He glimpsed the inflatable too late. It was moored close to the edge of the brickwork. As he hit the water, he flung out his free hand in desperation and seized the near side’s rowlock, wrenching his arm almost out of its socket with the impact. He had no idea how deep it was and the icy cold current sucked at his legs, pulling him away from the boat and pulling Esme out of his grasp. She screamed, and his first instinct was to plunge in after her. But first instincts weren’t always right. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he clung on to the side of the boat. The Fleet wasn’t having him and it wasn’t having Esme. With a huge effort, he heaved himself over the inflatable’s side and into the body of the boat. He should have guessed that the Thinkers would have come prepared. They needed the inflatable to navigate their way out of the tunnels. He glanced over his shoulder, scanning the rapidly moving water for Esme, but there was no sign of her. The shouts of the Thinkers were coming closer, the gunfire more rapid now. With freezing-cold and clumsy fingers, he pulled at the rope tying the inflatable to the brickwork, and finally the current gripped the boat and spun it away.
He fumbled for the oars, slipping them into the rowlocks and taking hold of their handles, fighting the current – he needed control of the boat, or he’d be past Esme and away to the Thames before he blinked.
Twenty yards away, Esme’s head surfaced. With all the power that was in him, he heaved on the oars in a bid to reach her before she disappeared into the black water. ‘Esme!’ he called as her head disappeared again. He stood up to get a better look and the inflatable rocked with his weight. Bullets spattered the air around him. He heard a sharp hiss as one of them found the inflatable. He wasn’t letting Esme drown in a forgotten river. At least, not on her own. As the thought came to him, he dived into the water and the cold, dark Fleet closed around him. He opened his eyes in the murk but there was too little light. Reaching out his arms and legs, he swirled around in the freezing water, desperate for a touch of her, but there was nothing. He made for the surface and sucked down the deepest breath of air his chest could manage.
Was she right to doubt that he could save her again?
He dived again, and again – and finally his outstretched fingers found a scrap of cloth. He took tight hold and pulled her closer, and, wrapping his arm around her ribcage, he brought her up to the surface. The river must have moved them some way downstream because the collapsed inflatable was still with them, but there was no sign now of Plato and Nietzsche, or the mouth of the tunnel they’d jumped from.
Still clasping her with one arm, fighting the current every inch, he made for the far side of the river, heaving Esme face first up on to the side. Scrambling up after her, he made a thousand promises about how he would live his life if she was alive. Let her be alive. After all this, don’t let her be dead and drowned on his watch. Because he’d insisted they come down into the underworld.
Her eyes opened as, with a gasp, she started coughing up he didn’t want to think what, and he laughed with relief.
Glancing back, he thought he caught movement in the distance of the other bank. Were the Thinkers dumb enough to follow them? Or would they concentrate on their own escape? He had the nasty suspicion Plato and Nietzsche were trying to do both.