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“Do Hutchinson as well, then,” said Amit. “’Cos he’s as bad. Neither of ’em could give a stuff about Taps.”

“Hutchinson’ll be back in a minute,” said Gene. “So watch what you’re saying. But you’re right. Things are getting bad, and we’re gonna have to talk about it. Later, though. Come on, Jubes – let’s get you on your feet and give you some tins to play with.”

Gene’s prediction was correct. Within a couple of minutes Hutchinson came back into the sort room.

“OK,” he sighed, apparently calm and un concerned. “A couple of you better get down to the jetty. Amit, Robbie, stop what you’re doing. Go and give Steiner a hand.”

Baz had been going over things in his mind, and now he remembered something that Taps had said earlier about Hutchinson. The boys were in the slob room, grouped around the seating area as usual, and they listened as Baz tried to recall the conversation.

“It was to do with the hymn books – forgetting the stupid hymn books in chapel. I think maybe Hutchinson got into trouble over it with Isaac, and then blamed it on Taps. Anyway, Taps told me he wasn’t going down the hole again, and said something about how he wished he could make the days longer. Oh, God...” It all became clear. “Hutchinson was going to put him down the hole, wasn’t he? Next Sunday. He must’ve said that to Taps.”

“What?” said Robbie. “After what happened to him last time? Taps couldn’t have gone through that again.”

“The bastard!” said Amit. “I reckon it was Hutchinson that drove Taps mental in the first place. And Steiner. It’s their fault he’s dead now.”

“It’s kind of our fault too,” said Gene. “We should’ve tried to help before it ever got to this.” He sighed. “Too late now.”

“Ey – 
some
 of us try to help,” said Jubo. It was obvious to Baz who these words were intended for, but a few of the others looked puzzled.

“Huh?” said Amit. “What are you getting at?”

A few moments of silence and then Dyson spoke.

“He’s getting at me. It’s because I stayed up on the jetty – didn’t go down into the water to look for Taps. And you wanna know why? ’Cos I already knew it was no good, that’s why.”

“Nah, it ’cos you scared, man,” said Jubo. “You scared of Steiner.”

“I’m no more scared of Steiner than you or anyone else.” Dyson leaned forward in his chair and looked directly at Jubo. “But I’m not going to get myself beaten up for no reason, OK? Look at you. Baz nearly drowned, and you got a kick in the bollocks. You reckon it was worth it? Taps had already gone, so what was the point?”

“If you don’t know, guy, then I ain’t gonna tell you.”

“They tried,” said Amit. “That was the point.”

“Hey – you weren’t even there, Amit, so butt out!” Dyson was looking beleaguered, his face reddening as he tried to defend himself. “You’re all mouth. And since when did you care so much about Taps, anyway? You were the one that called him a retard, not me.”

Amit said nothing.

“
I
 ain’t all mout’.” Jubo raised a fist. “I say I gonna take that Steiner an’ it be done. I got him in the bag already, man. Body bag.”

“Yeah, sure.” Dyson’s voice was a sneer of dismissal. “Whatcha gonna do, Jubo? Choke him to death with one of your farts?”

The tension in the room broke and everyone laughed.

“Ey – whatever it necessary, guy.”

CHAPTER
 
TEN

At Sunday chapel Preacher John gave another raging sermon, and this time, surprisingly, he mentioned Taps. At first the boys didn’t know who the preacher was talking about, and it took them a while to twig.

“Heavenly Father, in as much as it has pleased you to take from us our brother Paul’ – Preacher John lifted his eyes and hands to Heaven – ‘and have gathered him unto you, let his body and soul be as a sacrifice for our sins.”

Paul? Who was ‘our brother Paul’? What was he on about? Baz glanced sideways at Amit, who just shrugged and pulled a dumb face.

“Give us a sign that his young life has been accepted by you as an acknowledgement of our guilt and as a payment against our debts. Draw back the waters, O Lord, then we shall know that we live in your sight once more.”

Preacher John looked towards the vacant piano stool. “And thus shall we give, and give again, until the tally is met, and all our sins have been washed away. Amen.”

Only then did it dawn upon Baz that Preacher John was talking about Taps.

“Hymn number one-three-one. All stand.”

Baz rose automatically amid the general shuffle of feet, and began to flick through his hymn book.

“
When I survey the wondrous cross... “
The voices sounded ragged and unmusical – naked somehow – without the piano.

