My Little Armalite (19 page)

—Sorry?

—Dr Bracewell, consultant, genito-urinary medicine? he intoned, with insider‘s pride. I looked at his respectful face. My mouth shut once more. Light flooded my mind as my Englishman's class radar glowed. It had, after all, been trained every day of my life. It now kicked in with all the incalculable speed of an inherited instinct. I immediately knew that if I got my front foot forward fast …

—Aha. GU, eh? I think you mean
Mr
Bracewell, officer, since he's a consultant, ha ha.

—Yeah, that's right!
Mr
it was. I could never work that one out. Is
Mr
posher than
Dr
then?

—Only in hospitals, officer. I raised a finger in mock warning, and laughed again. The policemen laughed too.

—Funny, that.

—It is, rather, isn't it?

—Yeah, well, so, Doc, you're happy to blow into the bag?

—Of course.

—Lost your bonnet badge, I see, Doc.

I turned. The other policeman was strolling around my Mercedes, kicking the tyres and checking the lights.

—Yes, some young thugs, no doubt. Is that a problem, officer?

—No, no. So, you said you had a good reason, a special reason for being out and, to be honest, acting a bit noticeable, did you, Doc?

—Yes, I did say that, didn't I? And, of course, I have. The thing is, as I said, I'm not only willing to blow into the bag, but I think perhaps I really should do so. After all, I don't want there to be any doubt about this. Because, you see, because the good and special reason I have for being out, and yes, I admit, acting a little strangely, is that, in fact, um, look, this is rather difficult, officer, officers, rather. We don't want this getting about, obviously, but, well, the reason I got lost and had to stop and be sick, as you saw, is that I'm not feeling terribly well. I'm due for an early check-up at work. Before I go anywhere near the patients. Just a precaution, but even so …

—A precaution, Doc?

—Between you and me, officer, and I must ask you to let this go no further for now, your mother was lucky to have gone in last year. Our press officer would deny it, of course he would, but the fact is, well, there's no getting round it: the superbug's about on the wards again.

—The superbug!

—'Fraid so, officers. No, it's not a pleasant thought. In here, should I blow? Obviously. I should say that this is only a precautionary check-up. It's very probably not what I've got at all. It's far more likely I've just picked up something else on my rounds. All sorts of nasties knocking about in hospital, eh? The, um, clinical probability of it actually being
the
superbug, the flesh-eating one, you know, er,
Superbugii morbidus
necrosis
, is really very small, thank God, but obviously,
officer, well, with something so contagious, and quite frankly incurable, I'm sure you understand that I don't want to be getting close to my patients, or indeed anyone else until we can be quite certain. There. Did I blow hard enough? I think that's me clear, then, isn't it? Oh, and I should wash my hands as soon as I reasonably can, officer, if I were you. Better safe than sorry, eh? So, was there anything else, or am I OK to go for my check-up? You're sure? Well, sorry to have given you any reason to stop, officers. Goodnight!

The first hints of dawn were creeping into the winter‘s night. The world was no longer just a blanket of darkness in which the odd floodlit patch stood gratefully out, but was composed once more of blocks and forms in shades of grey and black. Houses, streets and buildings took shape again, and as they did so, their various illuminations seemed to glow with unnatural force. Now that the cars were growing almost visible as cars, their brake lights seemed to roar red; the green of the traffic lights was suddenly blinding.

Was it just that my tired eyes were reviving a little with the day, obeying some primordial, tidal call to awakening? Was it some plain scientific phenomenon to do with contrast and suchlike? Or might it be a deep wash of hormones flooding my mind now that I had got away with it, ha ha, and was rejoicing in the firm knowledge that the sun was coming back, the night was over and my path was clear at last?

Calling the police was now quite out of the question, of course; I would never again dare to touch the gun until I knew what I was doing; I could hardly leave it lying around in the passenger footwell of the family Merc until Sarah and the children got back. The facts were plain.

Conclusion?

That I had one week in which to (a) learn how to safely handle a weapon the mere possession of which could land me in prison for many years, (b) defuse the bloody thing and (c) dump it secretly. And then get
back to bloody normal and get down to work on the VIP and try to save my life.

