by Hocking, Ian
“Farnborough,” the pilot said. “Three hundred miles to the south. In new money, that’s about five hundred kilometres. They expect us for 9 p.m.”
Saskia closed her eyes. She opened them again before they became airborne. She watched the runway lights stream by. She became drowsy. She could hear a stream of English inside her head. They were nonsense words. She supposed that part of her brain that processed language was still working. She let it and fell asleep.
David recalled a phrase from his youth: ‘highway hypnosis’. Strange how phrases drifted into a language, took a bow, and left again. Most were fleeting clichés. But highway hypnosis was apposite. The feel of road: the warp of objects and contours as the world flowed past, slower in the middle and faster towards the edge; ideas that could only feed on the thoughts of a few moments before, feed on the same things, over and over, like the bike wheel turning, over and over. Midnight was far away.
The Grantham, being a light aircraft with no oxygen cylinders, could not climb above the weather. It flew low where the air was thick and contrary. The rain was a constant. It was 9:30 p.m. before they touched down. Saskia had not moved since she had climbed aboard, but when she stepped onto the concrete of the holding lot, she almost collapsed with fatigue. “Thanks, Sam,” shouted Hannah above the propeller noise.
“No problem. I have to park. See you.”
Saskia gave him a little salute and searched for a terminal building. She could see none in the fierce rain. The area was flat and huge. It was full of small aircraft. “Where now?” she asked. She ducked to avoid the wing as Sam taxied away.
Hannah pulled his suit jacket over his head. “There’s a blue light over there.”
They watched as a traffic patrol car approached. It weaved cautiously through the still aircraft and came to a stop ten metres away. A uniformed officer jumped out with an umbrella. He ran across and opened it over Hannah. “Piss off,” Hannah said. They climbed in the back. The men made conversation. It was a twenty-minute journey to Heathrow. Saskia fell asleep against the window before the car pulled away.
When she awoke, she knew that too much time had passed. She looked at her watch. It was 10:30 p.m. Ahead, the traffic was heavy. Some larger vehicles were flashing their hazard lights.
“Why haven’t we arrived?” she asked.
Hannah looked over. He was sweating. A vein throbbed in his forehead. “An accident. It happened just in front of us.” He dabbed at the vein with a handkerchief.
“What’s wrong?” She put a hand to his forehead, expecting it to feel hot. But it was cold.
He grimaced. “Heart burn. You know, acid indigestion. The bloody sandwiches. I knew I shouldn’t’ve eaten them.”
Saskia heard the co-driver talk urgently into his radio. The words were abbreviated. She didn’t understand, but when he replaced the handset on the dashboard, everybody but her swore. Hannah said to her, “These guys have to secure the scene.”
She nodded calmly. Perhaps some over her calm would creep over Hannah. “Then they will call us another car.”
The car shook as their co-driver slammed the boot. He shrugged a fluorescent jacket over his shoulders and jogged ahead alongside the driver. Saskia gripped the handle. She felt an urge to see the accident. Hannah looked at her. Saskia opened her mouth but stopped. They talked with their eyes. He wanted to go too, but he felt too ill to leave the car; Saskia would stay with him, and judged that she would force him to leave if she told him so; he smiled, knowing that he was understood, and she smiled in return.
When David blinked, his eyelids scratched his eyeballs. He took an enormous breath and said, “Come on, come on, not long now.” The bike computer’s graphic indicated that he was nearly there. He was on the M4. He was five minutes from Heathrow.
“Ego, what will happen when I open that locker?”
“I cannot tell you that.”
David pulled a wry smile. It was not the first time he had asked.
He crouched forward. This was his second riding position. His first was to lean back, let the wind push his chest. Occasionally the bike would wobble when he alternated between the two. He didn’t care. He thought of his daughter. He had taught her to ride in a cul de sac near the old house in Oxford. He had pushed her for miles, constantly reassuring her that he had a firm grip.