At the end of the service Preacher John said, “Capos, stay behind as usual.” Then he pointed at Gene and said, “And you, boy. I want to see you as well.”

“I never knew his name was Paul.” Enoch was sitting cross-legged on the grass. He dipped his spoon into a tin of beans and passed it on.

“Yeah,” said Dyson. “We only started to call him Taps because... Well, it was obvious why. He was always ruddy well tapping something. Like, if he did five on one knee, he had to do five on the other.” Dyson accepted the tin of beans from Enoch. He had agreed at last that sharing their food was the only way. The loss of Taps had drawn the boys together, healing the rift between them. The atmosphere behind the sports center was less strained than it had been the previous Sunday.

But if the disagreement over food had been settled, the bigger worries had not.

“So... I didn’t get it,” said Enoch. His pinched little face was creased into a frown. “Taps was like a sacrifice? But it was just an accident, wasn’t it? I mean, he wasn’t pushed or anything. So how could he be a sacrifice?”

“Dunno. Maybe Preacher John’s asking God if poor old “brother Paul” could be like a gift or something.”

Baz remembered the way Steiner had stood at the end of the jetty, just looking down at the water. Watching.

“Do you reckon Steiner was told not to help?” he said. “Like maybe those were his orders?”

“Nah,” said Jubo. “Nobody know what Taps gonna do.”

“’Cept maybe Hutchinson.” Ray balanced a tomato on his spoon, and paused with it in mid-air, as if struck by the meaning of his own words.

“What – you think Hutchinson 
made
 him do it? Told him to?” said Amit.

There was a moment of reflection as everybody considered this possibility.

“Come on. Even Taps wasn’t that crazy.” Dyson dismissed the idea.

“What d’you mean, he wasn’t that crazy? He soddin’ well 
did
 it,” said Amit.

“But not ’cos someone told him to.” Dyson still wasn’t having it. “You think we’re all going to get told to jump off the jetty like good little sacrifices?”

“Next time someone might get pushed,” said Amit. “And what was that thing that Preacher said? Right at the end he said something about doing it again, or giving again. He was looking at where Taps used to sit, at the piano, and said, “We’re gonna keep on giving.” Something like that. “Till all our sins have been washed away.” Gave me the bleedin’ creeps, that bit did.”

Gene appeared round the side of the sports building. He walked over to the flattened patch of earth and plonked himself down.

“Right,” he said. He pushed back his long curly hair and let out a deep breath. “This is serious. Hey – did you save me any food?”

“Yeah,” said Amit. “We kept back a tin. Here. Lamb stew. So what was all that about?”

Gene took the tin of food from Amit. “Preacher John had a special job for me,” he said. He picked up the tin-opener, but just sat there staring down at it, turning it over and over in his grimy hands.

“Get this. He wants me to build him a crucifix. A cross. So I said, what, like something to go in here? On the wall? I thought he wanted to make the assembly hall look a bit more like a chapel, maybe. So Preacher John said, no, it had to be bigger. So I said, how big do you want it? Know what he said to me then?”

Gene raised his head and looked around at the puzzled faces. “Lifesize.”

It took a while for that piece of information to sink in. The circle of faces remained blank.

“What do you mean, 
life
size?” Dyson was the first to speak. “How big’s that? You mean big enough to...” His voice trailed off.

“Yeah, that’s right, mate,” said Gene. “Big enough to crucify someone on. He didn’t say that was what he was gonna 
do
 with it, but that’s how big he wants it.”

“Christ!”

“Exactly. Christ. And Christ knows what he’s thinking. But if he’s really going off his head, then we need to be coming up with some kind of plan. Today. “Cos this has got me worried, I can tell you.” Gene applied the tin-opener, the soft click of engaging metal clearly audible in the surrounding silence.

“You don’t really believe he’s gonna start crucifying people,” said Dyson, and there was the trace of a plea in his voice, as though he were looking for reassurance rather than stating a fact.

“I don’t want to hang around to find out,” said Gene.

Baz wondered if he was the only one to have noticed the faint smile that passed across Gene’s face, and to have seen the grim little joke.

“We gotta be getting outa here,” said Jubo. “Teef that salvage boat or somet’ing...”

“And go where?” Gene took a mouthful of stew. “Mainland’s as bad as this place. Worse.”

