lying for a living

Shepherd’s Bush tube station in London is set to close for refurbishment. Transport for London says the improvements are necessary; commuters are griping because the station will be closed for eight months. The station, in the middle of a busy shopping and residential area in west London, can definitely stand a facelift. It may have looked spiffy in the 1920s, but today it’s scuzzy around the edges. Still, I feel nostalgic about the place.

When I was researching Kill Chain, the Husband and I spent several days tromping around London with a tube map and a camera, scoping out settings for the book. We rode the Underground extensively, checking out the layout of stations above and below ground. I don’t want to include spoilers here, so I’ll just say that we did all the things normal tourists do when riding the tube. We checked to see how easy it would be to vault the turnstiles if one were being chased by a psychotic hitwoman, for instance. And whether the escalators lend themselves to being used as a slide, in an emergency. And we investigated where on a tube platform it would be possible to hide, and how to keep from being seen by CCTV, convex mirrors, and the transport police. We worked it all out in detail.

We’re lucky we weren’t arrested, or worse.

Here are a couple of photos I snapped on the expedition. This one was taken from the entrance to Shepherd’s Bush tube station, looking across the green. Seeing the police van reminded me that perhaps I shouldn’t ask my husband to time me as I sprinted down the stairs, wearing a heavy backpack and clutching a small electronic device with a button I kept depressing.

And here’s BBC Television Centre, at White City, one stop up the Central Line from Shepherd’s Bush. It gets a mention in the book. No sign of any journalists… maybe they were all inside walking through raspberry jam.

Sometimes I just love this job.