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“OK, so that’s three of us. Enoch? Jubo? Come on, we might as well just have a vote on it. But if we all stick together, then everyone gets fed the same. No more scrabbling about on the floor and hoping for the best. So who’s in?”

Robbie’s hand was already up. “Yeah, OK. Me.” So now there were four.

But that was it.

Enoch and Jubo looked at each other as if for mutual assurance and then shook their heads. Taps just seemed to have gone blank.

“Dunno ’bout this, man,” said Jubo. “Like Dyson say, it ain’t our fault that Steiner got it in for these guys.”

“Sheesh. You try and make things fair... where’s Gene?” said Amit.

“Gone to the jakes, I think.”

“
I
 think’ – Taps suddenly spoke up – ‘that Dyson’s correct. We must all take our chances. Sometimes you get tomatoes and sometimes you get meat. It all works out in the end. Tonight, for example, I was top dog—”

Amit turned on him, his voice rising with anger. “Top dog? You weren’t top dog, you dozy little retard! Steiner told Hutchinson to pick you because he wanted to make sure that Baz and Ray didn’t get anything decent—”

“Hey. Leave him be, Amit.” Gene appeared from beneath the washroom curtain. “Just because things aren’t going your way, there’s no need to take it out on Taps.”

“Oh, right,” said Amit. “Here comes the big genius. Another one who knows when he’s well off. Tin of meat every night, and never has to graft for it. Don’t need to ask whose side you’ll be on, then.”

“Well, yours, as it happens.” Gene already had his can opened. “There you go. Chicken curry. Bung it in with the rest. Far as I’m concerned it’s fair to share everything out, but what other people do is their business, OK? Let ’em make up their own minds.”

“Huh?” Amit looked astonished. He’d been completely wrong-footed, and all the bluster went out of him. After a few moments he said, “Well... OK, then. Great. Thanks, Gene. And you’re right – I shouldn’t have gone off on one. Sorry, Taps.”

But Taps barely seemed to notice. He was holding his tin of food between both hands and looking down at the lid. 
CHIL.
 His forefingers tapped against the tin, first one side, then the other. One-two-three-four-five. One-two-three-four-five...

He wandered back towards his bed.

So the group was split, five for sharing and four against. Spaghetti and chicken curry were added to the tomatoes and beans, and a dubious-looking combination it made. The contents of the saucepan were doled out equally into the five tin cans.

“Bleedin’ hell.” Amit took a spoonful of the mixture and pulled a face. “Whose stupid idea was this?”

“Told you you’d be doing this for me,” Ray murmured. It was the first time he’d spoken. “Christ, it hurts. How does it look?”

“Not good.” Baz knelt beside Ray’s mattress and poured a drop more disinfectant onto the dampened sleeve of a T-shirt. Loose flaps of skin were hanging off Ray’s palms, and beneath that the flesh was raw and pink, like uncooked chicken. “And there’s only a few plasters left. Gene’s got some in the sort room, though. He might be able to get us a couple more tomorrow. OK. Here we go. It’ll sting like hell.”

Ray’s face was screwed up in agony as Baz dabbed at his hands. Baz saw that the wounds matched his own exactly – palms and fingertips – and he felt a shared and renewed pain as the disinfectant soaked into the grubby plasters he’d been wearing since this morning.

“Jesus...” Ray’s breath hissed out of him. “That dickhead Steiner... sheesssh... he was on at me all day... wouldn’t get off my back. Thank God it’s Sunday tomorrow. Ow.”

“Listen.” Baz didn’t want to make things any worse, but he had to put Ray in the picture. “The others told me something today, and it’s scary. Steiner and Hutchinson get legless on Sundays. They drink all afternoon, and then they do this thing where they put you down into a sewer. A drain thing. The others reckon you and me are in for it.”

“What?” Ray tried to lift his head, but couldn’t manage it. He fell back on the blanket again. “Ohhhh, great. That’s all we need.”

“Yeah, and it’s no good trying to hide, ’cos somebody else would just cop it instead.”

“What are we going to do? Get me up, will you?”

Baz put his arm around Ray’s shoulders, levered him into a sitting position, then helped him to wriggle backwards so that he could lean against the wall.

“I’ll tell you what we do. We refuse to work, and then we get sent back. Back to the mainland, I mean. I’ve had enough of this friggin’ place.”

“You know what?” Dyson’s voice interrupted them. He was over by the sink, getting rid of his empty food tin. “I’m beginning to wonder about you two.”

