by Ian Chapman
As Gregg raised it above him I grabbed hold of his arm, a firm grip on his overalls’ sleeve. ‘Leave him be.’
He shifted his arm, pulled and moved around. ‘Hey.’
‘Trent,’ said Nico. ‘Let the boys have their fun.’
They stared at me and I let go of Gregg. The lad was still pinned in place by Nico’s hand. ‘Cut him,’ he said.
Will slashed, cutting him across his face. Gregg roared with laughter and Nico smiled.
As Will raised his arm I barged into him, pushing him and Nico aside and knocking the blade flying. The knife landed on the ground.
I turned to the lad. ‘Go.’
He frowned, dabbing at the blood on his face.
‘Go!’
He ran off along the alley, past us and away.
Gregg lumbered off after him but Nico grabbed his overalls and stopped him. ‘Leave him.’
Gregg sighed. ‘But we were going to slice him, round him up —’
‘I know.’
Will stared at me then went over to retrieve the blade.
Nico shook his head. ‘You’re getting soft Trent, real soft.’
‘Sometimes I think you’re no better than the kids on the street,’ I said.
‘We won’t win this by being soft.’
‘We already lost it.’ I turned to go off but Nico took my arm.
‘I’m disappointed, Trent. Very disappointed. I had plans for you. Plans. I picked up. You could have been teamed up with anyone out of Round Up but you got to go with us. The top row.’ For a moment he gazed at the decrepit buildings around us. Then he grinned. ‘Maybe you can redeem yourself. I still have that babysitting…’
I shook his hand off him. ‘Look Nico —’
‘Trent, Trent. This is much more up your street. No kids. You just need to stay alert…Keep an eye on things.’ As he straightened his suit he set off down the alley, the other two following him, giving me glances, looks that showed they didn’t see me as part of their gang, which suited me just fine. Nico shouted from ahead. ‘Come on, Trent, follow, follow. I’ll show what we’re up against.’ He laughed. ‘This will really test your mettle.’
I hung back for a moment then joined them at the main road. I had to watch my step. Play along a little.
We piled into Nico’s Mercedes, one of his personal fleet. As he drove across town they chatted about betting and women. Who they’d rounded up recently.
We went to Round Up Central, the old multi-storey car park on the South Side of town. The fella guarding the entrance waved to Nico and pulled open the heavy gate. Long before I’d arrived in Faeston Nico and the rest of them had gone to a lot of effort salvaging stuff from an abandoned prison across the border. They’d hauled doors and gates all the way here and had a gang spend weeks adapting the car park. Turning it into the town’s prison.
We bounced up the potholed ramp and parked on level one, where all Nico’s other vehicles were: the Jaguar and Range Rover. Spoils from his confiscations.
‘Follow me,’ he said. Gregg and Will wandered off upstairs, to the main offices but Nico led me downstairs, to the section I’d thought unused. We went through a dim passageway, lit by bulkhead lights, the air cold, dry. There was a heavy door at the end. He had to flick through his bunch of keys before he rattled the lock open. Partway along the passage there was another door in the wall. ‘Not many people allowed through here, Trent.’
‘Yeah?’
He slid his dark glasses up, fumbled with the keys to unlock the door. ‘This is just for the initiated. The cognoscenti, you know? Get what I’m saying. You’re a lucky man.’
‘Real lucky.’ I followed him as the door swung open. I didn’t feel very lucky.
Nico grinned. ‘Here we go.’
It was a large space, high-ceilinged, covering much of the ground floor. It was all concrete like the rest of the building, but made more stark with the spotlights set up along the sides. It was plain apart from the door we’d come through and a heavy steel shutter at the far end. Several men stood around writing on pads whilst another drew on a large sheet of paper. In the middle was the tank parked an angle on one of the town's low loaders.