Finally, he let go and she wobbled all the way to the turning space. He felt proud. He felt like a real father. At the end of the road, he heard her faint voice say, “I nearly did it that time, daddy,” and he cupped his hands and shouted, “You did! I’m back here!” and she turned around and fell off with a scream. He ran down and picked her up, bike and all, and took her inside. He sat her on the washing machine and dabbed her grazes with TCP. Through her tears, she smiled. “I did it.” That became her catchphrase. When she passed her maths GCSE aged nine, had her poems published, when she got into the New York school, she always said, “I did it.”
And now he had learned to ride too. He had done it.
A blue light flashed on the dashboard. He glanced down, thinking it was a warning. But the light was merely a reflection. He turned around
(and fell off with a scream) and the bike wobbled. There was a police car bearing down on him. He indicated right and slid into the slow lane.
“Hello hello hello,” said the co-driver. She leaned forward. She turned to her colleague and muttered something.
“What is it now?” Saskia asked. She felt travelsick and she longed to leave the car, stretch her legs. They had been at the accident site for over an hour but Heathrow was, finally, only five minutes away. Hannah jerked awake and rubbed his eyes.
“What’s the description of Proctor’s bike?” asked the codriver.
“A bit fuzzy,” said Hannah. “A new bike. It could be a trail bike. Green, but possibly a different colour by now.”
The co-driver whistled. “That new?”
Saskia said impatiently, “Yes, that new. Do you see him?”
“Could be. Can’t be that many Moirés on the M4 this time of night being driven by a weekend rider. This year’s registration. Fair-sized luggage container on the back, too.”
“A weekend rider? What are you talking about?” asked Saskia.
The co-driver seemed unable to detect any edge to the question. She was calm. An easy day’s work for her, Saskia guessed. “He couldn’t ride a bike to save his life. Obvious from the way he’s sitting on it.”
“Pull him over,” said Saskia.
“Easy, tiger,” Hannah said. “We can’t pull over every bike we see. How many bikes have we seen tonight, Teri?”
“Five or six,” replied the co-driver. “What to you want to do? He’s moving lane. Shall we pull back?”
Saskia laid a hand on Hannah’s arm. “Scottie, pull him over. It will cost us five minutes if I’m wrong, but if I’m not…”
Hannah expelled a great breath of air. His lips flapped. “Fine. Dan, pull him over.”
The Fugitive
The co-driver activated the siren long enough for it to whoop once. Their headlights flashed. The rider glanced over his shoulder, wobbled, and changed lane. They were alongside the hard shoulder. The rider seemed uncertain whether to pull onto the hard shoulder or come off at the next exit. Teri gave him a clue and the siren whooped once more. Their little convoy crossed onto the hard shoulder and rolled to a stop.
The driver, Dan, opened his door. The interior light was abrupt and dazzling. Saskia said, “Be careful. He may be armed.”
He froze. “You sure?” The rider was sitting motionlessly. He had not looked around since stopping.
Saskia groaned. British police. No guns, but ready to be very disappointed. “Wait here.”
She slipped from the car and shook the life back into her legs. She unpopped the gun’s fastener and rested her hand on the butt. She moved forward until she was standing between the police car and motorcycle. With the car headlights on either side of her, it would be difficult for the rider to see what
she was doing. She knew, instinctively, that it would make him more careful.
“I am armed,” she shouted. “Switch off the engine.”
Nothing happened. The man held on. The engine revved. Behind her, Saskia could hear people stepping from the car. She felt their eyes.
Stay in the car, she thought. I’m in control.
The footsteps stopped. She exhaled and took a pace closer. “Armed police. Turn off your engine and show me the key.”
This time a gloved hand plucked itself from a grip. It disappeared behind the rider’s torso. Was he reaching for a gun? The engine spluttered to a halt. Saskia’s fingers drummed the gun. She had to think slow, think relaxed. She was in control. She was behind the suspect and she had a loaded gun; she was ready to draw it and ready to fire it. She ignored the expectations of the Brits behind her, the occasional car tearing by, the flashing blue lights. The rider’s hand appeared again. This time it held the keys. The fingers opened. The keys dropped to the ground and lay there, forgotten.
