Philip Nutman - Cities of Night

Staff startled him by standing suddenly, making for the door. He reappeared awhile later, tossing a black crash helmet to Alex, who spilled Guinness over the leg of his Levi’s. Staff laughed. “We’re leaving.” Held up a set of keys in one hand, a red helmet in the other.

“On Brian’s bike? You’re bloody crazy. He’ll kick the shit out of you when he finds out.”

Staff laughed, tersely this time. “He’ll never know. The old woman’s pissed out of her head and won’t hear us start The Bitch up. Let’s go. Ninety down the carriageway’ll blow out the cobwebs.”

He was gone before Alex could object. Shit, why the hell not? It was 7:45 already, time to do something. If Staff wanted to risk a punch-up with his brother, fine, it wasn’t his problem. Yeah, The Bitch, Brian Rivers’s bike. A red Kawasaki Z1000 — now you’re talking. A thousand cc’s of throbbing, rumbling four cylinder, four stroke. It would beat getting the bus to Tully’s.

The yellow Capri was six years old and starting to rust around the wheel arches, but Harry Bledsoe didn’t give a shit.

He wasn’t happy though, as he looked at the engine one last time, wiping his oil-stained hands on a dirty rag, aware that Gibbons, the Hitler of Carpenter & Sons Fruit & Veg (Wholesale), was walking towards him. In fact, Harry wasn’t happy full stop. His youngest kid was down with the measles, his wife, Kath, was hair trigger because it was that time of the month, and the Capri wasn’t running properly.

He’d recently had the car in for a service, and the vehicle had been given a clean bill of health from the mechanic. A couple of new spark plugs and a replacement fan belt he could live with, but despite the mechanic’s remark that the engine was in good nick considering the miles on the clock, the Capri hadn’t started efficiently for the last week, producing a consumptive noise every time he turned the ignition and only jumping to life on the eighth or ninth attempt. To add insult to injury, Hopkins was off sick, and Harry was working double shifts because the mortgage rate was up again and he had a family of five to feed. He was tired and fucked off, and he wanted to go home but couldn’t because it was 7:45 and he had another three hours to go.

Harry hated Mondays and loved Fridays — pub night, the only time Kath agreed he could go out and get plastered — but this one was a sack of shit the size of Big Ben.

He closed the bonnet of the car as Gibbons came up behind him. Harry had no idea what was wrong with the bloody thing. More money to spend.

“Get yer arse moving, Harry. The Bristol delivery should’ve gone out an hour ago.”

“Yeah, I’m on my way.” He tossed the rag to one side as he turned toward the fully loaded Bedford lorry. A trip to Bristol was the last thing he fancied, and it looked as if his plans for an early knockoff and a jar or two of Sam Smith’s in The Queen’s Head before closing were steadily disappearing up shit creek without a paddle.

“And don’t forget the invoice this time.”

“No, I won’t, George,” Bledsoe said as he opened the cab door, adding a silent Go shag a sheep, you old wanker.

Staff kick-started the Z1000 and The Bitch roared to life, all 1000 cc’s of prime Jap engineering. Alex straddled the big bike, holding firmly onto the pillion bar. Staff turned. “Let’s do it!” he shouted, revving the engine.

Staff slipped his visor down and the precisioned beast took off down Landsdown View. As they reached the bottom of the road, he pressed hard on the horn, the noise echoing off brick wall as they shot through the tunnel beneath the railway line, Staff slowing at the last moment as they reached the junction with the Lower Bristol Road, the brakes screeching in protest. The Herman Muller building was opposite, its lights still burning as the cleaners worked on the front offices.

They’d broken in for a lark a few weeks back after a late-night drinking spree and stole a couple of chairs from the board room, tossing them into the river Avon flowing behind the factory. Staff always knew what to do if the night was a dead loss. It had been a laugh, jimmying the men’s room window, climbing in, and stumbling around in the dark until they found the offices. Staff had taken a shit on a secretary’s chair and Alex’d pissed in a desk drawer, soaking a pile of personnel files. Yeah, that stunt had capped a boring night nicely. Now this one was shaping up as a riot, the Kawasaki rolling like a mechanized wet dream.

A stream of traffic passed, late commuters heading home for the weekend. As soon as the last car went, Staff put the bike in gear, accelerating with the style of a speedway rider. Within moments they were on a car’s tail. The road curved to the right and visibility was limited. That didn’t stop him from overtaking, dropping a gear, increasing the engine’s roar as he continued to push the speedometer up, then slipping into fourth as they glided past the Hillman Avenger. Alex looked over at the alarmed driver, a fat businessman type, flashing fingers in a V as they took off. Yeah, it was going to be a good night. He could feel it all the way from his balls to the top of his head, his body vibrating in concert with the powerful bike. He looked over Staff’s shoulder: the speedometer read seventy and they were in a fifty m.p.h. zone. Big fucking deal. Staff continued to accelerate, pushing the bike past the other cars. Up ahead the houses gave way to factories on the right and, on the left, the stone wall supporting the British Rail line connecting London in the east to Bristol in the west, the direction in which they were headed. Here the speed limit was sixty miles per hour; they were up to eighty. Ride that Bitch!

If he could have seen Staff’s face, he would have seen his friend was smiling, a grim, mean smile charged with aggression. Staff took the bike up to ninety, tempted to give it full throttle, the cars behind them receding rapidly. There was no oncoming traffic as they reached the city limits. The street lights stopped, plunging them into a stretch of blackness, the railway line disappearing into a long tunnel, the factories replaced by the dark, silent, slow-moving expanse of the Avon on the right. The Bitch’s engine purred with almost sexual satisfaction as it cut through the black, a thunderous ravaging red devil from hell.

Stoned on dope and speed, all head-rush perfection and oiled movement, Alex had no worries about Staff’s ability to control the bike. He’d been riding motorcycles since he was thirteen, way below the legal age limit, but then legality didn’t feature too highly in Staff’s worldview: a little dope dealing here, a little breaking and entering there — he was small time in his crimes, but he believed if you wanted something, you should take it; if there was money to be made, make it whichever way you could; if there was a bike challenging enough to ride, then push it to the max, take it to the red line and beyond. Fuck rules and regulations. Alex felt his amigo lean into the wind and lowered himself as far as he could go. There was no past, no future ( God save the Sex Pistols! ), only now — and that was one huge, throbbing brain scream of speed and dark.

They approached the traffic lights at the point where the Upper and Lower Bristol Roads converged and stretched out in a mile-long expanse of straight dual carriageway. The lights were green and The Bitch blasted through at one hundred m.p.h.. Alex whooped inside his helmet. Yeah, this was it. Go for it. Fast, furious, totally exhilarating. All thoughts of Sixth Form, of essays, tutors, home, and boredom, were gone. There was only the sensation of speed.

And the dark.

The phone rang as Jamie was finally starting to relax after the panic of the dead faint.