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“Er...” Baz found the three printed letters on the upended tin. “
LBS
. Is that it?”

“Yeah. Lentil and bacon soup. So write 
LB SOUP
 on it. You can pretty much guess Somerby’s without even learning them. But Patterson’s, they use just numbers and so they’re trickier. And then there’s ones with letters that don’t make any sense – like V for beans. That’s Costcut. It looks a mess to start with, but there’s only three warehouses that the divers can get to, Somerby’s, Costcut and Patterson’s. You soon get used to which is which. Gotcha.” The cigarette lighter came apart in Gene’s hands.

“OK.” Baz picked up a tin, looked at the code, and then searched the list on the wall for something that matched. It took him a while.

“So this is... Patterson’s,” he said. “New potatoes.”

“Mark it up, then.”

N/POTS.
 God, he could eat some n/pots right now...

“So... what’s to stop anyone, you know, pinching this stuff?”

Gene laughed. “Yeah, I wondered when you’d get to that. Well...” He glanced over his shoulder, and then leaned a bit closer. “It’s not easy, ’cos every tin has to be accounted for. The divers have a pretty good idea of how many they’ve brought back, and Hutchinson tallies ’em up on his clipboard as they come into the sort room from the washtubs. Then he counts ’em again once they’re marked up to go to the storeroom. So he knows exactly what’s come in here, and the same amount has to go out. He tries to count ’em off the boat too, before they go into the washtubs, but everything’s in such a state that he can’t be too sure of the numbers. So that’s when one or two tins can get lost – between the boat and here. Know what I mean?”

“Um...”

“Let’s put it this way. It’s easy for a couple of tins to accidentally get left in the tubs, and Hutchinson ain’t likely to go sticking his arms in there to check.”

“Oh. Right. Got it.”

“We usually manage to store a few extras up for Sunday,” said Gene. “You’ll see tomorrow, with a bit of luck. Damn. Lost a screw.”

“What are you doing, anyway?” said Baz. Gene was making something out of a piece of wood – a square offcut of planking. Fixed to the center of the square was a shallow plastic cap that might once have been the lid of some small container, with a couple of thin electrical wires protruding up through it. The dismantled cigarette lighter lay in bits around the working area.

“Little experiment. I’m 
supposed
 to be trying to fix that Seagull motor, but Hutchinson’s so thick I could tell him anything and he’d believe it. As long as I come up with the goods every once in a while, he’s happy...”

And then, at that moment, the door opened at the far end of the room and Hutchinson walked back in. Gene casually pushed the piece of wood to one side, along with the bits of cigarette lighter. He picked up a solid-looking brass flywheel, held it up to the light and squinted at it. Then he began fitting the wheel into the heavy workbench vice.

Baz concentrated on looking at the codes on the wall. He heard Hutchinson’s footsteps behind him, pausing for a moment before passing by. Hutchinson disappeared through the half-opened back doors, and his voice could be heard growling something to the clean-up team.

“He’ll be gone again in a minute.” Gene retrieved the bit of wood with the cap screwed to it. “He doesn’t hang around here anymore than he needs to – but he’ll expect you to know those codes, so keep at it.”

“OK.”

By midday Baz had learned the most common codes off by heart. He would have progressed even quicker if he hadn’t been so intrigued by whatever it was that Gene was building. The click-button from the cigarette lighter was now mounted onto the wooden base, and there was a piece of metal – like a miniature two-pronged fork – sticking up through the center of the plastic cap. Gene pressed the lighter button and a tiny spark appeared between the prongs of the fork.

“Go on,” said Baz. “Tell me what it is.”

“Wait till we get a break. Then I’ll show you. Might not even work.”

Hutchinson reappeared briefly a few minutes later. “Got those codes yet?” he said to Baz.

“Um, I can do a lot of the—”

“I don’t want a lot of them. I want all of them.” Hutchinson walked over to the back doors and shouted to the clean-up team. “Haven’t you finished yet? You should be on the wire wool by now. Everything polished and oiled by tonight, or you’ll stay here till it is. Right. Take twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you in an hour,” Gene muttered under his breath as Hutchinson left the room. He waited a few more moments, then said to Baz, “Go and get the others. Tell ’em to come in here and take a look at this.”

