Jane pushed by him into the corridor. All of the cells were locked. Dead men sat or lay inside them. There were claw marks on the walls, teeth marks on the bars. Most of these men had starved to death, their cries for help having gone unheard. Still nobody had found the keys to release them, to give them a burial, or cover their faces at least.
Jane’s boots rang out on the metal walkways. In the office at the front of the building he found Gerber, Simmonds and Fielding sitting around a table playing cards. Ombre. Gerber versus the others.
‘Hi,’ Gerber said and lifted a hand. He was a man of around sixty who had once been very large. He kept his hair clipped short and oiled, and did the best he could to keep his facial hair in check.
‘I saw a Skinner outside,’ Jane said. ‘Body, too.’
‘Loner?’ asked Simmonds. Simmonds was in her forties. She had large eyes that gave her the look of a St Bernard, always sad, expecting admonishment.
‘Yes. Just outside here. Just by the railway bridge.’
‘Gone now, though, yes?’ Fielding still hadn’t looked up to acknowledge Jane’s presence. He fiddled with the fan of cards, getting them in a neat line under his fingers. Then he’d tap them together and fan them out again.
‘Yes.’
‘So?’
‘So I thought you should know we’ve got fucking Skinners on the doorstep of the base.’
‘Base changes site tomorrow,’ Fielding said, handing him an envelope: this week’s cipher.
‘Time enough to have new holes eaten into your arse,’ Jane said. Fielding wound him up like a cheap watch.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Fielding said. ‘And anyway, we could be sitting pretty before too long.’
His phrases. Jane could hit him sometimes. They were all emaciated; hunger was dragging them down. But Fielding had this optimism that made it all sound as though it was little more than a rainy day. It would blow over soon. It would all come out in the wash.
Jane wanted to eat. He had squirrelled away maybe a week’s worth of tins for himself, Becky and Aidan by going without for a whole day, once in a while. It left him perilously close to fainting, and he knew that if he did that he would die – food for the Skinners. Or maybe someone else. He hadn’t thought that way at all before, not even in the most desperate moments when he could feel his own famished body feeding off itself. It seemed a taboo too far. He would never do it himself. But then there had been a meeting among the Shaded, or some supposed faction of theirs. Hollow faces sitting around a table. Steepled fingers. Furrowed brows. Chins stroked as they debated whether to enforce euthanasia on those that were draining supplies but not giving anything back to the community. The mentally handicapped. The lame. Babies. There was calm talk of what to do with the bodies. There was mention of recipes.
Jane had not been there for the meeting, and rumour was as slippery as ever, more so now, so he wasn’t sure what to believe. But he had to entertain the possibility. You keep the most dangerous option in view and it was one more safety measure, another peeled eye to keep you whole.
‘What is it?’ Jane asked. He hated having to probe and pry for information. Fielding was no further up the chain of command. There was no chain of command. ‘One of the gardens suddenly full of shoots?’
‘Would that it was. No, this is unsubstantiated…’ Jane felt the flare of excitement dimming already. More rumour. ‘… But there have been enough mentions, from disparate sources, to give it credence. Or at last make it a concern that deserves independent exploration.’
It was like listening to a formal speech. He’d never really talked to Fielding about his background but Jane wagered there’d been some ambition towards public office there.
‘What is it?’ he said again, patiently.
Fielding stopped fanning cards and blinked. In that moment his gaze switched from the suits to Jane’s eyes. Very theatrical, Jane thought. Very Fielding. ‘Have you ever heard of the raft?’
‘The raft? No. What about it?’
Fielding shrugged. ‘Conjecture, at the moment. But a picture is building up. Some say it’s a military op. Some refer to a ragtag group of engineers, architects, carpenters and metalworkers all pooling resources. But whatever, pretty much every report talks of a floating sanctuary being constructed off the Kentish coast. Self-sufficient. Currently anchored but with a crude propulsion system. Sheltered from the elements. And, um, capable of transporting a hundred people.’
‘A hundred?’ Jane spluttered. ‘On a raft? Get some grub down you, Alex. You’re delusional.’
‘It’s what we’ve heard.’
‘Well, it’s what I’ve heard too, now, and I think it’s bollocks.’
‘We have a duty to check it out.’
‘Right. Is this the same duty we have to follow the rainbow to its end, or put a tail on someone who may or may not be a leprechaun?’
‘We’ve got men on it right now. There’s a reconnaissance team on its way to Kent. Another doing the rounds here, collecting evidence.’
‘Evidence? Hearsay, you mean.’
‘We’re trying to ascertain where the rumours are originating.’
‘And then what? Punish the kid who’s been making this stuff up?’
‘It might be true. And even if it isn’t, it’s a good idea. We’ve got the manpower and the smarts. We need to be more proactive, Richard. We’re getting overrun.’
Gerber and Simmonds had quietly placed their cards on the table and removed themselves from the room. People tended not to chip in when Fielding was in full flow.
‘We have options open to us here,’ Jane countered. ‘We have secure bases all across the capital. We know the zones where the Skinners tend to congregate. Surely, once they discover that this place is not the free buffet they thought it was they’ll move on.’
‘Secure bases, you say?’ Fielding mugged, one eyebrow raising. Jane felt like an opposition politician who has let slip a crucial piece of information. He felt skewered. ‘Let me show you something.’ He led the way to what had once been the prison governor’s office. Any decoration – bookshelves, paintings, framed certificates – had been removed. The floors and walls displayed a series of pale parallelograms where things had once been. There was a map of London spread out on the floor, anchored at each corner by a shoe. Much of the centre of it had been whited out with Tipp-Ex.
‘Our main base at Elephant and Castle was attacked last week,’ Fielding said. ‘We’ve moved out. Burned it down. Their net is closing, Richard. We’re vastly outnumbered.’
‘And the answer to that is to play cards?’
Fielding did not look up from the map. He sighed. He was a big man, or had been once. Everyone was a shade now, a blueprint of what once was. ‘I just finished a twelve-hour shift burning dead bodies and scouring bad zones in south Tottenham. I watched Alan Poole get trapped in a loop of fire of his own making. Burned right through the oxygen hose on the tank on his back. We pulled him out – he’d been breathing fire for twenty seconds. He’s going to die. At the moment Doctor Sinclair is making a decision as to whether to let that happen without painkillers, as we really can’t spare them. Go down and have a listen to Poole breathing and then tell me what I should do to take my mind off things instead of playing cards.’
Jane chewed at his resentment. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Forget it.’ Now Fielding raised his head, and there was spice in his eyes as he regarded Jane. ‘What have you been doing?’
Spoken as if he was in charge. The implicit needle: Whatever it is can’t be as important as what I’ve been up to. Jane felt disgust rising. The best part of sixty million people dead and here they were playing office bitches.