The bedroom door opened then, and Ursula came out again, carrying a small canvas bag. We waited while she hugged Leanne, and promised to be in touch, then she allowed Sean to shepherd her out of the front door and along the open walkway to the stairs.
We were down to the second floor before we heard the motorbike arriving. I registered the sound of a big four-stroke out of habit and, glancing over the slatted balcony rail on my way past, I saw the black and yellow Honda CBR 600 come wheeling off the street into the parking area below us.
By the next half-landing, the rider had the side stand down, and the engine cut. The bike was too big for him, and although he was wearing a nice Shoei helmet, he had on just a denim jacket, and no gloves. I often wonder what makes these lads go out and buy machines that will do one-fifty plus, without bothering to get the proper gear to go with it.
As we turned onto the final half-landing, Sean suddenly stopped dead. I pulled up short and followed his gaze. The CBR rider had removed his helmet, and was walking across the grass towards the stairwell, with his face clearly visible.
This time, Sean didn’t make the mistake of yelling his brother’s name. He didn’t bother with the rest of the stairs, either. He just put both hands on the railing, and vaulted straight over it, coat flying. Ursula let out a strangled cry as he dropped out of sight.
Roger had frozen at her cry. It was only when Sean started heading for him at speed that he sprang into action.
He panicked completely then. He threw the helmet he was carrying at Sean, who swiped it to one side without breaking stride, as though it had no substance. The expensive lid smacked onto the rough ground of the parking area, bounced a couple of times, and finally rolled into the gutter, the gelcoat cracked and useless.
Roger managed to get to the Honda first, but fumbled getting the key into the ignition. I almost thought Sean had him, when the boy managed to get his thumb on the starter and the motor fired up. He snatched the Honda off its stand and kicked it clumsily into gear with the throttle already halfway open.
The effect was electric. The rear wheel ripped free of the road surface, spinning wildly, and churning up clouds of grey smoke as the transmission tried its best to bring the bike’s substantial horsepower into play.
Sean leapt clear as the rear end started to crab towards him. Finally, it dug in and bit, launching the Honda forwards with a lethal shimmy. Roger must have gone fifty yards in the blink of an eye, before he backed off the throttle enough to stay upright.
It was only a momentary ebb, then he was viciously back on the power. He laid down a haze of rubber right to the end of the street.
I headed straight for the Cherokee, practically towing Ursula along behind me. By the time I got her there Sean already had the doors unlocked and was in the driver’s seat. I bundled her into the back with a short instruction for her to buckle up, and jumped for the front seat just as Sean twisted the key and slammed the gear lever into reverse.
He set off out of the small car park and into the road with a squeal of protest from the tyres, and another from his sister.
“Sean,” I said, loud over the howl of the engine. “He’s on a CBR, with a head start. We don’t stand a hope in hell of catching him in this.”
“I know.” Sean’s face was grim as he accelerated down the narrow street, swerving the Jeep into a gap between the parked cars to miss an oncoming delivery van by a less than I’d like to think about. “But I’ve got to try.”
In fact, his pursuit lasted longer than I would have expected. Roger made a frenetic series of turns through the back streets. He was riding increasingly wildly, showing an obvious lack of skill and familiarity with the sheer bulk of the Honda.
The boy tried to go far too fast into one junction, locked the rear wheel at the last moment, and couldn’t make the turn in. He over-shot, cannoning off a parked car on the far side of the road.
Ursula let out a short scream, and I held my breath, waiting for the crash. He wasn’t even wearing a helmet now, so it was probably going to be messy, and it was definitely going to hurt, but the accident never happened. Just when I thought he’d lost it altogether, Roger somehow managed to cling on to control.
How in the name of hell, I wondered as Sean sent the Grand Cherokee thundering after his brother, did a fourteen-year old get his hands on a sub-superbike?
The answer didn’t so much form inside my head, as it just arrived, fully grown, as though it had always been there. I twisted in my seat to face Ursula.
“Is that Nasir’s bike he’s on?” I demanded.
She looked at me as though I’d gone out of my mind.
“What are you talking about?” she said, distracted, trying to see over her brother’s shoulder. “Nas doesn’t have a motorbike.”
I turned back, catching Sean’s eye as I did so. “Remember the reg number,” he said, “I’ll get Madeleine to check it.”
But we both knew instinctively whose name would be spat out as the registered keeper when Madeleine finessed the DVLA computer.
I realised briefly that Nasir’s age should have meant that the CBR’s power output had been restricted down to 33bhp for him to legally ride it. It soon became pretty obvious that it wasn’t.
Now, Roger kept on riding as though his life depended on it. At first, I thought he was just fleeing in a blind panic, but it soon became apparent there was method to his seemingly chaotic flips and turns.
“He’s heading for the escape road,” Sean said tightly as he drifted the four-by-four through another corner. “We won’t catch him if he makes it that far.”
The escape road out of Heysham wasn’t dual carriageway, but it was so wide that it might as well have been. Roger would be able to give the CBR its head and that would be it.
“What are you suggesting?” I demanded sharply, “that you run him off the road before he gets there?”
Sean’s hands clenched on the wheel, and he said nothing, but I didn’t like the sound of his thoughts.
In the end, we didn’t get the chance for drastic action. Sean hit congestion on the approach to a roundabout, and Roger nipped away from us up the inside of an artic, coming within a hair’s breadth of putting himself under the rear wheels of the trailer in the process.
Then he was away, throwing the power on in great handfuls, rocketing straight down the white line. As soon as we were clear of the roundabout Sean swung out to overtake the truck, but the driver had clearly decided we were lunatics. He did his best to make his rig even wider and longer. It seemed to take a painfully extended few seconds before Sean managed to carve past him. We could still just about see the Honda up ahead.
Sean planted the accelerator, and the jeep squatted down and ran under us. It had pace that amazed me for such a big, unwieldy vehicle, but with the best will in the world it wasn’t built for sheer speed.
Besides, the escape road was raised above the marshy farm land around it, dreadfully exposed to the wind as I well knew from the bike. As we hit a hundred miles an hour a savage gust whipped under the body, almost seeming to lift the Grand Cherokee right off the surface of the road.
We strayed over the white line as Sean fought with the steering. The inoffensive Peugeot coming the other way locked all its wheels up as the driver desperately attempted to avoid a head-on.
Blenched white, Sean managed to rescue that one, and still he kept his foot hard in.
Finally, it was Ursula, bracing herself into a corner of the back seat, whose nerve broke. “Stop, Sean, please! You’re going to kill us all,” she cried. “Why are you chasing him like this? What’s he running from?”
It was a good question. After only a moment’s hesitation, with a muttered curse, Sean lifted off the throttle. We coasted down to a more legal speed while we watched the Honda’s rear numberplate grow ever smaller in the distance.