wouldn’t say anything – that I’d let him tell you and the others himself. If he hadn’t been riding like he had a bloody death-wish I would have left him to it, but this was getting beyond a joke. Someone was going to get killed.”
William’s gaze had tracked over Jamie, still crouched with the upset Tess, and to Paxo, a hundred metres away sucking furiously on a cigarette. “Still,” he said, his voice mild, “Paxo and Tess haven’t taken it well. Might have been better to have left it until we got back, don’t you think? Instead of pushing him out of the closet now.”
“Why?” Sean said. “What’s so special about this trip?”
William just smiled and shook his head again, as though Sean wasn’t going to catch him out that easily.
“If you’re so good at this intuition business,” he said, “why don’t you tell me?”
“Don’t worry,” Sean said, favouring him with a tight little smile of his own. “We will.”
***
Tess refused to get back on Daz’s bike for the few miles from the Giant’s Causeway down to the little village of Bushmills. Paxo wouldn’t take her and, although Jamie offered, he was struggling to keep up solo. Neither Sean nor I wanted the added encumbrance, just in case of trouble, so in the end it was down to William to pat his pillion seat and give her a ride. She scrambled onto the Kawasaki behind him and wrapped her arms round his waist like she was using him as an oversize comfort blanket.
Daz just shrugged, fired up the Aprilia and resumed the pace he’d been setting all morning. If anything, I suppose he felt he had even more to prove now than he did before.
Either way, Paxo wasn’t about to be outridden by his mate, regardless of his sexual preferences. The two of them goaded each other to ever greater risks, scything past what little traffic we encountered and carving through bends on totally the wrong side of the road.
“Hey guys,” I said at last over the radio. “Remember Sam? This is going to end with somebody going home in an ambulance.”
Nobody replied.
Jamie and I were in the second wave with William, making progress but still going a lot more cautiously than Daz and Paxo. I occupied the small part of my mind that wasn’t tied up with the mechanics of riding the bike, with the problem at hand. Daz’s announcement explained a few things about his behaviour, but not everything. So, he’d been keyed up and worried – quite rightly, as it turned out – at how some of his mates would react. But that told nowhere near the whole story.
My eyes flicked ahead to where I could just make out Paxo, hunched over the tank of his Ducati. Paxo might be angry enough to be less cautious than William, in which case we might get something useful out of him. Not that Paxo had a very high opinion of me, but perhaps he was scared enough of Sean to tell him something. It was worth a try.
We all of us made it the short distance down to Bushmills intact, with no sign of the Vauxhall behind us. The road was teeming with other bikers and I started to get a stiff neck from all the friendly nodding I was doing.
Bushmills village itself was small and picturesque. The only odd note was the little local police station, which was bristling with razor wire and CCTV cameras. It seemed out of place in such a peaceful rural setting. That and the sprawling distillery on the outskirts.
Paxo was still sulking during the tour of the distillery but he didn’t unleash his outright hostility until we got to the tasting at the end. Then he couldn’t resist a dig about such fine whiskey being wasted on Daz – what with him being more of a Babycham man.
For a moment I thought Daz was going to rise to it, but then his shoulders came down a little and he smiled, wryly. “Well, I seem to remember it was you who got smashed out of your skull on Snowballs when we were in the third year at school together,” he said.
Tess was watching Paxo with her fists clenched by her sides like she was hoping they’d start brawling. She came close to getting her wish, then Paxo gave a bitter smile of his own and raised his tasting glass in reluctant salute. Whether it was at the reminder of his own previous drinking habits, or just how long they’d been friends, I couldn’t be sure.
“I think you’ll find that’s
“Cheers!” William said.
But Daz just pinned Paxo with one of the brilliant smiles he occasionally produced and raised his glass in very deliberate provocation.
“Bottoms up,” he said.
***
Knowing that the next leg of the journey was a run right the way down to the south end of Strangford Lough, I sought out the loos before we left Bushmills. The way Daz was behaving I wasn’t sure he’d stop on demand and nothing disrupts your concentration on a bike like a full bladder. Besides, some of the Irish roads were so bumpy it could have been disastrous, not just uncomfortable.
Just about everybody had the same idea. When I got back to the car park, it was to find only Sean was ready and waiting, and he was frowning.
“What is it?” I asked as soon as I was close to him.
He nodded across the busy car park to where there was a line of other bikes. “That Suzuki over there,” he said, indicating an old GSXR with Lucky Strike paintwork. “I’m sure I’ve seen that one a couple of times already so far this trip.
I shrugged, scanning for the grey Vauxhall. “Hardly surprising,” I said. “There were a lot of bikes on the ferry and they all seem to have had the same idea when it came to routing.”
