CAJUN NIGHTS

By

Ryan Lee

*********************

My name is Christine Bridges, and I was Richard Linton's lover. I never asked to be part of the legend but now that I am I feel compelled to tell the truth about everything, about Richard and me, the Casey brothers, and the truth about those torrid Cajun nights.

The first thing you should know is that I let it all happen. I never was that girl in the script, the beguiled young innocent seduced by a charismatic criminal. I was thirty five years old when I met Richard Linton, and from the very first moment I set eyes on him I knew I would never be the same again. I knew he was wrong for me. I knew that falling in love would cost me everything. But isn't it worth everything just for one perfect night in your life?

"Did you get it?" Kay-lee Lambert asked. Kay-lee was one of the full-timers, just twenty three and gorgeous in that sulky kind of way. They said she could have been a model if she'd had the right motivation behind her. They said the same about me, only they said I could have been a nurse or a personnel manager, something sensible and unglamorous like that, instead of a part-time barmaid in a country and western bar.

It was time to take a break. When Kay-lee decided to sit down at the bar with a drink and a fag it was alright for everyone else to do the same. I took a bottle of Bud from the fridge and marked it down in the book next to William Dexter's name. We all did stuff like that to William.

"So what's a Cajun?" I asked, pulling a stool next to Kay-lee's. I'd been working at the Old Black Kettle country and western club in Ritchmire for three months when Brian Lynch came up with the idea of turning Saturday nights into Cajun nights. He gathered the staff together after closing time on Friday and told us all about it in his own mumbly, uncertain way. We were hardly rattled with excitement. Brian was always coming up with bright ideas: line dancing on Tuesdays, live music on Fridays, cowgals' night on Thursdays, and now a Cajun night...whatever that entailed. As if a country and western bar in the heart of rural North Yorkshire wasn't theme enough, we were now burrowing into ourselves and discovering themes within a theme. I was rapidly losing track of all the subplots within our tiny island of fantasy.

"Dunno," Kay-lee said, gently scraping her cigarette on the bottom of the ashtray to remove the loose flakes. She could even make something as routine as removing the ash from a cigarette appear graceful and choreographic. It was all in the angle of her wrist and the way her back arched slightly as she leaned forward. I frequently experienced a senseless desire to smack Kay-lee as hard as I could. "Did you get the extra money?"

Brian rattled past us with his trolley of empty beer bottles. He had taken his stetson off and his bald head was reflecting the amber bar lights like a polished brass door-knob. He paused and looked our way, then gave a despairing sigh before disappearing into the cloakroom. Kay-lee shifted her eyes to mine and smiled knowingly.

"Full-time rate for Cajun nights only," I said."So what's a Cajun?"

"How do you spell it?"

The jukebox came on - Kenny Rogers singing The Gambler.

"I never put this on," Max said as he made his way over to the bar. Max had been a dancer at a tacky club in Osbourne before drifting into the Old Black Kettle. It was the sort of place where groups of factory workers went on hen nights. Kay-lee said she'd stuck her hand down his shorts one time, just to see if it was true what they said about black men, but Max didn't appear to remember her.

"It's spooky, I swear it," Max said as he took a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and joined us at the bar."No matter what you select, that jukebox will only play country and western songs."

Kenny was saying that you had to know when to hold 'em.

"Is there any other kind of music on there?" I asked.

"Eagles," Max said with a grimace.

"This is a country and western bar," Kay-lee said, grinding her fag in the ashtray."We don't get many people asking for the Commodores."

I laughed at that one.

There was a glassy clatter from the cloakroom; it had a deliberate edge to it that wasn't lost on the three of us. Brian had probably heard us laughing and started slamming his trolley around in agitation.

"Time to go," I said, but I didn't try to get straight away. I was waiting to see if Kay-lee would light another cigarette, which she did, and so I relaxed again.

"What's this Cajun night all about?" Max asked."Has Brian said anything else about it?"

"Do you know what a Cajun is, Max?" Kay-lee said, and when Max just shrugged she gave this smoky little laugh and looked at me with a wicked twinkle in her eyes."Thought everyone knew that."

"What is it then?"

She held the cigarette smoke in her lungs and looked at him levelly, coolly, until he shifted his eyes."It's something to do with country and western," she said eventually."What else can it be?"

"Actually..." a voice behind us began.

Nobody turned around because we all knew that it was William Dexter ( not Willie - you call him Willie and you were one spanked cowgirl), and we all knew that he would be standing there with his thumbs hooked over the fake gunbelt he always wore, his eyes boring into that alluring strip of tanned flesh between Kay-lee's skirt and tee-shirt. He opened the hatch and came around front so that he could look at our tits while he was talking to us.

William was the staff supervisor, just a barman with a fake gunbelt but it didn't do to get on the wrong side of him. He didn't have the authority to fire anyone himself but he could make trouble if he fancied.

"Actually, the Cajuns are descended from the French-Canadians. They live in Louisiana now."

"All of them?" Kay-lee asked with little interest.

"They are native to Louisiana," William said, unfazed by Kay-lee's sarcasm. The pair of them were like spirited horse and determined rider, though I could never quite work out which was which.

"Good old Brian," Kay-lee said."Always doing his bit for the ethnic minorities."

"Yeah, but what's a fucking Cajun?" Max asked, and we all started laughing...except for William, who just stood there with his thumbs in his fake gunbelt and a condescending smile on his face.

"We've booked a genuine Cajun band," William said."They're called The Full Moon Howlers. They're driving all the way from Manchester."

Kay-lee passed me a wry smile."Manchester, eh? Is that Manchester, Louisiana by any chance?"

William smiled tightly."Our Manchester." He clapped his hands together briskly."Right, up we get now - I want to get home tonight."

Max and I got up but Kay-lee didn't move. She crossed her legs and took a long, slow drag on her cigarette, her eyelids half closed. She made me think of a coquette in a Saturday matinee.

"All of us, Kay-lee," William said."Off that stool or you'll be one spanked cowgirl."

Her eyes came open, fixed and deadly beautiful."Try it and you'll be one nut short of a coco," she said. She stubbed out her cigarette and slid elegantly off the stool. William was watching her - no smile this time, just a dull, burning hatred in his eyes, his lips twitching oddly. I had a premonition just then. A stark and startling monochrome scene flashed through my mind's eye like the glint of light reflected off a knife edge: William was raping Kay-lee in the cellar, his hand clamped over her mouth, his tongue poking obscenely through his teeth, his eyes bright marbles of lunatic fury. I blinked and shook the image away.

"Anyone want a lift?" a voice called from the door. It was Dennis Jackson, lead picker with Den 'Done' Jackson and the Montana Red Dogs. In real life he was a teacher at the high school in Osbourne. I'm not sure what the other Red Dogs did with their days. Dennis was now wearing a fawn suit jacket over his cowboy shirt.

"Coming, Den," Kay-lee called back, glaring defiantly at William, who said nothing.

"Alright if I go?" I asked."I get a bit worried walking home at this time of night." William looked briefly annoyed. For a moment I thought he would turn mean and take out his frustration on me.

"Yeah, get lost," he said resentfully.

I grabbed my coat on the way out, called goodnight to Brian, and met up with Kay-lee and Dennis in the car park. It was July the first and the night was warm and windless. All at once I felt a brief and inexplicable yearning, like a pang of regret. I shook it off but it would keep me quiet all the way home, just wondering and wondering. I thought that maybe I was having a reality attack - I was thirty five years old, plain and not very interesting, and there was no man in my life. Maybe I was just fretting.

"Summertime blues," I said, thinking out loud. Dennis looked at me strangely. I just smiled and shook my head.

We got into the car, Kay-lee and I in the back and Paul Cook, one of the bouncers (they wore silver stars on their shirts with the word Deputy engraved on it) up front with Dennis.

"You shouldn't wind him up," I said to Kay-lee, thinking about what had flashed through my mind at the club."He's not the sort of man a woman should make an enemy of."

Kay-lee gave me a funny look, the kind of look a teenage girl gives her mother when her common sense is called into questioning."Him?" She sniffed."I can handle men like him until the cows come home."

You think you can, I thought as Dennis started up the car and turned up the radio. You think you can handle anything at your age.

But so did I. At thirty five I thought I knew enough about men to know which ones to avoid.

It was only the first of July, and I hadn't seen anything yet.

***

My babysitter let me down on that first Cajun night. It was six thirty and I was supposed to start my shift at seven. Carl was obliviously munching crisps and laughing at the Jungle Book on television, paying no attention to the frantic woman in the white cowgirl skirt and stetson pacing up and down behind him. I gave the babysitter until fifteen minutes before seven and then decided to call the club and tell Brian that I couldn't make it.

"Looks like I'll never find out what a Cajun is, Carl," I said as I threw my stetson on a chair and picked up the phone. I dialled the club's number but it wasn't Brian who answered - it was my son's grandmother, Darren's mum. For a second I was completely thrown. I wondered what in God's name Val, who read People's Friend and wore special knitting glasses, was doing at a country and western club with a reputation for brawling. Then it dawned on me.

"Sorry, Val," I said."I must have dialled the wrong number. How are you anyway?"

She was fine; so was Des, her husband. We didn't talk about Darren. Instead she asked me what I was doing and I told her about the babysitter letting me down, and that I had been about to ring the club and cancel my shift.

"Well I could come over, Chrissy," she said tentatively."You know how much I love to see the boy."

"Really?" I was equally tentative. There was a time when we didn't get on so well, which was right about the time that Darren left us and Val and I retreated to opposing corners with our respective sons safely behind us. In Val's case it was purely a matter of stubborn loyalty but for a while I genuinely feared that if I left my son in the unsupervised care of his grandmother I might never see him again. However my fears were eased once Darren gave me his new address and Val signed a four-year hire purchase agreement on a leather suite from Northern Upholstery.

"But I'd hate to spoil your night," I told Val."You'll have to watch the Jungle Book at least twice, and Dale Winton's not in it."

"Spoil my night?" Val chuckled indulgently."Chrissy, it would make my night. Make my week."

"Thanks." I said."You'll regret it, but thanks."

Less than ten minutes later Val and Des arrived at my house. The plan changed when I saw how delighted Carl was to see his grandparents. I quickly threw together an overnight bag consisting of pajamas, spare pajamas, Disney videos, storybook and nightlight, and then I made Val promise that she wouldn't bring the kid back until Sunday teatime at the earliest.

Des gave me a lift to work so I was only about twenty minutes late. William Dexter assured me that if I was late again I would be one spanked cowgirl, and then he gave me this creepy, sneering little smile as I went to hang up my coat. Kay-lee was in there, sneaking a smoke.

"Have you seen the band?" she asked with a cruel smirk.

"No, I've just arrived," I told her."Nearly didn't make it."

Nearly didn't make it...I felt a peculiar little shiver inside. Not a fright, just a strangeness, a thrill I couldn't explain.

Kay-lee laughed in that haughty feline way of hers."Looks like Brian booked the cast of Southern Comfort. We can forget about pulling the rhythm section tonight, Chrissy, unless you get off on toothless old men dribbling chewing tobacco down your neck."

"What?"

She crushed the end of her cigarette beneath the toe of her white leather boot."You know, long beards, banjo on the rocking chair, catfish pie and all that. Was grandpa Walton a Cajun?"

I just shook my head dumbly and followed her out of the cloakroom.

There wasn't much in the way of a crowd. Brian hovered fussily around the bar with an anxious expression beneath his stetson. I couldn't help wondering if the Old Black Kettle's first Cajun night would turn out to be its last.

"Maybe I should have advertised it better," he said. He wasn't speaking directly to me or anyone come to that.

I answered him anyway."Did you advertise it?"

Brian looked mildly surprised to hear my voice."Mmm? Oh, well I put a few posters up by the main door but that's about all." He frowned as the strange looking band launched into a lively if lyrically baffling electric banjo number."I don't think this is country and western."

Brian wandered dolefully back to his office. William, who had been standing close by, leaned up to me, his hand resting against my hip, and whispered,"I could have told him they wouldn't do Achy Breaky Heart. The man's got less sense than hair."

Funny, but that's not exactly what I heard. I mean, I heard those words clearly enough but at the same time I sensed this excited undergrowl in William's voice, a wolfish whisper all hot and breathless.

I've been watching you, the wolf said, watching you very, very closely.

It must have shown on my face, because when William slid away to serve a young woman in a tight skirt, Kay-lee passed me a look of concern. She finished serving her customer and came over.

"Did he touch you just then?"

"No," I said calmly.

She didn't believe me. I could see it in her eyes. And something else there too - a kind of indignant jealousy.

"Hey, blondie!" a voice called above the music."Come and sit on my face!"

Kay-lee turned cool as a cat to the small group of men at the bar."Why?" she asked."Is your nose bigger than your cock?"

I spluttered and turned away. Kay-lee just sauntered up and took their orders. I knew them, as it happened. The one with the mouth was called Peel, a noisy Jack Russell terrier famed more for his yap than his bite. The quiet menace and leader of the bunch was Paul Marwood, a tall, wordless threat of a man with a scowl so bitter you'd think he had a lemon in his gob. He'd been a pretty good amateur boxer, so Darren, my ex once told me. The trouble with Marwood was that no one had bothered to tell him he was retired.

The third man was Tim Rutherford, and that's all I knew about him.

It was when I turned back to them, my laughter-fit under control, that I noticed the young man sitting very quietly a few feet away from them at the bar. His shirt was too big for his narrow shoulders. Strange, but that was my first impression of him. And for some reason I wondered if he had mistaken the Old Black Kettle for a gay bar. He had that look in his eyes, the fevered mingling of terror and excitement of one experiencing his first taste of forbidden fruit. But he wasn't looking at Max or any of the other men who were around, he was looking directly at me.

I did feel something then. It wasn't love, at least not the fabled hammer of love at first sight, but I felt a powerful sensation move me nonetheless. I wanted to believe that his air of boyish vulnerability had prickled a reaction of maternal pity, but deep down I knew it was more than that. I felt as though something awesome had brushed past me, unseen but so fierce with energy it could be felt like the heat of a fire.

I went to him, distantly horrified to feel butterflies in my stomach. He looked at me and smiled shyly. I smiled back. Smiling at a customer is something you learn to do automatically when you work behind a bar. They smile, you knock it back like a tennis ball. Doesn't mean anything. It's not supposed to mean anything, is what I mean.

"Do you serve Bud?" he asked me. He seemed to be peeking up at me from beneath the longish fringe of his tousled blond hair. I thought of my son and the way he can turn on that little-boy charm whenever he wants something.

"I serve Bud," I told him,"but I don't serve minors."

He laughed then, a soft but manly laughter. The little boy in him vanished for a moment. His smile was curved and playful, a bit cocky. His teeth were a tad crooked but in a pleasing way."I've never been minor anything," he said.

I looked at him. He was still smiling lazily but now an intensity had appeared in his eyes. He held my gaze, rock solid, fearless. I stared back, enjoying the game but at the same time frightened by its meaning. I wanted to make him blush, cough, look away, but he was never going to do that.

I turned around quickly and got him a bottle of Bud from the fridge. I opened it and put it on the bar in front of him. He held out a ten pound note, and as I took it I caught his gaze again. I knew a hungry boy when I saw one.

I broke away and went to ring the sale through the till. When I came back with his change he had swivelled around on his stool to watch the band. I called to him but he didn't hear me. I had to reach out and touch his arm. He turned his head and smiled.

"Weird band," he said."Are they regulars?"

"Every Saturday from tonight."

"I might come again," he said.

I nodded and handed over his change, and he turned to watch the band again. I couldn't help but stare at the back of his neck, the soft little hairs there and the dark outline of his narrow shoulders and slender back as a stage light turned his baggy white shirt translucent.

"Chrissy?"

It was Bob Farrell, an inoffensive little man who wore huge sunglasses and a lot of gold plated jewellery. Bob was a travelling shoe salesman and one of the Old Black Kettle's kareoke kings. He had a decent voice but could only sing Galviston.

"Hiya, Bob," I greeted."Usual?"

"Unusual me, usual drink," was his standard reply.

I fixed him a rum and Coke. He kept me chatting for a few minutes; I let him think he was charming me but all the time I was watching the boy watching the band. I was disappointed to see him move away from the bar and sit at one of the tables by the stage.

I tried to keep track of him during the course of the night. He didn't order a second drink until just after nine, when the Full Moon Howlers took a break and the jukebox was turned up. Kay-lee got to him before I could. I watched their faces with something close to a distrustful lover's preoccupied scrutiny. I didn't want him to smile at Kay-lee the way he had smiled at me. I didn't want to see that what we had shared had been all in my head and nowhere else. I was anxious, and I know how ridiculous that sounds, but to understand what I was feeling you have to put rationality aside for a moment; rationality has no place in my story.

I felt a hard slap on my backside and whirled round. William was leering at me, his stetson angled over his eyes, his right thumb hooked into his fake gunbelt.

"Next time I take your pants down and do it properly," he said. And the wolf inside echoed him verbatim."I don't pay you to stand around with your tits jutting out. Get on and serve the customers, or you and me will be having quiet words in the cellar. Understand?"

I was mortified, indignant, but most of all I was frightened. I hurried past him without uttering a word. My hands were shaking as I pulled a glass of lager for a customer who must have been trying to get my attention while I was watching Kay-lee and the stranger. I could feel William's eyes on me. It made the back of my neck heat up as if I had the sun behind me. It was that real, that tangible. In my mind I could see him leaning against the till with his thumbs in his fake gunbelt, his lips curved in a wolfish smile of self-satisfaction, and his eyes flick-flicking up and down my legs.

I dropped the customer's money and heard a dry sniggering sound behind me. I went down on my knees and searched for the change. Down there I began to feel an incredible surge of anger. At least it felt like anger, but in reality it was self-pity and frustration. I wished that I could have handled the situation with an icy stare and an acid rebuff - I wished I could have handled the situation the way Kay-lee would have handled it. Until then I considered myself to be a fairly strong woman - not a ball-breaker, but neither was I the kind of woman who would allow strangers to push in the cash machine queue - and I deeply resented the fact that it had taken a sleazy git like William Dexter to prove I was just a frightened rabbit.

A pair of denim clad legs appeared in front of me, arrogantly parted, the brown leather boots just millimetres from my fingers. I didn't look up. If I had looked up I might have burst into tears.

"Do me a favour while you're down there," William said, and laughed in a way that briefly made me consider staying where I was until God granted my wish for a hole to appear in the floor.

I pulled myself together and scrambled to my feet. I couldn't see the expression on William's face - I would not look at him for the world - but at the same time I could see it in my mind like a hideous childhood demon.

Somehow I managed to finish serving my customer and then I retreated to the toilets. I splashed water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror. I saw lines and blotches of red in my cheeks, I saw a woman who was thirty five and unmarried, unloved. I thought of Kay-lee with her lovely long legs and her effortless elegance, and I felt a bubble burst quite suddenly and painfully inside me.

"Ah, Chrissy," I sighed softly at my reflection. Plain and dull, that's me, always wanting what the other girls have got.

I heard a country and western ballad playing in my head, the story of a lonely middle-aged barmaid struggling to raise her boy in a hopeless town miles from anywhere, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I'd like to tell you that I emerged from the toilets like a boxer given a dose of smelling salts, but I'm not going to lie. I crept out and went back to work. I kept my head down and avoided William's eye at all costs. The bastard was loving it. Bastards like him do. They love to prove they have power over a woman. I hated giving him that victory but I didn't know what else to do.

As for the boy, well I saw him a couple of times but his was another eye I was out to avoid. I felt foolish and angry for allowing myself to get carried away by a little meaningless flirtation. I guess I was sun-blinded for a moment. Summer madness my mother used to call it. People just throw off their clothes and run out of the house without thinking. You see a glimmer of sunlight and think it might be your last chance to get out there and do something with your life, even if that something is no more profound than driving a sports car with the top down and the radio on loud, or kicking off your shoes and paddling in a fountain. I think that some unconscious part of our minds gets a sniff of mortality and wakes up screaming.

We're not immortal. We all get old and die, and every moment we spend gazing out of the window wishing we were somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else, is a moment lost.

That was my state of mind at that time. All at once I felt old and ugly. I wanted to go home.

The Full Moon Howlers came back on for the second half of the show. Somehow I made it through to eleven o'clock, and that's when the band played a slow number and announced time at the bar. I looked around for the boy but he must have gone. In fact most of the customers had gone by this time, including Paul Marwood and his idiot friends. Again I was certain that the first Cajun night would also be the last.

I found Brian in the office and asked him if I could go straight home, promising it would be just this once. I had a headache, I told him. My mother used to call headaches a woman's parachute.

"Sure, I don't mind," Brian said. He looked a little down himself but I didn't ask what was wrong. He might have told me and I really did want to go home.

As I was leaving he called my name.

"Christine," he said. He was the only person in the world who called me Christine. Odd that. Even my parents never called me anything other than Chrissy.

He was looking at me strangely. I could read the concern on his face.

"William..." he began, then for a few moments he didn't seem to know what to say, or how to say it."Does he ever come on too strong?"

"Maybe a bit," I said."Nothing I can't deal with myself."

I thanked him for his concern and left.

Outside the air was little cooler than it had been inside the club. Flecks of rain landed softly on my face. The water was tepid. I wondered whether tonight would be the night we all began to sleep with the bedroom window wide open. People were predicting a long hot summer.

Voices in the car park drew my attention. Four men were having an argument, though from the looks of things the argument was pretty close to being settled. And there's only one way to settle an argument in the car park of a country and western bar.

I had no wish to stand and watch a group of drunken men brawling (or a group of drunken women brawling, come to that), but the headlamps of a departing car threw light on the scene and stopped me in my tracks.

Paul Marwood and his two cronies had the young boy trapped against the side of a Transit van. When you work in a tough bar for any length of time you quickly develop a sixth sense where these situations are concerned. Mine was working now, and it was telling me that Marwood was only seconds away from exploding into violence.

The young boy was holding up well. I couldn't make out the expression on his face but he was standing tall, not cringing in any way. But he was hopelessly out of his league here in the car park of the Old Black Kettle. His mistake might be to believe that this would be no more than a bit of playground rough and tumble, and if he did it might be the last mistake he ever made.

At Marwood's flanks, Tim Rutherford and Peel - especially Peel - were doing their best to pour petrol on the fire. Peel was all yapping mouth and nervous excitement, while Rutherford simply loomed threateningly. But Marwood was the main worry. He was a six foot strip of pure aggression, built for only one purpose.

I started to get closer, walking between the cars so as not to be noticed. My heart was in my mouth. I was terrified for him. The closer I got the worse the situation looked. They were three grown men onto one young boy. There was a dreadful inevitability about things.

"Drop him!" Peel goaded in his ridiculously squeaky yell."Just fucking drop him, Paul!"

Obligingly someone dropped, but against the odds it was the young boy who executed the most graceful and clinically efficient head-butt the Old Black Kettle was ever likely to see.

Marwood suddenly collapsed as if someone had cut the strings to his legs. I almost cheered. If Marwood had been alone, or if Peel had been a lone companion, I know it would have ended there. The boy had hurt Marwood, and once you take the sting out of a scorpion there's nothing left but a giant earwig. But three is an odd number; neither of the other two would lose face and walk away now. And yet for a split second I saw the way they hesitated, as if that single headbutt had stunned all three of them.

Then Peel and Rutherford set to him like a couple of baited dogs on a badger. The fight was a furious messy knot of tangled fists and feet. Bodies and missed blows slammed against the side of the Transit van. Within a few seconds the three of them were welded together in a kind of scrum that lurched and turned without really going anywhere. At that point Marwood jumped to his feet, one hand covering his nose. He let out a murderous war-cry and flung himself on top of the other three. The unit collapsed in a desperate, writhing mass of flailing limbs like a giant insect knocked out of the air.

I was almost frantic by this point. I knew that if the boy wasn't the first one off the ground he would certainly be the last, and only then with the aid of a stretcher. There was nothing I could do to help but the urge to get involved was defying my common sense.

"Leave him alone!" I screamed."You leave that boy alone!"

I ran towards them, thinking naively that a female presence would bring them to their senses. Maybe I expected them to struggle sheepishly to their feet, brushing themselves down while looking thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Gosh, miss, we were just laking around.

But of course I wasn't dealing with Carl and his little friends. This was big boys' games, big boys' rules.

Marwood was the first to disentangle himself from the fallen scrum. He staggered back a step and then kicked out wildly. I heard a sound like an egg landing on a tiled floor. I stopped dead in my tracks as a sickly dread made my eyes swim and my stomach churn. I turned away just as Peel and Rutherford were getting to their feet.

I raced back to the club, yelling for Paul Cook at the top of my voice. Luckily he was holding open the door for a man in a wheelchair. He took one look at my stricken face and shouted for his partner, an ex-para we just called Para. The two of them went stomping across the car park with me close behind.

There was a brief exchange between Marwood's boys and the bouncers, but nothing more than a bit of push and shove. All the fighting was over. The three of them retreated, victorious but strangely defeated. Marwood was holding his bleeding nose and Peel was walking oddly, as if he had been kicked somewhere soft and sensitive.

Paul and Para knelt down and pulled the boy into a sitting position. I hovered behind them, fretful and useless.

The boy's head rolled and then he snapped to attention. For an instant he looked ready to fight again.

"Easy," Para soothed, tilting the boy's head up to examine a cut under his chin."Just sit still, Rocky."

"Is he alright?" I asked."Is he hurt? Eh? Para? Is he alright?"

The boy looked at me blearily. Right now I bet that he wouldn't know the difference between Cajun night and Pancake Tuesday. There was blood running from his nose and the corner of his mouth; the front of his white shirt was dark and wet.

"I'd better get an ambulance," Paul said. He tried to stand up but the boy suddenly gripped his wrist. He moved like a snake.

"I've got a doctor," he said, sucking back a mouthful of blood."I don't want an ambulance."

"Shut up," Paul said kindly."I'm not just going to walk off and leave you here."

"Joono I am?" the boy slurred. His eyes were fixed but lacking any awareness."Joono..." He struggled to his feet. Paul and Para tried to get him to stay put but he wasn't listening.

"You've had a bang on the head," Para told him firmly."More than one at that." All three men were now standing. The boy was leaning back against the van; Paul and Para were positioned to catch him if he collapsed.

"I've banged my head before now," he said, and then laughed in a way that chilled me."Banged my head but never been shot. Robbie's always getting shot. Got shot in Africa and had to see the witch doctor. Which doctor? Dat doctor!" He giggled boyishly.

"Go get an ambulance," Para said, looking over his shoulder at me."This lad's seeing little sparrows."

"Don't do that," the boy said. He was looking at me again. He still sounded dull and soupy but I saw some signs of recognition in his eyes."I'd have to kill you all." He let his head roll to one side and laughed.

"I'll see to him," I said. Para narrowed his eyes and shook his head briskly.

"Shall I get Brian or William?" Paul suggested.

The boy lifted his head slowly until his eyes were looking into mine.

"I've got him," I said. "I'll look after him."

Reluctantly the two bouncers went back inside. I had a feeling that one of them would call an ambulance anyway, so I decided to get the boy away from here as quickly as possible.

I took him home.

***

"So what did they want?"

He was sitting on a stool in the centre of my kitchen. I had the first aid box at the ready and was about to clean him up. He glanced distrustfully at the damp cloth in my hand.

"Dunno." He shrugged."What do that kind always want?"

"There was no reason for it?"

He shrugged again. In the clean glow of my kitchen he looked like a fresh corpse which had miraculously staggered off the mortuary slab. His blood-soaked shirt shocked me every time I looked at it.

"I must have been staring at him."

"Is that what Marwood said?"

"Marwood's the thin one?"

I nodded. A coldness rose briefly in his eyes.

"He said I'd been staring at him in the bar. I told him I didn't want any trouble but I guess he was just out to clock someone. He's a lucky man."

"Why?"

"Stll alive, isn't he?"

"Head back," I said. He tilted his head back. I cupped the side of his face with my left hand and gently began to wipe the blood from the cut under his chin. His eyes closed. I could feel my heart pounding. I had to say something - anything. In this silence I could forget myself and take this boy.

"Aren't you a bit young to be drinking in a place like the Old Black Kettle?"

"What's young?"

"Well, how old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"That's young."

He lifted his eyelids."How old are you?"

My hand...I moved my hand abruptly."You never ask a lady her age. Didn't your mother ever tell you that?"

He closed his eyes again."I've never been one for mothers," he said distantly."You about thirty then?"

I laughed affectedly."Thirty something."

"Thirty what?"

"Thirty five."

"Thirty five," he repeated thoughtfully."Thirty five...thirty five...That make's you twice my age and a year."

"So you can add," I said."What else do you do?"

"I'm a bankrobber."

His eyes came open. He looked at me and smiled bashfully.

"What's your name?"

"Richard Linton," he said. He made it sound important, like an announcement. I was certain that he always said it that way, as if saying his christian name alone wasn't enough."What's yours?"

"Christine," I said."Friends call me Chrissy."

I finished wiping his face and dabbed some antiseptic on his cuts. He would have a nasty shiner come the morning, and the cut under his chin might need a stitch or two, but other than that he was remarkably unscathed.

"You're blessed," I said."I've never seen anyone take a kicking like that and come up smiling."

"I've taken worse. They say my luck will run one of these days."

"Who says that?"

"People who don't know much," he said, and laughed that soft, chilling laughter I recalled from the car park.

"You can't go home looking like that, Richard," I told him."What's your mother going to say when she sees the blood on your shirt?"

"Like I said, I've never been one for mothers. So who do you live with?"

It was a blunt question, blunt as the questions Carl sometimes presents me with.

"With my son," I told him."Just me and my son, Carl. He's just turned four."

I watched him digest this information. He seemed to be working something out, again so child-like in his concentration. His brow was slightly creased, his lips pursed. He has such lovely eyes, I thought. Lovely eyes, lovely skin.

"You didn't have a kid until you were thirty one?"

"So?"

"What about his dad?"

"Left us for someone else."

"What a dick," he muttered

"I'll get you a tee-shirt," I said."I get them from the bar. You can keep it."

I went upstairs to my bedroom. The air smelled musty, so I sprayed a little perfume. Something sultry. Seductive. I was terribly scared and confused. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but here I was doing it all the same.

I grabbed a tee-shirt from the drawer and went downstairs. I watched him strip off his shirt. He stood there in his jeans and trainers, waiting for me to hand him the tee-shirt. His chest was smooth and hairless, his stomach flat. There was a duelling scar midway between his hip and rib cage.

"It should fit," I said quickly."One size fits all."

I offered the tee-shirt. He took hold of it but I didn't let go. For a brief moment we were joined.

"I'm not like everyone else," he said.

That's when the phone rang. We both looked at the phone on the kitchen wall.

"I'll take it in there," I said."Might be private."

Richard tugged playfully at the tee-shirt. I didn't let go."Like boyfriend private?"

"Might be," I said."Sorry if I gave the impression of some hung-up divorcee waiting for the lorry driver of her dreams to whisk her away. I've got lots of boyfriends as it happens."

"Yeah, keep on truckin', babe," he drawled, and yanked the tee-shirt from my hand with an arrogant little smirk.

I went into the living room. It wasn't that private as far as things go, just Val ringing to let me know that Carl had been good as gold and hadn't swallowed anything that might need to be surgically removed. We chatted. I wanted to rush the conversation along but Val was as keen to talk about the evening as Carl would be the next time I saw him. Eventually I managed to round her off and hung up the phone. When I went back into the kitchen Richard was gone.

***

Relieved?

I didn't know...I just didn't know. It was something like relief, and at the same time it was something like dismay.

That night I did sleep with the window open. In the early hours a cool breeze sprung up. I woke from a dream I couldn't recall and rolled over to gaze out of the window. The net curtains billowed gently inward. The wind lapped my face and bare shoulders. I was thinking about him as I drifted back to sleep, wondering if he would ever be as real to me as he was in my tranquillised thoughts.

Physically he was real, but there was a part of him that was purely imaginary. A part of him had stepped living and breathing from the volumes of poems and perversions hidden away in my heart's secret library. It was as if I had wished him into existence.

My last thought as I succumbed to sleep: I wished him back again.

***********************************

INTERLUDE

************

 Bethley was a shit little town. There was no polite way of saying it. As far as Pete and Robbie Casey knew it consisted almost entirely of imposing old terraced houses linked together by cobbled ratruns too narrow to drive a car through. The only time you ever heard it mentioned on the television was when the non-league results counted on the football pools. This morning winter's cold grey shroud made it seem even grimmer and more depressing than usual. There were no kids about yet, except for one lone kid plodding along in silent introspection, his hands clasped behind his back like a forlorn poet. All the other kids would be inside watching the Saturday morning television programmes, which is where Robbie wanted to be.

"Who's Alia?" Robbie asked. He was staring up at the smoke curling from the chimney pots into the mottled grey sky, a grubby little blond boy of six dressed mostly in his older brother's clothes. Only the shoes on his feet were his own.

"Alia?"

"Yeah. I mean, you see Smith and Jones but you never see who Alia is."

Pete was thirteen, tall for his age but skinny and under-nourished. He was a handsome boy but his face was drawn and worried."Take a day off, Robbie," he said.

Robbie mulled over another little poser as they walked through the maze of old houses and alleyways. Pete was watching Robbie's shoes. The sole of his left shoe had come loose was was flapping like an old woman's tongue.

"How come they never shoot anyone then?"

Pete squinted at his brother."Who?"

Robbie sighed deeply."Alia, Smith and Jones! How come they never shoot anyone?"

Pete ignored the question. He looked at Robbie's wounded shoe and frowned."When did that happen?"

"What?"

"When did your shoe come loose?"

It was obviously news to Robbie. He stopped, lifted his foot and examined the sole of his shoe. It moved up and down just like a jaw.

"Hey, Pete!" he cried, hopping round to face his brother."Gottle a geer, gottle a geer!"

"I'll have to get you a new pair," Pete said. He was wearing the tense expression that always worried Robbie a little.