“Maybe another island somewhere. Where there no Preacher, ey?”

But there were no other islands as far as anyone knew, and stealing the boat would first mean stealing the keys from Isaac. Who would risk that?

“I wish we just had a bleedin’ great tank or something,” said Amit. He squinted up at the sports building. “Like, hidden in there. Wouldn’t that be great? Drive down the hill and blow the whole place apart. Divers, capos, Preacher John – the lot.”

“Yeah, right.” Gene made a little sucking sound with his teeth. “You’re dreaming again, Amit.”

“I know,” said Amit, and for once he looked beaten. He hung his head. “We got nothing, have we? No way of looking after ourselves and nowhere to go. Whatever happens to us, we just gotta sit here and take it.”

And that was the core of the problem: they were helpless to defend themselves against whatever danger might lie ahead, and unable to escape.

Baz could find nothing new to offer, and so he came back to Ray’s original crazy idea: building a bomb.

“Gene,” he said, “I know it was just a toy, but that little rocket thing you made – it was so amazing. I mean, it really 
worked
. Couldn’t we, you know, build a bigger one somehow?”

“What the hell for?” said Gene. “What would you do with it? Look, Baz, something seriously weird is starting to happen round here, and it scares me. We need to come up with some way of protecting ourselves, looking after ourselves, and you’re just thinking like kids all the time. Tanks... bombs... rockets. OK, in theory you could build some kind of weapon, something big that would explode. But here’s what you’d need: number one, a whole lot of propane – that’s the liquid they put in cigarette lighters. Number two, a heavy-duty casing. And it’d have to be airtight. And then you’d have to have some way of lighting the gas that was in the casing.”

Baz thought about it for a minute. “So if we had one of those big things of calor gas, like they used to use for camping – well, that’s already a bit like a bomb, isn’t it?” he said. “Metal casing and everything. Wouldn’t that work?”

Gene shook his head. “Calor gas’d explode if it was mixed with air. But you’d have to get the mixture right, and then find some way of setting it off. And anyway – where are you gonna get calor gas from? I’ve never seen any come off the boat and I’ve never seen any go onto it. There’s none around here.”

“Oh.”

So that was a non-starter. But then Amit seemed to perk up a bit.

“What about petrol?” he said. “Could you build a bomb if you had some petrol?”

“Well, yeah, maybe. But you’d still need a really heavy metal container, ’cos the heavier it is the bigger the explosion. You’d have to put the petrol in – just the right amount, and so there was the right amount of air in there as well. And then you’d have to have some way of sealing the container, and then some way of lighting what was in there.” Gene put his head on one side, his interest momentarily engaged. “Like a spark plug, I suppose...”

“But that’s... brilliant,” said Baz. He could see it happening. “That’d really work, would it?”

Gene shrugged, dismissive again. “Well, that’s the way an engine works. Engine cylinders are just metal containers, really. “Cept they have pistons in them, and the exploding petrol makes the pistons go. So yeah, it’d 
work
. But we don’t have any petrol, and we’re not likely to be able to get any. And what would you do with a bomb anyway? You can’t just blow everyone up.”

“Yeah, but’ – Baz was full of enthusiasm now – ‘it 
could
 be done.”

“That’s all I was ever asking, really.” Ray spoke up, and he sounded a bit miffed. “It was 
my
 idea in the first place. I just wanted to know if it could be done, that’s all.”

“Ha. Anything can be done in theory.” Gene chuckled at his own thoughts. “We could leave here and go to the 
moon
 in theory. But first you’d need an actual rocket. Yeah, and some actual rocket fuel to put in it. So you bring me a load of explosive – like propane, or methane, or petrol, or gunpowder – and maybe I’d start taking you seriously. Maybe. But till then it’s not even worth talking about.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Listen, Ray. I’ve already done you a 
big
 favor this week, yeah? So do me a favor in return, and gimme some peace.”

Gene slumped back on the grass, arms folded across his stomach, and sighed.

Baz looked at Ray. What big favor was that, then? The frown of annoyance on Ray’s face gave no clues, and Gene looked like he was already asleep. His tin of food lay half eaten beside him.

Baz woke up with a jump, fragments of troubled dreams still shooting around his vision. How could he have possibly forgotten about today? The hole! Ray was going to be put down the hole! Nobody had said a word about it, not even Ray. And there was Ray, apparently snoozing on the grass. Jesus...