Baz stuck his head out of the back doors. Amit and Robbie were standing up and stretching themselves. Taps still had his arms in the tub. He was swirling them to and fro, gazing down at the grey water. All three boys were filthy, streaked in muck, their clothes soaking wet. Baz felt guilty looking at them. He’d had an easy morning by comparison.

“Er... Gene says to come inside,” he said. “Got something to show you.”

“Huh? What is it?” Amit and Robbie wiped their hands on the backs of their shorts and moved towards the couple of steps that led into the building. “Hey, come on, Taps! Give it a break.”

“God, you lot stink,” said Gene.

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be privileged professors. What do you want?” Amit sounded irritated.

“Got a new toy,” said Gene. “In fact it was you that gave me the idea – reminded me of it anyhow.” He picked up the little wooden construction he’d made and placed it on an upside-down crate in the middle of the room. “Who’s got a cigarette lighter they can lend me?”

The boys gathered round the crate, but nobody offered a lighter.

“Come on. I had to break mine up to make this.”

“Well, what’s it supposed to be?” said Amit.

“It’s a rocket base.”

“Yeah, right.” Amit didn’t sound convinced, but he handed Gene a lighter. “I want it back, though.”

Gene squatted down beside the crate and produced a small black plastic container from his pocket.

“What’s that?” said Robbie.

“Film canister. What they used to keep camera films in.” Gene held the canister close to the grey plastic lid that was fixed to the piece of wood. Then he put the top of the cigarette lighter into the mouth of the little canister and gently pressed the button, allowing lighter gas to escape into the canister. He kept his thumb on the button for a few moments longer, before quickly pushing the canister down onto its plastic lid. So now the film canister was a sealed unit, full of gas, with an electrical element inside it. Baz had watched Gene testing the spark earlier on, and thought he could guess where this experiment was going.

“OK. Stand back, guys.” Gene leaned away so that he was at arm’s length, and clicked the lighter button that was mounted on the piece of wood...

Bang!
 It was a surprisingly loud explosion and everyone jumped back a mile. The film canister shot into the air, hit the ceiling and bounded away across the room, finally coming to rest on the workbench once more.

“Woo-ee! Friggin’ amazing!”

“Jesus! Did you see that thing go?”

Baz and Robbie were delighted, and Taps – just arrived – put both fingers in his ears and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh! Oh!”

“And that, gentlemen,” said Gene, “is what we call rocket science.”

Even Amit must have been impressed, although he didn’t really show it. “What – did you invent that or something?”

“Nah. I saw it on the internet, years ago. First time I ever tried to make one, though.”

“So how come it was me that reminded you of it?”

“When you were doing your rocket act the other night, in the slob room.”

“Do it again, Gene,” said Robbie. “Go on.”

“OK. Just once more, then. But somebody better keep an eye out for Hutchinson, case he hears it.”

“Yeah, but make it someone else’s lighter this time,” said Amit. “You’re using up all my bleedin’ gas.”

Something he’d seen on the internet, Gene had said. The internet. Websites and Facebook, blogs and music downloads. How far away it all seemed now...

Baz sat on the back steps of the sort room with the others, rubbing down the blade of a handsaw with a pad of wire wool. Hutchinson had decided that it was time he grafted a bit. He had plasters on each of his fingers, but they didn’t do much to ease the pain. The saw blade was rusty, and the wire wool kept getting caught on the serrated edge.

“Still don’t know why they make us do this,” said Robbie. He’d tied a broad piece of rag around his forehead, white with purple stars on it. Corkscrews of red hair spilled out over the top of the material. He looked like a firework. “Waste of time, if you ask me.”

“Isaac gets a better price for the stuff if it’s all clean and working, I s’pose.” Amit was struggling with a folding metal workbench, trying to free the seized hinges with an oilcan.

“Nah. They’d have to pay the price anyway, back on the mainland. Where else are they gonna get tools from?”

Baz looked at Robbie’s erupting hair and thought about the rocket toy. “How old’s Gene?” he said.

“Fifteen,” Amit grunted. “I think. You wouldn’t know it.”

“God, he’s brilliant, though, isn’t he?”

“Huh. Gene has it easy. He just mucks around all day, pretending to work, while the rest of us have to do crap like this. Gets the pick of the food every night... doesn’t have to fight for it like we do...” Amit yanked viciously at the legs of the folding workbench. “He’s just out for himself, is our Gene.”

Baz remembered his own desperate tactics to get food the previous evening. “Well... I suppose you sort of have to be, don’t you? Out for yourself, I mean?”