"Can I have some pumps instead?" Robbie asked, letting go of his foot.

Pete shook his head."You need shoes in winter, Robbie."

"I can't run fast in shoes."

"You can't run fast at all!"

They resolved the issue with a race, which also served to warm them up. By the time they reached Clegg's Super Discount store they were breathing ragged clouds of hot grey vapour into the crispy cold air.

Pete pulled Robbie close to his side and spoke to him in a furtive voice that Robbie found thrilling.

"You're just the decoy, remember."

"I know...Pete?"

"What's a decoy?" Pete finished, and Robbie threw his head back and giggled. Pete shook him by the arm."Pack it in, man, you'll get us noticed."

"I know what to do," Robbie said with exasperation."We do it every Saturday."

Pete nodded and regarded his little brother solemnly. Robbie reacted with hushed attentiveness."Whatever you do, don't shoot anyone," he said, propelling Robbie towards the shop door."And if you get caught, your name's Jones."

Once through the doors of Clegg's Super Discount store (which in Robbie's fantasy was now the First National Bank ) Robbie went immediately over the top in his efforts to look shifty. He knew how to do it without having to be shown. You had to hunch your shoulders, glance around with darting eyes, and flit from display to display making sure you handled as many things as possible along the way. It was a doddle.

In less than a minute the security guard had spotted Robbie Casey and began to follow him around the store. Robbie knew he was there. Well, the bloke wasn't very subtle. Not like an undercover cop or anything. The security guard was wearing a dark suit and looked like an ex-military policeman, and he plodded stealthily behind Robbie Casey with his hands clasped behind his back and his beady eyes all scrunched up.

Robbie was enjoying the game. His biggest temptation though was to look for Pete, just to see what he was doing, but that would ruin the whole thing. This wasn't like other stuff, say footy in the street or Kick Out Ball, where Robbie was pretty safe in the knowledge that Pete wouldn't be all that mad at him if he messed up. This was serious stuff, and Pete was serious in his threats to do what he said he would do if Robbie made a balls of it.

Robbie decided to check out the toys. Cleggs wasn't like Woolworths or Lewis's but they did sell a selection of toys. Cheap toys. All At Pocket Money Prices, as the sign said. Not much good when you didn't get any pocket money, but Robbie reminded himself that he was here to look and not to buy.

Most of the stuff was crap. Even a six year old could recognise that. The Clackers were cheap copies and Robbie had made better pea-shooters from the body of a biro. Mind, the spud gun looked quite nice. Robbie didn't have a spud gun, not since the Old Woman In The Big House snatched it out of his hand that time. I'm confiscating this! she rapped. She was always ranting at kids. I've put chemicals on them apples! she would screech, even if you were just looking. I know all your mams!

Robbie lifted the spud gun off the rack. It was stuck to a piece of cardboard to stop kids from bringing their own potatoes and test firing it. He was going to pull it off the cardboard anyway, just to make the security guard think he was stealing it, when suddenly he was smitten. He tossed the spud gun absently into a basket of tennis balls and raised his eyes reverently to the toy which the spud gun had been concealing. It was a Starsky and Hutch gun and badge set.

Oh, how he wanted one of those. How he coveted one. After Champion The Wonder Horse, Starsky and Hutch was his favourite television programme. His best game was a combination of the two, a fearless crime fighting force made up of cops and cowboys. Admittedly the effect suffered from a slight lack of reality in that all the characters were represented by plastic farmyard animals. They were the only toys Robbie Casey owned, except the ones he had made himself or those Pete had made for him.

But if he had a genuine Starsky and Hutch gun and badge set...

Robbie glanced slyly over his shoulder. This time he wasn't acting.

If he owned a genuine Starsky and Hutch gun and badge set all the kids in the street would think he was something else. They would think he was Starsky and Hutch for a start.

With a heady rush of fear and excitement, Robbie stuffed the Starsky and Hutch gun and badge set inside his coat and pulled the zip up to his chin. Whistling, he sauntered off to look at something else.

***

Pete gave Robbie a couple of minutes to draw the security guard's attention and then he went into action. He worked quickly, professionally, driven by a mixture of adrenalin and need.

First he took the large carrier bag from his coat pocket and shook it into shape. He was already striding towards the entrance as he did this. Then he was through the door and inside the store, no messing around, no furtive glances, just head down and get on with it.

Down the centre aisle he went, scooping a random assortment of tins and packets off the shelves and into the bag, and back up the next aisle to collect as many jars of coffee and packets of tea bags as he could. Tea and coffee he could always sell, the rest they would eat.

Pete was almost done when he remembered Robbie's shoes. He did an about face and marched to the rear of the store. He risked a quick scan of his surrounds. There were only a few shoppers inside, which was good, and no sign of Robbie, which was better. Knowing Robbie he would have waved or something.

Pete grabbed a pair of shoes and put them in the bag. Impulsively he also liberated a few pairs of underpants and socks, all for Robbie. His shopping done he turned on his heels and walked confidently out of the store. The operation had taken less than three minutes.

He didn't hang about for Robbie. Once outside he marched across the road and waited in a dark alley between a newsagents and a fish and chip shop. This was the rendezvous point. From here he had a clear view of the store front, and just as importantly there was an escape route directly behind him.

The weight of the bag was immensely satisfying. It meant that for the next few days Pete and Robbie wouldn't have to hang about outside the fish and chips shop until closing time, waiting for the scraps of fish and the nearly cold chips to be sold off cheaply. Robbie didn't mind but then he wasn't quite old enough to appreciate the indignity of it all. Theft was wrong, Pete knew that same as the next kid, but as he grew older he found that it offended his sense of pride and self-esteem far less than haggling over a scrappy fish supper at eleven o'clock on a cold winter's night.

Something else too, something he couldn't quite articulate, except to say that thieving was the best game he had ever played. Ever.

Robbie emerged onto the street and stopped, either confused or lost, or both. He looked painfully small and vulnerable trapped between the tall buildings and the busy road. Pete raised his hand and waved but Robbie was looking up and down the street instead of straight ahead. Just as Pete was about to call out to him a man in a dark suit glided out of the store and put a hand on Robbie's shoulder.

Pete's face withered with dismay. For a few moments, as Robbie was being led back inside the store, he experienced a blinding panic, a sensation so alien to him that it was almost interesting. He paced back and forth across the mouth of the alley, thumping his forehead with the heel of his fist as if the mechanism that controlled his thought process had jammed. The strain of not being able to think clearly built up so quickly it began to hurt his sinuses. It felt as though a great flow of thoughts had been suddenly stopped by a damn, and behind the damn the pressure was building and building.

His foot kicked something. Pete looked down and saw an empty milk bottle skidding over the stones. That was it. Damnbuster.

***

The security guard had Robbie cornered in a small bare office inside the superstore. A table and two chairs were the only furniture, and the walls were the drab grey of school shorts washed too many times. Robbie was sitting on one of the chairs. His feet didn't reach the floor. The security guard remained standing by the door, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. He reminded Robbie of those men in the furry hats who guarded the queen...except he didn't have a furry hat of course.

"You'd better tell me your name, lad," the security guard said. The tone of his voice leaned towards an or else.

Robbie slowly lifted his face. His eyes were large and round and full of bewildered innocence."Dave Starsky."

***

Pete stashed the bag of swag behind a metal dustbin in the alley and went inside the newsagents shop, the empty milk-bottle poking out of his coat pocket. He had only a vague idea of what he needed. If the man behind the counter was to ask him what it was he was looking for, Pete would only be able to answer with the cryptic 'I'll know it when I see it'.

He found a small display of greetings cards and party goods: tiny cake candles, novelty decorations, balloons, hundreds and thousands and the like. He scanned them quickly, almost chose a packet of balloons but then found exactly what he was looking for. He took two packets of crazy straws to the counter and counted out some change, all under the distrustful eye of the newsagent.

"Anything else?" the newsagent asked. He was eyeing Pete with unreasonable suspicion. Pete was unfazed.

"And a box of matches," he said.

He paid for his purchase and walked hurriedly into the street, just as a police panda car pulled up outside the store. His sense of urgency was intensified. He waited until the copper - a small,stocky man with short ginger hair and a face you could grate cheese on - got out of the car and plonked a cap on his head, and then he sprinted off.

***

Things were looking grim. Robbie, staring shamefully down at his swinging feet, began to sing under his breath in the hope that it might inspire his confidence.

"Like a speeding arrow whizzing from a bow, like a mighty cannonball you'll see him fly, you'll hear about him everywhere you go, the time will come when everyone-"

There came a knock at the door. Robbie's voice left him in an instant. The security guard smiled archly.

"Do you know who that is, lad?"

Robbie shook his head, although he had a pretty good idea who was behind that telling knock.

The store detective's smiled turned predatory."It's the police."

Robbie put his head down and muttered,"They'll never take me alive."

***

After a short but frantic search Pete eventually found a newish Austin Allegro parked by the side of some lock-up garages. When he was satisfied that no one was watching he sat down by the petrol tank and tore open the packets of crazy straws. He felt anxious for Robbie but at the same time he was electric with excitement. Not that anyone would have known that from the studious tension on his face. The job in hand took all the concentrated effort he could muster - and that was just to stop his hands from shaking. Academically Pete Casey was right up there with the sheep in the fields, but he was an industrious and resourceful boy, and as he fiddled with the straws, carefully slotting them together into a long continuous tube, he was the closest thing to a genius the cobbled back streets of Bethley had.

Done. It was done. Pete had made a syphoning tube.

He scoured the clumps of weeds growing along the sides of the garages and found a rusty shelf-bracket which he used to lever off the Austin's petrol cap. Next he inserted his makeshift tube and sucked enthusiastically until the petrol was flowing freely through the clear plastic. He was so slick he didn't even get a mouthful. Finally he took the milk bottle from his pocket and transferred the elbow-shaped end of the tube into it. Next week I'll be showing you how to make a bazooka out of empty toilet rolls and sticky-backed plastic, he thought crazily, and allowed himself the luxury of a smile.

***

The policeman lowered himself into the chair facing Robbie. For what seemed like an eternity he just sat and stared at his quarry, his expression not unlike Pete's in its placid indifference.

"I see you've been shopping, son," he said at last. He was a big man but he had a kindly voice - not the great booming bark Robbie had been fearfully anticipating."What's your name then?"

Robbie made no reply. His eyes flicked to the Starsky and Hutch gun and badge set that was sitting on the table like Exhibit A in Crown Court.

"I've asked him that," the security guard said, leaning forward over the policeman's shoulder.

"Good."

The policeman smiled at Robbie, who grinned shyly.

"He told me his name was Dave Starsky."

The policeman chuckled. Robbie was astonished at this simple show of human emotion. Looking at his face, he guessed that the copper was old but not really old like the security guard. He was old like Denny Blackmore, who lived with his mum but had his own car and everything. Denny was nineteen.

"Used an alias did you?" the policeman asked.

"Alia, Smith and Jones," Robbie whispered to himself. Maybe the copper knew who the elusive Alia was.

"Beg pardon, son?"

Robbie shut his trap. That's what Pete had always told him to do. Shut his trap and keep it shut.

"My name's Preston Deal," the policeman said."Going to tell me your name?"

"Not supposed to talk to coppers," Robbie said, forgetting that he was supposed to keep his trap shut.

"Who says so?"

"He says all coppers are bas-"

"Alright," Preston Deal said sharply."That's enough of that. Who told you not to talk to coppers then?"

Robbie shrugged and looked down at his feet. His cheeks were roasting.

"Come on," Preston said in a coaxing voice."If you tell me your name we might be able to sort this out without going back to the station."

The security guard coughed delicately."I think I should draw your attention to company police regarding shoplifting."

"I think you should draw a zip over your mouth," Preston Deal said without the slightest hint of annoyance in his voice.

Robbie looked up, his jaw slack and his eyes wide with disbelief. Preston Deal was a copper with attitude, just like the American cops on the telly. He probably back-chatted his lootenant and everything. Robbie was profoundly impressed.

"What's your name, son?"

"Ricky," Robbie answered smoothly.

Preston smiled broadly."Right, now we're getting somewhere. Do you live with your mum and dad,Ricky?"

Robbie shook his head."No, with my uncle Sandy."

"Just your uncle Sandy?"

Robbie smiled sweetly at the policeman."And Champion the fucking Wonder Horse."

***

Pete primed the bomb on the way back to the street. He had to use a strip of his own shirt simply because he didn't chance across a suitable piece of dry rag. He hoped Robbie appreciated this, the little shitbox.

They were coming out. The policeman was holding Robbie's hand. That was good. Pete had expected handcuffs.

There was no time to waste. Pete lit a match and put it to the petrol-soaked rag poking from the neck of the bottle. There was a moment of raw terror when he half-expected the bomb to explode in his hand, but the rag just burned.

Robbie and the policeman were walking towards the car. Pete dashed into the road and lobbed the deadly milk bottle.

Disaster struck.At the last second he took his eyes off the target and instead watched the bomb leave his hand. A nightmare image flashed through his mind. The bomb missed the target and smashed on Robbie's little head, engulfing him in flame. His little brother had become a HUMAN FIREBALL!!!

But no...the milk bottle sailed over the road and impacted on the roof of the panda car. The policeman and Robbie, who were only feet from the car when it whooshed up in flame, jumped back with alarm. The policeman instinctively turned his back on the burning car and shielded Robbie with his bulk. Pete saw his chance to act. If he waited any longer the moment of shock and confusion would pass.

"JONESEEEY!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, hoping that Robbie wasn't so idiotic as to assume the voice was aimed at someone else."RUN!"

Robbie looked sharply towards the sound of the voice, saw Pete waving his arms, and bolted. Preston Deal watched him go with dumb inertia. He looked back at the car, over at the fleeing prisoner, back at the blazing car, and finally decided to get his man. He charged out into the road and was almost hit by a van. The van didn't slow down but gave a meaty blast on the horn that scared Preston Deal out of his skin and promptly returned him to the curb as if he had been blown there by a back-draught. His momentum lost, he could only watch as the little lad dodged a honking, skidding flow of traffic and made it across to the other side of the road miraculously unscathed. There a second boy was waiting, and the two of them vanished up an alley like a pair of rats up a drainpipe.

***

"Did you see it go up, Pete? Did you? Did you see it blow up?"

"Course I saw it, Robbie."

They were on home ground. Robbie was walking backwards - or dancing backwards - breathlessly recounting the morning's events over and over as if Pete hadn't been there and needed to be convinced. Kids wrapped in thick winter clothing played all around them. A group of girls were skipping and singing silly rhymes, while a large gang of boys had set up a football game with jumpers for goalposts. Women with their arms folded under their big busters gossiped on the doorsteps, passing tittle-tattle along a chain that stretched down one side of the street, across the road, and back up the other like an electrical circuit.

"It went whooooosh!" Robbie cried, throwing his arms in the air."And it all blew up!"

Pete sighed and looked faintly embarrassed."I know, Robbie."

"Was it a bomb, Pete?" Robbie asked earnestly."Did you make a bomb?"

Pete smiled indulgently."Yeah, I made a bomb."

"Wow," Robbie said softly, gazing reverently at his older brother. Then suddenly excitement gripped him again."It was completely ace, Pete! That copper was going to take me to Borstal, and then you bombed him!"

"Have a day off, Robbie," Pete said, glancing uneasily around him. No one was paying much attention to the brothers, but that was no reason to get sloppy and start boasting about how they had evaded the law this bleak Saturday morning.

"I can't wait to tell everyone," Robbie said proudly."Just wait 'till I tell everyone, Pete."

"I said have a day off, Robbie," Pete said firmly. Robbie looked hurt. He pouted sulkily and fell into line. Pete punched him on the arm, just to let him know that he wasn't really mad. Robbie cheered instantly.

"Oh, nearly forgot," Pete said, digging into the big shopping bag with a mysterious smile. Robbie watched him with kittenish curiosity."See what I got you?"

It was a pair of shoes. Black shoes. School shoes. Robbie took them and turned them over in his hands, examining them with resentful distaste.

"These are shit."

***

The Casey brothers met Preston Deal for the second time exactly one week after the petrol-bombing incident. In another twenty years all three would meet again, and all three would be armed to the teeth, but on that bright, cold Saturday afternoon in the outdoor market of a jam and bread northern mill town that didn't even have a league football club, guns were something you only saw in cowboy films and twenty years got you a mantel clock from Arthur Brown's Tool Works.

It had been a good week for the Casey brothers. Pete had sold all the tea and coffee he stole from the superstore as well as earning himself two quid by acting as a look-out for a gang of older boys while they stripped the lead from St Jude's roof. Moreover, Robbie had grudgingly agreed to wear his new shoes in.

Pete and Robbie were sitting on the low wall which surrounded Bethley's bustling outdoor market, eating fish and chips from the newspaper wrapping and idly watching the market people go about their business. Behind them, tall and stern, loomed the new Police Headquarters building.

"Is that where all the coppers live?" Robbie asked.

Pete twisted his neck and stared at the imposing building. Robbie was gazing thoughtfully up at the top floor."I don't think they live there."

"It's big enough," Robbie noted. Pete agreed.

They went back to eating their lunch. Robbie, his head down, shovelling chips into his mouth by the handful, was virtually oblivious to what was going on around him, but Pete Casey, ever vigilant, ever cautious, spotted Preston Deal walking towards them and leaned over to his brother.

"Your name's Bill Jones and you know nothing," he whispered.

Robbie looked at him dumbly, a chip dangling from the corner of his mouth like a cigarette.

Preston Deal was wearing a suit and an expensive looking overcoat. He stopped in front of the two boys and slipped his hands into his pockets."Hello, lads," he greeted, friendly enough."Ricky, isn't it?"

Robbie drew the stray chip into his mouth and chewed automatically. Spots of colour rose in his cheeks.

"I said it's Ricky, isn't it?" Preston Deal repeated. He was smiling benignly. In fact he looked like a man who was in a very good mood.

Robbie glanced worriedly at his brother.

"His name's Bill," Pete said.

Preston nodded sagely."Suppose you're Ben."

Robbie giggled madly. Pete nudged him hard and glowered fiercely. Sometimes Robbie could be such a liability.

"No matter," Preston said. He sat on the wall next to Pete and appeared to watch the comings and goings of the market people with the same lazy curiosity the Casey brothers had been enjoying up until a moment ago. He even took a pack of Embassy out of his coat pocket and smoked with the contented air of a man whose only worry in life was how best to spend his leisure time.

Although scared, Robbie went back to eating his fish and chips, his faith in Pete's ability to get them out of this tight spot utter and complete. Pete stared silently ahead, his face pinched and troubled.

"You know," Preston Deal began,"What you did the other day was more than just naughty. You know that, don't you?"

Robbie glanced worriedly at Pete, who said nothing. He didn't trust Preston Deal's casual manner and sensed a hidden menace behind it.

"You were looking out for your brother. That's good. I can understand that. But in doing so you committed a very serious crime. Do you understand? Look at me when I'm talking to you, Peter Casey."

Pete was startled at the mention of his name. Robbie gave a little gasp of alarm.

"By all rights you should go to borstal for what you did, son."

"You'd have to prove it was me first," Pete said. He turned his head and looked coolly at the policeman."My brother's never going to tell the same story twice, and you won't get no confession out of me."

"Watch your lip," Preston said. It was a calmly delivered warning, one not lost on Pete Casey."You might just find out how clever I am if you keep it up. Don't ride your luck is what I'm saying."

Their eyes met for a few moments, lawman and outlaw, and Preston Deal felt a strangely powerful sensation shake him like distant tremors. He was everything they said he was, this boy. A crook, a father, a thief and a hero, as outwardly placid as the surface of a stagnant lake and every bit as dangerous as its freezing murky depths.

"I'm joining the CID," Preston explained."Start first thing Monday morning but the Super wants me in today so he can show me how to work the kettle. I expect to be very busy. Too busy to be mucking about chasing after the likes of you two, Pete and Robbie Casey...This time, I mean." He flicked his cigarette away and rose to his feet. He stood before the two boys, his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat. They were staring at him with pinpoint concentration, silent, watchful tiger cubs just biding their time.

"It doesn't end here, boys," he said."It doesn't end here."

*****************

My life fell back into a familiar pattern. I spent Sunday morning cleaning up the house, and in the afternoon I took my son to watch the kites in Bat And Ball park. On Monday night I went back to work at the Old Black Kettle. It was Kay-lee's night off, Max was sick, and so lucky old me was left with William Dexter for company.

Mondays were always quiet. There was no band, no kareoke, just the jukebox and whoever wandered in off the street. I never felt more ridiculously dressed than when the bar was empty.

"Girl trouble is it?"

I glanced at William, who was counting the bottles in the fridge. I had known he was there - he had been humming along to Coward of the County - but somehow I had become distracted enough to relegate his presence to a discordant buzzing sound in the distance.

"You were miles away," he explained. He was acting half-human, which made me suspicious."Something on your mind, is there?"

"Just stuff. Where's Brian tonight?"

"Was it me?" William asked, leering at his notepad."Thinking about me, I bet." His eyes shifted sideways. Then he did something to his pencil I've seen him do before, though never for my benefit, never as a private show. He slipped it into his mouth and began to simulate falacio. I should have immediately put things into perspective. I should have seen it for the crude, schoolboyish nonsense that it was, but instead I let it get to me. Worse, I let it show.

Kenny finished his song by reminding us how everyone considered him the coward of the county. The silence was too much. I took some change from the box on the bar and went to the jukebox. I knew the three records I wanted to select. They were the same three records I always selected, but I lingered by the jukebox for a full five minutes before dropping my coins into the slot and pressing the right buttons from memory.

Two men came in wearing the blue overalls of the Ritchmire Copperworks. I hurried back to the bar because I wanted to serve them before William did. I did the old teasing smile and heaving busom bit, and the pair of them decided to drink their pints at the bar.

They were nice, harmless sort of men. Their company was restful and untaxing and more importantly they kept William off my back. When they were down to the dregs I picked up their glasses and suggested a refill. Eric, small and timid with glasses, wasn't so keen but his taller, more confident friend cajoled him into staying. I caught snippets of their furtive whispering as I put the money through the till.

"...with this one...can't believe it...in here, mate..."

By ten o'clock things had picked up. A group of auditors who had been working late at a local electronic components factory got very drunk very quickly, and I was rushed off my feet trying to keep them in check. Brian returned from his mystery excursion and I was quickly able to forget about William's earlier behaviour.

Two men entered just before closing time. Straight away I knew they were brothers. Both were blond and good looking in their own individual ways. The older one was tall and quiet, with short thinning hair and a slightly preoccupied manner. I guessed he was about my age. The younger one - I'd have said in his mid-twenties - had shoulder length hair and a cheeky grin. He grinned at me as they came to the bar and I couldn't help grinning back.

They ordered two bottles of beer. The young one pulled up a stool but the older one turned his back on me.

"Does a man called Marwood drink in here?" the young one asked."He's a tall, thin man, face like a hatchet."

"Broken nose," the older one said without turning round.

"Yeah," the young one sniggered."Broken nose."

"That'd be Paul Marwood," I said. Naturally I was curious to know if these two were friends of Richard's but I didn't ask. Despite the friendly face of the young one and the quiet but non-threatening manner of his brother, I didn't feel completely comfortable in their company. In fact by now I was feeling a vague sense of recognition. I wondered if they were friends of my ex-husband's, a couple of pool cronies from the Snake Pit who might only remember me if I introduced myself as Darren's ball and chain.

"What nights does he come in?" the young one went on.

I shrugged."Friday's mostly. Some Saturdays. Why?"

He grinned but didn't elucidate."Is this a country and western bar?"

"That's what they say."

"So where's all the cowboys?" He narrowed his eyes and did a very good Clint Eastwood."Somebody run 'em out o' town...the James boys, maybe? You ever heard o' the James boys, li'l lady?"

I laughed but again I felt a shiver of uneasiness. I had seen them somewhere before but it wasn't in the Snake Pit.

"Finish your drink, Robbie," the older one said. He turned around and looked at me with cool indifference."Is Marwood always with the same two men?"

I nodded cautiously.

"And you say he comes in here on Fridays?"

"Mostly. Why are you asking? If you know him why don't-"

"Do you work Fridays?"

I shut my mouth and nodded again.

"Take the night off," he said.

***

But I didn't. How could I? I was burning with intrigue. More than that, I was certain the two brothers who came into the bar that night had some connection with Richard Linton. From the tone of their questions, and the growing suspicions about where I had seen them before, the possibility of serious trouble seemed likely.

So why didn't I warn people? Why didn't I tell Brian to expect trouble? Because there was a chance that Richard would be involved, that's why. So why didn't I just stay away like I had been told to?

Same reason.

****

It was just another Friday night as far as everyone else was concerned. Kay-lee was late for work, Max was confused about something or other, William Dexter touched my behind as he squeezed past, Brian was glum and distant, and Den 'Done' Jackson and the Montana Red Dogs opened their first set with a clanging rendition of Rhinestone Cowboy. A perfectly ordinary Friday night down at the Old Black Kettle.

"I've got a juicy one," Kay-lee said to me. We had sneaked off to the cloakroom for a fag and a natter. Kay-lee provided most of both."Want to hear it?"

I shrugged and nodded but I really didn't care one way or the other. The longer this night wore on the worse the crawly feeling in my stomach got.

By now I was putting two and two together and making mostly four. Something Richard said to me in the kitchen kept flitting in and out of my thoughts - I'm a bankrobber. At the time I had (almost) dismissed it as adolescent bravado, largely because he seemed to be speaking in jest, but that was before I met Pete and Robbie Casey. I still wasn't completely sure they were who I suspected they were, but If I had been forced to place my bet one way or the other I would have put my meagre savings on them being the Casey brothers.

"Well, do you want to hear or not?" Kay-lee cried, shaking me out of my thoughts. I think it was what they call a rhetorical question: she was about to tell me whether I wanted to hear it or not. I could see it leaking out of her sparkling eyes already.

"Go on then," I said, mustering up some enthusiasm."You gave Max a blowjob and hurt your tonsils?"

She gave me a withered smile and then the look of excitement sprang back to her face.

"Do you know that place out by the market, the taxi place where all the Turks work?"

I did but I couldn't remember the name. It was on Dagger Lane, down by the stadium."Is it Railway Cars, or something like that?"

"Racing Cars," she jabbered impatiently."I'm not talking about the taxi company though, I meant do you know who has the premises above?"

I shook my head, but then I remembered the tiny frosted glass window with the alluring red light and the discreet engraving on the window.

"Sauna and massage," I said."It's a brothel."

Kay-lee was grinning and nodding vigorously."Well, one of the girls who works there is none other than Susan Chipper."

Big anti-climax. I didn't know Susan Chipper from Joe Bloggs. I told Kay-lee so.

"She used to cut hair at the Beeswax!" she said, gaping at me as if I had just admitted that I had never heard of Elvis."Big girl, always had those rings under her eyes as if someone had clocked her one. Oh, you remember her, Chrissy!"

"Right, right," I said,though I was still no wiser."So she's a prostitute, eh? Still, you-"

Kay-lee let out an exasperated strangling sound."I haven't finished yet!"

"Sorry," I giggled."Go on. So she used to cut hair at the Bee's Knees and now she walks the night, calling out to passing men in a darkly seductive whisper: Closing down sale, everything must go, everything-"

Kay-lee thumped me hard enough on the shoulder to shut me up. The withered look was back again.

"Stop laughing!"

"I'm just smiling!"

"Chrissy!"

I pulled a zipper across my mouth.

"Okay," Kay-lee began again. She looked at me from the corner of her eye and smiled wryly."I called at Racing Cars late on Monday evening - I wanted a cab - and Susan Chipper was drinking coffee with that fat girl who works the radio. Well, she knows that I know what she does in that grubby little room, so I started talking to her, just to be friendly, and you'll never guess what..."

"She offered you a job," I said, and burst out laughing at the look on Kay-lee's face.

"She told me," Kay-lee went on in a voice that warned against further interruption,"that a friend of ours had been in that evening...for an appointment." She sat back with a priggish little smile, and then made that gesture with her wrist and hand."I think you know exactly what I mean when I say an appointment, Chrissy."

We sniggered like two convent girls peeking at the rude words in the dictionary.

"Who was it then?" I almost screamed. Now I really did want to know, even though I had drawn my own conclusion. I pictured William Dexter laying face up on a dubiously stained leather couch with stuffing spilling out of the knife slits, naked but for his stetson and fake gunbelt. Oil it up and jiggle it about or you'll be one spanked prostitute.

"It was Brian!" Kay-lee gasped, and my laughter just tailed away into shocked silence. Kay-lee gave this goofy little grin of embarrassment and shrugged."Who'd of thought it, eh?" All the glee had gone from her voice. Suddenly we couldn't even look each other in the eye.

"Poor Brian," I said under my breath. I tried to picture him down to his Y-fronts and saggy white mantits in the massage parlour. Like a buddha, except his expression was one of painful humiliation as he muttered his shameful desires. I recalled how he had vanished on Monday evening, returning somewhat distant and forlorn.

When I was eighteen years old I gave this bloke a blowjob in the back of a taxi cab as we were coming home from a nightclub in York. I didn't do it for him. I did it because I thought it was what I wanted, but the next day I was so racked with guilt and self-loathing that I never even got out of bed. All day and night I lay there, hiding my shame under the covers, my cheeks boiling with the awful memory of it all. I regretted it for years after, until I was mature enough to put it down to experience and subsequently into perspective, and yet the disgrace has never completely deserted me. A residue of it remains to this day, stronger than the memory behind it.

Can't be any different for men.

***

Paul Marwood came into the bar at ten o'clock. I knew it was ten because Den 'Done' Jackson and the Montana Red Dogs had just taken to the stage for their last slot of the night. They opened with Rhinestone Cowboy again, for those who missed it the first time around.

Marwood had a strip of plaster across his nose and his eyes were swollen and bruised. The injury gave his scowl an added dimension of meanness. The way he was scanning the crowd made me wary. He was selecting a victim just like the way he had picked out Richard. Somebody weaker than himself, alone, minding their own business. Somebody who didn't want to fight but who might throw a sporting punch or two if cornered, just to make it interesting. I felt sick with hatred for the man.

Peel and Rutherford were with him, as usual. I stood by the till, glaring at them while Kay-lee took their order. Marwood caught my eye and stared at me hotly. I had to turn away and make like I had something to do.

In fact I did have something to do. While everyone was occupied I went to the office and knocked on the door as I entered. Brian looked up at me from the computer screen and smiled faintly.

"Christine," he said."Everything alright?"

"That's exactly what I was about to ask you." I pulled a chair from under the desk and sat down."You don't look yourself, Brian...Is everything alright?"

He stared at me for a few seconds, bemused more than anything else. I was nobody's agony aunt but I didn't mind offering a shoulder to lean on now and again. I didn't expect Brian to burst into racking sobs and confess that he'd been visiting dubious massage parlours, but I hoped perhaps he'd admit that he was feeling lonely. I would have told him that it was the same for me, and didn't it just get you down? Didn't it make you contemplate some crazy things now and again, at the worst of times? I wouldn't suggest the two of us be lonely together like that pair from the Barry Manilow song or anything like that, but I would have offered my moral support in return for his.

"I'm fine," he said at last, smiling fondly at me."But thanks for asking."

"You don't look fine," I said. I had the feeling that my plan was all academic now. Brian was like me in a way, not the sort to pour out his troubles like so much cheap wine. A guarded soul, my mother used to say.

"A bit off colour," he lied."Might be a virus. How's young Carl by the way?"

I didn't press it. I stayed for about five minutes and then I went back to work. Marwood and his henchmen were supping from bottles at the bar, mean and uncommunicative even amongst themselves. The band were playing Achy Breakey Heart, and a large section of the crowd were stomping and waving their arms in front of the stage. Suddenly a fight broke out. At least I assumed it was a fight because in a flash people were scattering to the sides in alarm, those nearest the trouble bumping into others as panic overtook them. There were screams too, and that was unusual.

Then four men came bursting out of the chaos. They wore masks, and they were armed to the teeth.

The gunmen were dressed in old denims and baseball hats and hid their faces behind cloth masks. Only their eyes were visible, narrow slits of utterly pitiless hostility. They spread out with choreographic efficiency, one dropping down on one knee and pointing a shotgun at the crowd.

"Stand still! Don't move!" he barked. The band stopped playing with an abruptness they could never achieve in a million rehearsals. All at once. Now you could hear people's frightened muttering and whining.

One man went left so that he had Marwood and his two friends covered from behind."Don't move, fatnose!" he hollered.

Marwood froze. The expression on his face was sickly scared. Peel's head was snapping back and forth like a kind of possessed metronome. His eyes were small and white like two pickled onions. Tim Rutherford simply ogled the gunmen with moronic awe.

Two men emerged as the leaders of the group. One was tall and serene - possibly the only member of the gang who hadn't yet spoken - while the other was distinguishable by the black cowboy hat he was wearing above the decorated handkerchief tied around his face. Instead of a shotgun he carried two long-barrelled revolvers. He looked like some avenging gunslinger from hell.

"You, keep your fucking head still!" he yelled, and Peel's neck jammed instantly.

It was probably down to fear, but when I saw Peel's head stop moving that way I just burst out laughing. The gunslinger turned his face and quite clearly grinned at me.

"Evening, li'l lady," he drawled. He took in the rest of the bar staff - Kay-lee, who had moved close to Max, Tracey and Dawn, two secretive students I never had much time for, and Brian, who had just come out of his office to see what all the shouting was about. Finally he looked William up and down with cold-blooded speculation."You wanna draw against theeee keeeed?"

William, ash-faced, shook his head stiffly.

Finish your drink, Robbie, I heard the quiet blond man say in my mind, and now I knew for sure that this was Pete and Robbie Casey at work. And suddenly I knew that Richard was with them.

I might come again...to see the band.