Baz still had his arm about Ray’s shoulders. He self-consciously withdrew it, but ignored Dyson’s remark.

“And it’s hardly gonna bother Isaac if we leave. Can’t see why it would. There’s plenty more kids trying to get here. It’d make no difference to him. Let’s get out.”

Ray shook his head. “Can’t go.”

“Why not? You’ve still got a mum. Someone to—”

“Said I can’t go, all right?” Ray had tears in his eyes, but his mouth was set firm. “I need a pee.”

“Right. I’ll give you a hand.” Baz took hold of Ray’s wrists and pulled him onto his feet. “Come on, then.” He lifted Ray’s arm in order to help him into the washroom.

“It’s OK. I can do it.”

“What? You can hardly stand, let alone walk.”

“I can 
do
 it. Stop fussing over me.” Ray disentangled himself and staggered off towards the jakes. He was gone a long while, but Baz resisted the impulse to go and check if he was all right. You could only help people who were willing to be helped. Nevertheless, he went over to the cutlery drawer and found Ray a spoon. It would save him that journey at least.

Later, after Hutchinson had turned out the light, Baz was surprised to hear Ray whisper in the darkness, “You awake, Baz?”

“Yeah. I’m too hot.”

“Sorry I got so stroppy. Thing is, though, I’ve got to stay here for my mum’s sake.”

“Because of having to feed you? Well, it’s the same for my dad. And it’s hard on him, I know. But I figure he’d rather play an extra few hands of poker than see me wind up dead.”

“Yeah, that’s right. A few games of cards. But it isn’t so easy for Mum.”

“So what does she do? How does she get by?”

Baz heard Ray give a long sigh. “It’s just tough for her, OK? And so I have to stay. I got no choice.”

CHAPTER
 
EIGHT

The assembly hall was huge, with a high curved ceiling and a wooden floor, once polished perhaps, now dulled beneath a thick carpet of dust and grime. Along one wall stood a line of metal racks, on which hung many folded chairs. A few of these had been placed in front of the darkened stage at the far end of the hall – just four rows, with five chairs to a row. The group of chairs looked like an island stuck out in the middle of such a vast empty floor space.

Baz trooped into the hall along with the rest of the boys, and together they filled the first two rows. The chairs were the kind that hooked together, aluminum, with grey padded seats. Baz sat next to Ray at the end of the second row. Directly in front of him sat Taps, his hair still wet from the shower. Then Enoch, Jubo and Dyson.

Perhaps it was just coincidence, but Baz realized that the rows had naturally split into the same two groups that had divided over the food thing. Dyson’s group of four sat in the front row, with one spare space at the end. The five who had agreed to share their food occupied the second row. Weird.

Nobody spoke, or even whispered. Baz took his cue from the others and sat in silence too.

There was dust everywhere. Long curtains that hung to either side of the high windows, rows of pictures lining the walls – the remnants of former art projects – even the wooden lectern that occupied center stage – everything was furred in a coat of grey, all colors muted. It was like sitting in a black and white film. A piano stood at floor level to the left of the stage, its lid open. The bright shiny keys were the only things in the room that seemed to be in focus. Black side curtains framed the stage, and the backdrop too was black, so that the solitary lectern appeared to be hanging motionless in a dark universe of its own.

A wheezy gasp of breath came from the next row back, followed by a creaking of the aluminum seats. It sounded as though Cookie had arrived. Cookie had been last in the shower, entering the washroom just as Baz had been coming out. Ray, astonishingly, had once again been up first thing – already washed and dressed before the alarm bell rang – though he had collapsed onto his bed and gone back to sleep while everyone else took it in turns for the jakes.

Baz risked a quick look over his shoulder at Cookie, then saw that Steiner and Hutchinson had also taken their places at the far end of the same row. He hadn’t even heard them come in. Steiner scowled at him, an indication that he should turn round. But now there was a murmur of voices from the back of the hall, and in walked a group of men. They were dressed in dark suits and ties, hair slicked back. It took Baz a moment longer to realize that it was the salvage crew – the Eck brothers and Moko.

He dared not keep his head turned any longer, but the impression that Baz got was of discomfort. Moko in particular looked all wrong in a suit, his burly frame threatening to burst out of the cheap shiny material, his hand already at his collar in an attempt to ease the strain.