Amit stopped what he was doing. “Well, that’s pretty good, coming from a newbie. No, actually, you don’t. You try and look out for your mates, is what you do – that’s if you want any mates. Like we tried to look out for you this morning, yeah? Tried to make it so’s you didn’t have to carry any of the really heavy stuff.” Amit stared at him for a moment longer, then returned his attention to the workbench.

“
And
 that was after what you did last night,” he muttered. “To Enoch. And to Taps. Don’t think we didn’t notice.”

Baz rubbed at the saw, moving his hand back and forth mechanically, not really concentrating. “I know,” he said, aware of the disapproval surrounding him. “And I’ve been feeling bad about it.” He looked across at the kneeling figure of Taps, who was busy sorting through a rusty tin of nuts and bolts.

“Sorry, Taps. I shouldn’t have shoved you like that.”

“Beg pardon?” Taps glanced up at the mention of his name and looked around the group. But his eyes were quickly drawn back to the nuts and bolts. “Yes, it’s a shame, isn’t it?” He shuffled sideways, as if to cut himself off from further interruption, and delved once more into his tin of secrets.

“Well, it’s not all your fault, I suppose,” said Amit. “You’d had nothing to eat ’cept tomatoes, and nor had Ray. So we decided to lay off you. But the real reason we decided to lay off you is ’cos you were just trying to look out for your mate, yeah? For Ray.”

“Er... yeah.”

“But now Enoch’s gotta to do a day on the jetty with only tomatoes inside him. And Taps must be starving too.” Amit stopped work again as he thought about this. “God. What’ll we do if Steiner decides to keep pulling the same trick? Maybe every night from now on?”

“Nah, he wouldn’t do that,” said Robbie. “Baz and Ray are gonna get quicker. It wouldn’t be them that’d end up with the tomatoes all the time. And anyway, there’s always Sundays for getting their own back. I mean... you know...”

Robbie’s voice faltered, and Baz stopped rubbing at the rusty blade. He caught Robbie’s sideways glance at Amit, a look that was almost apologetic. Something had been hinted at, some communication had passed between the two boys that he wasn’t in on.

Amit sighed. “OK. He might as well know. Listen, Baz, newbies usually have to find this out the hard way – ’cos it gives the rest of us a break. But you’re not a bad guy. You do your whack and you don’t moan about it. And that kid Ray’s got some guts too. So we’re going to do you both a favor and warn you. OK?”

Baz had the sense of something horrible in the air. Something sinister, from the way that Amit and Robbie were looking at him. “What?” he said. “What is it?”

CHAPTER
 
SEVEN

“
We already told you about Sundays, yeah?” Amit put down the oilcan he was holding.

“You mean Preacher John and the chapel thing?” said Baz. “Going to church?”

“Yeah. Well, after chapel we get the rest of the day off. It ought to be the best day of the week, but often it’s the worst – ’cos it’s the capos’ day off too. And what they do, every Sunday, is they get legless. From midday on they’re drinking...” Amit blew out his cheeks. “And it can get pretty scary. If anyone’s given them trouble during the week, then Sundays is when they’ll cop it. And this week it’s you and Ray that’s given them trouble. Know what I’m saying?”

Baz felt his stomach begin to tighten. “What, you mean... like... they beat you up or something?”

“It’s worse than that. You get sent down the hole. See, there’s this one little job they save up for Sundays—”

“Hang on. I thought you said nobody worked Sundays?”

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t call it work exactly,” said Amit. “And it doesn’t happen every Sunday. But there’s this drain – a sewage drain – just round the other side of the building. That’s what they call the hole. Every newbie gets sent down there. There’s a kind of handle thing, and you have to turn the handle before they let you back up again.”

Baz didn’t like the sound of this, but it seemed as though it might be preferable to a beating. “What does the handle do? What is it?”

“Doesn’t matter about the handle. Gene reckons it doesn’t really do much anyway. What matters is you get put down the drain.”

“Oh. And that’s... bad, is it?”

Amit gave a short laugh. “Bad? It’s bad if they don’t let you back up again, yeah. It’s bad if they decide to put the drain cover back on and leave you trapped down there in the pitch dark, up to your armpits in sewage. Forget all about you for a few hours, maybe, while they go off and get bladdered. Yeah. 
Then
 it’s bad.”