Lawrence stood on the end of the pier, clenching his teeth, thinking for life. Back on the far side of the sea defence, Pezzini must be getting pensive. In not too many more minutes he would turn pessimistic and then resigned, he would go back to his dormitory and awaken to face a new life in the ultramarines. Lawrence needed a Plan B compelling enough to keep Pezzini in the escape. Without Pezzini as a supporting witness, his own escape would be useless.
At length, Lawrence did return over the crest of the sea defence and he called in low tones into the darkness. “You still here?”
“Why have you been away such a long time?”
“I’ve had an idea.”
“Are you saying there is some kind of problem?”
“They leave the valves open after unloading. When the tide comes in, the barge stays on the bottom. There are no guards out here because there is nothing to guard.”
Pezzini was silent.
“But I’ve got a better idea. We’ll do the unexpected. They are not going to have a clue where to look for us, Pezzini.”
“You have another plan?”
The voice sounded awfully woebegone.
“I need you to follow me, Pezzini. Come to the floating pier.”
Lawrence turned and walked back over the top of the sea defence. There was no point in trying to drag Pezzini along—only the most absolute dedication to physical effort and sheer nerve could carry the plan through.
He waited at the base of the floating pier where it rested like a stranded serpent on the mud. After a couple of minutes, he heard Pezzini slipping down the mud banking.
With his knife, Lawrence got to work.
Chapter 13
Creeping in coy swirls up the channels of mud, the tide made a soft hissing. In the growing light, the scene around them clarified like a developing print. The two men scanned all about like skulking rodents in a ditch.
Three prongs rose over a copse of trees in the distance. Lawrence was horrified to recognise them as the chimneys of the Factory barely a mile away. Their raft lay grounded upside down on mud in the tidal channel that flowed out of the fens adjacent the Value System, the channel Lawrence had spotted exactly one week ago from the top of the sea defence. By standing on one of the barrels, he could see above the mud wall of the channel across an expanse of grassland. Barely a hundred yards off was the handrail of a footbridge. Lawrence sank down, shaken. In the hours of the night, the drift on the capsized raft seemed to have taken them miles inland. He doubted they were more than two miles by direct line from the Tidal Basin. The Factory and the Square lay in those two miles.
Their raft was a square section of the floating pier. Lawrence had hacked it out as a single vertebra might be cut out of a backbone. They had pulled it to the mouth of the Tidal Basin and then hauled it through the breakers and over sand bars and plunged over their heads into channels, the raft thrown on its back by the waves and propelled into the night by the tide, until Lawrence sensed a faint deeper darkness rising around them and could make out trees creeping past. They were in the channel, getting carried upstream on the tide exactly as planned. Yet not everything worked as hoped. The raft proved unwilling to remain right way up, so they left it capsized and lay across its weed-slimed barrels. Lawrence felt as if every muscle in his arms and chest had been torn into strips. At some point early in the morning the moon came out and he realised they were being carried south—back to the sea—and they both got into the numbing water to tow the raft to the bank and grab overhanging bushes. Fortunately the raft settled on the mud before the bushes were out of reach. They waited. Lawrence dreaded every minute passing towards dawn.
Now it was dawn and they had to move.
He gesticulated to Pezzini to help him turn the raft the right way up. With their legs braced wide on the mud, they managed to heave the pier section deck-side up. The mild weather was a gift. It was drying their clothes instead of freezing them in suits of ice. If the wind swung to the north east, it could be snowing within a few hours, in which case their chances of seeing nightfall dropped to zero. He urged a reluctant Pezzini to help drag the raft down to the water, where he pushed his end of the raft out into the channel and crawled onto the middle of the deck, careful to avoid rolling the damned thing over again. Pezzini gave his end a shove. He tried to climb on, the raft lurched and plunged under his great bulk, Lawrence shoved him in the chest and he fell back with a splash.
“Be careful you fucking great oaf,” he breathed. “Do you want half the bloody world to hear us?”
Pezzini tried again, his chest flat on the deck, his legs dangling out in the water. He was a big man, heavier than Lawrence, who had to throw himself about to balance the weight of his clumsy partner. At least they were on their way upstream, rotating slowly between the monotonous mud walls. Lacking paddles, they had to sit impotent as they drifted aground, spun like a leaf, got pulled on, only to ground again. Lawrence had to clench his teeth not to scream with frustration. Paddling with their hands was a waste of time, all they got out of it were frozen fingers. So, they lay prone on their raft, hapless in the palm of a tide crying with laughter at their anguish. Lawrence thought, if there is a devil, then this is his pleasure. It was unbearable to lift his eyes to
