Alan Hunter - Gently Go Man

He took his eyes off the mirror — very well, it was their funeral! — and kept the 75 very straight down the empty stretch ahead. He refused to look at the mirror. He knew instinctively when they were up with him. He was checking his breath, waiting for the crash, certain that a crash was going to occur. Then he heard a roar above the boom of his engine. The two bikes appeared. They’d come up one on each side of him. For a couple of seconds the inside bike was bucking the bald, worn, verge: then they were through, closing up, streaking away glove by glove. He stared intently at the diminishing machines, but their plates were shrouded in the drumming black plastic.

He found himself biting hard on his pipe. It was a pretty man?uvre, that one! If he’d chanced to swerve a couple of inches there’d have been a fresh body in Five Mile Drove. He dropped his speed down to the sixes, let them go right away from him, saw them dwindle into dots in the misty aisle of the Chase. But the dots did not quite dwindle. Instead, they separated in drunken curves. For a moment he was at a loss to interpret what it was they were doing. Then he realized: they had turned. They were coming back for another attempt.

It was too crazy for anything. He guessed directly what was intended. He glanced quickly at his mirror, then moved out towards the crown of the road. He would have to cooperate, there was no alternative. To try to avoid them would bring disaster. He had to play along, as crazy as they were, and pray to high heaven they could bring it off. He held the 75 poised, kept her steady at six and a half. He said his prayer to high heaven and braced himself for what was coming.

This time their combined speeds must have been well over a hundred and fifty. The two machines hurtled towards him like missiles fired from a gun. He fought the instinct to close his eyes, to jam at the brakes, to swerve away. For a moment it seemed to him physically impossible to go on driving straight at them. Then the moment passed and he felt an icy detachment. The break came, they flicked apart, scythed howling by his two wings. A spark of elation glowed in him. He hadn’t diverged by a hairsbreadth. Only, he noticed with some surprise, his foot was hard down on the accelerator.

They turned and caught him again before the end of the Drove, but the slow overtake from behind now seemed comparatively tame. They were weaving slightly after they passed him, a victory roll it might have been. He pulled the stops out, trying to hold them, but they surged effortlessly away from the 75. Was there any chance of intercepting them? He made a mental check of the road ahead. It passed no phone box, no houses, up to the outskirts of Latchford. All they needed in the meantime were a few seconds to strip off that sheeting. After that they were unidentifiable, merely another pair of motorcyclists…

He eased down to a more reasonable speed and drew resignedly at his cold pipe. They’d got away with it for the moment, there was no point in flogging along on their tails. Better to start thinking out what was the significance of that incident, which he was sure had been planned with a deal of thoroughness and knowledge. He drove thoughtfully back into Latchford. He passed the Sun and kept going. He turned right into the Norwich Road, parked at the First and Last cafe.

Outside the First and Last cafe were standing six motorcycles and each motorcycle of the six had black plastic sheeting laced over it. The sheeting was cut so that it covered the tank and made a triangle with the pillion and back axle, thus concealing, except to an expert, the brand make of the machine.

Gently got out and walked over to them. It was very quiet inside the cafe. He walked along the row of motorcycles, stooping to place a hand near each engine. They were cool though not cold. They hadn’t been run for some time. The plastic sheetings had no mud on them. The number plates were stark and legal. He dusted his hand, nodded his head, walked into the cafe.

The six owners of the bikes sat at a table near the door, in front of each a milkshake and a sandwich on a plate. They were all dressed in black leathers and wore silk scarves round their necks. Their black gauntlets and black helmets were placed by the side of their plates. They sat silently and without moving. Only their eyes turned to Gently. In the background, his cheek twitching, Tony was doing something with a teapot.

‘Tony,’ Gently said, ‘I’ll have a milkshake and a sandwich.’

Tony dropped the teapot noisily, grabbed a shaker and slopped milk into it.

‘Whata would you like?’ he gabbled.

‘Same as the chaps,’ Gently said.

‘They got banana,’ Tony said.

‘Make mine banana,’ said Gently.

He took a leisurely survey of the premises. Two transport men were also sitting there. They looked bored. They weren’t eating and they didn’t catch Gently’s eye. At the silent table was a seventh chair and a vacant space on the table in front of it. Gently paid for his order, took it to the space, placed his trilby by it, and sat on the chair.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘as a matter of form, we’ll take the names and addresses first.’

He looked encouragingly round the table. No one answered him a word.

‘You,’ he said to a squash-nosed boy, ‘your name is Salmon, so I’m told.’

‘Like what’s it to you?’ Salmon said. ‘We haven’t been doing nothing, screw.’

‘We’ll come to that,’ Gently said. ‘You live in Barnham Road, don’t you?’

‘Tell him, Jack,’ said a thick-featured youngster. ‘We go for this screw knowing who we are.’

They gave him their names and addresses. Gently wrote them in his notebook. They were Jack Salmon, Jeff Cook, Pete Starling, Bill Hallman, Frankie Knights, and Tommy Grimstead, Hallman being the thick-featured one. Tony watched this going on with increasing agitation. The transport men seemed restive. One of them was heeling the leg of his chair.

‘Right,’ Gently said. ‘Now just for the book, how long have you been here?’

‘Like an hour and a half,’ Hallman said. ‘Ask anyone how long we’ve been here.’

‘Tony?’ Gently said.

‘It’s the truth what they say,’ Tony said. ‘They been here the hour and a half, mister. I don’t wanta no trouble around here.’

‘You won’t get it,’ Gently said. ‘Not if you keep your nose clean. What do these other two gentlemen say?’

The transport men were looking sheepish.

‘That’s about right,’ one of them muttered. ‘We’ve been here an hour, and they were here in front of us.’

‘You want to get away?’ Gently asked.

‘’Bout time we were going,’ the man said.

‘I should get away,’ Gently said. ‘You’ve nothing left to stop for now.’

The two men got to their feet hastily. One of them stumbled as he went through the door. Tony was clutching his arms anguishedly as though they were bothering him with cramp.

‘Good,’ Gently said, ‘that’s the inessentials. Now we can get down to business perhaps. What are the six of you sitting in here for — why aren’t you at work like other people?’

‘Like we work when we want to,’ Hallman said. ‘Is there a law against it, screw?’

‘Yuh,’ Salmon said, ‘what gives with you, screw? We can sit in here as long as we like.’

‘So you weren’t told off for it?’ Gently said.

‘We weren’t told nothing,’ Hallman said.

‘You weren’t told to tie those sheets on your bikes.’

‘Not nothing we was told about,’ Hallman said.

‘Then you just tied them on, did you?’ Gently said. ‘You just got the same idea. All six of you.’

‘Yuh, that’s about it,’ Hallman said. ‘Like we just got the same idea about that.’