Close up the vehicle was massive, a dark lump that gave off heat even though we were underground, making some low sound, not like an engine more something flowing, water under a stone bridge. It was painted a dull green marked with scorch marks. There were no wheels just two sets of caterpillar tracks. On the top of it there was a squat turret supporting a gun barrel of a calibre you could fit a small child in.
Nico walked around it and I followed. ‘It’s something else, eh?’
‘I saw it the other night.’
‘But close up, close up it’s really something!’
‘I suppose.’ Nico kicked the low loader. ‘Nearly bust this. Some weight. And the cranes struggled.’
‘Yeah?’ There were markings on the vehicle, letters and numbers. And symbols I’d not seen before, or not since before The Collapse, yellow squares with shapes in them.
‘Thing is, we can’t get into it. There’s no key. No lock that we can see but we can’t open the hatch’ He turned to me. ‘Imagine if we had one of these, if we could work out how to make others.’ He grinned. ‘We’d be unstoppable.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, tapping the thick steel. ‘Unstoppable.’
‘Problem is, we can’t make one, no one can now. Someone else made this, sometime else.’ He pointed at the walls and ceiling. ‘But there could be hundreds of them out there, thousands, left over.’
‘There are loads of them up at Otterburn.’ All the border couriers knew of wrecks abandoned in the old military base.
‘Not that junk. Working stuff. Like this…’
‘So why am I here?’
‘Because you’re one of us, Trent! A trusted member of the gang, a reliable foot soldier and good team player. You belong and you’re going to help us out.’ We carried on walking around, circling the great dark shape. At the back of the vehicle he grabbed my sleeve. ‘He’s the only one who knows about it, how to get in and work it. Where it came from and whether there are more. He knows all about it. We need to know.’
‘He?’
‘The driver, the guy who came out of it.’
I put my hand on the steel panel at the back, above thick vents and code numbers etched into the metal. It was warm to the touch, as if the vehicle had been out in the sun. There was a gentle throb through the metal, like the thing had a pulse, a heart beating somewhere inside. I took my hand off it. ‘How do I fit in?’
‘Well, that’s where your babysitting comes in. Unlike some of the others in Round Up, you’re a slow fuse, you know? You take your time with stuff. That’s sometimes a useful thing, you get what I’m saying?’
‘Not really.’ What I got was a bad feeling.
‘We’ve had him under lock and key ever since he came out, since he gave himself up, but we’ve not got much out of him. He’s not said more than a word. We tried various, ah, methods, but he’s resisting.’ He smiled and came up close. ‘So you’re going to take over, spend some time with him.’ He banged on the vehicle. ‘You’re going squeeze the details out of him.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Becky
THAT EVENING I WENT up to the track again. I parked my bike and stood on the verge. The sun was low across the town, catching the windows in the taller buildings and the sea in the distance.
Starter Lad came over. ‘Seen a lot of you this week.’
‘I’m in the mood for racing.'
He put me on the list and went over to the others parked opposite, an assortment from the usual suspects: the Suzuki Hayabusa, CBR and z750. Maybe I’d go against the zed. Or try my luck against the CBR again. Not the big Suki.
But there was another reason I’d come here. Now I’d half agreed to interrogate the stranger — not that it seemed I had much choice — I was tied up in the stuff going on. The tank arriving. Becky turning up. She was part of it and I want
ed to talk to her. Pick her brains and see where she fitted in.
That was real reason I was here. To see her.
Starter Lad leant against the fence drinking beer from a bottle. The riders of the three bikes chatted about oil and engines and stuff. They didn’t seem keen to race yet. There was an engine sound for Hill Road — low and staccato, not like Becky’s machine — and an old BWM appeared. It was an eleven-hundred, an infrequent visitor to the track, and he rolled up alongside the other bikes. The Suzuki’s rider slid on his lid and started his bike. He and the BMW lined up at the start line. As the they prepared I crossed over the track, standing a couple of yards down from Starter Lad. He raised his flag and the bikes shot off. They raced to the end with a trail of fumes, the Suzuki metres ahead.
