'Now what?' I said, craning my head back and trying to see out of the bottom of the pith helmet.
'Drive around the estate,' Davey said, shoving me into the back of the Roller. 'The three chimneys tour. I've only done it twice and I want to see if I can improve my time.'
'Three chi... oh hell, whatever,' I breathed, collapsing back in the seat and staring out the rear window at the darkness. 'Wake me up when we get back.'
The Roller purred, and we set off. I lay looking at the ceiling for a while, and must have been dozing at least when we stopped. I looked over the back of the front seat to see we were parked on grass in front of a large dark building, and Balfour was preparing a couple of very hefty lines of coke on a mirror balanced on the tray of the Roller's opened glove box. I pushed the helmet back, ogled the lines of white crystals and said, 'That it? We done it yet?'
'Not yet,' Davey said, snorting one line through a section of plastic straw and then handing me the straw and mirror as he sat sniffing and snorting and breathing hard, staring at the tall building in front of us. 'And don't spill it, he said.
Unnecessarily; I'd already disposed of the stuff, though I'd done the lot up one nostril and was feeling oddly imbalanced as a result. I lay back down again to wait for the effect, but Balfour dragged me out of the car and we stumbled across the grass to open a large door and then crash around a bit inside the unlit building, our only illumination coming from a torch Balfour held. I cracked my head on something and was very glad of the pith helmet.
'Careful!' Balfour said, and opened a door; I clambered up into what felt like a car interior, still too stupefied to work out what was going on. I lay back across a couple of seats and closed my eyes.
The realisation hit at exactly the same time as the coke, and at the same time as a powerful engine — much louder than the Roller's whispering motor — burst into life. I clawed and fought my way upright as we bumped across the grass; I slipped on something and fell to a thrumming floor, my helmet coming off and rolling away in the darkness. I felt for it, retrieved it, jammed it back on and headed forward to where I could dimly see Davey strapping himself in, lit by the lights from the dials and controls on the dash in front of him.
'We are!' I howled, hardly able to believe it was really happening, that even Balfour would be so insane. 'You — We — This really is...' I spluttered, then was thrown back as we accelerated. Balfour clicked lights on, and I saw the airstrip in front of us. 'No!' I shouted.
'Shut up and sit down,' Davey said calmly, peering at some dials. We leapt forward again, heading down the field. I looked for a door handle.
'You're mad,' I told him. 'Stop this! You bastard! Let me out!'
'Will you stop shouting?' Davey said, and pressed a stop-watch into my shaking hands. 'How can I concentrate when you're shouting like that?' The plane powered down the grass, bucking and heaving on the uneven ground.
I gave up looking for a handle in the darkness — I could never find the door handles in cars, so I knew I'd no chance in a plane and threw myself over the seat at Balfour. I managed to get one hand to his throat. 'Let me out, you mad son of a bitch! I'll kill you! I'm not kidding; I'll kill you now; I'm not letting you take me up in this thing!'
'Look, stop being melodramatic, will you?' Davey said reasonably, and detached my hand from his neck without looking at me. 'I'm about to take off; you're distracting me, know what I mean?'
'Take off?' I screamed, and threw myself back into what I imagined was the comparative safety of the rear seats. I lay there quivering, backside stuck in the air, hands over the pith helmet, but the plane didn't tip back and soar; it slowed, and made a sudden turn which pressed me (still whimpering) hard against one side. Then the engine roared, I was thrown against the backs of the seats, and the bucking and heaving increased dramatically in both frequency and amplification. 'What... what happened?' I shrieked over the racket.
'Oh, I wasn't really taking off before; I was just taxiing to the end of the field,' Davey explained in a reasonable voice.
'Bastard!' I scrambled to my feet and threw myself forward again, grabbing at the back of Balfour's head and just missing.
I saw him flinch and duck and heard him say, 'Now I'm taking off.'
'Aargh!' I shouted. The aircraft's nose reared up; a line of lights beneath us fell away, the blurred ground disappeared, some trees flicked into and out of sight just like that, and I was thrown back again as we climbed.
I froze. I went into some sort of temporary catatonic state, my hands clawed round the back of the seat beside the pilot, my eyes fixed staring straight ahead, my body — even my heart, it seemed stopped, fixed, stalled.
'Hey, you dropped the watch; here.' Balfour reached over to me and pressed the watch into my stiffened fingers. I was staring into the starless dark beyond the steeply tipped windscreen, my teeth vibrating in time to the labouring engine. Davey adjusted some controls. 'Sit down, Danny. You'll be more comfortable.'
I found my way into the co-pilot's seat. I got the harness on somehow. I could see lines of light beneath us; the sodium yellow of streets in towns and villages, and the tiny white spears and dim rubies of a motorway. I stared, transfixed. Then I looked over at Balfour. He was smiling, looking quite relaxed and happy. If I could have made it out over the engine, I bet I'd have heard him humming to himself.
He'd had less than I had, I told myself. He wasn't drinking as much as me and he had less dope and it doesn't affect your reaction time so much anyway and besides the coke should counteract it a bit... shouldn't it? I stared at the stop-watch in my hand as we swept out across a stretch of darkness I suspected was water, heading for an isolated bunch of bright lights in the distance.
'You all right?' Davey asked me.
'Ha ha! Fine!' I said. I looked at the stop-watch again. Then I dropped it and put both hands round Balfour's throat. He looked mildly surprised but didn't take his hands off the controls in front of him. 'Take us down. I may still kill you, but take us down right now; hear?'
Davey tutted. 'Look, you've dropped the watch again. I'll need you to work it in a few minutes. Will you behave yourself? You're getting excited; I knew I shouldn't have given you so much cocaine.' He shook his head; I could feel his neck move in my hands.
I realised I was dealing with a complete madman impervious to any reasoning or threats, and let go of his neck. I resigned myself to my death and picked up the stop-watch again. 'Fair enough. Just say when.'
'That's more like it.'
'But if we ever do get down intact, I'm still going to kill you.'
'There you go again,' he told me, settling himself in his seat and staring forward. 'Just calm down. Get that watch ready.' I stared forward as well.
We were approaching what looked like a huge factory of some sort; a gigantic building lit from inside, its many outbuildings blazing yellow under sodium lights; from the centre of the building a huge chimney rose, hundreds of feet high and lined with levels of red lights like vast necklaces of LEDs. We were flying just under the level of its summit. Smoke twisted lazily from it, and ghostly white steam drifted from bits of the brightly lit buildings beneath. We were flying straight at the chimney stack.
'What the hell,' I breathed, 'is that?'
'Kingsnorth power station,' Davey said, still aiming us straight for the vast concrete tower. 'Ready with the watch?'
I watched the chimney get closer and closer. We weren't climbing over it; we were at least fifty feet beneath the summit, and on a collision course. I pressed back in my seat, eyes goggling. 'I said, ready with the watch?' Davey said, annoyed.
'Yes,' I croaked weakly. I closed my eyes as the chimney, almost filling the screen in front of me now, came up to splash us like a midgie against a flyswat.