Baz faced front again and waited. He became aware of his heart rate – not pounding exactly, but definitely out of rhythm. He had to keep taking extra breaths.

Into the settling silence came odd musical sounds – a faraway chorus of high peeps and whistles, tiny chirruping notes that went round and round. Baz turned his head slightly to listen, and realized that it was only Cookie, sitting behind him. Cookie’s asthmatic wheezing sounded like a strange and distant birdsong. Baz felt a terrible urge to giggle, to shriek, to leap up from his chair and hurtle about the room, screaming at the madness of it all. But then there was a sudden stiffening of the bodies around him, an extra tension in the atmosphere, and Baz found himself instinctively looking towards the left-hand side of the stage. A flicker of orange... moving...

He thought for a moment that it was a flame – a fiery beacon gliding in from the wings. But it was a head. A great bearded head that appeared to sail through the void, alarmingly disembodied. The illusion held for a few moments longer, then the outline of a figure became more distinct. Red-haired, black-suited, a huge man walked across the darkened stage. There was a familiar bear-like roll to his movements, a heavy swing of his shoulders and upper body, yet his footsteps made no sound. As he reached the lectern, he turned and took an object from beneath his arm, a black book that carried the emblem of a gold cross. He raised the book in his right hand, held it there for a moment, and then slapped it down hard onto the lectern. 
Bang
. The sound was like a pistol shot, and Baz felt his neck jerk backwards. Dust flew from the lectern and continued to spread in a slowly descending cloud. The man reached into his breast pocket and took out a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. He flipped them open with one huge red hand, gripped the lectern with the other, and looked out over the silent congregation. Every particle of him, every movement he made, seemed to give out the same clear message. Here was a man to be reckoned with. A man of power. A man who would be obeyed. Preacher John.

The preacher’s gaze swept across the gathering like the light from a watchtower. Baz caught his eye momentarily, an eye that looked yellowish, as though stained by nicotine, yet with a stare so intense that Baz felt a shiver run through him.

“We’ll start this morning’s service with hymn number one-four-seven.” Preacher John’s voice boomed around the hall.

Taps jumped to his feet as if he’d suddenly remembered something, and Baz blinked in surprise.

Preacher John looked down from his lectern. He had his glasses on now.

Taps ran over to the piano, snatched up a pile of books and scuttled towards the back row of the congregation. Three more times he did this, trotting to and fro in a flurry of confusion, delivering a stack of books to the end person on each row.

“One-two-three-four-five...” Taps was whispering to himself as he went, and Baz found himself the recipient of five cloth-bound copies of 
Songs of Praise
. He kept one and passed the rest along.

And then, surprisingly, Taps was seated at the piano stool, an open hymn book before him. His ears, viewed from the back, were as red as tinned tomatoes.

“Isaac, I’ll see you about this afterwards.” Preacher John’s voice was quiet, but there was a hard edge to it. “These boys should be ready. I don’t expect to have to wait on them.” He lifted a hand to adjust his glasses. “Very well. Hymn number one-four-seven. ‘For Those in Peril’. All stand.”

Baz was still fumbling for the right page as Taps struck up the opening bars to the hymn. How extra ordinary it was to hear the sound of a piano again. The bell-like notes rose to penetrate every corner of the room, filling the grey and cavernous space with color, somehow.

“
Eternal Father, strong to save
,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave
,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
,
Its own appointed limits keep
.
O hear us when we cry to thee
,
For those in peril on the sea.”

“Sing out! Sing out!” Preacher John raised his hands, palms upwards, and the voices of the congregation grew louder in response.

As the last line of the hymn died away, Baz found himself quite out of breath. He couldn’t remember when he had last sung like that – if he’d ever sung like that at all. It made him feel dizzy.

“Sit.” Preacher John was looking down at the lectern, turning the pages of his Bible.

Baz followed the example of those around him, taking his seat once more.

“O hear us when we cry to thee. O Lord, hear our prayer... Dear Lord, we beseech thee...” Preacher John raised his head. “This is how we carry on, forever pleading and begging for God’s help, but then expecting Him to do everything Himself. Save us, we cry. Deliver us from our enemies. Sort it all out for us, Lord, so that we don’t have to. But God helps those who help themselves, and despises those who will not lift a finger in their own defense. Turn the other cheek? These are not the words of God! Eye for eye, tooth for tooth – this is the way of the true testament!” And Preacher John leaned forward, pulling down the lower lid of his left eye and rolling it around in its socket.