第17章 Cragmere's Second Number

Cragmere came out on the Wednesday with a second form and a different argument, and he left both on the wall. "Minus one point six," Tamar said. "Minus one point six," Cragmere said. "That's the new number, and the reason for the new number is that the tender model ran overnight with the Sunday bathymetry and came back inside your figure, and I have taken it to the committee and they have accepted it, and the tender is being re-let this week." "You changed the datum to match your model and now my survey agrees with your model." "Your survey never disagreed with my model." "My survey said minus two point one." "Your survey said minus two point one in a hard ebb in which your own array told you the station was in compression noise and your own analyst told you the same thing in writing." He took the folded form out of his jacket. "You have a disputed reading on this file. There are now two disputed readings on this file. When a file has two disputed readings the file goes to determination, and determination takes fourteen months and costs about a million one, and there is a headcount and there is a conveyor and neither of them likes you." He put the form on the wall between them, the way he had put the last one there, and then he did not step back from it. "Can I say a thing that isn't about procedure?" "You can say whatever you like. It's a wall." "You're frightened of the number." Cragmere did not move at all for about four seconds. "Yes," he said. "I've spent twenty years making sure this bay gets built. You think I sat in this room and lied to you about a datum because I enjoy the paperwork. I sat in this room for twenty years and did not put my name anywhere, and every time somebody asked me why, I told them it was because I would not have it hanging over the wall." He nodded at the sea. "That was a mistake," he said. "I should have filed it in 2004. There were four feet of overtopping that winter and a boy of fourteen drowned in the Hard at Bellrigg, and I did not file it because I was frightened of exactly what you are doing now. And what you are doing now is correct, and it is going to cost this place a year and a half, and I will not see it built in my working life, and I would still rather sign the minute." He tapped the wall. "But not on a number you got in a sound." "So what do you want me to do?" "Not that one," Tamar said. "Not one of yours." "No," Cragmere said. "Not one of mine. One that is defensible, that a determination panel cannot take apart, and that the council can defend in public with a straight face." He got out a third sheet, which he did not offer. "I have run the low water filter on the Ashenholt station myself, this time with a person from the trust in the room, because I did not want to do it on your file. It is four hundred and eleven events. It has a tide table behind it that goes back to 1922. And it puts the working platform at Bellrigg at minus two point one, and it has never been in dispute, and no one has ever had to bring it up, because everyone who has ever needed it has been told that the number was wrong." He put the third sheet on the wall. "That's the third number," he said. "It is not mine and it is not yours and it does not depend on anything either of us has said in the last ten days. It has been in the record for a hundred and three years and it was put there by men who had no instruments and were not wrong." Tamar looked at the sheet. "Your stop-work order," she said. "Stands." "My survey." "Stands." "The second form." "Superseded by the third number and I will write to that effect at eight o'clock this evening and you will have it in your inbox." He was not smiling. "I am going to tell you what I should have told you in June, because you will not sign until you understand the arithmetic of it. If the number is minus two point one, the consent is void, the scheme dies, and this wall does not get built in my lifetime or yours. If the number is minus one point six, I get my consent and I build it on the best information anybody in this bay has ever had. If the number is minus two point one and it is in the record and you file it, the scheme is finished and the record stays wrong and the next nine-year-old walks up there anyway." He picked up the folded form. "You are going to sign the third number," Cragmere said. "And in about eleven years somebody with a stopwatch and a recorder is going to stand where you are standing and hear it, and they are going to have to decide what to do about it, and the only thing that will be in their way is if we have all spent nine months being clever." "Are you asking me to lie?" "No. I'm asking you to file a number that is true, and to let somebody else worry about what it means. That's the job. That is the entire job, and I have been doing it since 2001, and I am not going to explain my job to a woman who has been here a fortnight." He got the second form back off the wall and folded it into his jacket. "And for the record, I have never once in twenty-six years asked an engineer to lie. I have asked four of them to file something they did not want to file, which is a different job, and it is a job that only exists because the alternative is a determination." He went away down the road without hurrying. "There is one other thing," he called back from the gate, not turning round. "Don't ring the harbourmaster and don't ring the trust. Whatever you're about to do next, do it to me first, and I will do it to them, and that's the only favour I have ever asked anybody for on this coast." ---