“I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah,” shrugged Spiderman. He turned away back to the comforts of stiff and Mirror-Face sobbing through his life story one more time.
Lawrence’s fingers touched the far wall of the Yard, where he removed his boots, bound the laces together and slung them over one shoulder. By touch, he glided along the wall until he reached the corner of the Yard and waited just inside the archway that lead out towards the Tidal Basin. Time passed. Lawrence coughed.
“Who is that?” Pezzini muttered from the darkness.
“Lawrence.”
Neither one pulled the other so much as they were both jogging out through the archway.
“Big Stak my perfect princess! Where the bloody hell are you?” The bleary, raucous yell halted them. “Princess, I know you’re out there. Get over here.” It was Tricky Fingers, yelling at the top of his voice. “Princess, get here now, that is an order.”
On a normal night, Lawrence would have lain low, knowing Tricky Fingers was just a coward cum bigmouth with a gutful of stiff. This night he did not have such luxury. If this bloody drunken fool kept ranting, the ultras might call a midnight parade just to piss everybody off.
“Wait here,” murmured Lawrence. “Hold my boots.”
He loped back through the arch, his beauty, the knife sharpened to a fang of steel, gripped in his right hand.
“I’m here, Tricky Fingers.”
“Come closer.”
“Come to me, darling.”
“Get over to me,” Tricky Fingers grunted.
“I’m with someone else.”
“Who?”
“Come and join us.”
Tricky Fingers stepped forward, stumbled, righted himself, trod on his Roman toga and yanked at it, muttering curses. Lawrence knew, consciously and coolly, this man was going to get no more chance than a pig in the slaughterhouse. Tricky Fingers tottered on, unwinding the pink belt to let the front of the toga hang open.
“Where are you, damn you?”
“Tricky Ducky, just another few paces.”
“Stand still, you cock-teasing little bitch.”
Lawrence permitted the hands of Tricky Fingers to reach him and slide over his shoulders. The drunk stood up close, the open flaps of his toga falling to either side of Lawrence’s hips. His prick pressed against Lawrence’s thigh and rotten breath poured forth.
“Ah, Perfect Princess, I always knew your queer side would win. Pretty men are always queer.”
Tricky Fingers escorted him deeper into the darkness, quiet now that he felt victory.
“My friend is over there,” Lawrence said. Despite himself, he could hear a quiver of tension in his voice.
“Who is he?”
Lawrence took a long step and turned, in that sweeping movement slashing under the chin of Tricky Fingers with the force of barging aside a charging man. The blade made a wet ripping. Hotness splashed over Lawrence’s hands and face and he heard it drumming on the front of his overalls. He jumped back. Tricky Fingers collapsed amid a splattering. From the darkness erupted a strangled gargling and a barking cough. Lawrence stooped to finish the job and got kicked in the side of the head. The heel of his right hand drove the knife deep into soft flesh under the sodden toga. He stabbed again and again, through ribs and breastbone, until the knife stuck dead as if embedded in wood and he had to work it to and fro like a pump to extract it.
Dead Tricky Fingers was a bulky load of meat. Lawrence could have sworn the corpse was clawing at the cobbles to thwart his efforts to drag it to the far side of the Yard, where he abandoned it.
“Pezzini, you there?”
“I am here.”
Lawrence groped over to the source of the voice.
“Give me my boots back.”
He slung the laced boots over his shoulder, gripped Pezzini’s wrist and yanked him hard into a long-paced quick march.
“Did you kill him?”
“Of course I bloody killed him.”
They moved in silence, their direction sure from intimacy with the way. Lawrence knew from small ruts and ridges in the path they were nearing the concrete sluice over which Pezzini had led him on Tuesday night. He felt his way towards the sluice. From the concrete footway, he reached down into the muddy shallows to retrieve the first tube. It was the size and proportion of a human arm, being made from one of the sleeves cut off Buttons’ leather jacket. Hell never knew a demon rave and curse as much as Buttons did after the discovery of the mutilation of his jacket into a waistcoat. Lawrence had actually performed the procedure on Friday at lunch time. Bloody dangerous business it had been, first digging up his beauty from the willow plantation in daylight, then rummaging through Buttons’ kit bag whilst other value yattered not ten feet away on the far side of the bunks. Two harsh slices and back to the gang with both sleeves and the knife on his person. Death by neck-shot it would have been had SMS London ordered a strip search. That was a chance he just had to take. He could not win freedom except by jumping impossible chasms again and again.
His hand claimed the second sleeve of water.
“I’ve got them. Take this one.”
The sleeve ends were bound tight with bootlaces, or at least, he hoped they were bound tight and not dribbling. He carried the water tube over one shoulder with his boots whilst gripping Pezzini’s wrist with the other hand and hauling him on.
“You did not have to kill him,” Pezzini said.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“You are a pitiless thug.”
“Shut your precious face.”
The path climbed. They were on the flank of the sea defence, which meant the Tidal Basin was just beyond the crest ahead. Lawrence slowed, padding forward on the balls of his feet, pausing between each pace. He doubted any guards would be on the shore, due to the risk—if only a psychological fear—from the marsh people. All he could hear was