Saskia stepped forward again. She barked commands and, as she spoke, the rider did exactly and precisely as she instructed: “Put down the stand. Get off the bike. Take three steps to the right. Face away from me. Remove your helmet. Slowly. Place it on the ground that it cannot roll away. Lie down on your face. Put one hand behind your head, the other one over the small of your back. Cross your legs.”
Only at this point did she glance behind her. The three men stood there, tense. Teri and Dan had shotguns trained on the suspect.
“Finished, dear?” Hannah asked. He walked past, gave her wink, and sat on the suspect. He produced handcuffs and worked on the man like a sailor on a knot. Throughout, everyone was silent.
Saskia called, “Well?”
“See for yourself.”
She walked over. Her heart thumped. The man’s head came into view. He was black and in his early forties. He was breathing heavily. Spit hung from the side of his mouth. For a moment, their eyes locked. She smiled apologetically. He looked away.
Hannah climbed to his feet. “Satisfied?”
“OK.” Saskia turned to the uniformed officers. “It’s not him.”
“Great,” said Dan. They gave their shotguns to Hannah, who took them back to the car, and began to release the motorcyclist. Saskia walked with him. She felt drained and faintly embarrassed. She overheard Dan’s raised voice. They were giving the rider a hard time. He would be less likely to complain.
“I did not think British police were armed,” she said.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
They leaned against the bonnet and watched the traffic. The air was crisp and smelled of exhaust gases. Saskia buttoned the fastener on her gun holster. “Sorry, Scottie.”
He snorted. “Come on, we had to take the chance. What if it had been Proctor?” He took a deep breath. “Besides, I needed the exercise.”
Saskia smiled. She watched more of the traffic. A police car fired past. Its blue lights were a racing heartbeat. Seconds later, she saw another motorcyclist. Was it Proctor? She would not cry wolf again and she had no confidence that they had second-guessed the fugitive. She expected to spend the next six hours in a vain computer search.
David saw the parked police car, with Saskia and Hannah against its flank, and the parked motorbike. His speedometer read 65 mph. He dropped to sixty.
Heathrow
It was midnight when David rolled into the car park of Heathrow’s Terminal 5. In the distance he could see the main building and its two satellites. There was one runway on the left and another on the right. He rode into a parking space and stopped. As the engine died, he slid off. He used the last drops of his strength to push the bike over its lay stand. When he finished, he was breathless. He leaned on his kneecaps and gasped. Blood filled his head. The helmet was stuffy because he was no longer moving. He tore clumsily at the strap and rolled it from his head. It fell to the floor and bounced into a nearby car.
The car park was a great, gleaming mass. It was nearly full. Security lights illuminated islands with orange signs that marked position. A car pulled in and David felt a brief flush of panic. But he calmed himself. Nobody knew where he was.
The voice, the sensible voice, said: Remember the bikers up in Northumbria? Forgotten about them? I bet they haven’t forgotten about you. They weren’t farm workers. They were professionals.
David sighed. It was pointless standing around. He slapped his face, hard. He shook his head like a dog throwing off water. He needed to be awake now. He needed to be careful.
“Ego, I’m at the airport.”
“Excellent,” said the voice in his ear. David had long abandoned reading human emotions into Ego’s tone, but it was hard to ignore its obvious surprise. “Change your clothes then find locker J371.”
“Am I going to fly?”
“I am not in a position to tell you that. If you are captured, it is better that you know nothing, in case you jeopardise a future escape attempt.”
David watched his breath condense. His eyes followed the vapour and continued to stare long after it became invisible, as though even the muscles of his eyes were exhausted. “So the minister is still around? The fake one?”
“I do not know. I suspect she has avoided capture.” Ego paused. “You must change now. Time is short. You must change.”
David checked his immediate surroundings. He did so in the manner of a careful drunk. There was a small hedge that ran along the back of the row. It was nothing more than a trough of blackened wood chippings with regularly-spaced shrubs. It held no cover. He looked at the car that he had hit with his helmet. It was a high-sided eight-seater. That would do.
