all that fucking matters to me! That she knows!! Ask her!’
‘Let us pray for this man’s soul!’ called out Valérie, dipping his head.
‘Jenny knows I’m innocent!’ Walter screamed, his voice ragged and breathless. ‘SHE KNOWS!!’
‘Lord, hear our prayer. This man has sinned against his family and his friends. He has taken the lives of two innocent young girls in moments of madness and selfishness. There can be no—’
‘I DIDN’T DO IT!! IT’S HIM!!’
‘—room aboard our ark for one who would take a young life for his own needs—’
‘HE KILLED NATASHA! HE KILLED HANNAH! I’M NOT A PERVERT!!’
‘—we hope, in this final moment, that he can understand the hurt he has caused to those beautiful children, to their mothers, to all of us. May God have mercy on his soul.’
Valérie dropped his hands and looked up. He nodded to the two men and they proceeded to wrestle Walter towards a narrow gap in the railing at the edge of the helipad.
‘Dennis . . . Howard!!’ gasped Walter turning to him. ‘For fuck’s sake! Please . . . don’t do this!!’
‘You brought this on yourself, mate,’ grunted Dennis.
Walter writhed and twisted in their grip as they shunted him through the gap until he teetered on the very edge of the platform, nothing between his overhanging toes and the sea but one hundred and eighty feet of blustering air.
‘PLEEEASSE!!’
Both men locked their free arms around the railing to brace themselves against Walter’s weight, teetering and swaying over the edge. They both looked at Valérie, awaiting his nod for them to release their grip on Walter’s upper arms.
‘It’s HIM . . . NOT ME . . . it’s HIM!!’
Then, all of sudden, his desperate twisting and struggling was too much for Dennis to maintain a grip, the left arm pulled free and Walter swung around with Howard still struggling to keep a hold onto the right arm. Their eyes met over Walter’s shoulder.
‘Oh, God, no . . . !’ he whimpered. ‘Please . . . please . . .’
Howard grimly pressed his lips together. ‘I’m really sorry, Walt,’ he whispered. He let go and Walter pitched forward. He tumbled, spinning end over end, his hands bound behind his back, white-knuckled and clenched as if in prayer, his legs scissoring in a futile attempt to right himself. Nearly six seconds of descent, then he disappeared into the roiling suds that spilled between the platform’s legs.
The Journey Home
Chapter 72
10 years AC
M11, London
It was approaching twilight when they decided to stop. Leona hadn’t worn a watch in years, but if she was going to hazard a guess at the time, then she would have said it was after eight in the evening.
Last night they’d hurried away from the Zone along the Blackwall Tunnel, expecting a hunting party of Maxwell’s praetorians to be in hot pursuit. But no one had followed. Halfway along the tunnel, at its lowest dip, they’d had to wade through a puddle of stagnant water almost chest high. The result of ten years of rain and the accumulation of Thames water leaking through crumbling and neglected fissures in the structure.
An hour later they’d emerged into moonlight again on the far side, north of the Thames. They decided to hole up for the night on the first floor of an office block, sleeping fitfully between quiet cubicles and dust-covered desk tops.
Today’s going had been slow. Leona had hoped they’d be out into the countryside by the end of the day, but instead they were still trudging along the M11 approaching the junction bisecting the M25. Beyond that was ‘outside’ London, according to Harry. But it was still very far from being outside the foreboding urban landscape looming down on either side of them.
‘There they are again,’ said Adam quietly.
Leona turned and looked over her shoulder.
A hundred yards down the motorway she could see them; about a dozen people, pale and ragged, old and young alike.
‘There’s a few more of them now,’ she replied.
Adam nodded.
It had been about midday that she’d first spotted someone, as they picked their way along a high street. A curious face peering out of the dark gloom of a window above the empty shell of a shop.
Scavengers, Adam had said. No better than those wild children. He said they saw them here and there, but never in large numbers; pitiful, lonely figures managing somehow to continue to find scraps in the city.
‘Never seen that many at once. They seem to be getting a little less nervous,’ he said.
They were closer, and