The man down on one knee with his gun trained on the crowd, a slim, boyish figure, glanced quickly over his shoulder. I thought of the moment when I first saw him, when he had looked into my eyes and changed my life forever. I thought of that because these were the same eyes looking at me now, stirring in me the same thrill of untold danger and adventure.

Shouting again:

"Off the chairs!"

"On the floor!"

"Lie down!"

"Get down!"

"On the floor!"

This time the orders were directed exclusively at Marwood and his sidekicks. Peel and Rutherford began to whine plaintively like kids being forced into a dentist's waiting room.

"Ah, come on!" Peel wailed with tearful dismay."What have we done, eh? Mate? Come on, pal!"

Rutherford was a bass litany of his squeaky little friend. The pair of them were desperate and terrified enough to believe they could cajole the gunmen into letting them off the hook. Calling them mate and pal...begging for their lives, when it comes down to the nitty gritty.

The shouting went on regardless of their pathetic protests. With great dread, I suspect, they slid off their bar stools and lay face down on the floor. Only Marwood remained.

"You can have it in the gut if you prefer," Pete Casey said."That was my suggestion anyway."

Marwood's face tightened. His teeth were clenched and bared as he dropped to his knees and finally onto the floor.

"Stand still!" a voice boomed from the back of the room. I looked over and realised why everyone hadn't simply fled when the gunmen burst into the bar. One of them was outside, or just inside the doorway, blocking their exit.

Robbie Casey shot them all. He shot them in the back of the legs with his revolvers. It was incredibly quick and incredibly shocking. It was the first time I'd heard a man scream. Scream, I tell you.

Before he pulled the trigger for the last time, Robbie Casey knelt down and said something in Marwood's ear. Marwood had already taken one bullet in the back of his left leg. He was moaning and writhing but Robbie's boot in the small of his back prevented him from rolling all the way over.

"Nobody fucks with the Casey gang," he said, and then he shot him again.

Within seconds they were gone, scattering the crowd as they had on their arrival. I didn't see Richard Linton again until the next Cajun night, which was more than a week later due to the disturbance and the affects it left behind. Of course I thought of him, often with simple curiosity for the boy and his lifestyle. And sometimes, in the melancholy blue of increasingly hot and restless nights, with a deep, pulsating need, a yearning I could no more reason than satisfy.

******

The story made all the papers and even merited a slot on the national television news. The police quizzed everyone who was in the bar that night but as far as they were concerned I was just another eye-witness. One particular policeman, a small, rugged detective named Preston Deal, was anxious that we positively identify the armed men as being the infamous Casey gang. I said nothing of my suspicions. I never mentioned Richard's name to anyone.

Overnight the bar had achieved a queer kind of notoriety. Most of the folk attracted to the scene of the Casey gang shooting were the last people you would expect to find in a country and western bar. They were ordinary types, if you like, just men and women with a ghoulish fascination for the notorious. Most of them would never return. The sole purpose of their visit was to provide an anecdote with which to astound their friends. The Casey gang were reluctant stars, and any rumoured sighting of Pete and Robbie was seized upon by press and public alike. Hardly a week went by without some or other British tourist returning from a far-flung corner of the globe didn't claim to have shared a drink with the Casey brothers. Part of us was always ready to believe them, because part of us was just a little bit thrilled at the thought that some day, somewhere, we ourselves might meet a couple of charismatic strangers and in our own small way become part of the legend, a line in the ballad of Pete and Robbie Casey.

The extra business meant that I was offered all the shifts I could handle. I didn't mind. The extra money came in handy, and most of the newcomers were nice and friendly. And what's more some of them did come again, because by the end of the following week I began to recognise some of them from previous visits. They quickly adopted the unofficial uniform of jeans and checkered shirts, and from then on were treated as regulars.

Early one Saturday evening I packed a bag for Carl and took him to his grandparents' house, then I went back home and got ready for work. I bathed in some expensive new bath lotion I had bought that afternoon from John Lewis. I felt guilty and indulgent as I wallowed in the steaming, scented water. I could have bought Carl a pair of those cool trainers all the tots were wearing with the cash I had squandered on the bubble bath. So what if I hadn't treated myself to something nice in months, that's what being a mother is all about. But oh, the water was so hot and soothing, the perfumed steam so musky and seductive, and Robbie Robertson was singing Somewhere Down The Crazy River on my little radio...I just had to forgive myself. I hadn't felt this good in a long, long time. I imagined myself a creature wrapped in a warm, dark cocoon, calmly transcending itself to become another, more fantastic species.

The bath left me feeling mellow and lethargic. When I left for work the sun was still strong and bright, casting a clean, healthy glow over the town. Kids raced up and down my street on bicycles, laughing and screaming in that shrill but pleasant way. The charms of an approaching ice-cream van tinkled nostalgically in my ear. I enjoyed the walk, and by the time I reached the Old Black Kettle the listlessness had vanished.

Most of the staff were already there. William made some comment about my bra-strap which I ignored, Kay-lee glanced up from the magazine she was reading at the bar and flicked a regal hand in my direction, and Brian told me I smelled nice.

"On a promise then?" William added as I was checking my hat in the mirror (I had carried it from home, tucked under my armpit so that at a casual glance it might be mistaken for a bag or perhaps one of those sculptured little terrier dogs). His face floated over my shoulder like some fiendish apparition.

"Not with you," I muttered. He replied with a mouthed obscenity I was meant to lip-read in the mirror. I noticed a third face in the looking glass, this one Brian's as he watched over us with a twitch of disquiet. This mirror's getting too crowded, I thought, and went to join Kay-lee for a drink and a smoke before the doors opened.

The Full Moon Howlers were setting up their gear on the stage behind us. Somebody struck up the opening notes of Duelling Banjos but a scream of feedback from the PA drowned it out. Tonight promised to be busier than the last Cajun night. Brian had printed up about a hundred posters and paid a couple of kids from the local high school to slap them up wherever they could find room. And naturally the publicity from the Casey gang shooting wouldn't hurt.

"Have you said anything to Brian?" Kay-lee asked, pushing a packet of Silk Cut my way. I didn't smoke as a rule, only when I was stressed out or relaxed.

"About what?" I asked, and I lit a cigarette as Kay-lee watched me with veiled amusement. She thought it was funny to see me smoking. I didn't do it properly, according to her, and I didn't look right with a cigarette in my mouth. Well apart from maybe Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis, who did?

"About what I told you the other night?"

I stared incredulously through a cloud of thick blue smoke."Did you seriously expect me to?"

She shrugged churlishly."I don't know...You seem to be his favourite."

I thought about that one for a moment and concluded that I was Brian's favourite. It was an observation I shouldn't need to have pointed out to me, but you don't always notice these things when the person favouring you has little more than a walk-on part in your life. I felt sorrier for Brian than ever before, and I made this agreement with myself to make a point of taking more of a friendly interest in him. It wouldn't hurt to ask how his weekend had gone or how his mother was keeping.

The Time-bell clattered above the twangs and bongs of the band, and William yelled,"Come on, people, let's get those wagons rollin'!"

Which meant that it was time to open up.

We took up our positions behind the bar. Each of the bar staff was supposed to have their own little territory but that system didn't work too well in practice, especially when it was busy. What's more the order was further confused by Kay-lee's habit of selecting good-looking male customers regardless of whose territory they happened to be waiting in.

The doors opened, and within a couple of hours I'd served people at every point of the long bar. William was kept busy stocking the fridge with Budweiser and Fosters, and Brian vanished into the office to brood behind his computer screen. The band were boisterous, and as the place filled up so the air became hot and the atmosphere claustrophobic. Kay-lee switched on the big fans in the false ceiling above us, and when a lull came at my end - or the end I had temporarily claimed as my own - I stood directly beneath one of them with my head tilted back and my eyes closed and let the cool breeze dry the beads of perspiration on my neck.

A vivid daydream gently and kindly stole me away from this hot, unbreathable cave. I was driving an old American convertible along a deserted beach road, the sea to my right flashing back silver sunlight, and to my left an endless desert of withered scrub and giant cacti.

And then a mysterious sensation came over me. I sensed his aura, his unmistakable presence, as certainly as if he had walked up to me and kissed me on the lips. He was here and I could feel him like fire, like thunder and doom.

I opened my eyes and lowered my head. He was smiling at me from the bar.

"I knew you were there," I said."I just knew."

He didn't hear me. The music was too loud. I came closer and leant on the bar."Where are your friends tonight?"

"Friends?" he repeated. His eyes narrowed."Which friends?"

"Pete and Robbie Casey."

He smiled cryptically."Do you serve Bud?"

"You know I do."

"Then do. And serve yourself one while you're there."

Little charmer, I thought as I took two bottles of Budweiser from the fridge. Drinking with the customers when you were on duty was strictly off limits. You could accept a drink but you were supposed to leave it in the pipe until closing time.

I put his beer on the bar and took a drink from mine. It was cold and crisp and cut the inside of my throat like a sliver of ice.

"I'm going to watch the band," he said, picking up his bottle."Is anyone walking you home?"

"Is anyone asking?"

He grinned bashfully but didn't reply. I stared after him as he walked away into the crowd. He mystified me. I thought back to the night of the shooting, how the Casey gang had conducted themselves with such frightening efficiency, and how Richard had pinned the crowd under the deadly glare of his black-eyed shotgun. And I also thought back to that night I first laid eyes on him, how I had been touched by his vulnerability and youth. What puzzled and disturbed me the most was realising that I didn't know which side of him I wanted the most.

Someone was watching me but it wasn't William. When I picked up the bottle and turned around Kay-lee was looking at me with an expression of deep intrigue.

"Who's he?" she asked simply.

I tilted the rim of the bottle to my lips and paused, eyeing her coyly."Friend."

"Did you buy him those drinks?" she asked. It was a pretty irrelevant question but curiously betraying in the touchy way it was delivered."You didn't put the money in the till."

"I'll do it later," I said, unfazed."I forgot to take his money, that's all."

"So who is he?" She smiled but there was a demanding edge to her voice. She had to know, just had to know, and the reason was more to do with her own insecurity than anything she might admit to.

"Just a friend. Well, a friend's nephew actually."

"Are you..."

"No!" I laughed, and Kay-lee relaxed visibly.

"I didn't think he was your type."

"Oh?" I lowered the beer bottle."And what's my type?"

"Mmm, maybe Brian," she said, and this time we both laughed.

Just then Max glided past and gave Kay-lee a poke in the ribs that made her squeal."Big Willie's here!" he hissed, and we all made like ants and set to work.

As the night wore on it grew hotter and more stifling behind the bar. A dull pain behind my eyes throbbed like a pulse. The fans were deliciously cooling but the bar was so busy I didn't get the chance to stand under one long enough to really feel the benefit. At ten forty-five Brian came out of the office to help with last orders, which William announced with his customary clatter of the bell and a shout of,"Saddle 'em up and move 'em out!"

It seemed like the perfect time to escape, so I nipped into the cloakroom and borrowed a cigarette from Kay-lee's coat pocket, and took it outside.

The night was warm and windless, still as water in a barrel, and faintly perfumed with something sweet and mysterious. I leant against the wall and lit the cigarette. I felt that eerie, mystical tingle once again, and when I turned my head there was Richard Linton. He was staring at me with an intensity I felt compelled to return. I don't know how long we stayed that way, silently staring at each other like two cats across an empty space that seemed to crackle with hidden charge, but I was only startled out of it by a burst of noise as the club doors opened. We both looked as a party of four, three men and a women, spilled drunkenly into the car park. The doors closed behind them. Their noisy, intrusive chatter soon faded, and it was just me and him again.

"Did you follow me?"

He grinned shyly and came closer."I watched you sneak out...didn't know you smoked."

"Only when I'm too hot or cold," I said."Do you want some?"

"Are you offering?"

I looked away, smiling to myself."You're a strange boy, Richard."

"Strange?"

"Different then." I held out the cigarette. He took it and put it in the corner of his mouth.

"Told you I wasn't like everyone else."

"Proper James Dean," I said."Where's my tee-shirt?"

"You said I could keep it."

"So where did you go? One minute you're in my kitchen, covered in blood and stripped to the waist, the next minute you're gone. Where did you go?"

"I don't have to answer to you." He took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked some ash on the ground."I don't answer to anyone."

"Oh, proper James Dean."

"You already said that."

"Now I've said it again."

His smile came at last, slightly chagrined."I had business to attend to."

"Oh, right," I said."Should I ask what it was?"

"No."

"Was this business anything to do with Pete and Robbie Casey?"

He looked darkly at me. For a moment I was frightened of him - and perversely excited by that fear. Looking into his eyes was like looking down the barrels of a loaded shotgun. Then in a flash it was gone; he smiled all sweet and bashful, and I was left wondering how much of it I had imagined.

"Robbie said you recognised him."

"Recognised you too, Richard Linton."

He sniffed and shook his head."I was somewhere else."

"Are you one of the Casey gang, Richard?"

The door burst open, spewing frenzied Cajun music into the still night air. Paul and Para quickly followed, dragging a raging drunk between them. They carried him all the way across the car park and out into the street.

"I've got to go," Richard said."I'm travelling."

My heart skipped a beat."Leaving?"

"Just for a time. I'll be back though. Pete's got a safe place here."

"What do I care?" I huffed, sourly imitating his moody shrug and bad boy sneer. I turned abruptly and headed back inside.

"Proper James Dean," he called as I opened the door.

****

He was waiting for me. I came out after my shift had ended to find him sitting on the bonnet of an old pick-up truck, leaning back on his hands and gazing up at the clear night sky. He knew I was watching him but he didn't look my way.

"The sun went down ages ago," I said as I walked up to the car."What are you like, Richard?"

"When you were young, did you ever look up at the stars and imagine there was one planet out there almost identical to ours, and that someone living on that planet was your exact replica, right down to the way they brushed their teeth?"

"Sure," I said.

He lowered his eyes and looked at me with comical uncertainty."Really, Chrissy...what are you like?"

I slapped his feet as I walked around to the passenger side."Are you going to take me home or what?"

"Haven't got a car."

My hand was on the door handle. I looked across at Richard, who was grinning broadly at me.

"This isn't your car?"

"Nope."

"Then get off!"

He rolled over and off, landing on his feet like a cat."Never said I hadn't borrowed it though." He smirked and pulled two finger and thumb pistols like a kid playing cowboy."It's what you might call a pool car."

"Pool car?"

"Belongs to the boys. It's a safe vehicle, registered in a safe name with all the tax and insurance bang up to date. It was my turn to use it so all the guys had to stay home and watch Friends. We really love that Chandler Bing, you know."

"Sweet," I said."So you gave up a night watching television with the Casey gang just to come and see little old me?"

His eyes narrowed."Came to see the band," he said."I can find a woman any time."

"Really?"

"Really."

"I'm really lucky then."

His eyes lingered on me as he tugged the door open."Keep that in mind and you and me will get on fine."

I opened the door and got into the car."Are you always this sure of yourself, Richard Linton?"

He turned his head and gave me that delinquent sneer of his."All the time, Chrissy. I'm what you might call-"

That's when I casually reached over and squeezed his crotch. The look of surprise on his face was a peach. He sucked his breath back and just gaped at me as if I had stabbed him or something.

"What about now?" I said, kneading his hardening bulge with my thumb and fingers."Now who's the tough guy, Richard Linton?"

I let him off the hook. He stared out of the windscreen for a few moments, still wearing that slack-jawed look of utter astonishment, then eventually he started the car as if nothing had happened. I wanted to laugh at him but I didn't. It would have been affectionate laughter but I don't think he would have seen it that way. Men don't like to be conscious of the power a woman can have over them. They know it deep down, because deep down they're slaves to it, but I've yet to meet one who felt good about being slapped down like a giddy puppy. It's all prick related. Men's pricks are like leashes - you can use it to lead them on or choke them up, or a bit of both. They don't know that though, or if they do they're keeping quiet about it. All women learn about it sooner or later. Kay-lee could teach the subject at degree level, but me, I was like the woman who spends her life collecting recipes without ever actually cooking most of them. I mean, part of me instinctively knew that what William Dexter needed was a good old feel up. That would shut his mouth for a long time. Gamblers would know it as calling the opponents bluff, but at the same stroke a gambler will tell you that it's pretty much suicidal to call someone's bluff when they're not actually bluffing. William had a better hand than me. Fact of life. Pecking order stuff. Kay-lee might be able to call his bluff but I'd just end up staring at a full house.

But then Richard Linton comes along, and Richard Linton makes me feel strong and confident, like I'm the one holding all the good cards. Richard Linton makes me believe that I can just reach out and grab a cock when I feel like it.

It was the strangest revelation to confront, because at the same time he made me feel somehow defenceless. Not a bad feeling. Not the same kind of defenceless that William Dexter's wolfish leer elicited in me. It was something else entirely. More like a willingness to surrender.

We drove slowly out of the car park and into the road. Richard looked at me slyly from the corner of his eye. I could tell he had something to say but sudden wariness had made him stop and think twice. I punched him on the arm, and he turned his head and gave me this big sweet grin.

"Do you have to go straight home?" he asked."We could go for a drive if you'd rather."

"What about you?" I countered."Bit past your bedtime isn't it?"

He pouted moodily."So what, you after tucking me in?"

"Oh, Jimmy Dean's back," I laughed."Hey, duff-guy? You gonna light me a smoke or what, duff-guy?"

His giggly, little-boy laughter was a simple addictive joy. It was the sound you would expect to hear from someone who was chasing a kite with a small dog yapping at his heels. The people who worked in the banks and guarding the armoured vans the Casey gang had robbed, who had stared into the eyes of those dangerous men and seen the terrible violence they are capable of, would not believe he was one and the same. Yet I had seen it, I had seen Richard Linton with a mask over his face and a shotgun in his hands, and I believed it. Perhaps that was simply because I was more inclined to believe it than anyone. After all, I didn't work in a bank or a counting house, and the Casey gang were not my bogeymen. I was a barmaid in a country and western bar, and I was being courted by one of the most notorious criminals in modern history. Yes I believed he could kill, but I was just as ready to believe he could love.

We passed through the town centre and joined the Ritchmire road. The car picked up speed. I wound the window down and let the wind drag my hair behind me.

"Does this car have like..I don't know...loads of gadgets and stuff?"

Richard was lighting two cigarettes from the dashboard lighter. He glanced at me, squinting oddly.

"Gadgets?"

"Like James Bond's car."

He passed me a cigarette."Oh yeah, if you turn the radio up the music gets louder."

"Then how do I know this is a Casey gang car?"

"There's a sticker over the windscreen, says PETE LOVES ROBBIE."

"You've got a smart answer for everything," I said.

"Keep 'em coming, sis," he answered with smooth, strutting arrogance."Just you keep them coming."

"Answer this then," I said, and I made to grab his crotch again. This time he was ahead of me and fended off my groping hand without taking his eyes from the road, just like someone holding off a playful kitten.

I sat back and studied him calmly. He sat slightly hunched behind the wheel, his shoulders rounded and the back of his neck exposed. I wondered what he would do if I suddenly put my hand there. I wanted to.

The breeze ruffled my hair and blew flakes of cigarette ash around the cab. I didn't know where we were going. I didn't want to ask for fear of breaking the spell. I had to be careful not to eject myself from the game. I didn't want to be ordinary. I didn't want to be a woman getting a lift home from work. At least not tonight I didn't. Tonight I was on the run with one of the Casey gang, blazing recklessly through the calm of night, destination destiny. Rock on, Chrissy, I thought. Give that line to Bryan Adams or Jon Bon Jovi and the world had yet another cheesy road song to wince at, but at the same time it was so real it was frightening.

I was with Richard Linton. He was most probably armed, and I knew for a fact that he was dangerous. I had no idea where we were going, but I knew that if the law tried to stop us the ride might turn into my last. Compared to what I did the previous night this was pure bloody fiction. And I thought, If I wrote songs instead of opening beer bottles for a living, this is exactly the song I would write.

"Turn the radio on, Richard."

He obeyed without hesitation. Van Morrison was singing Brown Eyed Girl. I wondered what Richard's reaction would be if I casually requested him to stop the car and take off his shirt.

"Chrissy..."

"What?"

Richard shot a brief look at me. It was quick, and the cab was dark, but not dark enough to hide the fact that he was edgy about something.

"You're staring."

"So?" I took a long drag on the cigarette, watching him unswervingly."What are you going to do about it?"

He laughed nervously."Not a lot, Chrissy."

"Not duff enough, uh?"

He looked at me again and smiled. Lovely smile. I smiled back, and we listened to the radio.

In a little over half an hour we arrived on the cliffs overlooking the poor seaside town of Burridge Head. It was the kind of place where they used to send under-privileged school children on subsidised holidays. I was sent there twice, all bucket and spade and scabby knees, and I remembered it with a touch of fond sadness. Suddenly remembered it, I mean, because I don't think I'd consciously thought of those two single week holidays in an awfully long time. Ghostly sounds and smells wafted through my mind, the sweet smell of candy floss, seaside fish and chips (as distinct from their inland cousins as salt water is from tap water), the scream of gulls, the buzzing, slightly muffled voice of the bingo callers along the front, and the dramatic spectacle of the waves crashing against the sea wall.

"We can't stay long," Richard said."Pete was a bit huffy when I told him I wanted the car. I think we're leaving tonight."

He got out and sat on the bonnet, his knees pulled up to his chest. After a few moments I got out and joined him. The oily black ocean rippled gently into infinity.

"Can't you tell me where it is you're going?"

"I don't know," he said."Pete knows but he won't say until the last minute. Never does."

"Aren't you scared?"

He turned his head and smiled with sweet-tempered amusement."Scared of what, Chrissy?"

"Scared of getting caught."

"But I won't get caught."

I couldn't contradict him. How do you begin to tell a seventeen year old outlaw that he won't live forever? You might as well argue against your own existence for all the good it will do. Richard's life was constructed in the way that most of us construct fantasies, and in it he was king, he was immortal. He couldn't die because that would signal the end of the whole damn world.

"So how did a young lad like yourself get mixed up with the Casey brothers?"

Richard sniffed haughtily and faked an offended look."They got mixed up with me. Before I picked them up, Pete and Robbie Casey had a whelk stall in Bridlington."

"Tell me the truth."

He looked at me and smiled. There was something so painful and world-weary in that smile that for a shaky moment I saw my father looking into my eyes. He left home when I was twelve years old and I didn't see him or hear from him again until two years before Carl was born. He was living in a squalid bedsit in Leeds, a washed up alcoholic with rummy eyes and a white beard turning rusty around the mouth from nicotine. Meeting him left me cold and numb and frightened at my own indifference, and yet there was a moment when I felt a crushing kind of love for him. It was when he looked at me and smiled the same way Richard had just smiled, and I suddenly became part of every tragedy and heartache he had suffered in his life.

"Who are you, Chrissy?" he asked instead.

I didn't know what to say. Nobody, I thought. I was nobody. Just somebody's mother, somebody's ex-wife. My past is part of someone else's story. But now I feel like I'm fnally becoming the woman I should have been from the start.

But I couldn't say any of that, at least not then. Instead I told him a little bit about my mother. Her name was Jane, and she was beautiful and wise and hilariously clumsy. She used to leave me little notes in my pockets and handbag, daft jokes and the occasional pearl of wisdom, and I always seemed to find them when I was feeling tired and blue.

She died of a brain haemorrhage when I was twenty one and dishing out pies in the staff canteen at Woolworth's. Every day for a long time after I would dig into my pockets and search around in there, only half believing that what I was looking for were old notes.

"Now you," I finished."Who are you, Richard?"

"It's best you don't know too much," Richard said."Not yet anyway." He shrugged apologetically."Makes no odds to me, Chrissy, but Pete won't see it that way. Pete's pretty pissed off at me for getting into bother already. He only let me go into town that first night we met because I wasn't armed and promised to keep out of trouble."

"Does he know you're with me tonight?"

Richard gazed out over the sea."He knows. I didn't tell him but he knows all the same. Not much gets past Pete Casey. That's why he's still in business after all these years on the run. He didn't try to stop me coming though. Know why, Chrissy?"

"Because you would have come anyway," I said.

It was time to leave. We made it home in good speed, enjoying the radio and the almost tangible air of anticipation that was growing between us. Richard parked outside my house but he didn't switch the engine off.

"Don't you want to come in?" I asked.

"Well..." He checked his watch."Maybe I'd better not."

I lay my hand on the back of his neck. I'd been wanting to do that since the moment I set eyes on him. And my God, It was like being injected with liquid sexual excitement in its most potent form.

"Thought you did your own thing, Richard..."

He shifted his head and shot me a meek look."I do, I do. I need to put the car in a safe place first, that's all."

"I thought you said it was a safe car?"

"It is, but after what happend the last time we met I thought it best to bring my tool bag with me. I don't want some twoccer to take off with all my best gear, or some nosy plod to come along and put one of his big flat feet through the window."

I opened the door."I won't wait all night."

"You would though," he muttered, smirking to himself.

I got out and went indoors. Richard drove away.

He was right. I waited all night but he didn't come back.

********************

INTERLUDE

( Next Verse)

******************

 In the master bathroom of a plush barn conversion in the heart of the Dales, the tall, athletic silhouette of a young man stretched lazily behind the frosted glass shower screen. Over the sound of hissing, steaming water, he sang with noisy good cheer.

"Like a speeding arrow whizzing from a bow. Like a mighty cannonball you'll see him fly..."

Downstairs in the lounge, Pete Casey was sitting in a bat-wing chair that creaked expensively with every slight twist of his body. He looked settled enough but he felt oddly uncomfortable in this place, oddly out of place in this place, as a matter of fact. He was twenty three years old, tall and lean and with calm, brooding good looks.

Pete was dressed to go out. He was wearing blue jeans and a dark sweater, a black jacket and a black bobble hat, and black leather gloves. He glanced at the mantel clock, raised his eyes to the ceiling, but his expression never changed. His expression rarely did change. His deep blue eyes were unfathamoble, his faint smile ambiguous.

A few minutes later young Robbie burst through the door, rubbing his girly blond hair with a towel. He was eighteen now and the years had grown him well. He was wearing jeans but his chest was bare and glistening with pearly drops of water.

"Finished?" Pete asked.

"Yeah, great stuff!" Robbie enthused,grinning at his brother."Wish we had a shower."

"You'll be sharing one with the rest of D-block if you've left any prints in that bathroom," Pete said, only mildly reproachful.

Robbie dropped the towel and held up his hands. He was still wearing his black gloves. Even Pete had to laugh at that one.

*********

The wheezy old Transit van limped and spluttered and coughed all the way back to Bethley. Robbie, far too concerned with what he was going to do with the money from the burglary to worry about the van, smoked and drank Skol from a can and fiddled with the radio, while Pete, silent and sober, listened anxiously to the engine as he drove.

"I might go to that U2 concert," Robbie mused."Remember that blond piece from the pet shop? She was into U2." He grinned smuttily to himself."Mind, she was into a lot of things."

"Van needs fixing," Pete said tersely.

Robbie curled his lip resentfully."Stuff the van, Pete. I haven't had a good night out in ages."

"We get the van fixed first. If there's anything left...we'll see."

"Awe, Pete," Robbie whined, his shoulders slumping with disappointment."You always say that."

"Best to get your priorities sorted, Robbie."

"You always say that as well."

Pete was unmoved by Robbie's display of petulance."Suppose we do a job one night and the van won't start?"

"We go down the pub instead."

"I meant while we were working."

Robbie grumbled under his breath and looked out of the window.

"Well?" Pete prompted.

"Alright, alright," Robbie muttered."We get the van fixed."

They said no more on the matter. Robbie retreated into a sulky silence, Pete concentrated on getting them home before the van packed up with a load of bent gear in the back.

The flat they shared was on the top floor of a huge Victorian town house. Most of the other residents were illegal immigrants and dodgy old cons passing time between spells inside. The man who owned the building let Pete and Robbie live there for a peppercorn rent on the condition that they were on hand when he called to collect the rent from the other tenants. So far they hadn't been needed, which was just as well because Pete had no intention of hurting anyone who minded their own business and stayed out of theirs.

The front door was standing wide open and the hall light was on, casting a web of cheesy yellow light over the steps. Pete stopped the van but didn't switch off the engine. Robbie passed him an uneasy glance.

"Go look," Pete said.

Robbie, as fearless as he could be reckless, reached under the seat and came up with a spade handle. He got out of the van and went inside.

None of the tenants would leave the front door open, no matter how pissed they were. You stood still in this district and some bastard was away with your shoelaces. It could be nothing of course, an act of carelessness on the part of some drugged up student or down to somebody who had nipped out into the back garden to empty their rubbish into the bins, but the Casey brothers hadn't managed to avoid the long arm of the law for so long by being sloppy.

Robbie was back. He looked shaken but he wasn't running, which had to be a good sign. He opened the door and gazed at Pete with eyes that were utterly disbelieving.

"Guess what?" he said."We've only been fucking burgled."

An illegal entry it was but a burglary it wasn't. Nothing had been taken but the flat was pretty well ransacked. The stereo was smashed and all of Pete's treasured Pink Floyd and Moody Blues records were scattered around it like broken biscuits. The television screen was shattered and the contents of the drawers in the chest had been turned out and scattered around the room.

"Bastards!"

Robbie lashed out with the spade handle and managed to hit the only object in the room that wasn't already broken or knocked over. It was a tacky Elvis mirror Robbie had won at a fairground shooting gallery. The King, who had been swinging his youthful hips and pouting at the Casey brothers since Guy Fawkes night, nineteen seventy eight, was all shook up beyond repair.

Pete gave his brother a disapproving stare."Don't go getting your head all boiled up, Robbie."

Robbie was incredulous. Pete's gift of being able to remain calm under crisis had saved their bacon on many occasions, but sometimes Robbie was infuriated by his brother's perennial expression and deceptively slow-witted, moo-cow way of under-reacting to everything.

"Look at what they've done!"

"I can see what they've done."

Robbie gave up and marched to the window, rigid with fury. Pete picked his way across the littered floor and checked out the bedrooms and the bathroom. The destruction was complete throughout the flat. No way was this the work of ordinary vandals, that was for sure. They wouldn't have been quite so thorough, quite so meticulous. This was something else entirely, something far more disquieting.

Pete went back into the front room. Robbie turned to face him, his eyes full of belligerent intent.

"I've called the police," Pete said, and Robbie snorted with laughter. Pete went across to the window. It would be alright. They were the Casey brothers, and if they couldn't sort this out between them there was little point in going on together.

"Mid-week Match is on tonight," Robbie said dully."I wanted to watch that." He jabbed the spade handle in the direction of the shattered television."No fucking telly now."

"There's one in the van," Pete pointed out, and Robbie's eyes lit up.

"You're right. I'm glad I'm a robber, Pete."

Pete smiled and nodded."It has its fringe benefits, must admit."

"Can we keep the video recorder as well?"

"No."

Robbie's grin was fast and flashy (and more than a touch menacing, Pete would have said), but almost at once his face darkened. It was like watching thunder clouds roll across the sun.

"This is down to Phillips and his crew, right?"

Pete merely nodded.

"So what are we going to do about it?"

"Go get that telly out of the van. We'll take the rest of the gear down to Uri's straight after. I don't want it sitting in the flat."

"But what about Phillips?"

"We'll have to wait and see what happens."

"Next time we get our kneecaps blown off," Robbie said darkly,"that's what happens. Phillips is a gangster, Pete. He isn't going to cut this stuff out until we start to pay him tax."

"I was there, Robbie," Pete reminded him."It was my throat the bastards put a knife to."

"So what do we do? Do we pay him?"

"No," Pete said sharply."We don't pay gangsters."

"Well we can't go to the coppers," Robbie said."That'd get a laugh down the nick wouldn't it? Two burglars complaining that a gangster is trying to extort money from them because they operate out of his patch." He eyed Pete bitterly."We've got to start standing up for ourselves, Pete. They're going to push us around for ever if we give in now. And I'll be fucked if I'm paying for the privilege of committing crime."

"Me as well."

"So let's do something." Robbie held up the spade handle and smiled grimly."Let's protest in the strongest possible terms."

"Right," Pete said dryly."You take the first six, I'll see off the rest of them."

"Bottle gone, has it?" Robbie asked with a goading sneer.

Pete was unfazed."Just being realistic, Robbie. It might be best if we move on."

"Pardon me?" Robbie lowered the spade handle and stared pointedly at Pete."You're not serious."

"I am. So far we haven't been caught but it's only a matter of time. Like the man said all those years ago, we shouldn't ride our luck, Robbie."

"What man?"

"That copper. Preston North End, or whatever he was called."

"Deal," Robbie said quietly, remembering all those years before when Pete had rescued him from the clutches of the law. He looked up and smiled at Pete, who smiled back like a reflection."Preston Deal. You petrol bombed his motor."

Pete laughed softly."Yeah, didn't I just?"

"But this is my town," Robbie said vehemently."I'll not leave until I say so."

"Alright," Pete relented."Go get that telly. I'll give it some thought."

Robbie put his spade handle down. He was on his way out when Pete called his name. Robbie turned around,hoping that Pete had changed his mind about keeping the video recorder, but Pete was gazing out of the window, strangely distant.

"You still see her don't you...the old lady?"

Robbie stuffed his hands in his pockets."Now and again. I take her a few groceries and stuff. No booze though, Pete. I don't take her booze."

"How is she?"

"Not so good," Robbie said."She asks after you all the time."

"Go get the telly," Pete said tonelessly."Robbie?"

"What?"

"Don't you ever tell her I asked how she was. There's only ever been the two of us. It stays that way."

*********

They called him Uri after Uri Geller, because everything he touched was bent. Uri was fat and touchy about it, which made most people wonder why he chose to wear tight white tee-shirts tucked into his greasy jeans and his leather bullet-belt done up tight enough to restrict the circulation of blood to his meaty legs, but he was touchy so nobody asked.

"Thing is, Pete,I've got a bit of a cash flow problem at the moment," Uri lamented. He looked sheepish with regret and shrugged."Know how it is, and all that."