He took off his clothes piece by piece. First the coat, then the jacket, then the inner fleece. He removed his waterproof trousers, his riding trousers and his boots. He laid them all in a heap. He opened the carrying container that he had bought in a town he had forgotten and retrieved the beige briefcase. He ripped off the transparent wrapper. Underneath, it was pristine. Shivering, he transferred his essential documents from his jacket to the briefcase. There were some non-essential items too: in the event, he had carried with him most of the bathroom from that little bed and breakfast. There were a couple of sachets of shampoo and a useless little soap. He kept them.
He grabbed new underwear from the container and stuffed it into the briefcase. In another bag he found a pair of tinted glasses, a shaving kit, a wedding ring and a belt. He packed those too. He found a travel iron and wondered why he bought it. He left it in the container.
There was a pair of paper overalls at the bottom. He donned these carefully, though the paper was tough. He put his boots back on, but not his bike jacket. Instead he retrieved a light nylon coat and threw it across his shoulders. Now he was an invisible everyman, albeit a very cold, tired one. Along one side of the container was a dry-cleaning bag with a complete suit inside. He rummaged some more and found a bottle of aftershave. He tossed it into the briefcase, closed it, and set about stuffing his old clothes into the bike container with one hand. In the other he held the suit.
Finally he closed the container and unfastened it. He walked to the front of the bike and remembered his escape from the farm hands two days before. He had roared from that ditch and jumped the hedge like a champion showjumper. He smiled and patted the light. It didn’t feel like a bike; it felt like a horse.
“Ego, can you hear me?”
Ego was inside the briefcase. “Perfectly.”
“Is it alright to leave the bike?”
“Of course. Where better to hide a tree than a forest? And, because this car park is designed to issue tickets on the way out, it should be a long time before anybody notices anything suspicious.”
“Did you read that in a spy novel?”
“Yes.”
David walked towards the terminal building with the container under one arm and the briefcase under the other. He lengthened his stride. The physical pain of the past few da
ys seemed to hang one pace behind. He was nearing the next stage. After miles on the bike, things were moving again.
The sky had cleared. The moon shone. Saskia watched an aeroplane land. In the moment before its wheels touched the ground, it seemed motionless. It seemed too big to fly. It seemed an impertinence.
“Scottie, do you believe in God?”
Hannah sat with his collar upturned. He seemed occupied with the traffic around them. They were about to pull into the airport. Teri had suggested Terminal 5 because most transatlantic flights originated from there. “Do you?” he asked.
Do I? she thought. Is religion a memory or a feeling?
“I don’t know.”
“I hope I never have to find out.”
She smiled. “Die, do you mean?”
“That’s the word.” He looked out of the window again. This time, he watched the sky. “When I was wee – when I was a boy – I thought that God was the sea. The sea was the biggest and most scariest thing I knew. It took my old dad.”
“I am sorry.”
He shrugged. “He was a fisherman. He took a gamble one day and he lost.”
“Do you think,” she began, and then stopped. Hannah glanced at her.
“Say it.”
“Do you think religion is a memory or a feeling?”
“Feeling,” he said. His eyes darted forward at the two police officers and Saskia realised she had embarrassed him. But then he said loudly, “Do you ever get a religious feeling, Dan?”
“Only when Teri’s driving, sir,” he replied.
Saskia grinned. Inside, she felt cold.
David slipped between two parked buses. A driver, who was loading heavy cases under the impatient eyes of his passengers, scowled as he walked past. David avoided his gaze and walked on. He avoided everybody’s gaze: the groups of teenagers back from Majorca, the retired couples with their redundant sun hats, the families with faces as long and grey as the English winter. All of them tanned, all of them freezing in the midnight chill. David avoided them all. He walked down the length of the large bus shelter and cut across the taxi rank. The terminal building towered like a glass FGcliff. It had a microclimate of exhausts and short tempers.