge, and headed into the tunnel.

The first time she'd come this way after the United Kingdom had moved, the first thirty yards had

scared the crap out of her. She was very conscious of the train tracks close to her left foot, and she knew

that if a train came along she'd be done for. Even if there was just room for her to press against the wall,

the suction of the train's passing would pull her into it, and she'd be battered between train and wall before

being deposited on the tracks. Maybe people would see her, maybe they wouldn't, but either way they'd

never reach her before the next train came along to finish her off.

Timing, Switch had said. He never spoke much, and after almost three months this was the first

thing he'd said directly to Jazz. Off the train, down, thirty yards to the door. Find it, get in, you're

okay. Miss it, you're f*cked. He'd stared at her, grubby face revealed by ghostly torchlight. Don't miss it.



She walked quickly, running her right hand along the wall and counting her steps. She heard a sound

in the distance, a screech and squeal, and for a second she feared it was the Hour of Screams coming in

again. But then she remembered how close she was to the surface. The Hour only swept through the

lower, more remote levels. Places, Marco had told her, where living people shouldn't be.

She found the steel hatch, grabbed its edge, and pulled. Once through the gap in the wall, she closed

the hatch and breathed out.

Away from the station, away from the line, she still had a long way to go. Their new home was

deeper than before. She only hoped it would be safer.

The clank of metal doors, the dust of abandoned tunnels, the flicker of uncertain lights, scampering

rats and the tickle of spiders, damp walls and leaking domed brick ceilings —all were becoming familiar to

Jazz. Worst were the cockroaches, which always seemed to scuttle just at the edges of any light. Once

she'd stepped into a nest of them; she'd become more careful since. The United Kingdom kept several

torches hid-den in an alcove close to the surface, and she took one now and made her way back down to

their new shelter. It had been built for royalty, and so they'd started calling it the Palace.

As long as Jazz didn't have to call it home, any name was fine with her.

The Palace was more comfortable than Deep Level Shelter 7-K, and sometimes when the air was

right they could hear faint, unidentifiable music coming in from somewhere high above, down pipes perhaps,

or through a fault in the ground.

But she was distracting herself. She was almost there, and she knew that soon she would have to

pass the wall.



It wasn't that it spooked her. Not really. But she was still getting used to the Underground, the nooks

and crannies, and the idea of miles of abandoned tunnels and places never seen by anyone alive. The

United Kingdom had made some of these places their homes and haunting grounds, and there were plenty

of other people living under London, the home-less and disenfranchised and mad. They kept away from

oth-ers as much as possible, keeping their own location secret to avoid the theft of food or supplies. When

Jazz passed others in the Underground, she usually ignored them the way Harry had taught her, but

sometimes she couldn't help giving a smile or a wave or a quick hello, just to let those lost people know

there were those who hadn't forgotten them, who still saw them and acknowledged their existence.

They were harmless, mostly. But Harry often alluded to other, less normal inhabitants beneath the

city. One night around a fire he'd told them all the story about a tribe of peo-ple who had lived down here

since the 1800s, and how their descendants were born down here and had never seen day-light. Hear a

scratch, he'd said, see a face at the bottom of some un-plumbed pit, and it's likely one of them. She'd

asked him afterward whether he'd said it to scare them, and he'd paused for a while, looking at her. Then

he'd smiled and nodded. Of course, Jazz girl, he'd said.

She'd believed him then because she needed to, but now she was not so sure.

She walked on, along a narrow access tunnel between a subterranean room and a shaft that housed

an old metal lad-der. She checked the shaft before descending —

(no pale face down there staring up with milky, sightless eyes)

—and then carefully lowered herself down.

And here it was. The bottom of the shaft widened in a bell shape, and its base was a dozen steps

across. One quarter of it opened onto an old brick-lined cavern, its use long since lost to time. But opposite

this opening was the bricked-in doorway.

Something back there, Jazz thought. Something not dead. It was the same notion she'd had the

very first time they'd come this way, all of them following Harry in those painful, con-fused hours after

giving Cadge to the river. Then she'd not had time to pause but had turned away from the old opening and

walked on. Now, as every time since, she stopped to look.

She remembered what Cadge had said about that other metal door that had held her fascination.

Never know what you 're gonna find behind a door down here. Well, once there had been a doorway

here, and somebody had seen fit to brick it up. They had brought all those materials down here —bricks,

sand, cement—and worked in these cramped, uncomfortable conditions to fill the opening perfectly.

Jazz felt as if she could walk straight through the bricks. She tried, but they were solid and damp.

Something scurried away up the wall, its many-limbed escape scratching at her hearing.

She turned her back on the wall and walked away. It wasn't easy. Maybe it was just because it was

a mystery, and sometimes mysteries can exert a powerful influence.

Jazz went on, leaving that strange place behind.

Ten minutes later she found the room of alcoves. It was a long, thin room, the ceiling blank concrete

instead of the usual vaulted brick, and along the wall to her left were five al-coves. The door she wanted

—the one that led to the back en-trance of the Palace—was in the middle one.

It was open, of course. Harry and the others were ex-pecting her and Stevie, eager to hear their

report. If all was good —and she would make sure it was—there was a job for them to pull in less than

twenty-four hours.