"Come and take a look," Pete said. They were in Uri's Emporium, which was a fancy name for one of those shops that buy and sell almost anything. Most of Uri's clients were thieves and the growing number of young glue sniffers and drug addicts on the estate. Pete wasn't sure who bought the stuff.

It was dark inside the shop. For obvious reasons Uri wouldn't turn the lights on.

"Everybody's selling," Uri went on, fingering the bullets on his belt."Nobody wants to buy anything."

"This is all top gear," Pete persisted."We got it from a big yuppy house in the sticks. There's a video, hi-fi, a lovely set of crystal glasses."

Uri shuffled uncomfortably."Thing is..."

"Thing is, he's been told not to buy any gear from us," Robbie said. He was sitting over by the meshed window, strumming an electric guitar."Isn't that right, Uri?"

Uri sighed miserably and nodded."Yep. He put the squeeze on me, Pete. Sorry and everything, but I've got a family to think of."

"Do this one last deal," Pete said."We won't trouble you after that."

"Phillips is dangerous," Uri whined."If he sees I've been doing business with you...well, you know what he'll do."

Pete gave a sympathetic nod."I know, Uri, don't fret. Phillips won't know it was our stuff. Just tell him one of the smack heads wheeled it in."

Uri made a groaning sound."He won't believe me."

"He'll have no choice. It's not as though you keep proper invoices is it?"

Uri shrugged churlishly."Fuck's sake, Pete."

"Come on, one last time. We need to get the van fixed...and Robbie needs an operation."

"Bollocks," Uri said softly."If I help you out you keep quiet about it, agreed?"

"Agreed."

Uri bit his lip, thought long and hard, and finally gave in."Alright, Pete, but only because I've known you so long. And I really wasn't kidding about having a cash flow problem. Phillips is squeezing me hard. I've had to tighten my belt."

Robbie gave an incredulous twang on the G-string. Uri's eyes found his hunched shape in the gloom."Say something, Robbie?" he rasped.

"Ignore him," Pete interjected."Come outside and I'll show you what we've got."

Uri was impressed with the mobile Aladin's cave. Under normal circumstances the Casey brothers would have made a killing, but with an ambitious gangster like Martin Phillips leaning on everybody from honest traders to burglars like Pete and Robbie, they would have to settle for what they could get.

Robbie started to unload the gear while Uri took Pete into the office.

"I can only do you a part exchange deal," Uri said."Are you interested?"

"Depends," Pete answered cautiously."I don't want any of that stuff you keep in the front. It's all stolen, I've heard."

"Very droll," Uri said. He pulled the zip of one of the many pockets in his leather motorbike jacket and took out a thin wad of notes."Hundred quid cash."

"And?"

Uri eyed Pete strangely. Then, when he had satisfied himself about something,he disappeared out of the room. He came back a few minutes later with two Smith and Wesson revolvers.

Done deal.

**********

When you've got a gun, sooner or later someone's bound to get shot. Pete and Robbie went to the Vesta drinking club with that same thought in mind. Already they were feeling a great and wonderful sense of destiny. It began the moment they held those guns in their hands and met one another's eyes silently, smiling with sacred understanding, sharing the terror and the unutterable thrill of realising that an eternal season of adventure had already begun.

So they went from Uri's Emporium directly to the Vesta, a private drinking and gambling club in the basement of a house. Pete rang the bell,and the door was duly opened by a bouncer who regarded them with the kind of snooty suspicion normally reserved for casual odd-job men and gipsies.

"Private," he grunted."Members only."

"We are members," Robbie said, smiling charmingly."Want to see our membership cards?"

The Casey brothers drew their weapons and pointed them at the bouncer's startled face.

"Remember us now?"

"Yes," the bouncer answered with the kind of snap-finger certainty only a loaded gun and a sexy woman seem to elicit.

"You'd better," Robbie hissed."You'd better remember us from now on."

They pushed past the bouncer and descended swiftly down the carpeted stairs towards the sound of masculine laughter and John Foggarty screaming Fortunate One from a wobbly stereo.

The club was just a single room with a thick red carpet on the floor and horrid flock paper on the walls. There were five or six tables, each with its own smoky golden lamp for atmosphere, and a bar wedged into the corner. It was impossible to count the number of people sampling the prohibited delights of drinking in a mysterious little haunt like the Vesta this fine night, because as soon as Pete and Robbie Casey appeared most of them dived for cover. The only men who stayed put were those playing cards at the big table - Martin Phillips and his associates. Phillips, who was grotesquely thin and as hunched as a man carrying a sack of coal on his back, snarled at the gunmen as they walked towards him.

"What's this? What the fuck is this?" His lips shrivelled back from his greying gums and crooked tombstone teeth."This is my club!"

Two men in suits came out of the shadows. There was no fear on their faces, no expression at all. They were like two monstrous freight trains advancing side by side. Pete and Robbie opened fire at the same time, cutting the two lumbering giants in half. That was the signal for everyone to take cover, which left only Pete and Robbie Casey standing.

"Show yourself," Pete said.

Silence greeted him. A snap of breaking glass. More silence. Terrified faces peered at them from behind chairs and beneath tables, small and pale like children's faces. One of the two heavies began to moan and writhe on the carpet. He was holding the top of his thigh. His colleague was staring at the ceiling, his eyes open and fixed, gulping down desperate breaths.

Phillips came up from underneath the table with his hands in in the air. He was baring his teeth like some rancid, cantankerous old terrier.

"We're Pete and Robbie Casey," Robbie declared. The revolver was straight and still in his hand."Nobody fucks with us. Have you got that, everyone? Nobody fucks with the Casey brothers." A narrow smile crept onto his face. He glanced at Pete, and the smile broadened into a grin of inspiration."And give us all your money."

*******************

 I want to tell the truth about Richard Linton, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that includes the bad stuff. The truth about the gunfight at the Old Black Kettle has never been told until now. I have to do it because there's no one left alive to tell except me and the Casey brothers, and they'll be dead themselves soon enough.

In fact there were lots of gunfights at the Old Black Kettle on that third Cajun night, literally dozens of them. It was William's idea, one of the few good ones he'd ever come up with. He saw a feature in a magazine about a country and western society in York that staged mock gunfights using some kind of electronic device that could register the speed of a cowboy's draw, so he rang them up and invited a posse of their fastest guns to come over for the night...just so long as they brought their machine with them.

They came on Saturday night, which was also Cajun night, so the bar was packed to the rafters with gunslingers and the steadily growing band of Full Moon Howlers fans.

The day had been muggy and strangely sunless, and by eight in the evening it was unbearably hot and stuffy inside the bar. I was having a good time with the gunslingers and the music fans but I couldn't wait to break out, to walk home under a grumbling thundery sky and catch the warm downpour when it finally came.

Brian called me into the office and gave me a school exercise book and a pen.

"Max is setting up a table by the gunslinging machine," he said."I want you to forget about the bar for tonight and look after the competitors. Just take names and give them one of these-" He dipped into his desk drawer and handed me a plastic bag full of little blue badges bearing the legend FASTEST GUN IN THE WEST. I sensed a distinct lack of enthusiasm on Brian's part. He was nearly always glum and distant but tonight he looked especially down. Alas I had fallen over on my promise to make a friend of him. I blamed that on Richard Linton for driving me to distraction.

"How's your mother these days, Brian?"

He looked at me oddly. For a horrible moment I thought he was going to tell me that she had died during the week or run off to Gretna Green to marry the visiting chiropodist, and how could I forget such a thing?

"She's very well," he said with a wan smile."Bit testy but that's just her age. How's Carl?"

"About the same," I said. We smiled with mutual empathy but of course our situations were poles apart. Brian was a sad and lonely middle-aged bachelor with an elderly mother to care for. He was trapped in a cage of circumstance like a zoo animal. A cloud of depression hung above him, shadowing his face and dulling his eyes. Something told me he had gone beyond boredom and frustration and had now reached a point where he had given up any real hope of changing his life for the better. Whereas I was looking at an open door, at the great and terrifying unknown that lay beyond, a jungle I had only ever roamed in spirit and in wild, unmentionable dreams.

I left Brian under his cloud and found Max by the stage. The idiot had set up the table next to one of the giant speakers, so I helped him move it to a spot nearer the door where I thought it might be a little cooler. I sat down with the book and the bag of badges and told Max to make an announcement when the band took their break.

They lined up at the table, men and women with steely eyes and murderous ambition.

"Are you the fastest gun in the west?" I asked, and each would invariably answer in the positive. I laughed scornfully - ha-ha - and handed over a badge."I need a name...something to put on your tombstone, pardner."

I was enjoying myself immensely, so much so that I was disappointed when the queue ended and all the names were in. I asked Max to make a final announcement - anyone who wanted to prove they were the fastest gun in the west had just five minutes to register at the desk. I waited. Nobody came.

And then two men walked through the door. Both of them were wearing stetsons and neckerchiefs pulled up over their faces. They paused and scanned the crowd, then one of them approached the desk and hooked his thumbs into the wide leather belt around his jeans. He just stood there looking down at me.

"Are you the fastest gun in the west?" I asked.

"That's for me to know and you to find out," Robbie Casey said toughly."Now why don't you give me and my brother one of them there badges, that way I won't have to ruffle that purdy hair of yours."

"I need names, pardner," I said, still in character."Something to carve on your tombstones."

Robbie Casey cocked a thumb over his shoulder."That man there is none other than Butch Bad-dancer hisself."

I tried not to giggle but I couldn't help it. Robbie's eyes were twinkling mischievously."And who might you be?"

"They call me the Suntanned Kid."

"Butch Bad-dancer and the Suntanned Kid," I said."I thought the sheriff ran the pair of you out of town."

"We're here under an alias," Robbie said.

"What's that then?"

"Alias Smith and Jones."

That's what I wrote. Pete Casey wandered off to the bar. Robbie waited a few moments, then lowered his mask and leaned forward, his hands on the table."I heard mention of a man in black, a young man with fast hands and a faster mouth. You seen him lately?"

My heart skipped a beat."He's here?" I asked, this time as myself.

Robbie was giving nothing away. He stood back and tugged at his belt."I hear rumours, li'l lady, that's all. But I wouldn't be surprised if that varmint showd up once the bullets start flying." He nodded courteously and tipped his stetson."Bid you farewell, ma'm."

I wondered if anyone would recognise them but one glance around the bar brought a smile to my face. Almost everyone in the place looked like one of the Casey gang. Pete and Robbie were just two anonymous contestants in a fancy dress competition.

"We're going to kick off in five minutes," Max said as he came down from the stage."Are those all the names?"

I glanced briefly and longingly at the open door."Just a couple of minutes," I said."I want to give everyone a chance."

"Two minutes. The guy who runs the machine is getting all bossy on me."

"Spurs Macaw," I said absently, my eyes drawn back to the door."That's who he's registered as."

"Yeah, well, whatever he's called he's giving me a headache."

"Go see Doc Holiday. I think there's three of them in here tonight. One of them must have an aspirin." I smiled wanly at Max."Hold him off for two more minutes, just for me."

I was glad it was Max and not Kay-lee I'd begged the favour from. Max didn't bother to ask why I was so anxious to delay the start of the gunfight but Kay-lee would have seen that something was wrong. She would have said as much too, and I'd have had to tell a pretty convincing lie to put her off the scent. Either that or tell the truth, which in a way is what I ached to do. I needed someone to talk to, someone who could help me make some kind of order out of my mind. Perhaps I just needed someone to tell me that I was falling in love. Coming from someone else it might not have sounded so utterly crazy at it did when I told myself.

Richard wasn't coming. Reluctantly I gave up waiting for him and went over to the stage, where Max and I copied the names of the competitors onto scraps of paper and dropped them all into my stetson. Some people were using their own names but others, Pete and Robbie Casey among them, were using aliases. Kid something or other seemed to be the favourite. There was a Ringo Kid, a Dingo Kid and even a Kid Younot.

Max took the microphone and quietened the crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen, cowboys and cowgirls, Cajuns and...more Cajuns..." There was a ripple of laughter, more at the lad's terrible American accent than his feeble attempt at humour."Welcome to the Gunfight at the Old Black Kettle. Our very own, very beautiful cowgirl Chrissy Bridges will now make the draw for the first round in a winner takes all shoot-out to decide just who is the fastest gun in the west."

I paraded up and down the stage holding my stetson above my head. The crowd whistled and cheered. I could imagine Kay-lee's utter indignation at being overlooked for such a performance, which admittedly was more her style than mine. I hoped she wouldn't go all frosty on me.

I passed the hat to Max and dipped my hand inside.

"And the first lone gunman out of the hat is..."

Max tilted the microphone to my mouth. I opened the scrap of paper and read out the name.

"Kid Creole!" I announced.

"Kid Creole!" Max echoed, snatching the microphone back."And not a coconut in sight!"

I was digging in the hat again.

"And Kid Creole will go head-to-head with..."

"Butch Bad-dancer!"

"Butch Bad-dancer!"

This went on until we had drawn all but two of the names out of the hat. The penultimate contender was our very own William Dexter, alias Billy the Kid, predictably enough. I put my hand in the hat and took out the last scrap of paper. I opened it up and read the name. It was some guy calling himself Calamity Jack.

"And in our final contest of the first round, Billy the Kid dukes it out with..."

I looked towards the door just as a dark figure stepped inside.

"Richard," I said.

***

"You cut it fine," I told Richard. We were sitting at a table with Pete and Robbie Casey. On the the next table was a taciturn Irishman called Clayton, and a friendly, good looking man who introduced himself as Sonny. They appeared to be keeping a careful watch over the crowd, paying particular attention to any new arrivals that walked through the doors. Clayton was wearing a tiny earpiece which linked him directly to two other members of the gang who were patrolling outside the club.

I felt honoured to be in the company of the Casey gang, no matter what some people say they'd done. They had an undeniable presence.

"Why so late?"

"There was a bit of a hold up," Richard said, and Robbie Casey laughed so hard he sprayed beer all over the table."I've got you a present. I'll give it to you later."

"What makes you think I want it?"

Richard looked embarrassed. Pete Casey smiled secretively and his brother sniggered.

"Take it or leave it, sister," Richard said moodily.

"I'm not your sister, Richard Linton."

He looked at me, and I swear I saw his eyes darken and begin to smoulder like burning paper."So what are you, Chrissy?"

"I don't know," I answered."Maybe we'd find out if you didn't keep vanishing all the time."

Max butted in with an announcement. Pete and Robbie Casey looked grateful for the interruption.

"One of you better take a cold shower," Robbie said, smirking at his brother."Either that or-"

I stood up, and as I left the table I let my hand glide across Richard's shoulder. I felt him flinch slightly, as if my touch was full of static electricity. Between us was denim and high voltage power. There was something going on inside me I'd never experienced before, at least not with such degree of intensity. I felt like needles, so damn sharp and glistening. My friend Benny snorts cocaine and says the rush just heightens him, man, but all the coke in Colombia couldn't match this thing. I was ready to jump-start some trucker's flat battery just by looking at it.

I went to the stage and announced the next two contestants. Butch Bad-dancer, alias Pete Casey, had already dispatched Kid Creole, and now it was the turn of the Suntanned Kid to draw iron with the legendry Spurs Macaw, the man from the visiting country and western society who owned the gunfight machine. All the sensible money was on Spurs but I was backing Robbie Casey. Call it a hunch.

I'm not sure exactly how the gunfight machine worked, but as far as I could tell the actual firing of the pistol was incidental. The speed of the draw was measured by sensors in the holsters, Max reckoned, and everything else was just for show. But it was a good show.

Robbie Casey lived to shoot again. To the naked eye it looked as though both men were evenly matched, but the red light on the pillar to which Robbie's holster was wired flashed triumphantly and a buzzer declared him the winner. Spurs Macaw was naturally peeved. He had expected to win the contest with ease but to go out in the first round was a humiliation. As they were unbuckling the holsters I heard him say to Robbie,"Have you done that before?"

Robbie's eyes glittered above his fancy red outlaw mask."You're the forth man I've shot in this place," he said.

After some twenty or so gunfights it was finally William Dexter's turn to live the fantasy. He climbed slowly up the stage steps to the cheers of the crowd, his hat pulled down to cover his eyes, and swaggered over to his position. Richard came like a schoolboy being called onto the stage to collect a certificate, smiling goofily and waving at Pete and Robbie Casey. But once he strapped that gunbelt on he slipped comfortably into a darker, more threatening persona. He stood with his head slightly bowed and his eyes tilted upward, gazing fixedly at William, who was all at once uncertain and genuinely apprehensive. At least it looked that way. He wasn't begging for his life or anything but suddenly he wasn't so cocky, and that horrid, wolfy smile of his was wavering. I wondered if he was thinking about that night Robbie Casey shot Paul Marwood and his friends, remembering those awful, undignified screams.

Green light, short buzzer, and the two men drew. William managed to get his gun out of the holster but by then Richard had already drawn and fired. The red light and victory buzzer proclaimed him the winner.

William stared disdainfully at his gun and muttered something about a loose wire. He left the stage with a cheery smile and a nonchalant wave to the audience that must have killed him. Meanwhile Richard began to unbuckle his gunbelt, slowly, deliberately. I love to watch a man take his belt off. It's just about the sexiest thing a man can do on his own, from my point of view in any case. Richard knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew how captivated I was. He passed the belt to Max and let his fingers toy with the the wide buckle of his own leather belt, teasing and pulling, tempting. I raised my eyes and saw that he was smiling crookedly at me.

"Bastard," I whispered. He just laughed.

***

We were down to the last four gunfighters. Pete Casey, having shot down Kid Creole, the Ringo Kid and the Dingo Kid, now had his own kid brother to deal with. Robbie had made stew and beans of Spurs Macaw, Doc Holiday (1), and the unimaginative Michael Marsden. Richard's second and third opponents were both women, one a giggly teenager I recognised from the Safeway store in town, and the other a cowgirl from the York country and western society, and he shot them down in a most ungentlemanly fashion. In the semi-final he was pitted against Simon Rioch, the drummer with the Full Moon Howlers, who was gunning under the name of Cajun Kid.

I went into the cloakroom to change my tee-shirt for the second time that night. I peeled off the old one and threw it at the wall to see if it would stick. It didn't, but another hour in this stifling hothouse and it would have done. I was taking a fresh one out of the wrapper when I heard a noise behind me. I spun round in time to see someone dart behind a rack of cleaner's overalls.

The big bad wolf, I thought half-coherently.

"William!" I snapped, my voice screechy with rage and alarm."What do you think-"

Brian stepped out from behind the rack of overalls, his face shielded by his hand."It's...er...just me, Christine," he mumbled."I didn't know, you know, that you...you know..."

"Brian," I sighed, relaxing."Take your hand away, man, I'm not completely naked."

He lowered his hand and looked at me gingerly, as if he expected me to spit poison at him. For a second his eyes locked onto my breasts. I wondered what kind of sight I presented to a lonely single man, standing there in my white boots and short white skirt and nothing on top but a Wonderbra. I was turning him on. I knew it. I liked it.Call me what you want but that's the truth. In fact I felt a powerful, rousing awareness of myself as a woman, of what I possessed, what I was and what I was becoming. If I had turned to look in the mirror I wouldn't have seen the haggard, defeated expression I was confronted with the night I sought sanctuary from William's crass stupidity in the ladies' toilets, I would have come face to face with someone else, someone who was as much spirit as flesh.

Brian hastily averted his eyes. The colour of his embarrassment had spread from his cheeks to his bald head.

"I'm sorry, Christine, I'm really sorry. I saw you come in here but I didn't think you would...you know..."

"Brian, it's alright," I said. I took the fresh tee-shirt from the wrapper, shook it loose, then lifted my arms above my head and let the cool, dry cotton fall down my torso."So what did you want me for?"

Brian grinned feebly and shrugged."I can't remember now."

It came back to him as we walked out of the cloakroom together.

"Can you sing, Christine?"

I pulled up and smiled bemusedly."Sing?"

"Yes, sing. I've heard you sometimes, you know, singing to yourself, and I was wondering if you'd ever thought of singing on the stage."

"We all sing, Brian, but few of us are singers," I said, quoting a line from one of the songs I'd heard coming from the jukebox."Are you serious?"

"You seem comfortable on the stage." He shrugged again."It was just a thought."

The strange thing was I knew I could do it if I wanted to. What's more,the idea that I could, if the fancy took me, jump on stage with The Montana Red Dogs and belt out a Tammy Wynette song came as no great shock to me. I mightn't necessarily have the voice for it but I was certain I had the confidence to see it through.

As I went back to work a sober voice in my mind cautiously reminded me how heat waves can distort a person's perspective of the horizon, how that fierce, shimmering curtain sometimes alters what is waiting clearly in the distance to the point of abstraction.

I dismissed the voice. I didn't want focus. When you see everything stretched baldly ahead of you that way, without twists or corners, without surprises, that's when you start to die. I was sipping a potent elixir that was beginning to affect the way I saw the world. The world itself wasn't changing, the changes were all in me. I was slowly becoming intoxicated by Richard Linton and the certainty - the only certainty - that ahead of us lay a torrid and immortal summer.

*************

 Until the moment he shot Robbie Casey I had fooled myself into believing that Richard Linton was a reluctant outlaw. I thought of him as a wild, untameable young colt who had taken to running with an even wilder crowd than himself, someone off the tracks but not completely off his head. It suited me to see the Casey brothers as the real villains, and while Richard was doing bad things that didn't necessarily make him a bad person. I was wrong in a big way, and I wish I could say that I suddenly sobered up and realised I was drifting into the deadly deep waters of my own dark fascination, but if Richard hadn't been the person he was, living the life he did, I would never have got involved with him in the first place. To see his capacity for violence suddenly explode into shocking, dynamic reality only made me want him more.

I was back on stage in time to announce the gunfight between Pete and Robbie Casey, alias Butch Bad-dancer and the Suntanned Kid, alias Smith and Jones. After I retreated to the bar and made an ice pack from a Skol towel and a handful of cubes. I pressed it against my throat, then lifted my hair and dabbed the back of my neck. Behind the bar Kay-lee was watching me with cool concentration.

"You okay?" I asked.

She shrugged indifferently."This place gets me down some nights."

"Tonight?"

She hummed, distracted by the activity on the stage. I missed the buzzer but the cheers of the audience told me the fight was over.

"Who won?"

"The idiot with the stupid grin," Kay-lee said boredly."By the way, some guy called Cactus Jack was asking what happened to his entry. I told him to see you." Her eyes flicked to mine, bruised and resentful."Told him you were in charge."

"Calamity Jack," I said absently."Grab us both a beer,eh? I could do with one."

She pouted, spiked because she misinterpreted my invitation as an order."William will go bald."

"Fuck William," I said, and Kay-lee's eyes widened. At last a smile came to her face. I made a gesture with my hand - blow the lot of 'em,the gesture said, and this time Kay-lee read me correctly. She took two bottles of Budweiser from the fridge and leant across the bar. I put the ice pack to one side and took a long drink of the cold beer.

"So hot," I sighed."This heat's maddening. When's Brian going to fit air-conditioning, that's what I want to know."

"Not this summer," Kay-lee said. She hadn't touched her beer, which probably meant she was still peeved at me. We should have talked about it. In fact what I should have done is scolded the spoiled little brat. Listen up, I should have said. I didn't ask Brian if I could prance around on stage and hog all the wolf-whistles, it just fell in my lap. But don't go worrying about it; you're still prettier than me, okay? You're still the fairest of them all. But I couldn't be bothered. This claustrophobic heat was dulling my desire to communicate.

Max's voice over the PA system called me back to the stage.

"Saw you talking with your nephew earlier," Kay-lee said as I got up to leave.

"Friend's nephew."

She smiled coyly."Come on, Chrissy, tell me what's going on."

I picked up the Budweiser and the ice pack from the bar, thinking all the while."I will," I said."I promise...Just as soon as I know myself."

Richard made light work of dispatching Simon Rioch, who was by this time reeling drunk and looking doubtful for the Howlers' final set of the night - unless he played that way all the time. Acting on an impulse I went over to Richard and hooked four fingers into the buckle of his gunbelt. Looking into his eyes, I yanked him forward so that he was pressing against me.

"Let me help you off with that," I whispered. He just gazed at me, confused and excited. He smelled of Juicy Fruit chewing gum and sweet, aromatic sweat, Jack Daniels and tobacco. I could feel his hot breath on my face as his lips came close enough to kiss. Over two hundred people watched me remove Richard Linton's gunbelt, never taking my eyes from his,but they weren't really there. Not even their bawdy cheering could diminish the intimacy of the moment. It was just Richard and me, and we weren't sharing.

***

The mock gunfight between Robbie Casey and Richard Linton was, as a spectacle, a light-hearted piece of theatre. And yet there was an element of tension in the air. The audience seemed to tune into the vibes and responded with silent, dramatic rapture. Pete Casey also appeared apprehensive. Perhaps he was sensing a similar shiver of foreboding that I was beginning to feel.

The green light on the central console between the two opposing gunfighters came on, and simultaneously the short buzzer sounded. A spooky thing happened then. Neither Richard or Robbie Casey moved a muscle. For a suspended moment they were utterly still, frozen, but from the look in their eyes they were already fighting. It was as though a weird telepathy existed between them, as if they were locked in combat on an entirely separate plane.

Then, at precisely the same moment, they both drew their pistols and fired. Robbie Casey won, but people would remember Richard Linton for what happened next.

Robbie coolly slotted his pistol back into the holster and turned to the cheering crowd, his arms aloft like the true showoff he was. He was grinning behind his face-mask, really lapping up his victory, when a gunshot hushed the audience and stilled Robbie Casey in his pose.

Richard fired again. Robbie lowered his arms and turned around just as Richard fired another shot. I saw Robbie actually flinch as if he felt the ghost of a bullet pass through his body. Richard fired a forth shot, then a fifth, and finally the hammer fell with a dead click. That's when I stepped between them and gently lowered Richard's hand. He didn't resist, but for a couple of seconds I truly believe that he didn't know I was there. He was looking right through me, his lips twisted into an ugly, flinty smile and his eyes burning with murderous intent.

"Go outside," I said firmly."Go outside right now."

Max broke the unnerving hush by announcing Robbie Casey - or his alter ego, the Suntanned Kid - the fastest gun in the west. There were whistles and cheers and applause from the audience, but a group of aggressive drunks at the front of the stage began jeering Richard.

"Take your ball home!" one of them yelled.

"Fucking arse!" another shouted.

Richard's head snapped sideways. A ferocious grin appeared on his face and his eyes seemed to catch fire. I wouldn't have been able to stop him. If it hadn't been for the timely intervention of Pete Casey, Richard would have dived off the stage and throttled one of the heckling drunks. I'm certain he would have killed somebody.

"Outside," Pete Casey ordered as he blocked Richard's path with his lean body. Richard stiffened petulantly but went no further. There again, neither did he turn tail and go. You had to admire his spirt no matter how infuriating.

"Or what?" Richard said, glowering hotly at Pete Casey."What will you do, hit me with one of your fucking Ladybird books?" He sneered nastily and looked at me from the corner of his eye."This is the infamous Pete Casey, Chrissy, and he can't even read and write."

I caught the look of self-consciousness that touched Pete Casey's face. I felt angry and ashamed of Richard for doing that. Pete Casey carried himself with the dignity of a lion, and it said a lot about the man that he didn't just kill Richard Linton right there on the stage.

"Leave it," he said. His voice was soft but commanding."Let's just go now before someone twigs and we end up finishing this fight in Parkhurst."

That was all it took, or at least I thought so at the time. Pete Casey turned and walked off the stage. Richard stared after him, his fists bunched by his sides, all knotted up with rage and frustration. At last he unbuckled his gunbelt with unhurried defiance,let it fall unceremoniously to the stage, and then he followed the leader of the Casey gang out of the door.

****

Robbie Casey hung around to soak up his new-found fame as a gunfighter. He was sitting at the bar with two giggling girls. One of them was the girl from Safeway that Richard shot in one of the mock gunfights.

"Your boyfriend's a bad loser," Robbie said as I placed another bottle of Budweiser in front of him.

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Seems to think he is."

I should have dismissed that remark as meaningless tittle-tattle but I couldn't. I knew it would return as a teasing, whispering rumour as I tossed and turned restlessly through another hot and thundery night.

"Well he can just think again."

I cleared a few bottles away and went to serve another customer. As I was handing the man his change, Pete Casey came over to his brother and spoke confidentially in his ear. A look of concern settled on Robbie's face. I wanted answers and Pete Casey was the only man who could give them to me.

"Where's Richard?"

"He's gone," Pete said. He gazed at me with his dead flat eyes and stoical expression."Good riddance."

"What do you mean?" I tried to mask the anxiety in my voice but if I could hear it then so could Pete Casey.

"I don't know where. He just ran off. He does that." A subtle change came over Pete Casey's handsome but bland features. He blinked a few times, as if stirring life into his eyes, and he may have smiled sympathetically."Richard's..." He glanced at Robbie, who read more in Pete's eyes than I did.

"Ask him what happened in Spain," Robbie said. Suddenly he was aware of the two girls sitting beside him. Neither were paying much attention to what we were saying but Robbie decided on silence nonetheless.

"Go find him," Pete Casey said."Now, I mean...before he does something stupid."

I didn't wait around for permission to knock off early. I simply hurried out of there, pushing past people with unaccustomed assertiveness. Outside the hot muggy air seemed little different from the atmosphere inside the bar. The night and its heat crowded in on me, flustering my mind to the point where I began to feel faint and slightly nauseous. I was seeing bleak images of deserted bridges over railway sidings, calm black lakes and country lanes leading to isolated clearings. Suicide spots is what I was seeing. I've passed through them in the flesh and always feel a tremor of deep, inconsolable despair.

I walked hurriedly through the car park and out into the street. The town was dark at night. There were no fruity neons to freak the night sky, just the required number of streetlights glowing as dimly as smouldering cigarette ends. The old stone buildings absorbed light and spun shadows.

I couldn't see him anywhere. I looked frantically up and down the High Street, reluctant to call out his name but wanting to all the same. It was slowly dawning on me that when Pete Casey suggested that Richard might go out and do something stupid he wasn't talking about suicide. I had already figured out that Richard's self-destruct button was on a hair-trigger, but taking an overdose in some crummy bedsit or parking up in a desolate clearing in the woods and stuffing a shotgun in his mouth isn't the way that Richard's kind go out.

A car door slammed behind me. When I looked around I saw Richard striding away from the pick-up, his denim jacket looped over his arm. I ran after him, lost him, then saw him emerge from behind the trailer of a juggernaut. I was about to call his name when I spotted Pete and Robbie Casey walking towards him. They were like trains on the same track.

"Don't go getting your head all boiled up now," Pete Casey said. He spoke with the same unassuming authority I'd heard him use on the stage, only this time I sensed grave warnings lurking just below the surface of the calm like alert sharks patrolling back and forth.

"It's the monkey I want, not the organ grinder," Richard responded. He looked as coiled and mean as a venomous snake.

"Just go home, Richard," Robbie said with lazy disregard."Leave it be."

Pete and Robbie Casey stopped a few feet from Richard. They still hadn't noticed me,or they were ignoring me.

"What's under the jacket?" Pete asked. The distrust in his voice was clearly discernible.

"This?" Richard cocked his head and smirked at one or both of the Casey brothers."Just these.." He lifted his jacket and tossed it away. Robbie Casey took a step back, alarmed by what he saw. Pete Casey didn't move but all at once it seemed as though he was on the verge of losing his composure.

"Put those down," he said sharply."See what happens if you don't."

"Likesay, I'm here to speak to your brother," Richard said unfazed."What do you say, Robbie...want to find out who really is the fastest gun in the west?"

Robbie quickly eyed the revolvers Richard was holding and blew out a breath of disbelief."Is he out of his fucking head or what?"

"Is he out of his fucking head or what?" Richard mimicked in a nagging, scornful falsetto.

A dazed grin came to Robbie's face. When I saw that grin I was convinced that things had gone too far.

"Man, I'll blow you out of your fucking Reeboks," Robbie said.

Richard grinned back and offered him the pick of the weapons. Pete Casey made a move but Robbie raised his arm across his brother's chest.

"Leave it, Robbie," Pete warned."I'm not letting you go through with this. It's pointless and stupid. You touch one of those guns and I'll kick your arse all the way to kingdom come."

Robbie turned on him, tensing with the aggressive indignity of a smacked child."Have you finished, mother?"

"I haven't even started."

"I don't need you telling me what to do all the time!"

"No? Where do you think you'd be without me, Robbie? Just answer me that one."

Robbie seethed inwardly. He paced around in a tight little circle while Richard just stood and watched with lofty amusement.

"See you?" Robbie said, squaring up to his brother again."You just like bossing people around."

Pete Casey sighed audibly and rolled his eyes."Robbie's throwing a tantrum," he said to himself.

"Right," Robbie sneered."Like I keep telling you - I'm not a kid anymore,Pete, and if I want to throw a tantrum I'll fucking well throw one."

Richard threw his head back and laughed out loud. Pete and Robbie Casey eyed him pointedly.

"Fuck you," they said in unison, then faced each other again.

"This is shit," Pete said in a hard, grating whisper."All the things we've done, all we've come through, and you'll end up dead in some pub car park over a stupid cowboy game."

"I'm not letting that-" Robbie stuck out his arm and pointed denouncingly at Richard "-little fuckface call me a chicken."

"He never called you a chicken."

"Chicken," Richard responded promptly.

Robbie nodded curtly."See what I mean...now I'll have to blow his head off."

He turned smoothly and plucked one of the guns from Richard's hand.

"Alright!" Richard whooped. Pete Casey positioned himself between them but Richard had already turned away in preparation for the gunfight. I watched with silent indecision as he counted ten paces along the length of the trailer. They were actually going to do it. Robbie Casey and Richard Linton were about to fight a duel. I had to do something. Instinctively I felt that out of the three men present Pete Casey would be the one to reason with.

