Could you tell Clare that I'm not really feeling up to Devil's Bridge today? Would she mind if we called it off?” I paused expectantly. “Jacob?”
“She's already set off,” Jacob said slowly, and I could hear the worry climb in his voice. “She left a good hour ago. I thought the two of you would be up there by now.”
My mouth dried. “Are you sure she was coming straight here?”
“Positive. Look, I'll have a run out in the Range Rover, just in case she's had a problem with the Ducati. You know what the electrics are like on these old Italian bikes. One drop of rain and they give up the ghost,” he said, trying not to sound as though he was panicking. “If she turns up at your place in the meantime, let me know, would you?”
“OK,” I said, and rang off with my own anxiety rising to match. I had just started collecting my gear together when the phone rang again. Wilks looked up from her study of one of my fitness magazines, saw I was closer to it than she was, and went back to her reading.
I was half-expecting it to be Jacob again, to say everything was all right, but it was Clare herself on the line.
“Charlie?” To begin with I was too relieved to recognise her voice to realise that the pitch was slightly off and she sounded strained.
“Oh, hi, I was just about to come and look for you,” I babbled. “Have you had problems with the bike? Have you rung Jacob?” I paused. Nothing. “Clare?”
“Ye-yes, I'm still here,” she said jerkily. “Listen, Charlie, there's someone here who wants to speak to you.”
“Clare, what's the matter?” I said, more warily now. “You sound like you've been crying. Are you OK?”
But it wasn't Clare who spoke. Instead, I heard that metallic voice I'd come to dread.
“Your friend doesn't seem too happy to be here with me,” it said.
The fear laced down my spine, riffling the hairs, causing an involuntary spasm in my hands. “What do you want?” I said sharply. Wilks looked up, but I ignored her inquiring glance.
“What do I want, Charlie? Now that's an interesting question,” purred the voice. “I want vengeance. I want you naked and screaming under me. That's what I want.” The voice halted a moment, then delivered the death blow. “But if I can't have you, I'm willing to take a substitute. Your friend Clare, for instance.”
“Go on,” I said tightly. There were bands round my chest. I couldn't breathe fully. I was gripping the phone so hard it made my hand pulse.
“The New Adelphi. Be here in ten minutes. If you're late, she dies,” the voice commanded, and even the voice changer couldn't disguise the swell of triumph. “Oh, and Charlie, I know your place is crawling with filth at the moment, so make sure you wash before you come. Any sign of the boys in blue and she'll be dead before you make it through the door.”
“If you harm her . . .” I began, my own tone quiet but frozen. He didn't reply to that one. There was just a soft click, and he'd gone.
I put the phone down slowly, and turned to find Wilks at my shoulder, looking suspicious.
“That was him, wasn't it?” she demanded. When I nodded numbly, she turned up her lapel mic to her mouth and started to call her HQ.
It was enough to shake me out of my stupor. I grabbed her hand. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Let go of me, Charlie. I've got to call it in,” she said.
“You don't understand. He'll kill her if your lot show up!”
She gave me a patronising look. “We are trained for this sort of thing, you know,” she said. “Did he tell you where he was?”
Anger star-burst behind my eyes. Without realising I'd done it, I'd shifted my feet into a stance, gauged the distances. “Please,” I said. “Let me handle it.”
She disregarded my final plea, so I hit her, just under her chin with my upswept elbow. Her teeth clacked together alarmingly, then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she started to crumple.
I half-carried, half-dragged the unconscious policewoman over to the sofa and left her lying on it. I suppose part of me was hoping she wouldn't hold it against me for ever, but part of me didn't care.
Within seconds I'd grabbed my jacket and helmet and pelted down the stairs to the street. The rain lashed down over my back, sliding under my collar. WPC Wilks's panda car was still parked three cars down, where she'd left it last night, but behind it, rear wheel slanted in towards the kerb, was Clare's Ducati.
When I looked, I found the bike's keys were still in the ignition.
Oh God, I'd never heard her arrive. He must have been waiting around outside the flat. Unwilling to come in and get me because of the obvious police presence. So he'd been waiting for me to come out. And he'd grabbed Clare instead.
Just for a second, I debated on taking the Ducati. It was far faster than the Suzuki, but an unknown quantity as far as handling went. I couldn't risk it.
I ran round to my own bike and slipped the chain. My only thought was that if I didn't get to the New Adelphi in time, Clare would be dead. And it would be all down to me.
I jammed my lid on, wincing as the side padding squeezed the swollen flesh round my eye, and kicked the Suzuki into life.
Usually I'm religious about letting the bike warm up, but this time it was in gear and moving the moment the motor caught and fired. I snapped the throttle wide open in the first three gears as I roared along the quay, short- shifting as the Suzuki squealed its outrage, the cold engine stuttering without revving freely to the red line.
There was hardly any traffic as I joined the main road and I gassed it again. As I hit the long tight left-hander over Greyhound Bridge on the river, I realised just how greasy the roads were.
The back end started to slide out. I daren't touch the brakes. I had to try and desperately control it on the power, feeding the throttle in evenly to compensate. By the time the road straightened out under the railway line, the speedo needle was wavering round ninety miles an hour.
By the college the cars were thicker, people on their way to the ferry terminal at Heysham, the supermarket or the Drive-Thru. I skimmed down the outside, slithering over the slick white lines, kicking up rooster-tails of spray like a water-skier.
I squinted through the rain blurring my visor, overtaking on the wrong side of a pedestrian refuge in the middle of the road when a truck blocked the left lane.
I braked hard for the first of the roundabouts, feeling the compression up through my arms, the pain in my hand. I ignored it, blanked it out. The Suzuki hit a trace of diesel on the second one, and shied sideways, damned near high-siding me into the back end of a lumbering Volvo saloon. It would have made an ironic change for a biker to have wiped out a Swedish tank, I suppose. I don't think the driver even noticed.
Come on, faster, faster! There's no clock on the bike, and the last thing I was going to do was take one hand off the bars to fumble for my watch. I had no idea how long it was since the phone call. It seemed like it had taken me hours to get this far.
I nearly didn't make it at all. A car on one of the side roads off Broadway misjudged the speed of my approach and pulled out in front of me. For once I didn't bother stabbing my thumb on the horn button, or gesturing rudely at him. I just swerved within a foot of the bumper and whacked the throttle against the stop, fighting to keep the front end in contact with the tarmac.
By the time I hit the car park at the New Adelphi, my heart was slamming like I'd just run a marathon and stinging beads of sweat were running into my eyes.
I kicked the side-stand down and jumped off the bike, yanking off my helmet. My left knee complained bitterly at the exercise as I ran for the main entrance on legs that trembled perilously.
When I reached it, the front door was firmly bolted and draped with “police – do not cross' tape.
I stood back, wheezing, cursing, then jogged round to the back entrance. The tape had been pulled aside here, and the door was propped open with half a breeze block again, revealing a dark aperture beyond. The lion's den.
I took a deep breath, and stepped through the doorway, moving quietly along the corridor until it opened out into one of the main dance floors. My breath was coming in gasps now, my heart about to burst. I bent and deposited my helmet on the floor, putting it down without a sound.
As soon as I moved out onto the darkened floor, the big lights in front of the stage blazed on. I flinched back,
