Chapter 31: The Breakers' Yard

"The keystone course comes down first," Venn said. "Always does. Bring the tackle round to the east side and the whole arch walks itself into the yard." He stood on a stack of salvaged lintels with a chalk stub in his fist, and about twenty breakers sat below him on the cobbles with their bars across their knees and their bread on the bars. The yard lay behind Brickfall's old quay. Lintels ran in rows to the wall, grey and wet, and the gantry over the weigh-pit hung its block and tackle in the cold. The air smelled of river silt and cut stone and somebody's onions. Ilan came in at the gate on foot and alone, on the seventh of December, three days after the hearing. The nursery had kept its ordinary share since Harrow struck the tags, the dry room stood cold until the eighteenth, and the sixty…