‘I lied. Don’t act surprised – you told me I had to play dirty.’
McCulkin regarded Lauren warily. ‘You trust this darkie?’
‘Hey!’ she said.
‘Don’t point your finger at me, girl,’ he snapped. ‘After sixty years having to live among you lot, I’ve earned the right to call you what I want.’
‘Which you won’t be doing while I’m around,’ Heck interjected. ‘This lass has done as much good in the last few days as you have in your entire career, and she hasn’t asked for a penny in payment. Now let’s keep it friendly, or there’ll be less work coming your way in future.’
‘I’m not sure I want more work if this is the way you’re going to play it,’ McCulkin said. ‘It’s bad enough one of you knows about this, but two of you … I’ll be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.’
‘And the people you’ll be looking for will be rotting in prison. That’s the whole idea, isn’t it?’
McCulkin didn’t seem convinced. ‘I asked if you trusted her?’
‘Implicitly.’
‘And no one else knows about this meeting at all? Especially none of her lot?’
Lauren glowered at him, but said nothing. The average white person had no concept of the sort of casual racial prejudices that ‘her lot’ still encountered in Britain even in the enlightened twenty-first century. But to meet overt and unashamed examples like this was now quite unusual. Unfortunately they needed this bitter, shrewish little man; otherwise she’d be tempted to chuck him overboard.
‘No one,’ Heck confirmed.
Reluctantly, McCulkin started the engine and they set off again, turning a wide circle and heading towards the aforementioned headland. Heck and Lauren sat on a low wooden bench at the stern. Bilge sloshed around their feet. Much of the vessel’s metalwork was corroded, its paint flaking off in scales. McCulkin had to stand up to control it; where his chair should once have been, only rivets were visible.
‘Where’d you get the boat, Pat?’ Heck asked.
‘Meaning did I nick it?
‘Put it this way, if you didn’t, you were robbed.’
McCulkin hawked and spat overboard.
‘Where the hell are we going?’ Lauren whispered. ‘A sea fort?’
‘Blacksand Tower,’ Heck replied. ‘It’s basically a fortified gun-emplacement. They built a number of them to fire at German aircraft navigating towards London along the Thames. They were called TESDUs, or Thames Estuary Special Defence Units. Most of them are now gone, but a few remain. They’re all derelict, of course.’
She stared past his shoulder, focusing on something that had just come into view. He turned to look. The fort had appeared around the headland. It was located maybe three miles from shore, and from this distance it was a lowering mass of rusted girders and weathered, moss-eaten brick. But the closer they got to it, the more they were able to distinguish. It consisted of four towering edifices, the nearest one a massive stone cylinder, which was something like the tower of a medieval castle but lacking the crenellations at the top. Heck guessed that this would once have served as the fort’s admin section and barracks. The other three towers, which were probably the gun-towers, looked more representative of the modern world; they were octagonal steel superstructures sitting on top of massive concrete legs. Each was of a uniform height – about ninety feet, Heck estimated – and all were located about fifty yards apart, connected to each other by high steel catwalks.
Heck watched closely as they approached. The whole thing was a scabrous ruin, streaked with dirt and seagull crap, but it was impressive all the same.
‘Who is it we’re meeting, Pat?’ he asked. ‘Surely you can tell us now?’
‘He used to work for them,’ McCulkin replied.
‘Worked for who?’
‘You know.’
‘You mean the Nice Guys? You don’t even like saying their name, do you?’
McCulkin clammed up as he steered them towards the concrete tower. A landing platform was visible on its south side, a timber raft held to the mighty structure by chains. The lower section of the tower, up to about ten feet in height, dangled with bright green river weed. Above this there was a tall aperture that might once have had a door fitted in it. A steel stair ran up to this.
‘I don’t see any other boats,’ Lauren said. ‘You sure this bloke’s here?’
‘He’s here,’ was McCulkin’s grunted response.
They were now far from shore, and the wind was stiffer and colder. This close, the fort cast an immense shadow. Waves slapped against its foundations; the cries of gulls and guillemots echoed eerily from its parapets. McCulkin cut the motor and again the boat glided the remaining distance. He brought it hard against the timber raft – there was a dull thud, then he jumped out and roped it to a hook.
‘Bit of an expert, isn’t he?’ Lauren observed.
‘When you’re brought up in the docklands,’ Heck replied.
‘This is it,’ McCulkin said, rather unnecessarily.
He tilted his cap back and stood waiting for them, tensely.
‘You nervous about something?’ Heck asked, climbing out.
‘Are you not?’ McCulkin replied.
Lauren jumped up beside them. The platform rose and fell – this part of the Thames was strongly tidal, and the swell came straight from the North Sea. They glanced up the stair towards the entrance. Rusted bolts hung at regular intervals down the pillar on its left-hand side, revealing that there had once been a door there. But access to the interior was still restricted: masses of barbed wire might have made an impassable barrier had someone not gone at it with a pair of clippers, clearing a narrow path to the room beyond.
‘After you,’ McCulkin said.
Heck went cautiously up the stair, which was not anchored down and shifted under his weight. At the top, he peered through the chopped wire into a dark, dripping interior.
Lauren appeared at his shoulder. ‘You sure you trust this guy?’
‘Why?’
‘You’ve already said this arrangement is abnormal. Even I’m getting that now. I’ve got to tell you, Heck, I don’t like this at all.’
‘Me neither.’ He pressed forward, sidling along the path and entering a surprisingly confined holding space, its cement floor puddled with oily water, a few empty barrels occupying one of the corners.
To their right, a metal ladder ascended into dimness. They gazed up, and as their eyes attuned, made out hanging chains and dangling strips of canvas. The underside of the floor above was composed mainly of riveted steel, though there were some gaps in it. Heck moved to the foot of the ladder. Twenty feet overhead, it passed through a hatch and vanished, but light was visible up there – probably daylight filtering through the grimy first-floor windows. He tested the ladder, which seemed sturdy, and began to climb it, acutely aware that the clanks of his footfalls were probably sounding all the way to the top of the tower. When he was about seven feet up, he glanced back – Lauren was standing down there alone.
‘Where’s McCulkin?’ he asked.
She looked around. ‘Don’t think he even came in.’
An engine growled to life outside.
‘Shit!’ Heck yelled, jumping back down, racing for the door. He skirted through the wire and descended quickly to the timber platform, but it was too late. The boat was already motoring away, a good thirty yards distant. McCulkin was hunched over the