Harry said the Palace was an old nuclear shelter from the 1960s. There was a big steel door at the

entrance that was wedged open, completely immovable. Inside were a series of rooms, a dozen in total, set

in two levels around a round cen-tral space, which served as their main gathering area. The largest of these

rooms was filled with a hundred shelves of inedible tinned and dried food. They'd opened a few of the tins

out of curiosity and found a powdery substance inside, which perhaps had once been soup or beef stew or

Spam. They hadn't tried any more.

Jazz wasn't convinced. Search though they had, they had not found any sign of a plant room to draw

in or process fresh air. The atmosphere down here was heavy and damp at best, but surely in a nuclear war

they'd rely on more than the depth of this place to ensure the air was uncontaminated? Neither was there a

control or communications center, which she'd seen in documentaries about the shelters built by the

govern-ment through the late fifties and sixties. She'd asked her mum about who would go down there if

there was a war.

The government, she'd said. Politicians, their assistants, sol-diers to guard them, doctors to

look after them. And the royals.

Lucky them, Jazz had said.

Her mother, in one of her darker but more humorous mo-ments, had laughed out loud and changed



channels to The Simpsons. Yes, lucky them! Survive Armageddon, and when they come out there's no

one to rule over, no one to canvass for votes, and no one to print stories about your latest

indiscretion with your secretary!

Maybe it was a shelter of some sort, but Jazz believed it more of a retreat than anything else. It could

have been gov-ernment, could have been private, but whatever the case one thing was sure: it was long

forgotten now.

When she stepped through the rear entrance of the Palace and walked along the corridor into the

central area, Stevie was already there. Damn, he was fast! They locked eyes, she frowned, he shook his

head slightly. Good. He hadn't said a word.

"Jazz girl!" Harry gushed. He stood and came to her, wrapping his wounded arm around her

shoulder. "It's good to see you safe and sound," he said, quieter. "So come and sit with us, have a drink and

a bite, because now that you're back we're all together again. And I've got something to read to you all."

Jazz nodded greetings and took a cup of tea offered by Marco. Hattie brought a plate of sandwiches

and a huge bag of potato chips, and Jazz helped herself to a generous portion. The shock of that morning

and the effort of her descent had made her hungry, and they'd not had time for breakfast.

"So Gob was up early this morning, lifting wallets on Oxford Street, and, bless him, he knows how

much I like to read a paper. He brought down the Times —the only true pa-per for a gentleman, as I'm sure

you all know. And lo and be-hold, at the bottom of page eleven, we get a mention!"

Cadge! Jazz thought. But no, that was more than two weeks ago. His memory was precious, and

she would not want it sullied by some impersonal newspaper report.

Bill tapped his plate with his mug and held his hands out, shoulder up. What is it? Nobody had ever

heard him talk when he was awake. Sleeping, he sometimes cried out words that none of them could quite

make out, as though he spoke in a long-forgotten language. And then only when he had nightmares. Jazz

felt sorry for him, but she also couldn't help finding him a little spooky.

"Patience, Bill!" Harry said. He rustled the paper, trying to pretend it wasn't already open and folded

at the correct page. He coughed several times, made himself comfortable on his chair, and began.

"Bromwell Crisis of Control is the headline. Piers Taylor, a longtime friend and supporter of

London's Mayor Leslie Bromwell, has spoken out against the mayor at a vital point in his campaign

for reelection. Taylor's London home was broken into ten days ago by a gang of professional

thieves, who made away with family jewelry and an undisclosed sum of cash."

"They called us professional!" Hattie said.

"Of course, my girl!" Harry said. "We've got the talented Jazz on our team. There are cat burglars

aplenty, but in just a couple of months she's become a shadow burglar, for sure. Got an aptitude for stealing

and a heart for hiding. Now, listen: In a statement read by his public assistant, Taylor, an in-dustrialist

who made his fortune in oil and diamond mining in South Africa, said, 'Mayor Bromwell's avowed

aim is to clean up London's streets, ridding us of the plague of violent crime and rob-bery that

blights this nation's proud capital. He has been less than efficient in succeeding in this task, which is

self-evident from the number of burglaries and street crimes still reported every day. Even if I had

not been a victim of such a crime, I would be speaking out now, because I believe the mayor is a

man who has been dis-tracted from his path.' Asked by this reporter what the distraction entailed,

Mr. Taylor's assistant refused to comment. Efforts to con-tact Mr. Taylor for an interview have met

with silence, but it is telling that someone once so close to Mayor Bromwell is now speak-ing out

against him. " Harry sat back in his chair, rested his head, and looked at the ceiling. "Ah, my pets, what a

fine vin-tage is revenge."

"Ten days ago," Jazz said. "That was the first house we did."

"The first," Harry said. "The one with the fancy topiary and swimming pool in the garden."

"What about the second?" she asked. "The one we did five days ago?"

"No mention yet." Harry stood and dropped the paper. "But it was well chosen, Jazz. Well chosen by

me."

"And what about the third?" Stevie Sharpe asked. Jazz could have hugged him. One day soon, she

promised herself there and then, she would.

All eyes turned to her.

"Yes, Jazz girl," Harry said. "What about the third?"

"Tomorrow morning," she said. "Easy. But we need to plan."

Harry grinned, bowing to Jazz like a performer at the end of a play. "Then plan we shall."