The Missing

Shaun Connolly, Irish Examiner Political Staff

The process is as delicate as it is sickening, the damaged Tube tunnel 18 metres under the road is reluctant to give up its dead. They thought it was just another mundane journey to the office, or to meet loved ones instead it was the journey to their graves.

Some members of the rescue teams were close to breakdown as they emerged from their grim task, shocked and haunted by what they had witnessed in the darkness below. "I don't know what heaven looks like, but I have just seen hell," one traumatised young policeman said as he staggered from the scenes of devastation on the Piccadilly line between Russell Square and King's Cross where at least 21 people are known to have died.

As if the moment needed any more poignancy, a hastily put together poster was blown along the gutter in the breeze, yards from the cordoned-off entrance to the Tube station.

Written underneath the photograph of a smiling man in a pink shirt was: "Please help us find our friend who is missing since yesterday's bombings. This picture was taken Wednesday night and he would have been wearing the same clothes."

London knew it was living on borrowed time, the terror was creeping ever closer; New York, Instanbul, Madrid, now it had

finally happened here. The idea of a suicide bomber is chilling in itself. However, now it seems those responsible did not die with their victims, but are walking the same streets they brought death and despair to. Poised to strike again.

I didn't think twice about getting a Tube to the bomb sites. But as the sliding doors opened and I stepped into a carriage for the first time since the attacks, my heart turned over. This is how those seemingly banal journeys journeys without end for so many must have began on Thursday. The trains are hot, crowded and claustrophobic at the best of times, the horror those people must have experienced during and after the blasts is unimaginable.

London had emerged shaken but unbowed by the bombings, though subtle changes were apparent. The usual Tube etiquette of don't look at anyone, don't speak to anyone had melted away. Yesterday, those barriers were gone. Eye contact was made, conversations were struck up with strangers about the events of the day before, while all the time the trains filled with a palpable tension where every bag was scrutinised and noted, every face checked with suspicion.

There has been a real sense of dignity about the city in the two days since the blasts. Of course there will be some mindless attacks on random Muslims. England's northern cities, where segregation is now so endemic it resembles a form of self-imposed apartheid, will remain particularly tense for weeks, but London feels more sorrowful than vengeful as it prepares to bury its dead.

London turned in on itself on Thursday, horrified that the very things that make it so exciting the diversity, the fluidity, the openness, had also made it so vulnerable. By yesterday the metropolis had moved on. The Soho streets, their sombreness heightened by the glorious evening sunshine that flooded the near empty pavements on Thursday night, were alive again. It was Friday, it was time to party again, but there was still a tangible nervousness amid the fun.

The wounds were still too raw. The gloom enveloping Russell Square half a mile away in Bloomsbury was still too close. It will be days before the bodies and the scattered parts of bodies resting beneath Russell Square are brought to the surface as the death toll nudges upwards and the hopes for the missing fade.

One of the world's great cities was paralysed by a few men, and perhaps women, who left violence and ruined families in their wake.

Once the No 30 bus exploded in Tavistock Square, eight million people were told to stay where they were as the message went out: "It may not be over."