Fourteen
By the time I got back to Lancaster I’d blown the cobwebs out of my head, if not the doubts, and more or less relearned the rules of the FireBlade.
By comparison, the Suzuki was smaller and more nimble on its feet on the twisties. It had once represented the outer boundaries of my abilities, but now it seemed a less challenging and ultimately a less rewarding ride.
Now, I’d climbed aboard something with outrageous speed and power, that just begged me to lean that little bit further, push that little bit harder. Something that coaxed and beguiled and seduced me to take another risk. And would kill me in a heartbeat if I let it get away from me.
I got off the motorway just after Forton services, intending to drop into the south side of Lancaster. Last night’s downpour had washed all the diesel off the long curving slip road and the roundabout at the end of it, and I took full advantage of the fact.
I stooged along the A6 through Galgate village, the FireBlade shivering with compressed violence as I kept it down to thirty. It was hard to get it out of my mind that only a few minutes earlier I’d been going a hundred miles an hour faster than this.
I rode with my right fore- and index fingers hooked lightly over the front brake lever, just in case of any stupid moves from other traffic. And I suppose that a part of my mind was looking for any sign of a certain Transit van with a broken rear window. Or one that had been very recently repaired.
To keep the bike humming along all it took was the slightest pressure of my right hand on the throttle. It seemed that I barely had to increase the input to overtake a slow-moving caravan. The ‘Blade just zipped past it, contemptuous.
When the lights opposite the sprawling urban mass of the university went red against me, I automatically filtered down the white line until I had my nose stuck out between the first two cars in the queue.
The driver to my left shot me a disdainful glance. I glared back.
In a detached way I recognised that the FireBlade had altered not just my riding style but my whole personality, the way beautiful clothes can make you walk sexier. It had nothing to do with the mechanics. It was a state of mind.
Like now. I wasn’t prepared to wait dutifully in a line of traffic any more, I wanted – no, I
Either way, was it going to be enough to enable me to take on the Devil’s Bridge Club at their own game?
***
The RLI was home to its usual swirling population of the worried and the exhausted and the sick. And then there were the patients.
I wasn’t quite sure why I’d come to see Clare as soon as I’d hit town. According to Jamie, the auditions for the Devil’s Bridge Club weren’t until tomorrow evening, but I suppose I just wanted to find out if she had changed her mind. Or was prepared to tell me what was really on it.
When I walked onto the ward the curtain between Clare’s bed and the next was drawn halfway along to provide some privacy but I could just see Jacob sitting on the far side, near the window. My stride faltered a little. He already knew Clare had asked me to look out for Jamie but I wasn’t sure how much else I could say without arousing his suspicions.
Jacob and Clare were both my friends and I hated the feeling that I was being sneaky with him. I’d already decided that if he asked me a direct question, I wasn’t prepared to lie. But, at the same time, there was no point in prompting him to ask. And anyway, if he’d been here all day, how much had Clare told him?
It wasn’t until I reached the foot of the bed and they looked up that I realised Clare had a second visitor who’d been hidden by the curtain. Not someone I would have expected to be sitting at the bedside of the girl who was living with her husband.
Isobel.
“Charlie!” Clare said, before I had time to do much more than stare. She gave me a smile that was strained and relieved at the same time, as though my arrival had put paid to a difficult conversation.
Jacob nodded to me, cordial, his anger of the morning seemingly forgotten or at least temporarily put aside.
“Hi,” I said.
“You and Isobel have met, I believe,” Jacob said without inflection.
Isobel shifted in her seat, juggling the handbag on her lap as though preparing to offer me a hand to shake. It seemed a ludicrous gesture given the circumstances of our previous encounter. I was carrying my helmet in one hand and I forestalled her by pointedly jamming the other into the pocket of my leathers.
“Yes,” I said, stony. And, with more of a challenge: “Eamonn not with you today?”
Isobel hesitated a moment, something scuttering across her face too fast for me to latch on to, then she settled back with a carefully pained expression.
“No. Look, I wanted to apologise about that, Charlie,” she said quickly, sounding for all the world sincere. “Eamonn can be so over-protective and sometimes he gets a bit carried away.” Her voice might be placatory but there was something calculating in her eyes. “I suppose he’s very much like that young man of yours, in that respect.”
I ignored the jibe, if that’s what it was. Hell, Isobel might have meant it as a compliment.
Jacob looked round. “Where is Sean, by the way?”
