Bumping Uglies

Chapter Twenty Five

The former wharf building was three storeys high and built out of red-brick that had worn and chipped in places. Graffiti tags had been scrawled across the exterior of the ground floor, though even they had faded as if the lack of traffic made it hardly worth the artist's time to replenish the various jagged and stylised forms.

I had crossed the bridge and was inspecting the building up close, Ty by my side.

The wall from waist height down was smeared in places with a vivid green slime-like mould, the growth of which much have been encouraged by the moisture and near-permanent shadow. I prodded it suspiciously, half expecting it to pulsate with alien lifeforce.

"We aren't getting in there," Ty said quietly, pointing out the main door which had been firmly sealed with large plates of steel bolted over the original opening.

"Neither is anyone else," I muttered to myself while inspecting the windows, all of which were broken, barred and too narrow for an adult male to squeeze through.

I walked along the towpath toward the large archway and canal inlet. If that had been originally used for loading and unloading boats, then there must be another entrance under there.

"Satchmo, something isn't right here," Ty warned me, his voice low and urgent.

I raised an eyebrow in response. Ty had never struck me as the superstitious type.

"I feel like we are being dicked..." Ty said by way of explanation. "... Sorry, old Army expression. I mean we are being watched. Messed with..."

"From where?" I asked. "Inside?"

I looked carefully around the basin. There were no obvious hiding places or vantage points. The top floor of the imposing wharf building would be the best, and only viable spot.

"I don't know," Ty said, his pistol suddenly in his hand, "but I feel something."

In my experience, Ty had been coolness personified. I had seen him provoke danger, mete out sudden violence and even kill. I had never seen him like this.

I took him seriously.

The canal inlet ran under the arch for the best part of fifteen metres and was double-wide. It would have allowed for two boats to be loaded nose-to-tail on either side, which must have been quite a sight. The roof of the archway was dotted with openings, some of which housed the ends of wooden chutes, others might once have been equipped with winches to raise and lower goods between the boats below and the warehouse above.

The towpath itself swelled in width, and I could image it full of bustling workers, all flat caps and clogs; heaving barrels, bags and boxes around at all hours of the day and the night.

"Ty, check this out," I called to stop him from peering out of the archway back into the basin, and to join me by a door that I had found, set back into the wall a little way.

There was a familiar sheet of steel affixed to the door itself, but a more careful inspection showed that the heads of the bolts that held the steel tight to the brickwork had been filed off.

My suspicions were confirmed by the faint outline of an arc scraped into the cobblestone floor by the corner of the steel plate as the door had been forced open and closed.

"Knock, knock..." Ty whispered, levering the door open with his left hand, then leading the way inside with the gun in his right.

The interior was near-black and smelled foul and dank. The walls were visibly moist, and the air was wetter than an otter's pocket.

The floor appeared to be comprised of broad wooden boards with over a century of mud and spilled goods hard-impacted into them, and they creaked and groaned under our tread like the tired animatronic skeletons at a fun fair ghost train. Here and there, time and moisture had conspired to create holes in the boarding which looked in many cases to be just the right size to accommodate plunging an unsuspecting foot down into the void below.