It was clear that there was only one place in the world I could go to learn about my Armalite.

Nevada, America.

Just about the last place in the world I would have chosen to go, the very heartland of Blue America, the Chapel of the Lost Souls of Capitalism, but logic is logic: where else could I just turn up and shoot?

Of course, I would have to work out some story to explain why I had suddenly flown to Las Vegas, in case anything went wrong and I did indeed get caught dumping the gun, because if that happened, the cops would certainly check up on where I had recently been.

What could I say? It would be hard to claim that as a lecturer in German I had suddenly discovered a vital professional reason for flying to Las Vegas just when (as it turned out) I had discovered, and failed to report discovering, an Armalite.

I could say that I was addicted to gambling. But that might be hard to back up, in terms of cash moved in or out of accounts and suchlike. Or prostitutes. Why shouldn't I be addicted to them? Men were. Especially when their wives were suddenly away for a week! Yes, that would work. I could claim that rather than sleep with my students, and thus abuse my position, I had elected to use prostitutes, who are, I recalled having once read in a
HIM
magazine article in my dentist's waiting room, apparently better-looking in Las Vegas than anywhere else on earth. In fact, when you thought about it, if I decided it was necessary to support my story, I could, in fact, really hire a prostitute in Las Vegas. I would, of course, not actually sleep with her at all, just talk to her and take her card to prove that I had been with her. Once this was all over and an alibi
no longer required, I could have a laugh with Sarah about it all.

But what if, on the other hand, it did all go wrong and I needed her? Would my prostitute remember that I had been there, yes, but had not actually wanted sex with her? Well, if she did, I could always say that, actually, I was addicted to prostitutes
not
for sex but because with prostitutes I could just drink and talk, just be with a pretty woman and let it all out without feeling that I had let them down and ruined their lives by pretending to be something I could never live up to. And rest on their breasts and … Hmm. Perhaps it would just be easier to do it and be done with it. I mean, when you thought about it, every known society has had whores. For most men at most times and places in history, Kafka for example, going to whores has simply been part of the landscape, so, really, my story would be more believable if I really did find a girl and …

—Fuck you! I yelled, as two red spots slid in front of me, glowing carnivorously from out of the fat arse of a spanking-new BMW, forcing me to step hard on the brakes.

I hit my horn, blinked, and found that I had, without realising it, got on to some stretch of urban dual carriageway which was already running bumper-to-bumper slowly in both lanes. This time it was the Congestion Charge, no doubt. These were no careless partygoers, but men crawling damply to work, mortgages clanking on chains from their bumpers. I caught the driver of the BMW clearly tapping his head at me in his mirror. Without thinking for a moment, I mouthed, —
'Yeah yeah yeah
', snapped my fingers at him as if making a shadow puppet of a crocodile, slapped on my right indicator, twisted the wheel and put my
foot down. Unfortunately, the Teutonic bloody brain in my horsepower-eating autobox simply refused to kick down.

—Come on, you heap of Stuttgart crap, I muttered aloud, but nothing much at all actually happened. The power was simply not there. Then the gap was gone and I had to pull hastily back in behind the big BMW amidst outraged horns and lights. My rival driver saw my discomfiture, and looked into his mirror.

Being a primate, I have, like all of us, an amazing ability to catch the meaning of facial expressions. I was left in no doubt at all that the bastard was laughing at me and looking pityingly at my seven-year-old car. And who could blame him, the shit? I had openly tried to get by him and had openly failed. I was the public idiot, the failed would-be lane-hopping git in the powerless old Merc. And I knew he knew I knew he knew and so on to the crack of doom.

—Big deal, I shrugged back at him. But his radar was as good as mine, and it did not play at all. He grinned smugly. —Fuck you, I sneered. At which he actually zapped down his window, extending his hand out from his cocooned cabin and into the real, rainy world in order to give me a slow and thoroughly authentic two fingers. As he did so, the incomparably crap strains of Queen drifted from his car.

I stared for a moment.