"Wait!" I cried as I ran towards the Casey brothers."Stop this, you've got to stop this right now!" I grabbed Pete Casey's arm and forced him to look at me."He's your brother...don't let him do this."

"I won't."

Robbie Casey spun the cylinder on his revolver and snapped it closed with a flick of his wrist."The fuck you won't."

"I promised to look after you, whether you like it or not," Pete Casey said.

"Chrissy, get out of the way!" Richard barked. He was moving nervously from foot to foot and wringing his hands. The revolver was poking out of the waistband of his jeans.

I threw a last,helpless glance at Pete Casey."Stop him," I pleaded."He'll listen to you, I know he will."

"Not when he's got a gun," Pete Casey replied."He won't listen to anyone when he's got a gun."

"I'm not going to kill him," Robbie Casey told me."I'm just going to shoot that pistol out of his hand. Might teach him a lesson he won't forget." He smiled reassuringly."Isn't that right, Pete?"

"You know a fuck sight more about guns to even think you could do that," Pete Casey said flatly.

Robbie turned his head and met his brother's eyes."And you know a fuck sight more about me to think that I'll walk away from this one. We've got a reputation to live up to. If I walk away now we're finished. You know there's reward money on offer. All those bookies we hit, and the Belfast job that time...people want us dead, Pete, but so far no one but the law's had the balls to come looking for us." He gave a dazzling, rascally grin."Besides, I'm the fastest gun in the west."

"I'll have to leave you if you die," Pete Casey said, and Robbie nodded soberly."Can't go carting you around day and night. In this weather you'll go off faster than a pint of milk."

"You're all heart."

"See you in hell then."

"Sure," Robbie said absently. His attention was now fixed on Richard."I'll tell everyone you were asking about them."

Pete Casey made a sign to the invisible men watching over his every move, one I interpreted as an order to stand off, and then he gently drew me away. I tried to pull free from the grip on my arm and reach Richard, to launch one last, desperate attempt to stop this madness. I screamed his name at the top of my lungs. The grip on my arm tightened painfully.

"You've got nothing without dignity," Pete Casey said with quiet, calming sincerity."I learned that a long time ago."

"I'll call the police," I said hollowly."That's one way to stop it."

"And we all go to prison, including you, Chrissy...probably." He read the shock in my eyes."You know about the shooting, about Robbie and me, and about Richard. You know enough to get you into trouble anyhow. The law will just assume you're keeping quiet about the rest."

He led me a safe distance from the trailer where Richard and Robbie Casey were preparing to shoot each other. I went meekly this time, stunned into compliance by Pete's revelation.

The night heat was oppressive and inescapable. The fresh tee-shirt I had unwrapped earlier was now moulded to my body. I felt like I was suffocating, not merely from the stifling heat but from the unbearable tension in the air.

A rumble of distant thunder quickened my heart. It sounded like the growl of some awesome spectral beast on the perimeter of this world.

"Draw!" Pete Casey called.

There may have been two gunshots but I heard only one. I must have had my eyes closed, or the unexpectedness of the gunshots may have closed them involuntarily, but when I opened them again Robbie Casey was on the ground.

****

Pete and Sonny loaded Robbie into the passenger seat of the same pick-up truck in which Richard and I had driven to the sea that night. Robbie had been shot in the stomach. He was lucid but suffering the most terrible agony imaginable. I didn't know where Richard was. He vanished after shooting Robbie Casey, and as I helped comfort the dying man in the pick-up truck, I didn't really care.

Pete Casey started up the engine. Sonny was now in the back of the pick up, hiding under a blanket with an assault rifle laying over his chest. It was saddle 'em up and move 'em out time at the Old Black Kettle, and people were already spilling out of the door and into the car-park.

"You've got to take him to a hospital," I told Pete Casey."If you don't he's going..." I glanced down at Robbie. The younger boy was watching me steadily. His eyes were full of anguished comprehension.

"I'm heading for the Lake District," Pete Casey said."We know a doctor there who owes us a favour."

"Robbie needs surgery, Pete."

"I wasn't talking about Doctor Doolittle, Chrissy," Pete said, and Robbie uttered a strange, gurgling laughter.

"Then you'd better get going."

Pete nodded."There's a bag in the back," he said."Take it and give it to Richard when you next see him."

I closed the door of the pick-up, a deep, aching sadness burrowing into my heart. I went to the back of the truck and lifted out a grotty old rucksack, then I stood and watched as Pete Casey sped away into the night. I didn't expect to see either of them again.

I walked home that balmy summer's evening feeling as though I was caught somewhere between real life and fiction, a place where the dog meets the wolf and dreams fuse psycadellically with reality.I even wondered if I was suffering from psychotic episodes, if parts of my life existed nowhere but in my head. I wondered if I was losing my mind.

I was unlocking my front door when I became aware of a presence behind me. I wasn't afraid or startled even. I turned around, and of course it was Richard Linton standing there. He smiled tentatively. He made me think of an angry teenager who storms out of the house in the heat of a furious row, only to creep home again pained with sorrow and regret his pride just won't allow him to express.

"Can I come in?" he asked, looking appealingly at me from under a lank, sweat-dripping fringe of untidy blond hair.

I shook my head, then I sighed as something like a knife cut into my heart."Ah, Richard," I said."How come the things we never say are more important than the things we do say?"

He tilted his head, affected by the poignant tone of my voice.

"You shot a man."

"I know. I shot Robbie Casey."

His eyes swam with tears which he hastily wiped away with a furious backhand swipe."I want to come in, Chrissy. I have to talk to you." He looked at me with miserable bewilderment."What are you doing to me, Chrissy? I can't eat, can't sleep, can't think of anything 'cept you."

"Ah, Richard," I said again. He was breaking my heart. That's when I finally accepted the truth. I could fight no longer, deny it no more. I loved him. God help me, but I was in love with this boy."You're seventeen years old.You should be out chasing girls your own age, not someone like me. What do you see in me? I'm old enough to-"

"You're nothing to me!" he suddenly screamed. He snatched the rucksack from my hand with a determined grunt, then turned and ran to the gate. I didn't know how to react.

At the gate he stopped and turned around. I've never seen anyone so at war with themselves. The possibility of never seeing him again filled me with horror and grief.

And then he was gone, and only the soft, swift, patter-patter of his training shoes was all I had left of him, and all too soon even that was just a memory.

******

People who refute the anodyne qualities of alcohol in times of emotional stress just don't get drunk often enough. Either that or they've never felt so damn wretched as I felt that night. Getting drunk on duty-free vodka mightn't be the ultimate answer to my problems but it was a place to start. A good place to start.

I took a long, cold shower while a tray of ice cubes were forming in the freezer. Afterwards I didn't bother to get dressed again. I didn't even bother to dry myself off properly. I liked the way the water dripped from the tips of my hair and traced cooling tear-tracks down the length of my naked body.

"You love this," I said to the pale phantom that was my reflection in the full length mirror. My face, veiled and beautiful in the sultry shadow of a dark room lightened only by a luminous moon and the deep denim blue of the summer night sky, smiled enigmatically."You like the pain. You love to glory in your own misery, to hold it up like a trophy. You love this...nothing makes you feel more alive than dying."

I went downstairs and retrieved the tray of ice cubes from the freezer compartment. The vodka was waiting in the fridge next to a bottle of supermarket champagne bought on a whim a week or so before. It was a depressing little symbol of life's ups and downs, its triumphs and tragedies. If someone had asked me which bottle I would be reaching for first I would have said the vodka. There's never been anything much to celebrate in my life. Even Carl's arrival had heralded a long period of mournful introspection.

I took the vodka, a glass and the ice cubes upstairs. The bedroom was the melancholy hue of a lone saxophonist's smoky spotlight. I turned on the radio and fiddled with the dial until I found something soft and soulful: Bob Dylan singing You're a Big Girl Now.

The open window beckoned me. Unconcerned for my modesty I sat on the windowsill and let what little breeze there was slowly dry my damp skin. The vodka eased me further into a mood of profound reflection. I was still there, thinking, searching, when the first pink light of dawn touched the eastern skyline.

I know my mother would have accused me of melodramatics, but how else was I supposed to act when I was unquestionably the centre of a smouldering melodrama? I had been drawn into a great story, a ballad of violence and passion, and there was nothing I could do to stop myself from evolving with events. There was nothing I wanted to do. Being the woman you are is life. Becoming the woman you want to be is living like there's no tomorrow.

************

I didn't go in to work at all that week. I knew that I wouldn't be able to concentrate on even the smallest of tasks. I couldn't slip in and out of moods as easily as I could my cowgirl uniform. It wasn't as though I was emotionally wrecked, drowning indifferently in a quagmire of depression, but I was, as the poets say, most severely distracted.

Obsessed. That's a word I was loath to say out loud. Of course I couldn't stop it blinking into my conscious thoughts as if it had been installed there by some insidious cosmic computer hacker, but in the warmth of a summer's day, laughing and playing with an enviably carefree four year old in Bat and Ball park, it didn't quite mean anything. But at night, when I was left alone to search myself, the truth was as impossible to escape as the muggy heat. I was obsessed with Richard Linton.

*********

I met Pete Casey on the Friday after that insane duel between Richard and Robbie. I was coming home from Safeway, loaded down with grocery bags, a hot and bad tempered four year old moping along a few feet behind me, when a battered old Land Rover pulled up to the kerb. Pete Casey was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses but I recognised him straight away. I stopped and waited for Carl, who chose that moment to plonk himself down on the pavement to examine something interesting. Knowing small boys it was probably an insect or a dog turd.

I put my shopping bags down and rummaged for a packet of Smarties."Sit nice," I said as I handed them to Carl."Count the Smarties for mummy." I knew that would keep him occupied for a couple of minutes at least. Carl was going through a counting phase. He cheerfully counted absolutely anything you asked him to count.

"It's an earwig," he said, pointing at the pavement.

"Where-wig?"

"There-wig!"

I left him to his secret counting game to which the earwig was pivotal. Pete Casey turned his head and gave a faint smile of acknowledgment. I could hear the low babble of police messages coming from a radio scanner inside the Land Rover.

"Chrissy."

"Pete. How's Robbie?"

"Resting. He'll live, he's been shot before."

"So where is he?"

"We've moved him to a place in Scotland."

"A hideout?"

He smiled, charmed at something or other."Yeah, a hideout."

I nodded and looked over at Carl, who was engrossed in his counting game."You've come to warn me about him, haven't you?" I turned back to Pete Casey. I was chilled by the black void of those insect-eye sunglasses."Going to warn me away from him?"

"Might be too late for that," he said."I've got a strange feeling about the two of you."

"What kind of strange?"

"Spooky. Being with you the other night was like the time Robbie and me met a tiger."

I smiled quizzically.

"We were laying low Ireland," Pete explained."Somewhere in Mayo, I can't say exactly where, when Robbie decides to hold-up this petrol station without telling me. I was about to pay for the petrol and Coke when all of a sudden Robbie pulls a piece and tells this young kid behind the counter to stand or deliver." He smiled privately, the same way I smile when I think of some of the scrapes Carl has managed to get himself into."We were chased by the Gards and had to dump the car and leg it through this private estate. Robbie goes straight up and over this wire fence - he's like a monkey, no kidding - so I followed him. We ducked through some bushes and came face to face with a tiger."

"A real tiger?"

Pete nodded."This beast was about eight feet long. And they purr you know, just like cats, only when a tiger purrs it sounds like a motorbike. Anyway, we just froze. I mean-" He laughed and shook his head "-It was a tiger, Chrissy!"

"So what happened?"

"Nothing. It just lay there staring at us. I think it was someone's pet. But man, it was awesome...just awesome."

"Wow," I said softly. My mind drifted. I thought of the moment when I took hold of Richard's belt and pulled him towards me.

"I had the feeling he was about to pounce any second," Pete Casey said, and I was abruptly ejected from my daydream.

"Who?"

"The tiger. He was calm when we met him but another time...who knows? I think he was shocked by the whole thing, know what I mean? One minute he's staring into space with nothing on his mind but whatever it is tigers think about, and the next minute he's face to face with two desperados. I don't think he could decide whether to kiss us or tear us limb from limb. So he didn't do anything. Robbie could have shot him, of course - least that's the way he tells it now - but he didn't. Do you know why?"

"Is this really about tigers, Pete?" I asked, playing dumb, and Pete Casey smiled self-consciously.

"We'd never seen a tiger before. Never come face to face with that kind of power. We were too scared to make a move, and it was the same for him."

"So what are you saying, that Richard's the tiger but I can still back away if I'm careful enough?"

"You're the tiger," Pete Casey said. He waved his hand dismissively."Forget about tigers, Chrissy. What I'm trying to say is that you and Richard Linton are a lethal cocktail. Don't ask me why, because I'll start talking about vibes and tigers and all that mystic crap, but I'll tell you this - if the two of you ever stop being afraid and meet in the middle, something big is going to happen. You might make great lovers, but then again you might blow each other's brains out."

"Hold on, hold on," I said. Carl had decided to take the earwig for a walk. I caught up with him and led him back to where I had left the shopping bags. I told him to play nice for mummy but I wasn't optimistic. The kid was hot and bored and tired. The day was getting me that way too.

"He's a nice looking lad," Pete Casey said when I went back to the Land Rover."Where's his dad?"

"Aberdeen."

"That's a long way away," Pete said thoughtfully."Don't think I could handle being that far from my kid."

"Are you thinking of settling down, Pete?"

He smiled thinly."Not much chance of that, not with the kind of life we lead. We do talk about jacking it all in but only when we're really drunk or really broke. Anyway, where would we go? Being on the run is an expensive business but not half as expensive as settling down is going to be. And the press would find us sooner or later. Things have got political now; they'd do anything to bring Robbie and me back in handcuffs."

"So where does Richard fit into your plans?"

"He doesn't, Chrissy, not anymore. That business the other night was just the final straw. Things have been building for a long time."

"You told me to ask him about Spain," I prompted.

Pete took off his sunglasses and cleaned the lenses on his white tee-shirt. I didn't miss the way he scanned the rear and side mirrors, and neither had the fact that the Land Rover's engine was still running escaped my attention. I couldn't imagine what life must like for the Casey brothers. How well could they sleep with one eye open?

"We were hired to do a job in Barcelona," Pete said."Sub-contract job, strictly lowkey. I only agreed to do it because there was a favour in it for us. When you're as wanted as the Casey gang, it's favours that keep you out of prison more than stolen cash. You never know when you might need a doctor or a helicopter, or both. I don't like working for terrorists but there you go; needs must and that's all there is to it."

"Terrorists?"

"We were working for Basque separatists. They needed funds, we needed weapons and safe houses. Done deal. Anyway, things went cockeyed when Richard shot a traffic cop who was sniffing one of the getaway cars. I'm not going to pretend that I'm a sentimental old bastard, Chrissy, because I've been around too long for that, but from a professional point of view what Richard did was madness. We barely made it out of Spain alive. If it hadn't been for the ETA people we'd all be laid out on slabs waiting for Preston Deal to come and identify us."

A car came around the corner. Pete slipped the Land Rover into gear and brought the clutch up to biting point. The tuned engine strained and growled keenly.

"Robbie's got a wild streak, Chrissy, and nobody knows that better than I do, but Richard Linton is a breed apart."

The car was approaching at a steady speed. Pete Casey tracked its progress with what seemed like lazy curiosity.

"I've thrown people out of the gang before now, a few of them reluctantly, but I'm glad to see the back of Richard Linton. I like the kid a lot, I really do. Well, he's a charming little bastard isn't he?"

"Are you asking me? Because you seem to be trying to get something off your chest, Pete."

"He reminds me of Robbie. That's why I picked him up. It's been an eventful couple of years with Richard in the gang, a lot of laughs and a lot of trouble, but it's over now. It has to end. His life line is fizzling like a dynamite fuse, and I don't want to be around when it finally runs out."

The car was behind the Land Rover. Pete watched through the rear view mirror until it was a safe distance away."You won't be seeing Robbie and me for a while, probably not ever. This was a good place for us but now I feel bad luck coming this way."

"Bad luck for who?"

"For anyone who happens to be around Richard. He's a born bandit, just like Robbie and me, but the difference between us is the survival instinct. We have it, Richard doesn't because he doesn't think he needs it. Robbie and me never go anywhere without bodyguards. There's two riflemen watching me now, Chrissy. You won't see them and neither will the plod who tries to take me in. But Richard swans around as if he's invisible, as if nothing can touch him. He thinks he's immortal. You've seen it for yourself. Richard Linton is the only man I know who would dare Robbie Casey to fire a shot at him. That either makes him the bravest man I know or the most insane."

"Maybe he's a little of both."

"Maybe," Pete said."But with Richard the line's too fine. In fact I don't think it's there at all."

Carl came trotting up to me with a gooey brown grin. He'd managed to liberate a chocolate cheesecake from one of the shopping bags.

"Looks like you've got your hands full," Pete Casey said."I'll be on my way." He looked down and studied Carl's face for a few moments. I would have given anything to see Pete Casey's eyes just then."When Robbie was not much older than your boy there, I petrol bombed a police car to stop him being taken into care. What would you do if they tried to take your boy away, Chrissy?"

"I don't know," I said as he raised his head and gazed at me through those unnerving black lenses."Whatever I had to do, I suppose."

"Then forget Richard Linton, because as sure as you're standing there you'll end up in trouble."

On an impulse I leaned into the car and kissed Pete Casey on the cheek."Thanks," I said,"but I think trouble is just what I need in my life."

I'm not going to say much more about the Casey brothers. Their story goes on even as I write. So they still rob banks and they still run from the law, and just the other day I heard all about that bad business at Butler Farm, but even though the story goes on it still reaches me like a ghostly echo escaping through a crack in time.

It's already history to me. I know how things will end for Pete and Robbie Casey. I've seen it all before.

***

I went back to work on Saturday night. It was Cajun night again but for reasons never explained The Full Moon Howlers had phoned earlier in the afternoon to cancel.

"I've had to book that slapper who used to do the Thursday night slot," William informed me. He was speaking to everyone, me, Kay-lee, Max and those two students I've never much cared for, but I was the only one paying any attention. At least William must have seen it that way. In truth I was still thinking about all the things Pete Casey had said to me, and William's leering clock was just something to focus on. He was all pink and blurred like a bad photograph of himself."The phonebook's a bit short on Cajun bands."

"Sure you weren't looking under K?" Kay-lee asked without glancing up from the magazine crossword she and Max were sweating over.

"I know how to spell," William said snidely."I S-A-W T-H-A-T D-I-L-D-O I-N Y-O-U-R B-A-G."

Max was scribbling it down as William spelled it out. When he had all the letters he looked at me with shocked white eyes.

"Don't be so gullible, Max," I said, flicking a disparaging look at the grinning William."He's teasing."

"You're teasing," William said, puckering his lips.

I stared back long enough to unsettle him. He didn't like that look I gave him. He didn't understand it, but he sure was nervous of it all the same. He wouldn't be giving me half the trouble he would have liked to from now on.

"It's a vibrator, actually," Kay-lee said at last. She looked up from the magazine, her eyes calm but hostile."Takes the work out of satisfying oneself."

"Dirty bitch," William sneered."What's wrong with a real cock?"

"Get it out and I'll tell you," Kay-lee said temperately."Go on, William, whop it on the bar and put your money where your mouth is."

"Fuck off," William growled, a flush of indignity colouring his cheeks. He snatched his cloth off the bar and turned away."Lot of you, get working before I dock wages."

It was another hot and crowded night in The Old Black Kettle. The replacement singer, backed by Den 'Done' Jackson and the Montana Red Dogs, turned out to be much better than I had been led to believe. Miss Tina McCaan, as Den announced her, was a striking redhead in torn jeans who sang country as well as mainstream cover versions. She was singing the old Cher song Just Like Jessie James with a Nashville twang when Kay-lee nudged me in the ribs and gestured at the door with knowing eyes.

"Your nephew's come for his pocket money," she said.

"Right," I responded. I concentrated on the drink I was pouring. I had the collies so bad I could hardly keep the glass still. Eventually, when I had served the customer and taken my time over ringing the sale and counting out the change, I looked across the room.

Richard was standing by the door, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, a loose white shirt open to reveal a low-cut sports vest. He looked me in the eyes and made a finger and thumb pistol with his right hand. I made one back, and we shot each other.

"Nephew my arse," Kay-lee drawled.

There was a cold Budweiser waiting on the bar by the time he had strutted across the floor to join me, eyeing up the talent along the way. He was playing games again, making sure I knew that he was tough and unaffected. I had a mind to leap over the bar and start tearing at the front of his jeans, just to see the look on his face. That would shoot you down, I thought with a secret smile.

"What's to smile at?" he said as he hoisted himself onto a bar stool."Well? Cat got your tongue?"

"Richard Linton's back in town," I chided insipidly."Let's get out the flags and alert the world's media."

He smiled crookedly and nodded at the bottle of Bud."Is that for me?"

"Do you want it?"

"I want it."

He took hold of the bottle but I curled my fingers around its smooth, icy neck before he could lift it off the bar."How bad?" I asked him, whispering urgently."How bad, Richard?"

"Like I can't describe," he whispered back. There was a gleam of drooling anticipation in his lively blue eyes.

"Yeah, well..." I straightened up and casually flicked a sud-blob from the rim of the bottle."You'll have to wait with the rest of them."

I turned away from his laughter to see Kay-lee watching me from the till."God, Chrissy," she said."You're a dark horse, old girl."

"He's my nephew."

"Your friend's nephew."

I looked at her blankly for a few seconds before breaking into a broad smile."Oh yeah, my friend's nephew. Do you want me to introduce you?"

She looked over my shoulder and appraised Richard without a hint of discretion or shame."Looks a bit rough to me. Is he a bit of rough, Chrissy?"

"Ask him," I said, grabbing her arm and pulling her to the bar."Richard, this is Kay-lee. She wants to know if you're a bit of rough."

Richard and Kay-lee shook hands across the bar. They both looked equally bemused and slightly suspicious of each other.

"I'm going to stand and watch the singer," Richard said, taking up his Bud and dropping from his stool. He gave Kay-lee a lingering wary look before making his way to the stage.

"He's intense," Kay-lee said. She looked at me with mature concern."Are you sure about him?"

I shrugged resentfully, feeling about fifteen years old all of a sudden."He's okay once you get to know him."

She hummed doubtfully."You know best, Chrissy."

About five minutes later, just as I was about to pull a pint for one of the regulars I was sharing the news with, Richard came rushing up to the bar. The expression on his face almost stopped my heart dead.

"Chrissy!" he hissed, gesturing for me to come to the hatch he was already moving towards."Now!"

I hurried along the length of the bar and opened the serving hatch, launching an empty Red Strip can over the heads of three bleary drunks. Richard grabbed me tightly by the arms, pinning them to my sides with strength I never imagined he possessed. His eyes were glittering with panic.

"Get me out," he said quickly. He turned me away from the crowd and steered me in the direction of the door marked STAFF ONLY."Just get me out of here right now!"

I had no idea what was making him so feverish. I looked over my shoulder to scan the crowd but he urged me on with forceful pleading.

"Chrissy, for fuck's sake get me out of here! Get me out of here or I'm dead!"

*******************

INTERLUDE

FAMILY SNAPSHOT

************

 The sky was blue and clear and so vast that it appeared to fit the perfectly flat landscape as snugly as the lid on a casserole pot. Huge white grain towers stood petrified and bleached under the maddening eye of the midday sun. An arrow-narrow strip of blacktop road cut the land in two, creating the illusion that one side of the road might be nothing but a reflection of the other. Dust stirred on the horizon. An insect kicking up a fuss, moving, scuttling, racing, growing, roaring.

A black Cadillac Eldorado came to a sudden, skidding halt in the middle of this heat-shimmering daydream. The engine revved and rumbled and died with a final shudder. On the radio Talking Heads were singing Once in a Lifetime.

A short time later a rusty Jeep pulled up sedately behind the Cadillac. The doors of both vehicles opened and the occupants got out. There were seven of them in all, seven rugged and sunburnt characters dressed like poorly paid garage workers or film extras from a Bruce Springsteen video.

Pete Casey walked a few paces away from the body of the group and stood with his face to the screaming sun, his hands linked behind his neck. A tall figure with thinning blond hair, he radiated the silent melancholy charisma of a James Dean movie poster.

"You'll never piss that out from there," Richard Linton said. He felt a stinging cuff across the ear and turned sharply, his fists raised. He had expected the cuffer to be Robbie and was ready for a another not-quite-friendly game of ruff and tumble. But it was Clayton Pepper standing behind him with his lightning hands stuffed casually in the pockets of his jeans. Richard knew better than to trouble the taciturn Ulsterman.

"I was just kidding, Clayton," he protested, springing a roguish grin."I know you're his bodyguard and everything..."

"Sit down," Clayton said."I want to look at that wound again."

"Wound's fine," Richard said, nodding brightly."It's best left alone now."

Clayton didn't repeat the order. He rarely had to, but with Richard there was always the need to edge one step closer to a threat. Eventually Richard sat down by the side of the road, muttering truculently under his breath. Clayton fetched the medical bag from the Jeep and crouched down, rummaging inside. Robbie and Sonny Wilson ambled over to take a look. Robbie was smirking stupidly.

"I hope this hurts," he said."Hurt him, Clayton."

Richard eyed him narrowly."Why don't you try it, Robbie?"

"I will," Robbie said darkly."One of these days."

Richard curled his lip scornfully. He lost interest in Robbie the moment Clayton lifted the syringe kit and the small vial of liquid from the medical bag. Robbie laughed at the expression of alarm on Richard's face.

"You're not sticking that in my arm!"

Clayton raised his eyes."That's right, kid."

Robbie laughed so hard he had to lean against Sonny for support. Richard sizzled angrily on the ground like spilled acid.

"After what you did, I ought to tell him to stick it in your eye," Pete said. He dropped his hands and turned around. Richard shuffled uncomfortably, his face pinched with adolescent resentment."I've told you," he muttered, not looking at Pete."I thought they were FBI."

"Fucking FBI," Billy Young scoffed. He was leaning over the bonnet of the Cadillac, in the process of drawing the Arsenal FC badge in the layer of dust. Ben Miller was beside him, looking tired and thirsty.

"They had black suits on," Richard grumbled."And sunglasses."

"So did the fucking Blues Brothers."

"They fired back didn't they?" Richard snapped with sulky agression. He tried to get to his feet but Clayton yanked him back down without much effort. The Ulsterman ignored the argument and lifted Richard's tee-shirt to inspect the wound in his side where a bullet had gouged a two-inch long furrow through the flesh.

"This is America, Richard." Sonny Wilson said with his customary easy-going smile."Everyone shoots back."

Again Richard was distracted by Clayton, who was now drawing liquid into a syringe.

"What's that?" he asked, wetting his lips.

"Antibiotic," Clayton said."Now shut up and show me your arse."

Richard slipped his jeans down and turned on his side. He glared up at Robbie's grinning clock, just daring him to say a word.

"Are you qualified for this?" he asked, glancing worriedly over his shoulder as Clayton checked the syringe for air-bubbles.

"Clayton was an army medic," Sonny said. His hair had just been cut and he thought it made him look like George Clooney."He was what the SAS call a bushdoctor."

"Bushdoctor?" Richard said dubiously."Is that like a tree-surgeon or something?"

It was over in a second. Richard grunted, stuck two fingers up at his audiance, and was finally allowed to fasten his jeans and stand up.

"Quick team photo before we get going," Pete announced."Just to let Mr Deal know we're missing him."

Clayton set up the camera and tripod, then the seven wanted men went to the rear of the Cadillac and selected a favorite weapon. All of them chose rifles or shotguns except for Robbie and Richard, who picked revolvers which they sometimes called six-guns, but only in secret, boyish conversations. Next they tied scarves or handkerchieves around the lower halves of their faces, pulled on baseball caps and wollen hats, and gathered at the front of the big black car. Clayton set the timer on the camera and ambled over to join the group. Pete remembered the sign in the car and gave it to Robbie, who was already clambering onto the roof.

They posed like this: Pete Casey, Clayton Pepper and a sober, haunted Ben Miller in front of the grill. Sonny Wilson and young Billy Young cross-legged on the bonnet of the car, rifle barrels resting against their shoulders. Richard Linton and Robbie Casey on the roof with their legs over the windscreen and a cardboard sign propped between them bearing the message: WISH YOU WERE HERE?

They could have been mistaken for a rock band posing moodily for an album cover, but their weapons were not props and the toughness in their eyes came not from an image consultant's inspiration but from a life of violent crime. A long journey had made them mean and bad tempered. A longer journey - an epic journey - could be seen in their eyes, if a man was stupid enough to stare for long enough.

**********************

By the staff toilets was a seldom used emergency exit which led into a dingy alley. Richard pushed up the bar and shoved the door open, leading us both into the stuffy calm of the windless evening. He pushed me back into the doorway and dropped down on all fours. I saw him pull up the leg of his jeans and take a small pistol out of a holster strapped to his calf. He edged out into the alleyway like a cat stalking a rodent. Instead of making a run for it, which is what I was expecting, he darted to the wall of the next building and mounted the first few steps of the metal fire-escape.

"Richard!" I whispered fretfully."What's going on?"

He looked down at me and grinned wildly. He was scared to death of something but it wasn't enough to dull that fire of adventure he had burning inside him.

"Southern accents," he said cryptically."I'll see you around, Chrissy."

With that he was gone, running almost silently up the fire escape and vanishing over the roof. I went back inside, my eyes darting round the crowded bar. Still I saw nothing. I was beginning to think it was all down to Richard's paranoia, but then Brian, looking grave and strangely authoritative, came out of his office to tell me that some gentlemen were here to see me.

**********

Preston Deal I had met before but the others, six of them in all, unpleasant-looking taciturn men dressed in jeans and scruffy shirts, I had not. I would have remembered them.

"Hello, Chrissy," Preston Deal greeted as I came into Brian's office. Deal looked like a Welsh miner. He was small and stocky with rusty hair and thick, ropey arms. He must have been in his mid-to-late forties but he looked as though he stayed in shape by wrestling alligators.

I looked nervously around the room. My confidence all but deserted me when I saw their numbers and the dark, suspicious way they were looking at me. Dark eyes everywhere, watchful men dotted around the room like statuesque felines. Brian's was the only reassuring face amongst them, although the poor man looked completely drained and overwhelmed.

"Do you remember me, Chrissy?"

"Superintendent Deal," I said."You came to see us the other week, after those men were shot in the bar."

"That's right,Chrissy," he said in that patronising tone coppers use when they want something from you."Why don't you sit down and we'll have another little talk."

I scanned the room for somewhere to sit. Eventually - and reluctantly - one of the black cats gave up his chair.

"These gentlemen are from the Metropolitan Police," Deal told me in gleeful confidentiality."Together we represent a very special task force...we are the whole task force in fact. The newspapers don't know anything about us just yet, so we would all appreciate it if you kept this visit strictly between ourselves. Is that okay, Chrissy?"

"If you say so, Mr Deal," I said. I laughed nervously - and that was no put-on."Who would I tell?"

"Loose lips sink ships," Deal said archly. He took a small blue book from Brian's desk and handed it to me."Take a look at these photograph's, Chrissy. Study them very carefully and tell me if you recognise any of the faces in them."

The photograph album was similar to the dozen or so I kept of Carl. Carl Riding His Trike, Carl At The Seaside, and so on. Little books of memories. Not the sort of database you'd expect the police to use, but then these were no ordinary policemen.

The first photograph showed the Casey gang posing against a huge black car, one of those monstrous great gas-guzzlers you see in the films. It was obviously taken somewhere in America, probably in one of those flat and empty mid-western states such as Kansas. All of them were masked but I could still pick out Pete Casey standing in the front line, and of course Robbie and Richard sitting on the roof of big car.

"I got that through the post about twelve months ago," Preston Deal said."It was taken in Illinois, the FBI tell me. I know it's difficult, but do you recognise any of those men, Chrissy?"

I peered intently at the photograph, my bottom lip caught between my teeth. I had to find the right balance or risk exposing myself. I was conscious of over-acting but at the same time I realised that suspicion would surely fall on me if I simply denied all knowledge of the men in the photograph.

"Not really," I said with a slim smile. "I'm sorry."

"Look carefully at the man in the front row with the short blond hair. Look at his eyes, Chrissy. Now look at the young man sitting on the roof of the car, to the right with the red scarf around his face. I want you to look very carefully at their eyes, Chrissy."

"You know," I said, tapping the photograph."There is something familiar about one or two of them, now that you've pointed it out to me. In fact I'm pretty sure that I've saw them in here last Saturday."

Preston Deal glanced at one of the black cats, a big man with broad shoulders and a five o'clock shadow."Was that the night you staged the mock gunfights, Chrissy?" the stranger asked me. He spoke with a southern accent.

"I believe it was," Brian put in on my behalf. All the black cats turned their eyes on him at the same time, and Brian's bald head went crimson.

"Chrissy?"

"Yes, that was the night. The young man with the red mask was called Jones, and the other one told me his name was Smith."

"Smith and Jones..." Preston Deal said speculatively."Didn't that make you a little suspicious, Chrissy?"

"We had three Doc Holidays in that competition, Mr Deal. We also had the Ringo Kid, the Dingo Kid and and a woman called the Woman Kid. Why would I be suspicious of anyone calling themselves Smith and Jones?"

Preston Deal smiled quickly and nodded. I think I irked him with that smart-mouthed little routine, and that was not the way I wished to proceed.

"Sorry," I said with sincerity."It's just...all of you, you know."

Deal smiled again, only this time he seemed to lean towards an apology of his own."I understand. These men might look like a bunch of foundry workers out for a few lagers and a quiet game of Russian roulette, but they are all police officers of the rank of sergeant and above. See that man there -" He pointed directly to a slender man with short, curly black hair who was leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette."He's a superintendent, just like me. And just like me, Chrissy, he carries a gun. We all carry guns."

