Tricky Fingers wound up the matter: “Big Stak it is, then.”
A rapping noise. SMS London stepped up to a dais and announced the afternoon duties. Gang 4 was in the Separation Shop. The men around Lawrence sagged. A few eyed him with open pity.
Master Sergeant Ratty led them out of the Square towards the three brick chimneys Lawrence had observed in the morning. The path ran straight as a sunbeam through a plantation of row upon row of willow. Many of the rows had been razed back to stumps and new shoots were already reaching out like feelers. Lawrence supposed the plantation yielded fuel for the heating system. The path crossed a tidal creek with sides of steep, slimy mud, overhung with scrub grass and bushes. Such a creek would be lethal at night. A man would have no chance of climbing out after falling into that brown, cold-looking water. The gang queued to get over the creek by a spindly iron-framed bridge. After crossing to the other side, Lawrence observed a winch mechanism. It was a drawbridge. If the prison camp was on an island in this tidal marsh, security would be simply a matter of drawing up the bridges every evening.
He started to notice a foul smell, of stale toilet and rotten meat. Ahead, steam and brown smoke lifted in lazy coils against the clear sky. The air was hot, the last insects of the season roared all around. A long building emerged over the tops of the mass of willow. It was built of brick, with a corrugated steel roof, neatly whitewashed, just minor smudges of rust around the bolts. It was clear the building was an heirloom of the Public Era. Such perfectly neat brickwork was not found on utilitarian buildings nowadays, while corrugated sheet metal was simply a luxury. It was not that the Public Era had failed to bequeath a vast heritage of sheet metal, on the contrary, the sheet metal in their beloved motor cars alone could have covered half the landscape. The problem was that most of it rotted to dust within a decade of the Glorious Resolution. Lawrence could see no hints of the original purpose of this building. It did remind him of a hanger for an airport of the Public Era—he had seen pictures in history books. In those days, public aircraft came down on land rather than on water, making use of expanses of marble-smooth concrete so that they could roll about on tiny little wheels like the castors of furniture. Any such airport would have been connected into the vast public highway network. If so, his service on the fens did not leave him hopeful. Most of the Public Era roads had been consumed by the marshes.
By the side of the building the stench was thick, cutting down the back of the throat. Ugly Toes saw Lawrence scowling in disgust.
“This is the sweet side of the wall,” he said.
Ratty stepped forward and addressed the gang, his sharp nose high like a sniffing rat.
“You were under-performance on your last shift in the Separation Shop. That kind of thing gets noticed in the wrong places. Work together and get the whole job done. That is all.”
Ugly Toes stepped close to Lawrence.
“Stay by me, Big Stak. When you throw up, make sure you don’t spoil the product, or the whole gang will get extra parade. You understand?”
Lawrence nodded and followed Ugly Toes through the doorway. After the blazing sunlight, he was at first blind, immersed in stench, able to see only the skylights high above as if he were a diver looking up at the surface. He was smothered by an overpowering atmosphere of decay, which dragged out of him a wretch. Ugly Toes spun him towards a drain in the floor. Through sheer will power, he forced his outraged reflexes to come to order.
“Follow me,” Ugly Toes said.
He strode off, shouting at his section to get started fast, time was passing. He led the section towards one end of the shed. The area was furnished with rows of tables of spanking clean stainless-steel. Each was like a shallow bath, contoured to a drain hole in the centre. Lawrence had only ever seen such tables in hospitals. On each lay a hammer, chisel and two dagger-like knives, all very clean. Beyond the tables, a long black curtain stretched across the end wall of the shed. The gang flowed up to the black curtain and pulled it open to expose a jam of carts piled high with dead bodies. These were the carts they had filled at the Tidal Basin during the morning shift. Ugly Toes gathered a group around the shafts of one of the carts. Top heavy with load, each cart amounted to more than a tonne that would catapult a whole team into the air should it overbalance to the rear. Chanting in rhythm, they levered the cart into motion and hauled it out. A couple of value scrambled up on the load and began shoving bodies down onto the tables. Hands grabbed at clothing, unwinding robes, pulling down pants, throwing them all to the floor where other value collected them in wooden barrows and wheeled them away. Everybody melded their effort to fit the work of the team.
The work of separation began.
Now, Lawrence was of hardened character. He had seen human bodies literally torn apart by multi-barrelled brass-munchers. He had shot bandits in the face at point-blank range. During countless journeys on the public drains, he had seen heaps of dead surplus fought over by dogs and vultures. He was not easily shocked.
At first he could not even believe what was happening on the tables. He could not bear