As they sorted out the winnings I looked across town. Round Up’s HQ stood out at the far side of the river, lit by its office lights. The tank was in there. And the fella I had to interview.
I’d asked to see him earlier, find out who I was dealing with but Nico had been coy, evasive about where he was and what was happening. He’d promised money and promotion to Round Up’s top rank. His reward.
None of it bothered me apart from the money.
An engine sounded behind me, powering along the lane. I turned to see a bright light charging towards me.
It was the R6. Her bike.
It eased to a stop a metre short of me.
She was wearing those leathers again, her lid on her arm and bright hair loose on her shoulders. She glanced over as Starter Lad approached her. They chatted for a moment then looked over at me. I shook my head. There was no point putting the scrambler against her machine. No contest.
She shifted on machine, rocking it between her legs. ‘It’s taken some time for me to get this machine of mine right.’
‘No kidding.’
‘Those forks and wheels take some looking after —’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Can we stop playing games?’
‘I just thought —’
‘We need to talk.’
She smiled at this. ‘Okay.’
‘Just so you know, I don’t like being followed. Don’t like being messed about.’
‘Sorry.’
The CBR and z750 had started up and approached the start line.
‘So what’s going on?’ I said. This was her chance to convince me she was worth taking seriously.
She put her hand on my arm and glanced around as she spoke. ‘I hadn’t meant to come straight out with all the stuff the other day. It just slipped out.’
‘Right.’
‘Can we talk somewhere else, somewhere private?’
Starter lad stood by the fence with the flag raised as the CBR and Zed both revved like mad. The flag dropped and the bikes were off, popping and cracking up the track. For a few seconds we just stared at each other. As the bikes raced.
‘Here’s fine,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘I need some information, just to know something.’
‘Information?’ This really was dodgy.
The bikes finished and parked at the other end. There were no other bikes ready to race. Just me and Becky parked there.
She messed with the fuel cap on her bike’s tank. With those slim fingers. ‘I need some help.’
‘Help…’
‘And I think you’re the person who can give it.’
‘Right.’ I wasn’t going to give her anything. Not a hint that I was willing to help a stranger. Especially if it was to do with Round Up. There was a chance that this was a set by Nico, one of his loyalty tests. Like the one that had seen off Jackson. Probably loads of fellas before I’d come to town.
She put her hands to her head, closed her eyes for a second. ‘They have my brother.’ Then she turned slightly away, looking out across town, towards the sea. ‘They’re keeping him. I just want to know he’s all right.’
‘Your brother?’
‘They have him, somewhere. He was passing through. It all just went wrong.’
‘Right.’ Though it was tempting to fill in the gaps I wanted her to do the talking. Tell me what going on.
‘He didn’t mean to go through town. That was a mistake. Now they’ve got him. And his vehicle.’
‘Vehicle?’
‘You know, do I have to say it?’
‘Yes, you do.’
She closed her eyes for a second then opened them and stared at me. ‘He was in the tank.’
‘Right.’ So that was it. That was why she was here. Talking to me.
‘I just want to know he’s all right. That’s all.’
‘Why me?’
‘I heard you were in Round Up, the people who run this place, and you seemed approachable…’
Starter Lad came over and stood before us. ‘You two racing?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Becky.
‘No,’ I said.
He pulled a face and walked towards the fence, his flag trailing on the ground.
Only when he was well away did I speak. ‘So, tell me more.’
‘Like what?’
‘Why did he come through town? Shoot the place up?’
‘That wasn’t the plan, like I said. He was meant to go round. He must have panicked. Lost control or something…’
‘Or something?’
‘Anyway, Round Up has him and I wondered if you could see him. Talk to him. See he is okay.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Becky smiled. ‘Thanks —’
‘But I can’t promise much.’
‘Okay.’
