"Michael Marshall Smith - Missed Connection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Michael Marshall)

steps themselves were liberally strewn with rubbish: cans, wrappers and yellowing newsprint. It seemed hard to
believe that even a particularly festive pre-Christmas evening could have generated this level of debris.
More disconcerting still, the top of the escalator appeared to disappear into darkness. Instead of the familiar
reflected light from the outside тАУ not to mention the lights which normally lined the roof of the ascending tunnel тАУ the
escalator seemed lit only by the area he stood in, this glow fading into complete darkness about two thirds of the way
up the shaft.
Lawson swore with exasperation. Clearly some mishap had befallen the escalator up from the Victoria Line, and the
way was closed. Everyone else had known this, and that was why he been the only person to alight from the Victoria
Line at this station. Perhaps there had been an announcement on the radio.
Where the back stairs for the station start? Not here, clearly. Mind still sluggishly working at the enigma of his
confusing entrance on to the station platform, Lawson peered round, a little surprised that he was still alone. He had a
vague memory of the stairs leading off a corridor somewhere near one of the Northern Line platforms. The irritating
thing was that the people in his carriage who hadn't had the tube-sense to get off here were probably already at Oxford
Circus.
There was nothing for it but to make his way to the Northern Line and get out that way. As he walked, blinking
hard and rubbing his eyes against a faint headache, he looked again at the posters that covered the walls. The posters
seemed to fuel his flu-engendered feeling of dislocation, telling him of drinks he'd never heard of and shows he didn't
realise were on. He'd had no idea that they changed all the posters in a station at once: perhaps it was some new edict.
As he approached the corner which would bring him to the steps down to the Northern Line he listened to the flat
echoes of the noise his heels made, and still he saw no one else walking the tunnels.
He turned the corner on to something so unexpected that he stopped dead in his tracks. In front of him were the
descending steps which he knew led down on to the southbound platform of the Northern Line. But they did not lead
down into the usual shuffling melee of irritable shoppers.
They led down into total darkness.
Lawson was so confused that he unthinkingly looked at his watch, as if checking that night had not fallen without
his realising. To his surprise, his watch wasn't there. Or rather it was, but strapped to his right wrist instead of his left,
breaking the habit of 30 years. He must have been very vague indeed that morning to have done such a thing. It was
only after confirming that it was still early afternoon that he realised how little sense checking the time had made. He
knew what time it was.
He stared down the steps into the darkness, feeling a little perturbed. Why should the platform be dark? What
was going on? He was suddenly glad he had checked his watch, and did so again, feeling he needed confirmation that
he hadn't somehow got completely mixed up. For an instant, everything about being at the station, from arriving at the
far left of the platform through the roped-off escalator to this, seemed altogether odd, a sequence of related events. He
felt only precariously tethered to reality, and also as if there was something that he was missing. Almost as if
Whitehead were hovering just behind him; as though he'd forgotten or misunderstood something important.
Then the rational side of his mind, which was well-developed and used to being dominant, stepped in. For some
reason the Northern Line was shut at this station. To ram that fact home to passengers in passing tubes, they'd turned
the lights off.
Or there was a lighting failure in some parts of the station, or a general electricity problem. Hence the disfunctional
escalator, perhaps.
Either way, it was not worthy of 'holding the front page'. Just a little strange. Lawson remembered what it had
been like when, for a number of years, Stepney Green station had been shut. Passing though the dimly lit station as a
child had given him a similar feeling to the one he had now, of the eeriness of seeing something familiar looking
disused.
But Warren Street was not a disused station, and all that this proved was that he ought to listen to the radio in the
mornings more often. He'd already wasted enough time. What he should do now was find the steps and get out of
this disaster of a tube station. Yes, and compose a letter of complaint to London Underground. It wasn't good
enough, abandoning people in a station that was in this state. Feeling invigorated with a sense of indignation,
Lawson started to descend the steps.
He hadn't realised just how black it would be, just how complete the darkness is underground. By the time he'd