Bram Ash moved with the heavy, cautious silence of a veteran hunter tracking a wounded bear through deadfall.
He stepped to the north foundation wall of the cellar. There, an old coal-chute shutter of four-inch cured ash was set into the yellow brick stonework at ground level. The shutter was secured with a heavy wrought-iron drop-bar and fitted with a level watching slit two inches wide, protected by an inside sliding shutter of quarter-inch boiler plate.
Bram eased the iron plate aside with the thumb of his left hand, barely a quarter of an inch, just enough to bring his right eye to the sky-slit.
Outside, the cold bitter salt wind roared down the narrow, three-foot alleyway between the tram shed and the brick wall of the town cooperage. The alley was dark, lightless. Then he paved with broken granite sets slick with frozen lye runoff.
Four meters above the ground. There, the brick wall met the overhanging roof edges of the corrugated roof, a single gas-bracket cast a dim, flickering yellow-green glow across the stonework.
Bram’s breath hitched in his throat.
“God above,” Bram whispered, his voice cracking with a cold, hollow revulsion that made his thick neck stiffen. “Look at the pipe.”
