tomorrow night,’ said Adam.
Her heart stuttered. ‘Tomorrow night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, God, then they’ll get there first!’
‘Not necessarily. If we leave now and push hard—’
‘There’s no time to waste,’ she finished for him.
They looked at each other, quicksilver faces, eyes lost in dark shadows.
‘Then let’s go.’
Adam led the way up to the end of the aisle, taking them to the quayside and the river’s edge. They turned right, staying close to the end of the plantation, all of them dropping down to a back-aching scooting run as the tall rows of pea and bean vines gave way to a waist-high field of tomato plants.
Finally, they arrived at the eastmost end of the barricade wall, where the patchwork sheets of corrugated iron overhung the quay and a spiral of razor wire looped over the edge and down onto a river bank of glistening silt.
Ahead of them, over the six foot high barricade, stretched a no-man’s land of crumbling concrete and fading lines of paint marking out coach parking bays. Beyond that, the long dark warehouse outline of a building that had once been the Beckham Football Academy.
Adam spoke in a low murmur. ‘All right. We could go over the wall here, and we’re out or . . .’
‘We need more guns,’ said Leona.
The men looked at her.
‘We need more guns,’ she said again. She pointed along the wall, in the direction of the gate and the low hump of the garden shed.
Adam nodded. ‘She’s right.’
Harry jabbed a finger at the wall. ‘Sir, we can be over this and gone in—’
‘We need the guns,’ replied Adam. ‘And a hundred yards that way are five more we could grab.’
Walfield nodded. ‘S’right.’ He grinned. ‘And a chance to give the little shits a farewell kicking.’
Chapter 69
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
She stood up, emerging from between the rustling rows of leaves twenty yards away from the gate. She called out almost immediately, not wanting them to spot her and fire before she had a chance to talk.
‘Hello?’ Her voice carried across the stillness and she watched the five boys, standing in a circle in murmured conversation, suddenly spin on their heels. She heard the click and clatter of their guns, swung off shoulders and pointed in her direction.
‘Please . . .’ she said quickly, ‘don’t shoot. I just need to speak with you.’
There were two taller, older boys and three smaller ones.
Second Generation. That’s what Adam called the younger ones; boys more recently recruited and trained by the boys that he, Walfield and the other two had originally trained. The older two would be in charge. Leona took several slow steps forward, her hands instinctively raised. She addressed herself to the taller of them; a straggly-thin black boy wearing a bandanna on his head.
‘I want to join the girlfriends,’ she said. She felt a twist of nausea in her gut as she spoke.
Bandanna’s posture subtly shifted, his head tilted over on one side, his shoulders squared as he puffed himself up. She recognised the body language; all the boys did it when they wanted to make a show of bravado in front of their comrades.
‘You wan’ join our girls?’
Leona nodded.
A torch snapped on. Instinctively she covered her face from the blinding light.
‘Drop your hands, lemmesee yo’ face,’ said the boy with the bandanna.
She did so and heard from somewhere behind the glare of the torch one of the younger boys chuckle. ‘Ahh, man, she’s all beat up.’
‘You ugly,’ said one of the boys. ‘Piss off back inside.’
The torch wavered off her face for a moment, down and up. ‘Face ain’t all that, love,’ said Bandanna, ‘but the rest looks tight. Show us your tits an’ we’ll see.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Show me your tits,’ repeated Bandanna.
The other boys liked that, a ripple of giggles amongst them. ‘Go on, make her show all the pooty,’ one of the smaller boys egged him on.
Leona felt nausea inside turn quickly into a barely suppressed gag response. For a fleeting moment she thought she was going to chuck up this evening’s gruel right there.
‘I said show us the fucking tits!’ snapped Bandanna.
She saw Dizz-ee’s snarling face on his; an almost identical sneer.
Come on. Come on. They’re distracted enough now, surely?
‘We do like the old tell-ee-show X Fat-ryy on you, bitch,’ said Bandanna. ‘You give us all an audition, right? You show the pooty an’ dance for us. An’ I’ll decide.’
A peal of excited laughter spread amongst them. The torch was off her face again and down on her chest,