I looked slowly at the black cats, one implacable face after the other, and I could now see why Richard was so spooked. He must have heard them talking, or recognised them from previous encounters, or perhaps even brushed against one of them. I thought both sides could count themselves lucky that the meeting had passed unrecognised.

"We travel in a specially constructed armour plated van with bullet-proof windows," Deal went on."In the back is enough hardware to fight a war. We're tooled up to meet the devil, Chrissy. Also, we have Home Office dispensation to requisition helicopters and armed back-up in any county we happen to be in, which means, in effect, that as a group we out-rank every Chief Constable in the land. There used to be nine of us but two are dead now, one of them killed by the men we're pursuing. Do you know the men we are looking for?"

"It's the Casey gang," I said without hesitation."You told me the last time you came."

Preston Deal took a packet of cigarettes from the desk and lit one."Smoke, Chrissy?"

I took one and lit it from Deal's lighter. Brian thoughtfully provided me with an ashtray from his desk drawer.

"At the time we weren't sure that the shooting of Marwood, Peel and Rutherford was actually the work of the Casey gang. In fact I still had my doubts up until a few days ago. You see, Chrissy, lots of people claim to see the Casey brothers. Some do it for attention, while with others its a case of mistaken identity. I'll let you into a secret the press don't know about, shall I?

"One weekend last summer we received three separate telephone calls from people claiming to have seen the Casey brothers in Leeds. Robbie likes nightclubs and Pete's hobby is scouring the vinyl record shops for rare albums." The policeman gave a baffled shrug."Don't ask me where he keeps his record player because if I knew that....Anyway, those were the places they were spotted. Then on the Monday we were faxed a still photograph taken by the security cameras positioned outside a branch of the Yorkshire bank in the centre of Leeds. It apparently showed Pete and Robbie Casey observing the comings and goings in and around the bank, the volume of road traffic etc. In other words they were planning a robbery. So we all piled into the van and headed up the motorway. On the way we had a phone call saying that Leeds police had actually apprehended the Casey brothers and were holding them in custody. When we got to Millgarth we discovered that the two men in the cells were really professional actors hired by the Casey gang to divert attention away from a security van robbery they had been planning in Glasgow."

I smiled but only in a lordy, isn't that strange? kind of way. I didn't want Deal to see how tickled I was by the cunning of the Casey brothers.

"So you see, if the team investigated every possible sighting and incident we would need our own helicopter, and the Commissioner says that would be too costly. Instead we have an intelligence officer attached to each force. If a report from an intelligence officer looks promising then one or more of my men will follow it up, but he'll only call out the rest of the team in the most positive of situations. I'm sure you can work out the implications of that kind of strategy, Chrissy. It means we're usually one step behind the Casey gang. Occasionally, such as last week when a normally reliable snout packed us off us on a wild goose chase to the south of France, it's a big step, but now and again we get so close that we hear the doors slamming behind them."

I had finished with the cigarette. I died it out and passed the ashtray to Brian. His eyes were fearful and concerned for me."I don't understand why you're telling me all of this," I said, trying to sound bewildered."What's it got to do with me?"

Preston Deal held up his hand."I'm getting there, Chrissy. I just want you to understand what we're up against. The first thing a copper has to do when investigating the Casey gang is sort out the rumour and myth from the concrete evidence. There's so much of one and so little of the other, I'm afraid. But when I heard about the mock gunfights last Saturday night - when I heard about the cocky young gunslinger who wore a mask over his face and liked to show off to the audience - I was cautiously hopeful. I got a feeling-" He thumped his gut vehemently."Call it intuition. Added to the Casey gang's possible involvement in a previous incident here that feeling intensified. But that's the good news. The bad news is that I didn't find out that the Casey brothers had taken part in the mock gunfight until this afternoon. A witness recognised them on the night, but then had doubts and sat on his hands for a whole week before calling the police."

Deal glanced gloomily at the curly haired superintendent with his back against the wall."What sort of luck is ours, Gal?"

"No luck," the detective said with a wry smile."Up to press, that is."

Deal turned back to me."We know you got friendly with the Casey brothers that night, Chrissy. Now, don't say anything at the moment-"

"Because I'd like you to look at some other photographs first of all. Go on, turn to the next one."

I flipped to the next photograph in the album and saw Richard Linton, aged about fifteen, sitting on a motorbike which looked to have been constructed from bits of old lawnmower and washing machine parts. His hair was long and untidy and his tee-shirt was smeared with grease. He was smiling into the camera with ferocious pride. Look at my beautiful bike, he might have been thinking, but knowing Richard the bike would have been no more than a prop. He was the star of this photograph. Look at me, his face was saying...and don't ever forget me.

"Do you recognise him, Chrissy?"

I was too scared to look Preston Deal in the eye, scared that he might read me like an open book.

"I think he went under the name of Calamity Jack," I said doubtfully."I think that was the name he used." Which wasn't a complete untruth, as Richard, all be it on my intervention, had taken the real Calamity Jack's place in the gunfights. Furthermore, Calamity Jack was the only name I had entered into that little book where I had listed all the competitors prior to giving them a badge.

"His real name is Richard Linton. He's wanted on suspicion of armed robbery, attempted murder and at least one count of murder. You spoke with him last Saturday night."

"Did I?" I glanced up briefly, then looked at the photograph again as if I was trying hard to jog my memory."Well, I spoke with all the competitors that night..."

"Chrissy's great with the customers," Brian said, and I passed him a grateful smile.

"You were sitting at a table with Pete and Robbie Casey and the young man known as Richard Linton."

"Yeah, Richard," I said."You know, now that you mention it I think he did tell me that his name was Richard. Yes, I'm positive."

"Richard Linton?"

"He didn't tell me his surname. None of them did."

"Okay, Chrissy," Preston continued."Would you look at the other photographs please."

I looked at four more photographs. The first two were of men I recognised only from wanted posters and Crime Watch appeals. The first was young and dark-haired, a football thug with ambition. The second was tall and blond like Pete but he was older and looked like a man who had seen the edge of the world.

Next was Sonny Wilson, whom I had met on the night that Richard shot Robbie. The last was a slightly fuzzy picture of a man in army uniform crouched over a map in some dingy hut. The insignia on the front of his beret had been scribbled over with a biro to disguise the regiment. This was Clayton Pepper, Pete's personal bodyguard.

"Those photographs show Billy Young, Clayton Pepper, Sonny Wilson and Ben Miller. These men are believed to be current members of a band of armed robbers commonly known as the Casey gang. Do you recognise any of them, Chrissy?"

"Pete and Robbie Casey, and the boy you say is called Richard Linford," I said as I handed Deal the photograph album.

"Linton."

"Linton then. Can I ask you a question?"

He nodded and reached for another cigarette. By now the room was cloudy and stale from cigarette smoke."Anything you like."

"Have you got me here because you think I'm something to do with the Casey gang? Is this a...you know...like a formal interview? Am I suspected of something?"

"Chrissy," Deal said, leaning forward to put a calming hand on my shoulder."No one suspects you of being anything but a grand barmaid. Believe me, we're not insinuating a thing. But - and let me stress this point - this team of cockeyed coppers here work largely on intelligence. Do you know what I mean by that?"

"Sure," I said."You mean information, right?"

"I mean gossip, snippets, titbits, facts, fiction, headlines and headcases, Chrissy. We listen to them all, hear everything and act on what needs to be acted upon. You shared a drink with Pete and Robbie Casey plus a third member of their gang, shared a laugh and a joke and perhaps exchanged, in an off-hand way, information about your lives. Can you think of anything they might have told you, Chrissy? Anything at all?"

"Maybe they mentioned holidays," the broad, unshaven policeman suggested."Spain perhaps? Did they say anything about travelling to Spain, Chrissy?"

"No, I don't think so."

"What about transport, Chrissy?" the curly haired superintendent asked."Did they happen to mention how they had arrived? You know, did they talk about cars and stuff?"

"All men talk about cars," I said.

Deal was smiling indulgently."I know, I know, but can you recall if they mentioned any specific make of car? For instance, did one of them say...oh, I don't know, something like,'hey, Chrissy,you should come outside and see this new van we've got.' " There was a ripple of derisive laughter from the other policemen. Deal turned his head and made a private gesture which the others smirked and snorted at. I wondered if they saw themselves as being a gang, because that's how I suddenly saw them; every bit as much a gang as the outlaws they were chasing in fact.

"Did you ask them where they came from, Chrissy?" Someone asked me. The studious young southerner was handsome in a plain, bookish kind of way, but there was something creepy about him that made me shiver inside. His eyes sat big and lifeless behind the lenses of his penny glasses like anatomical specimens in a jar. An academic thug with a strong leaning towards sexual cruelty, I figured.

"Not directly," I answered smoothly. He was making me nervous, this one, but if I let him see that he would immediately shed his skin and show me what a vicious bastard he really was."I mean, I might have asked them but I don't recall getting an answer. Maybe one of them said Manchester." I shrugged blankly."Can't remember, really."

"Okay, Chrissy," Preston Deal said."Maybe something will come back to you in time. I'm going to leave you a couple of telephone numbers." He took a notebook from his back pocket and wrote on the first page, which he tore out and gave to me."The top number is my mobile number, and the second number puts you straight through to the telephone in the van. Don't go through the local police, Chrissy."

I heard a veiled warning in his voice."I thought you were local," I said.

He nodded."I'm local enough but I'm not with the local bill, if you see the difference. I'm the operational head of a deniable police unit with no official name. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner refers to us as Room G5, because that's the office at Scotland Yard which we occupy. Other bobbies call us the Posse, while the Casey gang - so it's rumoured - know us simply as Southern Accents. What do you want to call us, Chrissy?"

"Black cats," I said. A few of them laughed. Preston Deal smiled questioningly."I used to have this aunt," I explained."A nice old bird but a bit eccentric. She had about nine cats, all of them black or dark, and they all just sat around on the furniture staring at you." I laughed embarrassedly and waved my hand in front of my face."You all made me think of the black cats, that's all."

"Black cats," Deal repeated, then turned to the curly haired superintendent and grinned."Black cats, Gary, what do you think of that one?"

"Purrrfect," the policeman called Gary said.

There were no more questions to answer. I stood up as they began to file out of Brian's office, my legs weak and shaky with relief. Preston Deal was the last one to leave. He appeared to linger as if there was something on his mind.

"Try and have a think," he said with another of those patronising smiles."It's very important, Chrissy. Anything you remember could be useful to us, even if to you it seems trivial or irrelevant." He thanked Brian and turned to go - then turned back again. My heart was going up and down like a leaf in the wind."Did you like them, Chrissy?"

"Excuse me?" I said, stalling for time. I didn't know how much more of him I could take.

"The Casey brothers - did you like them?"

"Yes," I said truthfully."Pete Casey was quiet, a bit stand-offish but nice enough. Robbie was funny and charming."

"I've met them, you know," he said, looking past me as if actually gazing back through a time tunnel."Quite a few years ago now, but I've never forgotten it. What did you make of Richard Linton?"

"We didn't speak much."

"But you flirted with him."

Deal stared at me with eyes that were suddenly alert and compelling. I knew he was recording my reaction, as good as photographing every detail of it and sticking it in that album with his little snapshots of the Casey gang."The witness told us that."

"Didn't mean anything," I managed to reply."He was the youngest in the bar, I was just teasing him."

"We don't normally serve minors," Brian said. His voice broke Deal's concentration. I don't think I've ever been more grateful or more relieved in my entire life. I truly believe that if Brian hadn't been there that night, if it had been just Preston Deal and I in that office, he would have drawn a confession from me with the deceptively skilful ease of a doctor extracting a foreign body from under the skin.

Confession...

What I had to confess was this: not only was I withholding vital information concerning the possible whereabouts of the two most wanted men in Europe, I had also willingly helped a third wanted man evade police capture. That's against the law, so I guessed I was now something of a criminal myself.

"Did you believe that story I told you about the Casey brothers using actors as decoys?"

"Sure," I said."Why shouldn't I?"

Deal smiled kindly."It's not true, Chrissy. It's popular myth. There's a hundred and one fascinating little anecdotes about the Casey gang but there's hardly a grain of truth in any of them. The truth is this: armed robbery is not a glamorous business. The Casey brothers are nothing more or less than thieves and murderers, and that goes for every chancer who teams up with them. For every comic-book adventure story you know about the Casey gang I can show you a bank cashier or security guard whose life will never be the same again." He opened the photograph album and held up the portrait of the Casey gang."When Pete and Robbie Casey get sent to prison for the rest of their lives, I'm going to put this picture in an envelope and post it to Parkhurst along with a photograph of the men who put them there. While Pete and Robbie Casey are fighting off big queers in the showers, we'll all be smiling and drinking Sangria somewhere on the Costa-del-sol. I've already started to pack, Chrissy, because the net's closing on the Casey gang. They've no idea how close we are, no idea at all." He closed the photograph album and looked at me with frank comprehension."Do you know how the Casey gang have managed to evade capture for so long?"

Because you're so stupid, I wanted to say, but of course I didn't. In fact I didn't make a reply other than to shake my head. I thought if I opened my mouth I might scream.

"Well, they go out of the country a lot, we know that, but we have good reason to believe that when they are living here they stay with women friends. Over the years they've managed to cultivate a select group of mistresses willing to risk going to prison to protect the men they love. These women intrigue me almost as much as the Casey gang do. The men get a safe house where they're treated like royalty, but what's in it for the women?"

"Are you asking?" I said, finding my voice.

Deal shrugged."Just speculating. I'd like your opinion though, as a woman."

"As a woman, Mr Deal, my opinion would mean nothing to you."

"Good answer, Chrissy," he said with a faint smile."It's fun to play games from time to time, but now I'm going to be straight with you. I know you met three members of the Casey gang that night, and I think you might even have developed a crush on one of them. Richard Linton and Robbie Casey are too young, so that makes Pete Casey the most likely candidate. I don't think you took him home because Pete's too wily to put himself at risk that way. Robbie maybe, and Richard Linton certainly, but not Pete Casey."

"You know a lot more than I do," I said. I found it easier to lie now that Deal had switched to the wrong track."I had a couple of drinks with three strangers. I thought I recognised one of them - Robbie Casey, as it turns out - but I wasn't in the least bit suspicious of them." I laughed hollowly."They were nice to me. I don't get many people being nice to me in this place."

"They weren't being nice to you, Chrissy, they were charming you," Deal said gently."Don't be a fool for them. Don't let them get under your skin, because once you do you're infected for life. You'll never be the same again."

"It was just a couple of drinks," I persisted with taut exasperation."Nothing happened. I wouldn't have allowed anything to happen."

"I believe you."

"Christine's not like that," Brian said, his voice a harsh whip-crack of indignant force."Christine's the most..." He coughed and looked suddenly embarrassed."Well, she's just not like that at all."

I smiled at him, touched by his unprompted desire to defend my reputation.

"I'm not passing judgement," Deal said quickly. He looked measuredly at Brian before giving me an equally thoughtful once-over. I was pretty certain that he had just jumped to a wrong conclusion but it was one I was in no hurry to correct."But if Pete Casey senses a weakness in you he'll come back to work on you some more, and before you know it you're in too deep. All I want you to do is promise that if he does get in touch with you again you'll let me know. That goes for any member of the Casey gang. Will you promise me that, Chrissy?"

I promised.

I lied.

It was easy.

**************

 Preston Deal had done something worse than frighten me. He had given me doubts. Suddenly I doubted all kinds of things, least of all my own behaviour. It wasn't a question of what I had done but the reasons behind my actions that I now began to doubt. He started me thinking about heat waves again, about mirages and distortions of reality. He started me wondering whether I was falling in love or falling under a wicked enchantment.

These were doubts I had harboured from the very beginning, but only now, only in the fury and despair of my jealousy, did I begin to recognise patterns in the shivering heat haze.

I felt myself being cruelly shaken from a fantastic dream...and then, at the very last moment, I came to my senses.

Brian had been gone for about two minutes. That's all it took for me to see that Preston Deal was shooting psychological arrows. Trying to make me believe that the Casey gang manipulated suitably susceptible women into becoming their molls was a clever way of stirring up trouble. He was attempting to undermine the ideal, to chip away at the romantic image of the Casey gang as semi-mythical working class anti-heroes, and to present instead the reality that Pete and Robbie Casey and anyone else who happened to tool up and go to work with them were lying, devious swine with a fondness for loose women.

One thing Preston Deal neglected to consider through to its logical conclusion was this: New Man, with his sensitivity and his emotions and his Gillette shave and his gurgling baby glued to his hairless chest, he was the semi-mythical figure. If he existed anywhere outside the saccharin television commercials and glossy magazine features it was only in the wine bars and health clubs and village fetes and sushi restaurants of middle-class, middle-management's middle-England. He wasn't down the Old Black Kettle drinking Budweiser and fist-fighting in the car park, or getting in touch with his inner-self while he waited for the next giro cheque to drop through the letterbox.

I didn't even bother to look for him, not down here; life's too tough and the work's too damn physical to produce that kind of man. Down here there's a lot of bad rock and the odd rough diamond, and by and large a woman takes what she can find and makes the best of it. We respect strength and courage more than understanding and sensitivity, because down here one ethos makes you a man and the other makes you different, and being different makes you an outsider.

The Casey gang came from us. We women made them what they are because they're everything we desire in a man. We made them, we grew them, and I'm telling you now, so long as they live, we'll protect them.

*****

By the time Brian returned from escorting Preston Deal and his team out of the bar things were clearer and calmer in my mind. What a shit he was (Deal, that was, not sweet old Brian) for trying to mess me up with mind games. More fool him for assuming that Pete Casey was the one I had fallen for. Hey, Pete Casey has got another girlfriend, Chrissy! What are you going to do about it, eh?

Like I said, more fool him. Pete Casey could have a hundred girlfriends scattered across the planet for all I cared, because I was virtually certain that Richard Linton did not have even a single romantic interest other than yours truly.

"Everything alright, Christine?" Brian asked. He took a chair and pulled it close to mine. His eyes contained a depth of pity and compassion I was ashamed to accept.

"I'm fine," I said."Still a bit stunned, that's all."

"I'm sorry I didn't do more. I should have stopped that...that bastard from going on the way he did. It wasn't fair. He doesn't know you, Christine."

I smiled and patted his hand."Not like you, Brian."

"Well..." he said, reddening."Just so long as you know I'm always here if you want to talk."

"Can we talk on the way home?" I ventured."I really don't feel like working tonight."

It wasn't much of a venture. Brian was fishing for his car keys even before he was up from the chair. We went out through the fire escape and walked up the dark alleyway to the car park. Brian was talking to me as he unlocked the car, but I couldn't stop my eyes from straying to the jagged line of rooftops on the old buildings opposite. In my mind's eye I could see Richard darting swiftly from chimney pot to chimney pot, sliding deftly down slopes and taking death-defying leaps across the narrow but uncompromising drops between the closely packed string of former factory units, the furtive phantom cat-burglar of macabre music hall songs.

"Christine?"

"Nothing," I said, opening the car door."I thought the neon was flickering, that's all."

"Trick of the eye," Brian said.

We drove home with the windows down and the radio on. Brian liked the country and western show on the local station. Some or other first lady of country was singing Blanket on the Ground.

"Have you never been married, Brian?" I asked him. I was genuinely curious. He was such a nice considerate man, the kind of man most women would settle for in the absence of unexpected twists such as my own life had taken of late.

"I was engaged once," he said pensively."Her name was Elizabeth. She was knocked off her bicycle and died instantly."

"I'm sorry," I intoned."You must miss her."

He shrugged and smiled ruefully."I did, but it was a long time ago now. Almost thirty years in fact. She's just a grey face in a black and white snapshot we had taken in Whitby. I can't really remember her for anything else. I can't remember her dreams."

We lapsed into our own personal thoughts. I cast my mind forward thirty years, to a lonely woman getting ready to open the door on old age, to a time when Richard Linton was long dead and no more to me than fading headlines in yellow newspapers under the worn carpet, no more than the distant, uncertain memory of an insolent young man sneering at a camera from his motorcycle. It distressed me to realise that I knew so little about him. I didn't know his dreams or his fears. And yet that same realisation was strangely comforting, strangely inspiring. I was not meant to know Richard Linton. He came to me as a wild bird swooping down into the palm of my outstretched hand. I had no right to tame him, to cage and domesticate him. With that same awareness I came to accept the inevitability that sooner rather than later he would fly away for good. What we had was already coming to an end.

Lightning flashed across the black sky. A few seconds later a clap of thunder made me jump in my seat.

"They forecast storms," Brain said gloomily.

"Good," I said. I sat up straight and watched for the next bolt of lightning."God, I love summer storms, don't you? All that power and energy, all that electricity being flung out of the sky. Awesome!"

Brain glanced at me, bemused behind his owlish spectacles."I've never really looked at-" He cringed as another rollicking explosion of thunder cut him off in mid-sentence.

We arrived home. Brian parked on the kerb and switched off the ignition. I got out of the car and tilted my face to the sky. The air felt hot and dry and brittle.

"There's no rain," I said."It feels...I don't know the word. What's the word, Brian?"

"Ominous," he said, coming up beside me."Are you going to stand here all night?"

I laughed and shook my head."No, course not. I wouldn't mind getting wet though. Don't you ever feel like standing out in the rain, Brian?"

Brian gave a fidgety smile and shrugged."I'm not really built for it am I, Christine?"

"What do you mean?" I asked as we walked to my front door.

"Film stars and pretty girls can dance about in the rain. Fat old baldies like me would look silly doing something like that."

I nudged him playfully."You're not fat, Brian."

He smiled reluctantly. He was in one of those determined self-pitying states of mind that are impossible to snap out of. They linger like hangovers, and the only thing you can do is sleep them off."I might as well be for all the difference it would make."

"Brian..." I dug my key out of the little pocket in the front of my skirt and unlocked the door."Sometimes it just smacks you in the face when you're least expecting it."

He gazed at me, not quite understanding.

"Love, Brian. Romance. One minute you might be walking along wondering why God made you the most unattractive person on the planet, and the next minute - blam! It drops out of the sky and crushes you. It's like being buried under tons of rubble and roses."

Brian's owlish eyes blinked slowly as he tried to make sense of my whimsical wittering. Suddenly I wanted to shake him and kiss him but I doubted his ability to cope with either.

"Listen..." I said.

A deep, guttural rumble of thunder grew in volume until it broke with an ear-splitting crash.

"You're a lovely man," I told him."I really mean that, Brian. Sometimes I wonder why the two of us are alone. But it won't be like that forever. Love's coming, Brian, and it's going to move you and scare you like that thunder does. You won't be ready for it, but then that's love isn't it?"

He was listening to me with perfect adoration, as if I was whispering sweet nothings in his ear. I don't think he was listening to the words, the dribbling, sugary garbage I was adapting from a hundred corny Sunday afternoon melodramas I'd seen, but I think the sound of my voice was doing something to him.

"Thanks for the time off," I said."And thanks for the sympathetic ear. Sometimes I just want to talk and talk."

"I don't mind listening, Christine."

"I know. You're wonderful. Night, Brian."

I went inside but left the front door wide open. My mother would never close an outside door during a thunder storm, and it's just one of a number of inherited superstitions I've followed ever since. Sometimes the crap our mothers leave in our minds cancels out all the wisdom they pass on.

I was feeling hot and tired and sticky. I wanted to take a shower and watch the storm from the bedroom window, where I could ponder over the implications of this evening's events.

Part of me had hoped that Richard would be waiting for me when I arrived home, perhaps hiding in the bushes or behind a neighbour's hedge. Realistically that was too much to hope for. The Black Cats were in town, or they were an hour ago, and that was sailing too close to the wind even for Richard Linton. I guessed he was out of town himself now, probably heading out of the county too.

I went into the kitchen and pulled off my boots, then stripped out of my clingy tee-shirt and white skirt and dumped them both into the washing machine. It was hot - too hot to sleep, as Robbie Robertson says in the song.

Because it wasn't yet ten o'clock I picked up the wall phone and called Val to see how Carl had behaved. Smashing, was Val's verdict. Funny how that little piece of unimportant domestic news sent a wave of good cheer through me.

"At least that's one thing off my mind," I told Val."Don't think I've got the energy to worry over two bad boys."

Of course she didn't know what I was talking about. I said it didn't matter and hung up with a very private smile. As I went into the hallway on my way upstairs to take a shower I was thinking about Richard Linton and the teasing way he unbuckled his belt that night at the Old Black Kettle. Even though I assumed he was on his way to one of the Casey gang's secret hideaways, I kept a glimmering nugget of hope that he would somehow slip back into Ritchmire undercover of the summer storm and finally...

There was a figure standing in the open doorway. The hall was in darkness, and the figure at the door just stood there watching me intently as if he possessed vision that could pierce the gloom.

"Richard? Is that you?"

I was groping for the lightswitch when lightning snaked across the sky and a fiendish face erupted in a flash of bright silver.

I gasped aloud with fright. I was suddenly conscious of my state of undress, as if my clothes had simply evaporated at that very moment, and with it came the awful awareness of my own vulnerability.

"Brian, what do you want?" I asked shakily."I was about to take a shower."

He stepped slowly into the hallway. And suddenly he was running at me with spidery quickness, his footsteps drowned by a rolling, growling wave of attacking thunder. I screamed and bolted for the kitchen. My mind went spinning back to the nightmare image of William Dexter raping Kay-lee in the club cellar. Maybe my subconscious had been trying to warn me all along, using the others like chess pieces so as not to disturb me too much. A note in my coat pocket would have much clearer, like the notes my mother used to leave there for me: They all rape you sooner or later, Chrissy, but be especially wary of the wolf in sheep's clothing.

Too late now. The wolf was in my house.

I had to make it into the kitchen. There were knives in the kitchen and, if I was fast enough to get the bolt off, a back door through which I could escape into the garden and scream-

"Raaaa-"

His arm looped over my shoulder, the palm of his hand smacking hard against my lips as it clamped down on my mouth. My head was yanked back but the weight and momentum of him sent us crashing into the kitchen door, which flew open with a bang that may even have been thunder.

He was on top of me, groping me roughly with one hand while his other hand remained pasted over my mouth. I twisted and flopped and bucked with all the frenzied strength of a fish on a riverbank but I could not shift his smothering weight.

Blasts of hot, sour breath hit the side of my face like moist slaps.

"Christine! Christine! Christine! Oh Christine!" this other wolf panted. I managed to turn my head and saw Brian's sinister, demonic face looming close to mine. I closed my eyes when he began to plant urgent, slobbering wet kisses on my cheek.

"Christine! Christine ! Christine!"

His weight shifted critically. The groping hand also moved in a frantic, desperate reaction. He was fumbling at the front of his trousers, fumbling for that huge hard cock I could feel digging into my thigh.

"Don't move."

The voice stilled us both. Brian's weight pressed down on me like a soaked mattress.

"Stand up," I heard Richard's cold, hate-filled voice order."Stand the fuck up so that I can kill you."

**********

Richard had a sawn off shotgun pressed to Brian's raised throat. Brian looked like a man who had been impaled on a sharp stick. His face had contorted into a grotesquely petrified mask complete with comical bug-eyes, and when a stroke of lightning flooded the hallway with jittery light he reminded me of a chilling exhibit in a waxwork museum's chamber of horrors.

I scampered away from him and pressed my back against the kitchen wall. I couldn't find the strength or the will to get back on my feet.

"Are you alright, Chrissy?"

I heard myself make an absurdly cheerful humming sound.

"Up we get," Richard said to Brian."And don't you try anything silly now, granddad."

Richard nudged him gently under the chin with the end of the shotgun, and Brian rose to his feet as if he was being lifted ever so delicately on a crane.

"Turn the light on, Chrissy."

I heard what he said but I couldn't make myself respond. I felt my mind beginning to drift away to a safer place.

"Chrissy!" Richard's voice was sharp and reprimanding."Get on your feet and switch on the fucking lights!"

I scrambled upright and turned on the fluorescent ceiling light."Don't look at me!" I screamed, but instead of trying to cover up my exposed flesh I simply hid behind my fingers like a frightened child.

"I'll make you suffer for this," I heard Richard say in a fuming, menacing whisper."Chrissy...Chrissy!"

Reluctantly I lowered my hands. Richard was gazing at me with a wilting, anguished expression. Forced to stand almost on tiptoes, Brian now seemed to dangle from the end of Richard's stubby little shotgun like a hanged man.

"Did he hurt you, Chrissy?"

I shook my head forcefully.

Richard nodded, then turned to Brian."Those men who came to your bar tonight were looking for me. My name's Richard Linton, and I used to run with the Casey gang before I was kicked out for being too aggressive. Do you believe me, Brian? And don't nod your head, my friend, because if you upset this shotgun you won't have much of a head left. Just answer the question - do you believe I am who I say I am?"

Brian swallowed with a dry clicking sound."Yes," he answered in a helium-filled squeak. His bald head was redder than a Swan Vesta. I could clearly see the rivulets of sweat rolling down the dome.

"And do you believe that I'll kill you sure as spit in your face if you so much as think about making a run for it?"

"Yes."

"I bet you say that to all the boys," Richard said, giving Brian a teasing little prod in the neck with the shotgun. He looked at me with a smile that was every bit as wild and dazzling as the streaks of lightning flashing across the sky outside."He's a believer, Chrissy."

We laughed together, and somewhere in the back of my mind I heard a sound like glass shattering.

"Need your help now, Chrissy," he said."Need you to be a big girl and wise up. Can you do that?"

"Can you fill a bucket?" I retorted automatically, and Richard almost doubled over with laughter.

"Whoa..." he said, raising Brian's chin again with the end of the shotgun. There was humour in his blue eyes but they were also alert and threatening."This is not a laughing matter, is it, Brian?"

Brian closed his eyes as if praying.

"Chrissy, get some clothes on, pull the curtains and then go and lock the back door."

"What are you going to do with him?" I asked. Richard didn't answer me directly. I think he recognised the dread in my eyes.

"Chrissy, get some clothes on, pull the curtains and then go and lock the back door."

I did as I was told.

*********

When I went back into the kitchen, dressed in clean clothes from upstairs, Richard and Brian were sitting at the table as if one of them was about to deal a hand of cards. Brian lowered his eyes when I walked into the room. Richard didn't seem to notice my arrival at first. He was staring at Brian with icy hatred. I couldn't see the shotgun but then I realised that Richard had it under the table.

"Did you lock the door?"

"Yes."

He looked at me and smiled. Warmth flooded his eyes and face."Not too bad?"

"Not too bad," I said. Now I looked at Brian, his head bowed in shame, and I tried to dredge up the kind of hate I read in Richard's eyes but it wouldn't come. I felt nothing. Nothing at all except maybe a sense of sadness and profound disappointment.

"I thought you were my friend," I said tonelessly."I thought you were my friend, Brian."

He looked not at me but at Richard, a quick, timid glance before he lowered his eyes again.

"He's been sent to Coventry," Richard said with mild reproach."Brian's not allowed to open his mouth or look you in the eye, because if he does then Uncle Wichard is going to send him a lot further than Coventry...he's going to send him all the way to kingdom fucking come, right, Brian?"

"I'll thank you to stay out of this," I said sharply.

Richard gazed at me serenely."Sure?" he asked."Sure about that, Chrissy?"

"I didn't mean-"

My head was aching. I turned away from them and went to the sink, where I turned on the cold tap and let it run until it was fit to drink.

"I didn't mean that," I said, shaking droplets of water from the glass before setting it on the rack to dry. I watched the movements my hand was making with disbelief. Ten minutes ago I had been fighting off a rapist. The country's third most wanted man was now holding that rapist at gunpoint. This was all happening in my kitchen, my kitchen with its new washing machine I couldn't afford and the buzzing fridge that occasionally woke Carl in the night. I was drinking water and putting the glass on the damn rack to dry as if nothing had happened, as if the damn glass meant a damn thing in this mad, fractured picture."If you hadn't come when you did, that man would have raped me." Tears burned my eyes. I didn't want to cry but I knew I had to if I was to regain any semblance of sanity."He wher-wher-would have raped me."

"Hey, hey now," Richard called anxiously. He came over to me and slipped his arm around my waist. I twisted around and buried my head against his chest, and then just cried and cried while he rocked me and comforted me with soft sounds. I couldn't think of him as a seventeen year old boy just then. He was too strong, too much a rock, and he smelled too much like a man.

"Don't cry now," he whispered in my ear."I got the bad man, Chrissy, I got the bad man."

I drew away from him and wiped my eyes. It was the first time we had held each other and I didn't ever want to let him go.

"Better, Chrissy?"

I held the back of his neck and pulled his head down so that his lips could meet mine.

"Wait," he said, pulling away from me with a wicked glint in his eye. He looked over his shoulder to check that Brian hadn't moved. I pressed myself against him, hooking one leg around the backs of his thighs.

"I want you now, right here," I said urgently."Right here, right now, Richard."

He turned his head and smirked arrogantly."It's nice to be wanted, Chrissy."

"Oh, you're wanted," I said breathlessly, pressing into the bulge in his Levis until I felt myself begin to go dizzy with delirium."Dead or alive, Richard Linton, dead or alive."

I don't know why Brian didn't run for it, though it was probably because Richard was a more terrifying character than I would ever know. He was just a great big teddy bear at home, I heard this silly, simpering voice in my mind say.

"What are you going to do with him?" I asked, breaking gently from Richard's embrace."I don't want him hurt, Richard."

"He tried to rape you, Chrissy. Do you think that sort of urge just goes away?"

I looked at Brian cringing in his seat and felt a stirring of pity for him. This man was finished, beaten. I think he had just enough self-respect in him to ensure his own destruction.

That's only because he got caught, a malicious thought spoke up. Suppose he had got away with it - do you think he would be sitting there looking like it was his world that was caving in? Like hell he would. He would have swaggered out of the front door looking like a man who had single-handedly satisfied the female population of Great Britain, pulling up his zip and laughing his sweaty bald head off, leaving you on the floor, Chrissy, leaving you to decide whether your future lay in the long, long road back to normality or in the bathroom cabinet.

