MacNeil was starting to panic. They ran past neat little gardens behind well-trimmed hedges, more light falling on to manicured lawns.
Someone shouted, ‘There they are!’ A shot rang out. MacNeil heard the bullet ricocheting off brick somewhere very close by.
Someone else shouted, ‘Don’t shoot, for Chrissake! We’ll be shooting each other.’ There were more feet running now out in the street behind them.
They reached the end of the alley and turned into a riverfront walkway. It was about a hundred yards long. And blocked at each end. They were trapped.
‘Excuse my French,’ Dr Castelli said. ‘But oh, fuck!’
MacNeil peered over the wall, down to the river. The tide was washing in against a couple of yards of mud flat and rock, breaking fluorescent all along the river’s edge.
Dr Castelli looked at him. ‘No,’ she said.
‘No choice,’ MacNeil told her. ‘If they catch us, they’ll shoot us.’
She dropped down first and landed ankle-deep in the mud. He landed beside her and fell to his knees. Mud sucked at his feet as he staggered upright and grabbed her arm, pulling her in flat against the wall.
Voices and torches streamed out along the top of the wall above them. Beams of cold white light panned across the mud inches in front of them and then vanished. ‘They’re not here!’ someone called, and the footsteps immediately receded, running back up the alley towards the road. ‘Search the gardens!’
‘Now,’ MacNeil whispered, and still holding Dr Castelli’s wrist, pulled her after him along the edge of the wall. It was heavy going, through mud reluctant to let each footstep go. And then they reached a rocky outcrop and it became easier. The wall curved away to their right, apartments overhanging the retaining wall above them. There were dozens of lights now, shining out from windows across the water. It seemed as if everyone on this southern tip of the Isle of Dogs was awake. And looking for them. They clambered over rocks and boulders and the jetsam washed up by the tides, the refuse of a society careless with its world, until ahead of them they saw the dark shape of the old Felstead Wharf extending into the water.
They reached the safety of the deep shadow it cast along the riverbank, and found steps leading up. On the wharf itself, they felt exposed again. They could hear voices somewhere beyond the apartment blocks. Windows everywhere were filled with light. On the far side of the wharf, more steps led down to a small jetty. An ancient, tiny, two-person speed boat was tied up there, rising and falling gently on the swell. MacNeil knew it was their only chance of getting off the island.
Dr Castelli ran after him down the steps, and MacNeil jumped into the boat, sending it rocking dangerously. He ripped off the dash and looked at the bewildering spaghetti of coloured wiring that he had exposed. This was something he ought to know how to do. But he’d always been on the right side of the law. There had to be a logic to it, though, and he tried following the wires back to the ignition lock.
Dr Castelli pushed him out of the way. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Let me. Where I came from we used to steal cars for fun on a Saturday night.’
She quickly established the circuit logic and ripped out a green and then a red wire, exposing their frayed, silver ends. She touched them together and the motor coughed and died. ‘Shit,’ she said. It wouldn’t take many failed attempts to attract the whole of the island to the wharf.
MacNeil reached across her and pulled out the choke. ‘Try again,’ he said.
This time the engine fired and caught. She twisted the ends of the wires expertly together, establishing permanent contact, and then let him in behind the wheel. The motor was sluggish, and MacNeil pushed the choke in a touch, before gunning it hard. Diesel smoke and the smell of it filled the air.
‘Untie her!’ he shouted, and the doctor leaned over to slip the loop of tethering rope over the top of its wooden capstan. MacNeil engaged the gear, grabbed the wheel and pulled back on the throttle. The front of the boat lifted dramatically as the water behind them churned white, and they slewed out from the shadow of the wharf into the main drag of the river.
Behind them, they heard voices raised in anger, and then several shots. MacNeil ducked instinctively, and saw tiny plumes of white raised from the Thames by bullets aimed in their direction. He wondered why they were bothering. If he and the doctor had brought the flu with them, then it was too late now anyway.
He sent the boat weaving towards the far bank, out of range of the rifles on the island, and turned and called back to the doctor, ‘We’ll be quicker to take the boat all the way. There’s a pier at the Eye.’ She nodded, and as they reached the South Bank, he turned north to traverse the loop of the river, keeping his distance from the Isle of Dogs which was waking up in fear across the water.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I
The lights of the city spread out below them, an irregular hotchpotch of jumbled boroughs crowding one on top of the other around the serpentining eastward progress of the Thames. The Houses of Parliament, the controversial Portcullis House, the concrete iceberg that was the Ministry of Defence — two-thirds of it hidden underground. Away to their right, the lights of St. Thomas’ Hospital, and beyond it the building site in Archbishop’s Park, where Choy’s bones had been uncovered just twenty-four hours earlier, setting in train the unpredictable sequence of events which had led inexorably to this. Work had begun again after a short overnight break, and workers moved around like tiny orange ants beneath the arc lights. Too far away to help. Even if they were to look up towards the wheel, it was unlit, and moving too slowly to attract attention.
Amy watched as the capsule which had been above them throughout their ascent reached its apex and started dipping away beneath them. Their pod sat proud now on the very top of this giant wheel, cold pre-dawn air whipping around its open doors. It whistled through all the spokes, whining amongst the cables, almost as if it were alive and giving voice to her fear.
With a slight jerk, the wheel came to a standstill, and the pod rocked gently upon its axis. They were as high as they could go. Amy couldn’t look directly down. It made her giddy and turned her stomach. She glanced across the pod towards Pinkie. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the glass, and seemed semi-comatose. If there had been a moment when an able-bodied person might have overpowered him, it would have been now. But Amy was powerless to do anything. And as the pod came to a stop, Pinkie seemed to revive. He got back to his feet with difficulty, leaving a pool of serum on the floor, and shuffled across the pod to the door. He leaned out and looked down, and she heard his breath crackling in his ruined airways as he sucked in the cold air. He turned back and leaned his gun against the wall, and then with great difficulty began dragging Tom towards the opening.
It took Amy a moment to realise what it was he was going to do. ‘Don’t!’ she called. ‘Please. He’s dead. He deserves better than that.’
Pinkie looked up and held her eye for a moment. They seemed strangely sad, his eyes, full of a watery melancholy. And then he returned to his task, dragging the body to the very lip of the door. He stood up, fighting for breath, and tipped the body over with his foot. Tom fell silently out into the night, striking the superstructure of the wheel, before spinning off out of sight into darkness.
Pinkie retrieved his gun and straightened himself against the glass wall to the left of the door. Amy looked at him with hate and revulsion in her heart. ‘I hope you rot in hell.’
Pinkie tried to speak. But nothing would come, except for a bubbling noise in his throat. He was fading fast.