Chapter 6: The Ladder

"Explain that," Ha-yeon said.

"I can't, in any way you'd believe on the phone."

"Try."

"Come tonight and film the hatch," he said. "If I'm wrong, arrest me."

"If you're wrong, I'll arrest you for wasting an inspector's night."

She hung up.

At 10:45 that night she was waiting for him at the boiler room door.

She had a body camera clipped to her coat and her spear on her back.

"Your inquiry file says you came in this way in 2016," she said. "Nobody else ever has."

"Are you here to arrest me?"

"I'm here to watch a ladder."

They went down into the drain level together with their lamps off.

The walk east went the way it had gone the first time, except that now he knew where every eel would rise.

He killed nine of them before they reached a lamp.

Each one left a stone behind in the water, gray-green and the size of an egg.

The twins fished them out and stuffed their pockets.

At 12:30 Woo-seok stopped the lanterns at the second bend.

"Leave your lamps on the ledge," he told them. "Switched on."

Chil-seong looked at him over his reading glasses.

"Then what do we see by, Fireman?"

"Me."

They set twelve lamps in a row on a brick ledge above the water, glowing down the tunnel.

The eels gathered under the lights.

Woo-seok led the lanterns in the dark along the west wall, one hand each on the shoulder ahead.

Ten years ago he had checked every chute in this building for trapped people.

The old linen chute came down through the ceiling of a side tunnel, a square steel shaft with rivets you could climb.

It had carried towels from the upstairs laundry.

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