"I need a drink," I said.

"Good idea." Richard returned to the table, the shotgun trained absently on Brian's groin."What have you got?"

"Vodka."

"Anything else?"

"Ice."

I had the champagne but this didn't seem like an appropriate moment. Instead I took a half bottle of vodka from the fridge, a tray of icecubes from the freezer, and fixed Richard and myself a stiff drink. I sipped mine by the sink. I couldn't bring myself to sit at the same table as Brian.

"What are we going to do with him, Richard?"

"We?" he repeated, raising his eyebrows in a warning way."There's no we here, Chrissy. Whatever happens is down to me and me alone."

Brian cleared his throat and looked meekly at Richard."Please, can I just -"

"I told you to keep your fucking mouth closed!" Richard spat venomously. The stubby little shotgun was out above the table in a flash. He's the fastest gun in the west, I remembered."Didn't I tell you to keep that fucking trap of yours closed, Brian?" He tilted his head and cupped his ear."Didn't I, Brian? Didn't I tell you to keep your FUCKING MOUTH CLOSED!"

"Richard!" I hissed."Keep your voice down!"

He looked at me with guilty surprise. All at once he wasn't even seventeen years old but a child I had caught with his hand in the biscuit tin."Jesus, you're scary," he laughed."Did you ever teach maths to the dumb kids, Chrissy?"

"Shut up," I said, hiding a smile."This isn't funny. This isn't a big game like one of your Casey gang things, Richard. That policeman who grilled me tonight knew something." I took a drink of the vodka, eyeing him over the rim of the glass. He smirked and I narrowed my eyes in warning."Wouldn't surprise me if they were all watching the house right this minute."

"Ah, sausage meat," Richard scoffed."What did Deal say to you, eh? Did he tell you how bad they were? Did he tell you they all drive around in this big fucking tank?" Sneering, he sat back in his chair and crossed his ankles."Deal ain't got an armoured van, Chrissy. He needs to combat the myths that surround the Casey gang by inventing myths about himself and the Southern Accents. Least that's what Pete Casey says, and he should know; Deal's been chasing him long enough."

"He was here wasn't he? Isn't that close enough?"

"They got lucky," Richard said, unperturbed."Pete and Robbie should have stayed away from that bar you work in. They're too well known."

"So why did they come back after shooting Marwood and his mates?"

Richard shrugged churlishly."I don't know," he muttered.

"To keep an eye on you?"

He wriggled in his seat, shrugged and finally nodded."Nearly got me caught as well, didn't they? Fuck 'em anyway, Chrissy. I'm better off without the Casey brothers."

They were bitter words but he spoke them with enough regret to make me understand how lonely he was outside the comfort and security of the gang.

"Have you eaten?" I asked him.

"A sandwich would be alright," he said, then turned his head and stared thoughtfully at Brian, who had pulled himself back into his shell like a frightened tortoise."But we've got a job to do first."

*****************

 I'm going to tell you exactly what we did that night, even though you already know.

You know, don't you?

See, even if you hadn't read all about me in the newspapers, you'd still know. You can feel it coming. Like the storm. Like the rain.

Like the end.

*****

"I need you to drive," Richard said. He dipped his hand into his jeans pocket and handed me a set of car keys."It's the dark blue Ford Escort, the old mark-three model parked near some lock-up garages behind an off-licence. Do you know where I mean?"

"Yes."

"Look outside then, make sure everything's groovy, girl."

The hallway lights were off. I opened the front door and peered out into the empty street."Okay," I said.

"Right, go on then. Walk naturally. Don't do anything to make people remember you. Sit in the car but don't switch on the lights."

I looked back, puzzled.

"Me and Brian are taking the long way round, just in case."

"Richard..."

"We're just going to hand him over to the police, Chrissy."

"But what-"

"Shush," he said softly, putting a finger to my lips."I've just told you what we're going to do. There's no need to question everything, Chrissy. Go sit in the car - in the driver's side, and unlock the back doors."

He ushered me outside. The door closed and locked behind me. I felt suddenly afraid without him.

It wasn't far to where Richard had parked his car but it felt like the longest walk I had ever taken. The strange, perilous fragility in the atmosphere was conducting live charge into my frayed nerves. There was a sense of dramatic tension in the air as the sky continued to flash and rumble, but if anything the night seemed to be growing hotter and more humid. I prayed for the rain, for a break in this dangerous electric limbo.

If I passed anyone during that short but seemingly endless walk I never noticed them. The only sign of life came when I heard a window open and a vaguely familiar tune playing faintly on a radio that was whistling and crackling with interference. I tensed and almost pulled up, half-expecting someone to yell out Hey you! Hey, rape lady! I know what you're planning to do with him! Police my eye! You're going to mur-

I shut my mind and hurried on, hearing nothing but whistles and whines and the dying sound of a song I should have known, and I-

-a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn and I-

-just kept going until I reached the the lock-up garages. I got into the car and sat for a few moments, motionless, my hands gripping the wheel as if my life depended on it. When I had regained some of my former composure I wiped my sweaty palms and unlocked the back doors as Richard had instructed. I longed for the company of the radio, perhaps some smoky-voiced lonesome dee-jay on a night-time talk show who would soothe my nerves, but strange as it may sound I feared hearing the news bulletins.

It was a completely irrational thought but so is leaving the front door open during a thunder storm.

I wasn't thinking straight. I snapped open the glovebox, switched on the overhead light and located a crumpled pack of foreign cigarettes and a lighter. The cigarette was rough and strong but the nicotine jabbed my brain and seemed to instantly pacify a deep, demanding craving. I switched off the light and smoked the stale cigarette until Richard and Brian arrived.

Richard opened the door and pushed Brian inside."Lock his door, Chrissy," he said. I had to twist around, and as I did I caught Brian's eye for the first time since he tried to rape me. It was like looking at an old and defeated stray mongrel gazing through the mesh of his cage at the lost dogs home.

I locked the door and stared straight ahead through the windscreen."We can end this right now," I said, my voice high and tight and scared."We can just turn him out of the car and that's the end of it, that's where it will finish."

Richard put his hand on my shoulder, leaned forward and kissed me softly on the neck. I shivered convulsively as if he had run a feather down my bare spine."I've nearly gone crazy thinking about you these past few weeks," he whispered."I can't get you out of my mind. Pete and Robbie said it was stupid, said you can't fall in love with someone you hardly know." He kissed me again, warm, gentle little pecks like raindrops on my neck."It's not stupid is it, Chrissy?"

I could barely speak. My eyes were closed. I gripped the steering wheel as a tremor of unutterable excitement rippled and quaked inside me.

Is this him or is this me? I thought dimly. Is he the sexiest man in the world or am I the sexiest woman? Then I remembered what Pete Casey said to me:If you ever stop being afraid and meet in the middle, something big is going to happen.

My God, it was happening.

"No," I whispered back.

"Because it killed me seeing him do that to you. Seeing him hurting you. I won't let anyone hurt you, Chrissy. I won't stand for it."

He sat back against the seat. A pang of empty sorrow crushed me quite unexpectedly. I was lost without his touch. I couldn't even distinguish his face in the driving mirror. All I could see was a dark, confused phantom, his fading ghost. I was losing him, and I was willing to do anything just so long as we had the rest of tonight together.

"Start the car," he said."Don't go straight to the police station just yet - I want to drive around first, get a few things straight in my head. This is dangerous ground for me. Brian understands. There's no rush is there, Brian?"

Brian didn't answer but Richard laughed coldly. I started the engine, switched on the headlamps and drove slowly out of the garage yard and into the road.

"Put the radio on, Chrissy," Richard said when we were on the main road into town."I like Virgin."

"I'd rather not." I was thinking about that imaginary news flash again.

"Come on, I always have music on when I'm driving."

"You're not driving," I reminded him.

"Makes no difference. You know, when the Casey gang go on a job we play that music from Apocalypse Now, where all the helicopters are on the way to bomb the Japs or whatever they are." He hummed it loudly. I recognised the tune but only from a furniture polish commercial.

"That's sausage meat," I scoffed, and Richard giggled like a small boy.

"You stole my catchphrase," he said delightedly."Guess I'm a bad influence on you, Christine."

I looked in the mirror and smiled wryly."In your dreams, Richard Linton."

"Yes he is," a voice as dry and bland as a Cream Cracker spoke out. It was Brian but he sounded so strange and alien that I was genuinely jolted. I briefly turned my head to see if a forth presence had materialised on the back seat.

"Shut up!" Richard rasped."I told you to shut up!"

"Christine, please listen to me, please-"

I heard a thump and a cry of pain and surprise.

"I said shut it!"

We were coming to a set of traffic lights on red. I pulled up and twisted around in my seat. Brian was sitting with his eyes staring straight ahead and both hands clasped over his mouth like the wise monkey speak-no-evil. Richard glowered at me as if daring me to defend Brian.

"Put the fucking radio on, Chrissy," he said, his voice tetchy and sullen.

I faced forward again. The lights changed and I rolled the car through as I fiddled with the radio dial.

"Leave this," Richard said when I found Steely Dan singing Do It Again."Keep your eyes on the road, Chrissy, you're all over the place."

"Do you want to drive?"

"Do you want to shoot Brian?"

Lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the radio crackled angrily. I noticed a few specs of rain on the windscreen.

*********

"I'm going to take him out on the moors and beat the living daylights out of him," Richard said decisively. We had been driving round and round the town centre in loaded silence for about twenty minutes. A rainstorm of almost biblical portentousness was flooding the town. People emerging from restaurants and other late-night places were running for the cover of cars and taxis like panicked insects being flushed out of a drainpipe. I could no longer hear the revving of the old engine over the deafening thudder-thudder-thudder of rain-rivets being driven into the roof of the car.

"Keep the engine going, Chrissy."

"I am."

"If it stalls in this we won't get going again."

The lights changed from a red smudge to a green smudge in the steamy rain-washed windscreen. I powered through, tyres slicing through a deep puddle and sending a mini-tidal wave over a drunken old man who was sitting at the kerb's edge like some bizarre fishing gnome. Richard snorted with laughter.

"See that, Chrissy? You almost drowned him."

"Where shall I go now?" I asked irritably."I can't keep driving round in circles all night. We'll run out of petrol for a start."

"The tank was full," Richard said smoothly."Just keep your hair on and do as I say."

The windscreen was so grey with condensation I could hardly see the road. The wipers were defective and could only manage to shift the rain in brief spurts of animation. I played around with the heater controls until I finally managed to lift the curtain of steam from the windscreen.

"Brian thinks I'm going to kill him," Richard said with confidential amusement."I bet he thinks I was really in the Casey gang too."

I didn't like this. It was too much like a cat toying with a mouse, letting it scurry away before casually trapping it by the tail again.

"All I'm going to do is rough him up a bit. What would the law do to him anyway? Nothing, that's what. He'd probably get off with a fine for assault or something stupid like that. Nobody gets done for attempted rape these day. They'd probably laugh at you, Brian."

"That's enough," I said lamely, but I think the sound of the rain drowned out my voice.

"It's only fair," Richard continued."You mess with my woman and I get to beat the daylights out of you. That's the law of the jungle, Brian. Hey, would you rather take your chances with the police? Do you want your name dragged through the newspapers? And besides, a fair fight's a fair fight. I'm not going to tie you up or anything. Chrissy can hold the gun and the two of us will be even. If you beat me that's your good luck."

I was heading for the Old Ritchmire Road without realising it. Richard lapsed into silence. I switched off the radio; the crackles and whistles were skewering my brain. Gradually the lights of town dispersed into smaller clusters strung out along the town road and scattered around the hills, and then became isolated dots glowing dimly like lone lanterns.

We were on the moors.

********************

 It comes back to me in terrible nightmares, that fated rubicon I crossed when Richard put his hand on my shoulder and told me to stop the car.

"Switch off the engine," Richard said."And the lights."

Blackness, gathered and crouched and nibbling the edges of the headlamp beam, now swooped on us, smothering, disorientating. The ceaseless drumming of rain on the roof seemed intensified in the sudden absence of the engine's subliminal undertone. Despite the hard, noisy rain and the restless sounds of thunder, I had never experienced such stillness, a stillness only mood can create. We three, with our expectancy, our respect and our dread, were more powerful than the storm.

Brian began to sob, but very quietly, as if he wished not to intrude on the dignity of the moment. Poetic cac you might think, but you weren't there. I can only say that it was every bit as moving and personal as kneeling before a church alter to question your soul and to contemplate mortality and what, if anything, lies thereafter. I think it's the closest I'll ever come to God.

"Is there a packet of fags in the glovebox?" Richard asked. His voice was quiet and solemn.

I could murder one, I expected him to add. I think if he had I would have laughed myself into the funny farm.

I rooted blindly through the glovebox until I found the packet of cigarettes and the lighter, lit two and handed one back to Richard.

"Chrissy..."

I lit a third and passed that back also.

We were on a bumpy, overgrown cart track somewhere on the Gelder moor. In the distance I could make out the shape of the Brunton Hills rippling darkly across the sky like some giant prehistoric monster. The road was only a short distance behind us but we might have been in the middle of a sunless, inhospitable world light years from our own.

"Brian and me are going for a walk now," Richard announced, and Brain uttered a wailing,anguished cry that was like something tearing. I closed my eyes, wanting desperately to feel the mercy and compassion I knew existed within me, but it was like looking over a cliff into a great empty hollow.

"It's him or me, Chrissy," Richard whispered in my ear."If I let him go I'll have to leave town for good. He knows who I am, and once he's gotten over the shock of tonight he'll try and fuck things up for us. I know his type, Chrissy. He'll want to get his own back on you. He won't rest until he's caused trouble and hurt. He'll be fucking you in his mind, raping you over and over again until he's completely fucked up your life."

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" Brian suddenly screamed."THAT'S NOT TRUE CHRISTINE HE'S LYING HE'S LYING!"

Richard pushed the car door open and slammed it shut behind him. I watched him march around the front of the car, his shoulders hunched and his head ducked against the force of the rain.

"Please Christine don't let him shoot me don't let him shoot me Christine I won't do it again Christine I'm sorry Christine please don't let him shoot me..."

Brian's panic-stricken jabbering was more than I could stand. It was like being trapped in a lift with an hysterical chimpanzee. And panic spreads like fire. I caught it, and I think Richard got burned too.

"Christine oh God Christine you have to tell him to stop just tell him to stop I won't tell anyone I swear I won't-"

Brian had gripped the back of the passenger seat and was shaking it violently. I could smell the sharp, acrid aroma of his terror.

"Christine! Christine!"

I clapped my hands over my ears and screwed up my eyes just as Richard opened the rear door and dragged Brian out into the storm.

My head was full of wasps. For a long time I rocked back and forth in my seat,hearing nothing but the angry buzzing of trapped wasps and the grumbling agitation of thunder.

And then I heard a gunshot.

*********

Far from tipping me over the edge, Brian's murder had a perversely calming effect on my state of mind. It was as if someone had gripped me hard and then slapped me across the face.

You knew what you were doing, I told myself. No good kicking and screaming and pretending it's come as some horrible shock, because you knew what you were doing.

The inner voice was right, but I had to get out of the car for a few moments. I had to breath air and feel the solid reality of the rain on my face.

I was soaked to the skin within seconds of stepping outside. It was every summer downpour you ever saw all rolled into one. It can't last, I thought. There isn't enough rain in the world.

Richard came trudging over the rise like a shipwreck survivor stumbling onto a desert island beach. His white shirt clung to his thin frame like a layer of wrinkled skin. Without a word he came to me and held me against his chest. We stayed that way for some timeless time, just being together, holding each other, taking all the rain the sky could throw at us.

**********

Richard drove the car back to the road. He reversed all the way because there wasn't enough room to turn the car around without leaving the track and risking the likelihood of getting stuck in a muddy hollow. While he concentrated his efforts on trying to navigate the car with only the tail-lights to guide him, I tried not to think about what would happen when Brian's body was eventually discovered.

We reached the road and Richard stopped the car. He turned around and looked at me with eyes that were old and tragic."Everything I touch turns to shit," he said."I meet someone as beautiful as you and end up screwing your life up."

"Don't talk that way," I said, holding his face between my hands.

"I bet you wish you'd never met me."

"Never!" I said, lifting his face so that he was forced to look me in the eye."Do you?"

"No."

I leaned over and kissed him."Don't you ever regret me, Richard Linton, because not for a second do I regret you."

He smiled shyly and fluttered his eyelids."Sweet talking bitch, you are."

"Sausage meat," I said."I bet all the girls talk to you this way. A big star bandit like you."

He smiled awkwardly."No other girls, Chrissy."

"I know."

"How?"

"Just do."

"Do you love me, Chrissy?"

"I do," I said."You knew that before I did."

"If I was older...If I wasn't seventeen, and if I wasn't wanted by the law, would you-"

I covered his mouth with my hand."No ifs, Richard. This isn't about ifs. You and me...we just are." I lowered my hand and pressed it against his chest. I could feel his heart beating."We just are."

****************

 We were on our way back home. I took the last two foreign cigarettes out of the packet, lit them and handed one to Richard. He smoked it appreciatively, holding each breath of smoke in his lungs as if savouring the effect.

"What are you staring at?" he asked, looking suspiciously at me from the corner of his eye.

"Nothing. Just you."

"What about me?"

"Who are you, Richard? Where did you come from?"

He didn't answer. He drew deeply on the cigarette; his face appeared tired in the warm red glow.

"Do you want the radio on?"

"Sure."

I switched it on but not too loud. Tom Petty was singing American Girl.

"Where did you go that night you shot Robbie Casey?" I asked him.

"I came to your house but you wouldn't let me in. Remember?"

"After that. You were gone for a whole week."

"I went to a safe house," he said."Pete knew where I was. He came to see me, gave me some cash and told me to be a good lad."

"Do you miss them?"

Richard smiled mirthlessly."Pete Casey is good bankrobber but he's a piss poor excuse for a dad."

"But they were your family weren't they? The Casey gang were like your family?"

He laughed cynically."We played the same sport, Chrissy, that's all. Armed robbery's just about the most glamorous criminal activity there is. You get dressed up, snort some coke, and on you go. It's performance crime. Being with the Casey gang was like being one of the Rolling Stones. But I don't miss them, and I'm not about to get a job at Burger King just because I'm out of the gang. I'll work alone if I can't find someone with big enough balls to work with me."

Richard became tense as we approached the town lights. His watchfulness set me on edge. Every time I looked into the wing mirror I expected to see a flashing blue light.

"There's something else we have to do before we can relax," he said, taking the road that would lead us back to the lock-up garages close to my house."We've got to get rid of the car."

"This car?"

"No...the other car."

My heart took a drop. I'd forgotten all about Brian's car. Right now it was parked outside my house where anyone passing might idly record it.

"Oh Christ," I said under my breath."Richard, you've got to get rid of it. You've got to blow it up or something."

"Be cool," he said, laughing to himself."I've hidden it. I stashed it earlier while you were waiting."

I didn't relax."Where is it?"

"Close," he said.

We arrived at the garages. Richard cut the engine and switched off the lights.

"Wait half an hour-"

"Richard!"

"Half an hour, Chrissy. Go for a walk if you get nervy. After half an hour I want you to drive back to the moor and wait for me by that track. Pull off the road and wait with the lights off. Have you got it?"

I nodded miserably. He stared at me with grave concern."Just go," I said sullenly."I know what I'm doing."

"Are you sorry I killed him, Chrissy?"

"We killed him, Richard. And I'm sorry we had to, that's all."

We kissed. Our lips locked together like metal and magnet.

*********

Go for a walk he said. Fine if you were a fish. If you were human there was nothing to do but sit and wait, all alone except for your demons.

One of these nights I was going to wake up screaming. I was certain of it. The delayed shock would hit me without warning. Perhaps I would even be awake, at work or dotting around the kitchen fixing Carl's dinner, when all of a sudden I would hear Brian screaming out my name.

I tried to make myself feel guilty but it didn't work. We feel what we feel, and there's no way to induce emotions that just aren't there. If I felt guilty about helping Richard to kill Brian I would be compelled to feel equally guilty about being myself. Nobody forced Brian to attack me. Certainly I didn't, and nor did I encourage him in any way. I won't except any other version, I won't. I showed kindness and friendship to a lonely man, and if he misread the signs it was no one's fault but his own. My mother used to say you get what you ask for.

It wasn't quite thirty minutes but I couldn't wait any longer. I was on my way out of town when the midnight news came on the radio. I could hardly believe that it was still only twelve.

There was no mention of a murdered country and western bar manager. I wondered if I would be able to say that the same time tomorrow night.

It was easy to locate the track once I had reached the Gelder Valley district. I was guided to it by a faint orange light flickering over the moor like willow-the-wisp. No sooner had I parked when Richard opened the door and slipped inside. He was sopping wet and breathless, and he also reeked of petrol.

"You blew it up."

"It won't burn out though, not in this rain. Come one, let's get back before some idiot bumpkin calls the fire brigade."

Fifteen minutes later we were back at the lock-up garages. Richard collected his shotgun from the back seat and took the keys out of the ignition.

"We'll walk to your place from here," he said."You go first and I'll follow in a bit. When you get home lock and bolt every single door and window in the house except that little window in the back bedroom. Leave that one open."

"You're going to come through the window like the Milk Tray man?"

"You bet."

I laughed and kissed his wet lips."Hurry then. I get anxious when you're not around."

He caught me by the arm as I was opening the door."Put the hall light on so that I know you made it safely inside. If you see anything unusual on the street switch on the bathroom light."

"Unusual?"

"Like armed police crawling through your neighbour's garden." He shrugged apologetically."I'm a wanted man, Chrissy."

"I know that."

"I can't just swan around town like normal people."

"Doesn't stop you coming into the Old Black Kettle, does it?"

He smiled crookedly and looked away from me."Well, we all have a weakness, Chrissy. Besides, I had the Casey gang behind me most of the time. The other times I was taking a big risk."

"Worth it, am I?"

"Am I worth it, Chrissy? You stand to lose more than I do."

"You first."

He turned his head and regarded me with painful sincerity."You're worth it, Chrissy. I killed for you didn't I?"

"But I don't want you to die for me."

"Dying's not in the script," he said. He lifted his eyes and grinned with all the cocksure certainty his youth could muster. I was blinded and inspired by a near-religious belief in his immortality."And I should know, Chrissy, I'm the one who's writing it."

***

I ran all the way home, pummelled by rain that was coming down so hard it was bouncing up from the tarmac. There were no vehicles parked in my street other than those which belonged to the residents. It wasn't practical to go searching through the garden for camouflaged police officers, and besides, if Richard didn't sense their presence there was little chance that I would.

I opened the front door and went inside. For a moment I was visited by the childish fears and insecurities associated with being alone. Hastily I locked and bolted the front door, then hurried through to the kitchen and made sure the back door was fast.

I looked at my work clothes poking out of the washing machine and felt cold hands stroke the back of my neck. I was afraid to turn around in case I came face to face with Brian's vengeful ghost.

The vodka bottle on the draining board was an unexpected solution to the sudden attack of the jitters. I poured a glassful and swigged it down too quickly. It was good though, it hit the spot, but I craved another and a cigarette to go with it.

Later, I decided, putting the bottle to one side. On an impulse I took the bottle of champagne from the fridge and went upstairs, remembering to switch on the hall light so that Richard would know that all was well. I took a long, cooling shower in the dark, unable to use the light because Richard would think there was something amiss. When I was done I went through to the bedroom and lit the three ornamental candles by the bed. The candles were another of my whimsical purchases. Like the champagne, I didn't ever expect to use them.

The back bedroom was my son's room. I opened the window and then stepped back, looking at all his diminutive possessions such as his books and his little chair and desk where he sat and drew pictures of trees that were shaped like lollipops, but all I could think of was Richard Linton.

A franetic scrabbling sound outside the window made me jump. Instinctively I drew my short dressing gown around me; I was naked underneath.

A face appeared at the window, wet, ghoulish, grinning. Richard pulled himself up to the small window above and dangled a plastic carrier bag through.

"Get that," he gasped."Hurry up, Chrissy!"

I sauntered over to the window and took the carrier bag."Are these my chocolates, Milk Tray man?"

He sniggered and almost lost his footing."Bitch!" he hissed."My trainers are slippery. Here, get these-"

He clung to the window frame with one hand while he shrugged a big holdall down his arm and passed it through. It was heavy, full of tools or something.

"Erk!" I cried, holding it at a distance so as not to get my housecoat wet."Did you drag this out of the ground or something?"

"It's raining" he said heavily."Put it down before you drop it. All my kit's in there." He pulled himself through the little window and monkey-rolled to a standing position.

"Are you waiting for me to clap now?"

"You want to see Robbie Casey climb," he said, a little out of breath."He's like Spider Man. One time..."

He was staring at me, open mouthed but lost for words. I lowered my arms but not all the way. I wanted to tease him first. I wanted to see the whites of his eyes and then I was going to let him have it.

"It's rude to stare, Richard," I said in that voice I reserve for ticking off naughty boys.

He came to attention with a guilty snap."My, what big eyes I've got," he muttered, and snatched up his holdall and carrier bag."Is there somewhere I can put these?"

I led him through to my bedroom. He put the bags in the corner and knelt down to check the contents of the holdall.

"This is a Heckler and Koch MP5," he said, proudly displaying a lethal-looking weapon. Frightens the life out of people."

"Is that thing loaded?" I asked uncomfortably.

"Wouldn't be much use otherwise," he said. He took out his stubby little shotgun and stroked the barrel lovingly."This is my favourite Purdy. I took it when we robbed this big estate in Scotland. That's how the Casey gang make their money, you know. There's no profit in armed robbery these days. Robbing banks is a publicity thing, to keep the myth alive. Pete Casey is really just an armed antiques dealer. He steals valuable paintings from galleries and private dealers to sell on the continent." He was still gazing affectionately at the shotgun, his fingers sliding up and down the smooth shaft of the barrel."Nearly broke my heart to saw this up."

I smiled indulgently. He was doing this for my benefit after all."What else have you got?"

He showed me a couple of handguns and a fancy flick-knife he said came from Italy. Every one of his weapons meant something to him. They each had a little story behind them. Eventually though it dawned on him that I was faking my interest, and he put the weapons away with a chagrined smile.

"What's in the other bag?"

"I'll show you later," he said, getting to his feet."I need to shower first."

I could have joined him I suppose, but while those kind of scenes look great in steamy movies they rarely work out in real life. You just end up laughing or slipping on the soap or something, and I didn't want our first time to be remembered for its comedy.

While Richard was cleaning up I took his sodden clothes downstairs and put them in the washing machine. Above the rain and thunder I could hear the steady tick-tock tick-tock of the kitchen clock, and I was overcome by the peculiar notion that I wasn't so much listening to it as feeling it. The sense of urgency was suddenly stronger inside me.

I took two of my best glasses from the kitchen cupboard and went back upstairs. Richard still hadn't emerged from the bathroom. I waited by the window,looking out at the rainwashed night, when incredibly it stopped. There was no warning, no transitional drizzle, it simply stopped raining. Bad thoughts of unnatural endings coloured me blue. A rambling chain took me back to when Darren and I split up, and I was playing this old record over in my mind when I became aware of Richard watching me from the doorway.

"You look nice like that," he said,"Surrounded by candles I mean."

I looked him up and down brazenly. He was wearing nothing but the clean white boxer shorts he had taken from his holdall."So do you."

He padded over to the corner where he had put his belongings. I caught the sultry scent of my expensive bubble bath.

"I thought you took a shower."

"I did," he said, rummaging through the carrier bag."It was colder than a witch's tit."

"Did you use the shower gel, the stuff in the funny shaped bottle with the gold top?"

"Mmm,think so." He came closer to where I was sitting but I could tell the undraped window was making him uncomfortable.

"Plenty of bubbles, was there?"

"I guess," he said, squinting at me strangely."Didn't really notice."

I smiled privately and drew the curtains."I've got a bottle of champagne," I said."Do you think you can open it?"

He picked up the bottle and tilted the label to a candle.

"It's just supermarket stuff."

"We drink champagne all the time in the Casey gang."

"Sausage meat, Richard Linton."

He laughed so much he had to sit down on the bed to open the champagne.

"Quick, Chrissy, get the glasses!"

I grabbed the glasses from the dresser and Richard managed to fill them with foam.

"That's the thing about champagne," he noted solemnly."All fizz and no substance. This needs a bit of a kick." He put the champagne bottle on the carpet and took a bottle of Jack Daniels out of the carrier bag."Old Jack here's the robber's friend," he said pensively."That's what young Billy Young used to say."

"What do we christen this new cocktail?" I mused as he poured a generous dollop of JD's into my wine glass."Fizz and kick?"

"Linton and Bridges," he said, topping up his own glass."Next time we're in some poncy cocktail bar we'll show them how to make a Linton and Bridges."

"A Bridges and Linton," I corrected."I always go on top, Richard."

He sniggered into his glass, his round eyes avoiding mine.

"Do I embarrass you, Richard?"

"No."

"Scare you?"

"I'm not scared of anything."

It was my turn to laugh. I scared him alright, but that was the one confession not even I could draw from Richard Linton.

"There's some cigarettes here," he said, delving hurriedly into the bag."Foreign though, I got them abroad, same as the whiskey."

They were the same Red brand as the ones I had found in his car. I tore at the box like a kid opening a Christmas present."Soft pack," I noted."Hope that's not an omen, Richard."

"And I got you a present too. I know you didn't want it but..."

He was holding out a small black jewellery case. When I looked at him I saw an agonised uncertainty in his diffident smile and behind those soulful blue eyes. I saw a young boy who was so hopelessly and desperately in love it was carving him up.

"You couldn't fight me could you?" I said, brushing my hand against his cheek."All your guns and your tough talk, but you couldn't fight me, Richard Linton."

"You made me ill," he said."I got sick, Chrissy. Pete Casey said I was pining. I hated it." He looked at me with painful bewilderment."It was too much like dying."

I took the jewellery box and a candle over to the large mirror on the dresser. I sat down and smiled secretively at his puzzled reflection."Come and put it on for me."

"You don't know what it is."

"Ring boxes are smaller, so I know it isn't ring."

"Could be a bracelet."

"Not heavy enough."

"Could be a cheap bracelet."

"Just come here."

He came and stood behind me. I opened the box. Inside was a tiny gold bullet on a chain.

"Ah, Richard," I sighed."It's..."

"Beautiful?"

"...a bullet."

We laughed together. It was a bullet, and it was beautiful because it was something only Richard would think of buying. I was moved to cry a little.

"I'm silly," I said, plucking a tissue from the box and dabbing the corners of my eyes.

"But you like it?"

I smiled warmly and nodded."It's the best present I've ever had. I mean it. Here, put it on for me." I passed the box to him and then I slipped my dressing gown down my shoulders, keeping my hands crossed over my breasts.

"My, what big eyes you have," I said to his reflection. He grinned sheepishly and concentrated on getting the chain out of the box.

"Thunder's stopped," he said, pausing to listen.

"And the rain."

"Can we have the radio on, Chrissy?"

"Sure. And fill my glass again. Make mine a Bridges and Linton."

He laughed with simple joy and switched on the radio. The Platters were singing Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. Richard pulled a disgruntled face."Can you get Virgin on this?"

"Leave it," I said."I love this song."

He fixed me a Bridges and Linton and then finally managed to get the chain out of the box. I could feel his hands trembling as he fastened it around my neck.

"Beautiful," I declared. I couldn't really see in the flickering, shadowy half-light, but it felt precious against my skin.

I opened my jewellery box and took out a necklace of my own."My father gave me this a very long time ago," I said. I stood up and turned around. Richard's eyes slipped down to the front of my open dressing gown. He seemed awe-struck. He wet his lips and gazed at me helplessly.

"Chrissy..."

"Shush about that," I soothed."First time's the best time. I promise." I slipped the chain around his neck. He touched the small rose pendent with something close to reverence.

"A rose," he said."I don't know what to say."

I put my arms around him and kissed him lightly on the lips. His hands circled my waist, and he pulled me hard against him. I could feel the fire, the urgency of his passion. I recalled how earlier in the evening - what seemed like a million days ago now - I had told Brian that sometimes I just want to talk and talk.

Well, sooner or later there comes a time when there's nothing left to say.

***

We made love that night, Richard Linton and me, but if you think I'm going to cheapen the most perfect night of my life the way the newspapers tried to do then you really haven't understood this thing at all. This is one part of the story where I don't feel the need to set the record straight. We made love, we consummated a marriage of souls, and that's all I'm going to say. The rest is mine alone.

My short time with Richard Linton was the spike on a flatline, the one period in my life when I felt truly alive. So you walk along empty beaches and watch blood-red sunsets create the magical illusion of fire on silky oceans; so you send roses and make love on Sunday mornings, and you dine in romantic restaraunts and make plans to grow old together and never leave each other...so what? Do you really imagine that the love you feel is any different from mine?

We're the same, you and me. I loved him the way you love yours, and I miss him like I hope you'll never know.

We had so little time together that the few precious memories I have of him are already beginning to diminish in clarity. They are leaving me like migrating birds. But the memory of that night, that last hot, torrid Cajun night will live with me forever. As I grow older, it grows brighter and younger, as if a part of him lives on there while I slowly die.

So don't ask me to share it all because I won't.

Leave me something, damn you. Please leave me something of my own.

**************

 It was just before dawn when they came for him. We hadn't been asleep for very long and our reaction to the sound of a bomb going off downstairs was sluggish and disbelieving.

I came awake with a jolt, but almost immediately I began to slip into unconsciousness again, convincing myself that the noise had been part of a dream. I think it was the same for Richard. I felt him jerk and begin to struggle into a sitting position, and then he flopped down again.

My eyes fluttered open. A vague, irrational dread crept into my soul. The residue of a nightmare, I thought, dwindling so quickly that it seemed at once imagined...