I started the Scrambler. The whole story made me uncomfortable but it was hard to work out how much of it was true. What it was she was really after.
She raised her voice over the clatter of the engine. ‘Let me know how he is. I’m in The Bay Hotel, High Town. You’ll find me in the bar most nights.’
‘Right.’ I clunked the Triumph into gear.
She smiled at me, leant back against her bike, stretched her leathers tight on her body.
I steered round her and rode off. She was lying to me about something. Maybe everything. I should have said no to her request.
I should have.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two Women
THERE WASN’T MUCH ROUNDING-up to be done the next morning: a few kids hanging around the harbour, kicking stones back and forth in the mist but I soon scared them off. There weren’t many others which was just as well as my head was too full to concentrate. Full of stuff about the tank and Nico and the tank’s driver. And Becky. She was on my mind a lot. I wandered around in the damp air as the waves thudded on the harbour wall. Tried to make sense of it all.
At lunchtime I met Sophie, like I had done every Friday for the last few months. I wasn’t in the mood but she’d kick up a stink if I didn’t show up. It was the usual venue, the Cafe Italia, a fake continental place that was as shit as all the other cafés but more expensive. She was waiting when I arrived, sitting in the corner where she always sat wearing a pink jumper, holding a menu, not that she needed it.
She stood up when I arrived, kissed me on the cheek and pointed out that I was late, as usual.
She thrust a menu at me, this stained piece of card with uneven writing on it. I didn’t even bother to read it seeing as I knew it all. Knew what I’d have.
‘How are you?’ I said.
‘Fine, as if you care.’
‘Work all right?’
She shrugged then threw down the menu. ‘What’s going on Trenty?’
‘What do you mean?’ I wondered if she’d seen Becky parked round at my place, seen us chatting.
‘Your head’s not here! You’re off with the fairies.’
‘Right.’
The waiter came over, the usual lad, shaven headed, stained apron. ‘What you havin?’ he said.
‘Stew,’ I said. He wrote it down, didn’t reply.
Sophie tilted her head back, like she always did before saying something ridicul
ous. ‘Well, I'd like the spaghetti carbonara.’
‘Out of bacon,’ said the lad.
She grunted. ‘Give me the fucking bolognese.’
The lad left.
‘So,’ she said, leaning towards me. ‘What's going on?’
‘Going on?’
‘Oh, Trent. Tell me about work. What you’ve been up to?’
‘We’re busy. Got a lot of sorting out to do.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve been asked to lead some of it. To do with The Incident.’
‘Oh?’ She sat up at this. ‘That's good. If you're doing that, something so important, they must think that you have prospects. That you’re going somewhere. That is good.’ She grinned at this, gave me a big smile. ‘Oh, Trenty, I didn't know you'd taken on extra responsibilities.’ Her hand gripped mine, held it far too tightly.
‘It’s not something I asked for…’ She’d not been interested the other day. I hadn’t expected her to make such a fuss.
She clapped her hands, a high clap up in the air. ‘This will make such a difference. We’ll be able to plan ahead, think about where we are going —’
‘Hang on —’
‘I knew it would all come together. I knew…’ And so she went on, about us and how things were going to be great. The two of us together. Forever.
Our food arrived, the two plates slapped in front of us. Mine the usual grey slop that they called stew. Sophie’s reddish-brown with lumps in it. Nothing like what she’d ordered. Usually she complained and pointed out what the food was meant to look like, quoting her beloved cook books. This time she just tucked in, ate and talked. Said more about her plans for us in the future.
I picked on with mine and said a few words, but that was it.
By the time we came to the end of the meal she’d sorted out the rest of our lives and I’d hardly said anything.
‘I have to go,’ I said standing up, throwing some cash on the table.
‘Oh, is it time to get back?’
I shrugged. Unlike most places Faeston had clocks that worked so being five or ten minutes late did matter. But this was more about getting away from Sophie with her mindless crap.