He was as old as me, four-eyed like me and even rounder in the face, his ridiculous haircut frantically gain-saying baldness. A rumpled suit jacket of no great cut or cloth hung from a hook behind his fat-padded right shoulder. An ordinary middle-aged bore with a spiritual life of zero. Almost certainly, he worked as some kind of glorified bookkeeper in some firm of which he owned not a bit. He was, in short, most definitely in my league.
And he was such an utterly cultureless arsehole that the best thing he could think of to listen to on his no doubt many speakers as he drove to his crap job on a wet November morning was Freddie fucking Mercury, for Christ's sake.

And yet he, this image of banality, was driving a car worth ten of mine, and laughing at me.

This was not the deal.

Never mind chucking stones (well, a stone) at cops and singing songs about the evil British Army and shouting along with chants against capitalism in general and America in particular, I now, for the first time in my life, felt that I had The Enemy clearly in my sights.

It was all his fault.

His and his countless ilk's.

We were all doomed to global warming because this godless idiot and all the millions who thought and dreamed and shat just like him could not live for a single weekend without watching Sky and buying electronic crap they had never even heard of till last week, air-freighted in from factories stuffed with slave workers on the far side of the world. Our planet was dying just because morons like this thought it was their inalienable human right to fly to fucking Florida for two hundred quid and have iPods to play Queen for hell's sake and vast great watt-guzzling plasma screens just so they could watch Manchester sodding United and
Big
bloody
Brother
.

And drive big new BMWs that made my Mercedes look like shit.

Well, I was not letting this one get away with it. At the next opportunity, I swung myself niftily outwards again, but he had seen me coming and was there before me. I cut back. So did he. Open and declared warfare. We both knew it: he who chooses the least slow lane wins.

At slightly over normal human walking pace, the
BMW and I tangoed desperately across the crawling lanes. We crossed and crissed a dozen times in our slow-motion dogfight, often almost causing entirely harmless low-speed shunts, both aware only of each other and of every nuance in the lines of traffic ahead, neither able to gain a definite edge. Sometimes the squab of my seat drew almost level with his. At these moments, the two feet of cold morning air between our cars crackled with our point-blank refusal to make eye contact. Once my nose was actually in front of his and I could feel the sweat breaking out under his armpits. But then he pulled away again, gaining several yards. Each time a lane seemed to be loosening up, he, being in front, saw the gap first. You had to hand it to him, he was a worthy opponent. At one stage, some complete idiot in my lane actually
slowed to let someone out in front of them
, for God's sake, thereby losing me an entire car‘s length just when the BMW was, in any case, gaining maybe a foot per second. I thought for a horrible moment that I had been blown away, that my enemy might have some kind of decisive local knowledge. I foolishly looked straight at him. He flicked a scornful glance at me and shook out his shoulders.

Shit, what had gone wrong with the world? How could nobodies in nothing jobs drive cars that made mine look like a fourth-hand heap of crap from the free ads (as indeed it was)? This was not the deal. I, a full university lecturer, for Christ's sake, could not afford a half-decent place to bring up my family because Maggie bloody Thatcher and her successors, blue or red, had fixed things so that shallow, stupid twats like this, the objects of seventies comedy, could call themselves executives and buy houses and price everyone else out of the bloody market. Christ, what had been so wrong with the seventies anyway, when the workers
were workers and proud of it, and book-keepers were just bean-counters, and university lecturers could live in big houses with sash windows and … ?

I kept my eyes peeled for another attack, and found myself saying aloud, in a Devon accent I had swiftly lost at Oxford and never used again:

—The Merc 1.8: a
bit of a plodder
? Let's see about that, shall we, my lover? It's not the car, it's the driver, my dear. It's not the dog in the fight that matters, it's the fight in the dog!

Both lanes had speeded up now. We were travelling at very nearly fifteen miles per hour. At such speeds, every action is decisive. I pulled swiftly out once more and got a volley of noise and halogen from a ridiculously young arsehole in a spanking new Range Rover. I replied with the ‘L for loser‘ sign (which my sons had taught me a week before). He was evidently young enough to get this, for he moved to within inches of my rear bumper, filling my mirrors with sound and light. I hit the brakes for a second and made him lurch down nosewards to avoid shunting into me before closing in again, mouthing fury.