Lockdown

Chapter Twenty-Six

There were voices calling in the night. They could hear the sound of running feet. The beams of torches crossed and criss-crossed in the dark. There was no way back.

Several vehicles were pulled up outside the park in Saunders Ness Road, motors running, headlights blazing, turning night into day. Somehow the man guarding the foot tunnel had got free, or someone had come to relieve him and found him bound and gagged. The alarm had been raised. Someone had got on to the island. Someone who might be carrying the flu. MacNeil knew, now, they would be shot on sight. Panic was a great dissipater of the rational.

He grabbed Dr Castelli’s wrist, and they ran back along Ferry Road. Her sensible shoes clattered resoundingly in the night. Excitement raised voices behind them. A motor gunned, and they heard the squeal of tyres.

‘Get rid of the shoes!’ MacNeil told her, and half-hopping, half-running, she plucked the shoes from her feet, each in turn, and threw them away across the road. He dragged her off the street, down an alleyway between brick bungalows with shallow pitched roofs. He saw a street sign. Livingstone Place. Lights were going on in houses everywhere. Someone was screaming, ‘Intruders! Intruders!’

MacNeil was starting to panic. They ran past neat little gardens behind well-trimmed hedges, more light falling on to manicured lawns.

Someone shouted, ‘There they are!’ A shot rang out. MacNeil heard the bullet ricocheting off brick somewhere very close by.

Someone else shouted, ‘Don’t shoot, for Chrissake! We’ll be shooting each other.’ There were more feet running now out in the street behind them.

They reached the end of the alley and turned into a riverfront walkway. It was about a hundred yards long. And blocked at each end. They were trapped.

‘Excuse my French,’ Dr Castelli said. ‘But oh, fuck!’

MacNeil peered over the wall, down to the river. The tide was washing in against a couple of yards of mud flat and rock, breaking fluorescent all along the river’s edge.

Dr Castelli looked at him. ‘No,’ she said.

‘No choice,’ MacNeil told her. ‘If they catch us, they’ll shoot us.’

She dropped down first and landed ankle-deep in the mud. He landed beside her and fell to his knees. Mud sucked at his feet as he staggered upright and grabbed her arm, pulling her in flat against the wall.

Voices and torches streamed out along the top of the wall above them. Beams of cold white light panned across the mud inches in front of them and then vanished. ‘They’re not here!’ someone called, and the footsteps immediately receded, running back up the alley towards the road. ‘Search the gardens!’

‘Now,’ MacNeil whispered, and still holding Dr Castelli’s wrist, pulled her after him along the edge of the wall. It was heavy going, through mud reluctant to let each footstep go. And then they reached a rocky outcrop and it became easier. The wall curved away to their right, apartments overhanging the retaining wall above them. There were dozens of lights now, shining out from windows across the water. It seemed as if everyone on this southern tip of the Isle of Dogs was awake. And looking for them. They clambered over rocks and boulders and the jetsam washed up by the tides, the refuse of a society careless with its world, until ahead of them they saw the dark shape of the old Felstead Wharf extending into the water.

They reached the safety of the deep shadow it cast along the riverbank, and found steps leading up. On the wharf itself, they felt exposed again. They could hear voices somewhere beyond the apartment blocks. Windows everywhere were filled with light. On the far side of the wharf, more steps led down to a small jetty. An ancient, tiny, two-person speed boat was tied up there, rising and falling gently on the swell. MacNeil knew it was their only chance of getting off the island.

Dr Castelli ran after him down the steps, and MacNeil jumped into the boat, sending it rocking dangerously. He ripped off the dash and looked at the bewildering spaghetti of coloured wiring that he had exposed. This was something he ought to know how to do. But he’d always been on the right side of the law. There had to be a logic to it, though, and he tried following the wires back to the ignition lock.

Dr Castelli pushed him out of the way. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Let me. Where I came from we used to steal cars for fun on a Saturday night.’

She quickly established the circuit logic and ripped out a green and then a red wire, exposing their frayed, silver ends. She touched them together and the motor coughed and died. ‘Shit,’ she said. It wouldn’t take many failed attempts to attract the whole of the island to the wharf.

MacNeil reached across her and pulled out the choke. ‘Try again,’ he said.

This time the engine fired and caught. She twisted the ends of the wires expertly together, establishing permanent contact, and then let him in behind the wheel. The motor was sluggish, and MacNeil pushed the choke in a touch, before gunning it hard. Diesel smoke and the smell of it filled the air.

‘Untie her!’ he shouted, and the doctor leaned over to slip the loop of tethering rope over the top of its wooden capstan. MacNeil engaged the gear, grabbed the wheel and pulled back on the throttle. The front of the boat lifted dramatically as the water behind them churned white, and they slewed out from the shadow of the wharf into the main drag of the river.

Behind them, they heard voices raised in anger, and then several shots. MacNeil ducked instinctively, and saw tiny plumes of white raised from the Thames by bullets aimed in their direction. He wondered why they were bothering. If he and the doctor had brought the flu with them, then it was too late now anyway.

He sent the boat weaving towards the far bank, out of range of the rifles on the island, and turned and called back to the doctor, ‘We’ll be quicker to take the boat all the way. There’s a pier at the Eye.’ She nodded, and as they reached the South Bank, he turned north to traverse the loop of the river, keeping his distance from the Isle of Dogs which was waking up in fear across the water.