‘Whose side are you on, blockhead?’ Sorbie cranked the wheel and took a lot of pavement in cornering around the vehicle. It only cost him a few seconds but it had put the entire length of a street between him and the scooters. They were cornering again. Sorbie shot after them.
Fairfield pointed ahead. ‘They’re going down there, that’s a dead end.’
‘It is for us but not for them. There’s a pedestrian entrance into the supermarket car park, they’ll go through there. We’ll have to go round. We’ve lost them.’ Sorbie drove on without slowing but turned the siren off until he needed it to cut across the next two junctions, then turned it off again. It might relax the riders if they thought they had lost them. He doubted it would. They were too well organized not to have an escape route planned in advance. Having circled the supermarket he slowed in the middle of the junction long enough to avoid colliding with a greengrocer’s van, then sped north.
Fairfield, who had kept up a commentary on the pursuit to the controller, asked if any units were in the area and was told there were none on that side of town. Several had been drawn off to help with a multiple RTA on the motorway, which kept the helicopter busy as well.
‘Are we packing it in?’ Sorbie asked, still overtaking vehicles at speed. They had come full circle, once more on the Bath Road.
Fairfield’s voice was gritty with frustration. ‘Carry on past Mitchell’s place. You never know, we might get lucky.’ Minutes later the lock-ups flew past her window, dark and deserted. ‘All right, cut the lights and drive me towards my coffee machine, Jack. I’m seriously pissed off now.’
Chris Reed loved computers. He loved everything about them. And especially the net. It was the most liberating weapon unwittingly given into the hands of the ordinary man, and now it was unstoppable. It brought together like-minded people into supportive communities that could be fostered and nurtured into global movements. The establishment could never monitor them all, there were too many of them, too many sites, too many users. Computers helped keep in touch, organize action. Computers gave you ideas. And they cost next to nothing. This one had come from a skip, like most of the things in his room in fact, and it was okay. It was ancient and had less memory than a middle-aged pothead but it did most things, albeit very slowly.
The printer on the other hand was a pain in the arse. Reed cleared another paper jam. The print on his home-made leaflets was too pale and a bit stripy, not at all the stark-looking warning he had been aiming for. But they’d get the message.
He could only do a few cars at a time. Of the five students in this house all but Vicky were totally apathetic. A couple of them had come on the Saturday Traffic Protest once and that was it. Direct action wasn’t their style. Any action really. They didn’t even bother to vote. As far as he could see they were all at uni so they could one day become part of the establishment and add their own 4?4s to the madness and consume until the planet was dead.
He left the printer chewing on the leaflets and went and knocked on Vicky’s door. Loud, synthetic dance music thumped on the other side. He knocked harder.
The music blasted him as Vicky at last opened the door. ‘Oh, hi.’ She went back to piling her hair into a mess on top of her head in front of a narrow length of mirror glass, giving a grunt of frustration when the arrangement snaked apart. She started all over again. As she lifted her arms her short dress rode up high enough to gave him a glimpse of black knickers.
‘You’re wearing a dress?’
‘Yeah. Look all right?’
She’d forgotten. Obvious. ‘Not very practical.’
‘That always depends.’ She could see Chris in the mirror. He was so scruffy. Someone should take the man in hand. For a mature student he was all right really. He had some valid ideas, stuff to say. But it got boring very quickly. Chris the one-trick pony. ‘I’m going out tonight. We’re meeting at the Watershed.’
He crossed the room to the mini system and turned down the moronic music. ‘We were going to do some cars tonight. You said you’d come.’
‘No, don’t do that, it gets me in the mood.’ She turned it up again and returned to her mirror. ‘I must have forgotten. Next time. I’ll come with you next time. Who else is going anyway?’ She asked purely for something to say, she really wasn’t in the mood for Chris tonight and she knew there’d be no one else. In theory Chris’s raids were quite a laugh, in practice they were cold and yucky.
‘It’s just us.’ He knew she wouldn’t change her mind now, she had her make-up done and everything, but he wouldn’t let her off so easily.
‘Sorry, we could do it tomorrow night, what’s wrong with tomorrow?’
‘I’ll do it by myself then. Won’t be able to do many cars but at least it’s a start. Then we can do some more tomorrow.’
‘Oh no, just remembered, I can’t tomorrow, I’m going up to see my parents for a couple of days, aren’t I? Dad’s birthday, they sent me a train ticket.’
He left her room without a word and slammed the door behind him, regretting it instantly. He couldn’t afford to alienate the girl. But how were they ever going to make a difference if dancing and birthdays took precedence over saving the planet? He found lots of support for what he had to say on the net, in the forums and chat rooms, but actually getting stuff off the ground yourself was a lot harder. He hadn’t managed to find many recruits and of the few he did find, only Vicky was left to help him. When she felt like it. Ah well, he’d do it tonight and he’d do it by himself.
Chapter Seven
Tiny, tiny hairs. Backlit by the weak morning light that modelled the contours of the girl’s stomach. There had to be thousands of little downy hairs and he liked them. From this vantage point — his head resting on her thigh — he could see some of them moving in his breath. The pierced belly button was, on close inspection, not an improvement on the original design. During their lovemaking he’d been scared of catching his hair on it, ripping it out by accident. It was quite safe, Rebecca had told him. Didn’t he like it? No, no, it looked fine. A tiny enamelled daisy. He touched it now with his middle finger, waggled it about a bit. It made him shiver. Rebecca remained fast asleep. Or pretended to be fast asleep, sometimes just as good.
Why couldn’t they stick to earrings? Earrings were all right, much nicer in fact. Was it a sign he was slipping into ‘young middle age’? Was that why he’d chatted up the barmaid in the first place, to reassure himself that everything was still there, everything was just as it was before Laura?
The two-bar heater from the junk shop had been on all night while they slept and the room was unnaturally warm. The girl had kicked away the duvet after their last, lazy lovemaking. McLusky propped himself up on one elbow and studied her body: the hollow of her stomach, her taut flanks, her breasts unbothered by gravity, her long neck curved away from him, her exactly shoulder-length blonde hair, the perfect ovals of her nostrils.
He had enjoyed her body but images of Laura had constantly intruded, offering themselves for comparison. Sight, touch, smell, energy and size, everything was different. No better or worse, just different and somehow vaguely irritating, not exciting and energizing as it should have been. But these tiny hairs he liked.