Then suddenly it was all too real.

The sound of heavy-booted feet pounding up the stairs ripped me from a blissful after-loving cocoon and plunged me straight into a nightmare world of terror, chaos and confusion. It was like being woken by being thrown into a bath of cold water. It was like being born, cruelly ejected from the warmth and insular security of the womb into the berserk pandemonium of existence.

Richard was up on his feet on top of the bed, staring wildly at the door. It wasn't fear on his face but complete and utter dismay.

Outside the door the dogs of doom began to bark:

Richard was so confused he didn't know what to do. He remained standing on top of the bed for a few moments, his lean, naked body postured in the way of a boxer. He looked noble and strong but the expression on his face gave him away. He was the boxer who felt the stinging blows of his opponent's punches but couldn't see where they were coming from, a pathetic old punch drunk fighter who had been slapped out of a snooze by a giggling kid who then ducked out of sight. He was bleary, angry, disorientated, but worst of all he was crushed inside.

It was all over, and Richard Linton knew it before anyone else did.

"RICHARD LINTON!"

The voice came over a megaphone, awesome, godlike.

"RICHARD LINTON, COME OUT OF THE ROOM WITH YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD! COME OUT OF THE ROOM WITH YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!"

Seconds ticked by. I gathered myself up to the headboard, pulling my legs to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. Richard just went on staring at the door, his face slack and withered.

"RICHARD LINTON WE ARE ARMED POLICE OFFICERS! COME OUT OF THE ROOM WITH YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!"

Richard jumped down from the bed and began to pace back and forth against the wall, his hands tearing at his head. He was wheezing noisily, like a man who had run his heart out. His face was red, anguished and hopeless.

The next voice was mine, and I think I was every bit as loud as the megaphone the police were using.

"Window!" I screamed, and instinctively Richard dropped to the carpet and covered his head with his hands.

"RICHARD LINTON, WE ARE ARMED POLICE OFFICERS! COME OUT OF THE ROOM WITH YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!"

I scrambled off the bed, keeping my head as low as possible, and scurried over to him. He gripped my arms with all the force of a desperate man on the edge of breaking up.

"Can't think! Can't think, Chrissy!" he wailed.

It wasn't what I wanted to hear from him. I wanted to see that arrogant sneer of teenage impunity, and I wanted to hear him tell me how we were going to bluff our way out of this just as cool as a pair of brass monkey's balls.

Richard Linton...

I struggled free of his clinging grasp and held his wrists tightly together."Richard!" I hissed."They want you. They know you're in here, so why don't they come through the door?"

His head came up. He stared over my shoulder at the bedroom door, his eyes fixed and intense.

"You," he whispered, turning his head to gaze at me incredulously."They don't want to shoot you, that's why." He took a few deep breaths and then crawled away to where his boxer shorts lay discarded at the foot of the bed. He wriggled them on, mostly out of sight for a moment, then poked his head around the foot of the bed. His blond hair, damp with the night's sultry heat, hung over his eyes in a tangled fringe. He grinned quickly, quite unexpected and quite beautiful.

"Chrissy..." He crawled back to me and took hold of my hands."Now you're shaking," he said.

I tried to laugh but it came out as a despairing sob. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to hold and comfort me but it simply wasn't practical.

"I need to tell you something-"

I freed my hand and tried to cover his mouth, as if I feared he was about to break some sacred taboo, but he gripped my wrist tightly and held my arm away.

"Chrissy-"

"RICHARD LINTON COME OUT OF THE ROOM WITH YOUR HANDS UP."

"Bastards!" he cried, glaring icily at the door."Fuck if I don't take one of them out with me."

"No!" I gasped, looking at him with horror. I'm not completely satisfied that I know where the horror came from. We had, after all, killed one man tonight, so the thought of killing another should not have moved me so, even if that other was a police officer. Perhaps it was hearing him speak so finally, and realising myself that he would not be leaving this room alive.

"Listen," he said urgently."They think I'm holding you hostage, either that or they think you came into this thing blind. Whatever it is it gives us a couple of minutes together. So just bear out, okay, Chrissy?"

I looked at the door,the flimsy curtain protecting us from obliteration, and nodded.

Richard crawled on all fours to the corner of the room and took the sub-machine gun from the holdall. His darting eyes kept check on the door.

"Chrissy, look out of the window," he whispered, then amazingly he grinned at me again,his eyes sparkling with mischievous humour."And mind your head."

I turned my body to the wall, shuffled along on my heels, and placed my fingers gingerly on the windowsill.Slowly, very, very slowly, I raised my head and parted the curtains until I could see the street below.

Swishing, flickering blue neons...the tops of vans...brief smudges of dark movement...

To see any more would have made a target out of myself. So maybe they don't shoot at shadows but I had no way of knowing that at the time. That was a rational thought, and as I've already explained to you, rationality has nothing to do with my story.

"Coppers?"

"Yes." I lowered my head and turned my back to the wall.

"As long as it isn't the Casey gang," he said with strained laughter."I really would have been in trouble."

He took a pistol from the holdall and crawled back to me, resting his back next to mine. He closed his eyes and lay the back of his head against the wall. He blew out a breath as if the act of crawling across the floor had burned him out.

"It's so hot," he said.

"Shall I open the window?"

He laughed shakily, then rolled his head and opened one eye.

"I have to tell you this."

"I know," I said,tears stinging my eyes."I already know."

"But I have to say it, Chrissy."

"Richard, please," I begged."You can't shoot your way out of this. It's useless."

He looked at me with the kind of amusement and pity an adult will normally reserve for a naïve child."I know that, Chrissy."

"Then give yourself up. I'll tell them the truth, that Brian tried to rape me and that you saved my life. I'll tell them everything. I'll tell them where Pete Casey hides out and-"

He stretched over, nuzzling and kissing me until the panic had subsided. I was left with an awful, aching grief in my heart.

"I'll wait for you," I whispered. I was blinded by tears. His face was losing definition."I'll wait for you, don't care how long, don't care."

He kissed me again and brushed my cheek with the back of his pistol-hand.

"I've robbed banks and killed men, Chrissy. If I go away I go away for the rest of my life. I was one of the Casey gang. They'll never let me go."

I felt something like a damn burst inside me. I wanted to scream until my lungs burst, scream at the men who had come to kill my husband as I had screamed that night in the car park when Paul Marwood and his thugs had set upon him:YOU LEAVE THAT BOY ALONE! YOU LEAVE HIM ALONE!

But then in the back of my mind I heard the quiet and calmly commanding voice of Pete Casey reminding me of something important.

And I held the scream back and at the same time I felt something inside me just wither and die.

We stood up together, Bridges and Linton. Richard looked at me and smiled.

"I think I'm going to die," he said, and he laughed, one sharp and startling sound like a mirror cracking.

I could feel time ticking away, ticking away, ticking away. It was like watching the clock attached to a bomb tick ever closer to detonation time.

"I love you, Chrissy," he said. He wasn't looking at me, he was staring at the door, his pistol in one hand and the sub-machine gun raised awkwardly in the other."This has been worth everything."

"Everything," I echoed.

He turned his face to me, smiled, and kissed me goodbye. And at that very moment the door crashed in and a volley of gunfire put out the brightest light I've ever known.

******************

I have only broken memories of what took place before the cell door slammed shut behind me. Sometimes it comes back to me in shocking flashbacks like bright, glinting signals from a mirror reflecting the sun. The rest was filled in for me, though strangely even the clinical testimony of the men who shot my boy went largely over my head.

Of course I remember the way he died. They shot him down like an animal. Untouched myself (not quite a miracle, as I later discovered) I gazed dumbly at his broken body while around me my bedroom filled up with armed police all pointing their weapons at a dead man, as if the myths about the Casey gang included the power of resurrection. I think that some of them didn't begin to relax until poor Richard was cremated.

They bunched around him, weapons trained, edging closer and closer, until one of them dropped to his knees and felt for Richard's pulse at the neck.

"Eliminated," he said.

I felt myself growing smaller and smaller, dimmer and dimmer, and thought oddly of Mrs Pepperpot from the old childrens' stories.

Somebody caught me and helped me to sit on the bed. When I blinked the world back into some kind of order I found myself looking into the eyes of Preston Deal.

*****

I was taken in a van to Ritchmire's Victorian police station, a dark, brooding place with wretched vibrations and an unhealthy lack of circulating oxygen. I was treated very kindly, I think, given the circumstances. They cajoled and indulged and guided me through the booking-in procedure as they would have done a lost child, although I felt more like a confused geriatric or a hospital patient who has wandered out of bed before the anaesthetic has worn off.

Preston Deal was beside me the whole time, adopting the role of avuncular mentor by encouraging and prompting me to answer questions where necessary.

Did I want to inform anyone of my arrest?

No I didn't.

Yes I did, Deal gently corrected.

Yes I did. I told them Val's full name but I couldn't remember her address or telephone number. It was alright, Deal assured me.

Did I wish to consult with a legal representative?

Did I?

It was probably best to, just to be on the safe side.

I was escorted to a cell. Preston Deal came in with me and sat beside me on the hard bunk.

"We'll talk later, Chrissy," he said."Best let the doctor examine you first."

I turned my head and stared at him. Something in my eyes made him shrink from me.

"Don't pretend you care," I said icily."Don't pretend you give a damn about me. I don't want the slightest reason not to hate you for the rest of my life."

He stood up and left without a word. The cell door banged shut.

***

A young policeman brought me a cup of tea that was far too sweet to drink. He also gave me a packet of cigarettes and a disposable lighter.

"Off the record," he said with a forced smile. His eyes wouldn't leave me. At that time I was not really aware of my notoriety or the effect it would have on people."Mr Deal said you were to be looked after."

I thanked him.

"Are you married,son?" I asked as he was closing the door. He looked at me attentively.

"Yes," he said at last."Just a few months now."

I smiled absently."Nice. You love her don't you?"

"Yes."

I nodded."Then love her," I told him, but he didn't seem to understand."It's all that matters, you know."

Some time later I was examined by a po-faced female doctor. She took my pulse and blood pressure and then asked me a series of irrelevant questions, the answers to which she absorbed with a professional detachment bordering on the robotic. I complimented her sarcastically on her comforting bedside manner.

My solicitor arrived at ten o'clock in the morning. He introduced himself as Peter Endercott, and I had no reason to think he wasn't. He asked me if I understood the gravity of the situation, and I told him I did. He then told me that I had been arrested on public order offences and charges of possessing firearms, which came as news to me.

"I might get off with a fine then," I said lamely. He didn't smile. I didn't smile. Peter Endercott then informed me that the police were making inquiries into the disappearance of Brian Lynch, and quite suddenly it occurred to me that I hadn't really understood the gravity of the situation at all.

But I did now.

****

"Brian Lynch hasn't been seen since we all spoke together in his office at the Old Black Kettle," Preston Deal began. All that guiding hand compassion he had shown me earlier had gone, and that keen, hungry predator's look was back in its place."Can you give a full account of your movements between the time you left the club with Brian to the time of your arrest?"

I smiled wryly at Deal."You thought it was Pete Casey all along didn't you? Were you disappointed to find out it was Richard Linton?"

"I was very surprised, Chrissy," Deal said. There was a judgemental overtone in his voice I didn't much care for.

"Were you also having an affair with Brian Lynch?"

The question came from Gary Swift, the curly haired superintendent with the Black Cats. He was sitting on Deal's left, absently doing 'church and steeple' with his hands.

"No," I said bluntly."I was not having an affair with Brian Lynch."

"So what time did the two of you leave the Old Black Kettle?" Deal asked.

"Shortly after you left."

"And that would have been about what time?"

I shrugged."I don't know, maybe nine or ten...I can't recall."

"And where did you go?"

"Brian took me home. I said goodnight in the car and went indoors. I don't know what happened to him after that."

Preston Deal took a cigarette from the packet and lit it; they were his anyway.

"The thing is, Chrissy, we know that isn't quite what happened. You see, we didn't go anywhere after our little chat in Brian's office. Some of us stayed in the van while others were positioned at various points around the club."

"Then we walked right through you," I said.

Deal exchanged a curious glance with Gary Swift."Lessons will be learned. Perhaps on this occasion we were looking too hard. We were watching for someone going in."

"Pete Casey?" I asked, and Deal nodded reluctantly.

"He knows all our faces so we couldn't leave anyone inside the club. It wasn't until after closing time that we realised you and Brian had already gone. We talked to some of the staff. A girl called Kay-lee Lambert identified Richard Linton as being the young man who had visited you at the club on a number of occasions."

"Cajun nights," I said, smiling distantly."He only ever came on Cajun nights."

***

I read from a prepared statement. Resigned now to my wishes, Peter Endercott sat expressionless by my side, while across the table Preston Deal and the curly haired superintendent called Gary Swift both looked as though they were anticipating the story of the century. Going on the station gossip concerning the hoards of press gathered outside, it might well have been.

"My name is Christine Bridges, and I wish to confess my part in the abduction and murder of Brian Lynch. Earlier this evening Brian Lynch attempted to rape me in my home but was apprehended in the act by my lover, Richard Linton. Together we drove Brian Lynch to a remote spot on the Gelder high moor, and there Richard Linton shot him dead."

That was all she wrote.

Nobody said anything for a long time. I lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly as Preston Deal and Gary Swift absorbed my statement in silence.

"We must have missed you by seconds," Deal said at last."When we got to your house and saw that Brian's car wasn't parked outside we figured that the two of you were at his place."

"And where did you think Richard was?"

Deal looked at me blankly."Not all of the pieces fitted together at that time, Chrissy. It wasn't until we saw you enter your house alone at twelve thirty five that we began slot the jigsaw together. Brian left the club with you but he didn't go home - his mother told us that - and he evidently wasn't at your place because his car would have been parked outside, so we assumed that something must have happened to him. A short time later, when Richard Linton was seen climbing through a bedroom window, we were certain of it."

"If you saw him why didn't you just shoot him on the spot?" I asked bitterly.

"The safety of the public is always paramount in these circumstances," Gary Swift answered."We felt it was safer to contain Richard Linton to your home rather than risk a gun-battle in the open. It was just a matter of waiting for the right moment."

"When he was sleeping?"

"Not ultimately," Preston Deal said."He let his guard down when he kissed you for the last time. We saw him, Chrissy. We had a mini-camera under the door. We would have taken him out anyway but at considerably more risk to the police officers involved. So I guess I should thank you."

He thought I would reply in anger but I didn't. In fact I smiled and touched his hand."No, I should thank you, Mr Deal. By not shooting Richard when you saw him earlier you gave us a few precious hours together. I said that I never want a reason not to hate you, Mr Deal, but it looks like you've given me one anyhow."

Deal was completely wrong-footed. He just stared at me bewilderedly. I took a cigarette out of the packet. It was the last one.

"Whatever did you see in him, Chrissy?" Deal asked. He went on staring in that dopey, gobsmacked way, his head moving from side to side."Whatever did a nice woman like you see in Richard Linton?"

And I began to laugh. I laughed and laughed until my stomach ached and tears spilled down my cheeks, and somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Richard Linton laughing along with me.

Deal seemed puzzled and concerned. He asked me if I was alright.

Of course I was alright. I was laughing wasn't I?

**********

 That's it. My story is told. I languish here in prison a scandalised woman, convicted of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to nine years.

I don't know my own son anymore. He lives with Val and she sends me pictures and stuff he's done in school. He's growing so quickly, so quickly that each new photograph just breaks my heart.

They say I'll be out in five years but I think I'll die here. I'm so lonely.

I can't always see Richard's face. Sometimes I wake up crying from dreams in which he is leaving me. In these dreams his image is distressingly elusive. Sometimes I see a walking figure silhouetted against a blood-red sunset, in others a dash of blond hair and denim in the middle of a distant crowd, and sometimes there is nothing but an open door in an empty room and the haunting aura of his ghost.

I've lost everything, but isn't it worth everything just for one perfect night in your life?

Epilogue

( The Ballad of Butler Farm )

*****************

 "Four years as a Yugoslavian resistance fighter and he ends up being dragged from his car at eight thirty in the morning, robbed and left to die in the street like some injured bird."

Preston Deal glanced at his driver; a comment of some kind was expected at this point, a reaction surely, but Martin ignored Preston's voice the way he would have ignored a familiar blip in the tone of the engine.

"Did you hear me, Martin?"

"Yes," Martin said simply. His eyes never left the road. "You were referring to Ivan Stanovic, a retired train driver who was robbed and murdered somewhere in London. A man went on trial yesterday."

"And what's your opinion of the matter?" Preston continued. Experience had taught him that it was useless to attempt to draw Martin English into a conversation and yet he persisted anyway. He had long ago given up trying to befriend the man. These days it was more of a mental exercise, a complex crossword puzzle constructed of the most confounding clues which Preston occasionally returned to but never expected to complete. If the challenge to discover what made Martin English tick ( and laugh? What the hell made him laugh?) ever became an obsession, Preston was certain that he would wind up mad before he had all the answers. Always assuming there were answers to find, that is. One of Preston's theories was that Martin English was some evil, spiteful Puzzle Master's idea of a joke: all the clues were tormenting riddles and the answers just as infuriating and meaningless.

"He took a wrong turn," Martin said. "It was bad luck that he stopped to ask for directions from the person he did."

"Bit like yourself then," Preston teased.

At this remark Martin took his eyes away from the road and glanced briefly at his boss. The feeling that struck Preston Deal - as it did whenever he found himself staring beyond Martin's penny lenses and into that strangely artificial intelligence his eyes projected - was that of being scrutinised and recorded by a remote control eyeball camera.

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Martin said, returning his attention to the road.

Like shite, Preston thought. There was nothing that Martin didn't follow. His mind absorbed everything that happened around him, every conversation, every action. Martin had the mind of a computer, a fast and analytical processor with absolutely no opinion on Woody Allen films.

"I was just thinking," Preston said, "that you seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line. Metaphorically speaking, I mean." He paused and waited for Martin's reaction but of course there was nothing, not even a slight shift in posture which might have indicated that Martin was puzzled or even uncomfortable with Preston's line of conversation. Everything was merely absorbed and analysed. "You had a promising career with the Security Service, then one day you take a wrong turn and end up working with me. Is there a way back for you, Martin?"

"I'm on secondment," Martin said tonelessly."Nothing more. I'm not a police officer, Mr Deal."

Preston twitched with excitement. Was that it? Had he just ruffled Martin English? Had he upset the machine?

"You think you can go back to doing what you did before?" Preston asked. "Sitting in that little windowless room sifting through all those obscure magazines for likely subversives?"

"I'll move on."

"Will they let you?"

Martin almost smiled. "Will they let you, Mr Deal?"

The conversation ended there. Preston sat back in his seat and gazed thoughtfully at the road ahead, his face pinched with worry. He had never really tried to imagine what might happen afterwards. The fantasy only ran as far as Pete and Robbie being arrested or killed, and at that point the credits rolled and the audience left the theatre. Now suddenly he was forced to confront the probablility that the only job there was for a bobby with no more villains to catch was a job guarding building sights and supermarket trolleys, the dreaded downshift from superintendent to car park attendent.

They were travelling through Ritchmire town centre. It was almost a year since Preston was last in Ritchmire, during that short and sultry summer which proved to be young Richard Linton's last. Even then, with one of the most dangerous criminals in recent history out of the picture, Preston had been unable to shake the lasting sense of failure. The remainder of that hot, thundery season had seen Preston in a profound mood of restless uncertainty, an endlessly turning wheel of long slow days and even longer nights. Those nights were the worst. At night the concentration he lacked in the daylight hours kept him awake. Perverse. Who'd be a copper, eh? That's what Preston's old man used to say.

Ritchmire faded like a bad dream. The houses thinned out, the road mysteriously emptied, and around them a ravished landscape of hills and moorland grew. Martin followed the signs to Precious, a lovely name for an unlovely village.

"Fancy retiring to a place like this?" Preston asked as they drove through the village of Precious with its crumbling stone cottages and broken picket fences. "It's about six miles to the nearest shop."

Martin didn't reply.

"Do you ever think about retirement, Martin?"

"I've made provisions," Martin said noncommittally.

Preston sighed glumly. Made provisions...what kind of answer was that to a whimsical question, a question which inspired great daydreams about boats and long, lazy fishing trips taken aboard them?

Butler Farm was about two miles further up the exposed moorland road leading out of Precious. It was a dishevelled cluster of outbuildings and derelict stone barns, along with an imposing farmhouse painted olive green. Butler had sold the barns to a property development company who promised to turn them into holiday cottages. On the back of this the Butlers, John and Mira, had planned to sell fresh eggs and milk and cheap souvenirs to the tourists, but now the property company had changed its mind and was instead taking the barns away stone by stone. They were going to re-assemble them in Harrogate or somewhere closer to a beach and a funfair.

John Butler had told Preston all of this during a very long, very depressing hour in the gloomy farmhouse kitchen when Preston had first sought permission to use the farm as an observation point. They were an odd couple. Both of them were big people with gloomy oval faces and broad shoulders you could hang a sheep over. They both spoke with the same weary note of defeat and despair in their voices, something which travelled to their dull brown eyes. Preston had wondered, briefly, if they were actually brother and sister, but then he had seen the wedding photo partly hidden by a basket of washing on the scarred table. All the garments in the basket looked old and faded and by-gone, just like the wedding photo.

John Butler was tinkering with the engine of a brutish Land Rover when Preston's car pulled up outside the farmhouse. He was dressed in jeans which were hardly fit to wash windows with, a brown pullover and a dirty green fishing hat. He looked up from his work and began to rub his greasy palms on the backside of his jeans.

"The man makes me think of suicide," Preston said to himself."Do you pity him or loath him, Martin?"

"Neither."

"Figures," Preston said heavily. "Do you know why we put animals into zoos?"

Martin switched off the engine."Not to marvel at their wonder but to mock their stupidity."

"Alexander Pope?"

"Def Leppard," Martin said deadpan, and for a second or two Preston almost liked him.

"He reminds me of this mangy old lion I saw at a zoo in Tunisia. What kind of farm is this anyway?" Preston backtracked through the drive, the bleak, windswept moorland and those smiling faces of the wandering sheep on the hills. "Forget it. He doesn't grow things here, I remember now."

They got out of the car. Martin went to the boot and began to unload his mysterious cases of equipment. It was stuff loaned to the team by MI5. That's all that Martin himself was, when it came right down to it, nothing but a piece of Home Office wizardry out on loan.

John Butler stretched out his hand for Preston to shake. He didn't smile - he looked like a man who was too tired to smile - and his eyes showed nothing but bovine indifference.

"There's some tea in the pot," he said. "Mira just made a fresh brew for the lads."

"Maybe later," Preston said with a smile he found difficult to muster. What was it about this couple that made him feel so uncomfortable and insecure? Perhaps it was because they represented most of his human fears, the fear of failure and the fear of depression. Or was it simply the fear of abject poverty? He saw a monstrous Hand of Fate pointing down from the heavens: it could be you.

John Butler looked over Preston's shoulder at Martin unloading the silver cases from the boot of the car. "Gadgets," he sniffed. "I'll tell Mira to put some breakfast on. There's plenty to eat. One of your lads went to the supermarket."

Preston watched him walk into the house and close the door behind him. He shook off the disconcerting feelings and went across to one of the dilapidated barns where the team had set up the observation point. Martin followed him carrying three silver briefcases and a bag over his shoulder.

The team had been here just long enough for that curious process of habitation to have begun. It never happened all at once: Preston could never remember an occasion when they had transformed a building by merely transporting their gear from the vans, rather it was a gradual process every bit as ritualistic as it was spontaneous. Over a period of days or weeks little bits and pieces of ordinariness would begin to appear. More often than not these items took the form of entertainment to while away the hours of boredom: mini-televisions were a favourite luxury, as were board games and things like dart boards and domino sets, but eventually, if they were in one place for long enough, a painting might go up on the wall or a photograph of the kids streaming down the waterslide at Centre Parcs, a pot plant might appear in the corner ( for which no one ever claimed responsibility) and sooner or later the members of the team would claim a corner of territory as their own personal space.

They hadn't quite reached that stage yet, although the dart board was up and the stack of magazines had grown considerably since Preston's last visit. The bunks had been pushed over to one side of the barn, probably to avoid the hole in the roof which Preston was pleased to note had now been covered by a polythene sheet. There was a table in the centre of the bare floor with a pack of cards, a bottle of vodka and a TV Quick on it. In the corner with his broad back to the door was Michael Dawson, an inspector from the Met. He was huddled over a flicker of light and crackly sound that Preston eventually distinguished as being the cricket commentary. Two other men were munching bacon sandwiches by the hole in the wall where the long-range camera had been position. Preston knew it was bacon because bacon is what Inspector David Moyne ( Met) and sergeant Ken Livingstone ( Thames Valley - all jokes exhausted) always had in their sandwiches.

"It smells of feet in here," Preston noted, wrinkling his nose."I thought Gary was scouting in Wales?"

"He sent some socks," Michael Dawson explained. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at Martin, the kind of smile a school bully has on his face as he takes some snivelling weed's dinner money from him. "You brought the spook, I see."

Martin moved to a chair and started to unpack his equipment. He opened one of the cases and examined the contents, his small oval face taking on the relaxed concentration of a dedicated philatelist perusing his collection.

"Happy as Larry," Preston said. He went across to the observation hole and looked through the long-range camera. What he saw was the front of an untidy cottage standing obstinately in a rocky crevice at the foot of the Brunton hills. It was completely overwhelmed by its surroundings and yet something about it remained strong and defiantly proud. It was a Casey gang safe-house, owned and occupied by a hippy artist named Jane O'Hara. It was possibly one of the houses used by the Casey gang during the fateful summer of Bridges and Linton. The current user was Clayton Pepper, a former SAS soldier and probably the most deadly and, in an intelligence sense, the least-known member of the present Casey gang line-up. That was the rumour anyway.

Preston stood up and stared silently at the cottage through the second observation hole. The dark rocky hills loomed threateningly over the tiny dwelling like shadows of monsters.

"Seen him?" he asked quietly.

"Not a whisper," David Moyne answered. David used to be bright and clean and friendly, Preston remembered, the kind of bushy-eyed brat you would expect to buy your hi-fi equipment from, but these days he was always grubby and untidy and apt to be aggressive towards strangers. That wasn't just down to this particular job either, it came as part and parcel of being one of the Southern Accents. "We've seen the woman coming and going but she doesn't stick to any set routine."

"A routine will get you killed," Preston murmured. "That's what Clayton would have told her. How does she get about?"

"She keeps a moped round the back of the cottage but sometimes she walks and sometimes she rides push bike."

"She's got lovely knockers," Ken Livingstone said. He took a bite from his sandwich and chewed, nodding at Preston's bemused expression."Honest."

"Did you get any good photos?"

He nodded again, this time with great enthusiasm."Mmm, ask James Bond to set up his computer and download them."

Preston was game. Anything to bring a little light relief to the routine. He turned, about to ask Martin if he would do his magic, when he was rendered suddenly speechless. Martin was standing only a foot or so behind him, wearing headphones, the cable of which plugged into a silver box hanging from a shoulder strap at his hip. And he was about to shoot them all with a ray-gun.

"Fuck me it's Captain Scarlet," Preston said.

Martin was unruffled. "It's a receiver," he said."It can detect human conversation by picking up the vibrations on a window pane. We use them a lot in Northern Ireland."

"Did you serve in Ulster, Martin?" Preston asked.

A slight nod from Martin. "For a time. Can I get to the hole, please? And do you think we could have the television off?"

"Bollocks," Michael Dawson grunted. He broke into a rendition of Urban Spaceman.

"Turn it off, Mick," Preston laughed. He shrugged a so-so apology to Martin and moved aside. Martin positioned the microphone so that it pointed at the cottage. Everyone waited eagerly for something to happen. After a minute or so David Moyne and Ken Livingstone drifted over to the table. David picked up a pack of cards and dealt two hands of Crash. Michael made a sarcastic face at Preston - lordy, isn't technology exciting? - and started to check and clean his revolver.

"Do you hear anything?" Preston asked. He spoke in a whisper, afraid that anything louder might perforate Martin's eardrums.

"Thought I did," Martin said. "It sounded like whispers."

"That was me."

"Before you. It may have been the wind."

"Should we be speaking, Martin?"

"I'd rather we didn't, actually."

Preston nodded. He felt oddly useless. He stuck his hands in his pockets and went to observe the card game. There was a tentative knock at the wooden door, which then opened. John Butler poked his head into the barn. He had that slightly diffident, worried look of someone who was watching a mechanic cheerfully pulling wires and pipes out of his car's engine.

"Mira's made you some breakfast, Mr Deal," he said at last."I said you'd take it in the house. She'd like that." He cast a final worried glance around the barn and then disappeared.

"Breakfast with the Butlers," Preston said dryly. On his way out he did a passable impression of Blakey from On The Buses."I hate you, Butler, I hate you."

The kitchen was badly in need of redecoration. The walls were the colour of processed cheese, and in places lumps of plaster the size of a fist had fallen out, the resulting depression merely painted to match the walls. The glass in the windows was grimy, the paint in the frames flaking onto the windowsill.

That's not just poverty, Preston thought as he sat down at the table. That's honest neglect. It costs nothing to clean a window and only a little more to paint a frame.

"Morning, Mrs Butler, " he said. He heard the strange droning quality in his own voice and wondered if what the Butlers suffered from was contagious."I hope the lads aren't being too much of a burden on you."

Mira Butler glanced at her husband, who was washing his hands at the sink. It was almost too quick to notice - or too imperceptible in their case - but something passed between them, an unspoken anxiety. "No trouble," she said. "They're nice men, all of them."

Preston smiled and nodded. He was trying to read her eyes but he made little of what he saw there. Something and nothing. She was apprehensive about something.

He had read somewhere that cows could not change their expressions. They could not show fear or distress or panic other than by the instinctive act of running away. Nothing touched their eyes other than the fate and tragedy they were born to.

In the house, too...there was something in the house, a strange tension.

She turned away from him briefly. John Butler wiped his hands on a dirty tea towel and sat down at the table opposite Preston. His dull, simpleton's gaze never left the policeman. Preston began to feel inexplicably chilled, touched by a cryptic premonition.

"What?" he asked quietly."What is it?"

The farmer didn't answer. Instead he shifted his eyes to his wife, who set a plate down on the table in front of Preston. There was no food on the plate, just a single bullet.

Preston looked up quickly, a stab of panic shooting through him like pain.

"They said it was for you," Mira Butler told him."Two for us if we didn't do as they said, and one for you if you don't sit still for a minute. That's what they said."

"They made us do it," John Butler almost whispered. Preston snapped his confused gaze to the farmer. A warning alarm was shrieking inside his head. Now he saw something in John Butler's eyes, and he heard it in his voice, too. It was shame. "Them's the law to folk like us, Mr Deal."

Preston was on his feet, reaching inside his shoulder holster for his revolver, when a fusillade of gunshots rang out. He raced to the door, opened it slightly and peered quickly into the farmyard. Bullets were flying with that rapid and lively firecracker anarchy of a real old fashioned gun battle, and it was all happening within the confines of the barn. Preston felt scared and excited.

"Phone the police!" he shouted to the Butlers, who were now cowering on the floor by the kitchen table."Tell them there's a firearms incident, and that I need armed back-up and a helicopter. Give them my name. Have you go that?"

John Butler, his arm over his wife's broad back, lifted his head and glared at Preston. "You get out of my house," he said in a quivering voice. "Go on, sling your bastard hook!"

The gunfire ceased as unexpectedly as it had begun. Preston went outside, running low until he reached the cover of the car. A nerve-jangling silence hung over the farmyard. The barn door was open by a foot or so. He thought he saw movement inside, a shifting shape no more revealing than a shadow. He broke the chamber on his revolver, checked that it was properly loaded, and snapped it shut. His head down, he scurried forward and threw his shoulder against the grill of the Butlers' Land Rover. Crouching, he spent a long time just listening.

A stand off?

No, too quiet for that. There had been no stray shots since the brief but violent exchange. No voices. No warnings.

Because everyone's dead, he concluded. He felt a kind of distant horror reach out to him like real voices breaking through a dream. All my men are dead in there.

"Police!" he called out. "Who's in there? I'm an armed police officer, come out!"

Silence, nothing but the oceanic roar of blood pumping through his own head.

"Michael? Kenny, are you in there? Martin?"

A voice answered him. The voice was quiet and rational and as cold as a snake's kiss. And it came not from the barn but from a few feet behind him.

"Put the weapon down, Mr Deal."

His heart skipped a beat. For a few seconds he could do nothing at all except be grateful that he had learned to control his reaction to surprises over the years. If he had turned around with a start he might be dead now. Eventually he dropped the revolver and put his arms out from his sides to show that he was giving himself up.

"Now walk slowly to that barn wall over there. Turn your head and I'll blow your backbone in half."

Preston began to walk slowly towards the barn where his men lay slaughtered. He knew what it would smell like in there after all that gunfire. It would smell like hell with a hangover.

"You're Billy Young, I take it," he said.

"Very clever, Mr Deal, now just keep walking."

"I know you all. I dream about you all."

Preston stood against the wall of the barn, his nose almost touching the stone. "What do I do now, Billy?"

"You keep very, very still, Mr Deal," Billy Young warned him.

The barn door opened. Preston heard footsteps in the dust. He had to fight against the urge to turn his head, but he knew that he would see soon enough. They wouldn't kill him without giving him that much.

"You can turn around now," a different voice invited, and although Preston Deal hadn't heard that voice in over twenty years, he knew in his heart that it belonged to Pete Casey himself. So he turned around and at last came face to face with the Casey gang.

They were standing in a line, six of them, their faces masked by scarves and handkerchiefs, every bit as deadly dispassionate as a firing squad. Their sense of fun was legendary but none of them were laughing now. This was business, this was the Casey gang at work. All of them were armed with pistols or revolvers, which they held pointed at Preston in straight-arm fashion, except for Billy Young, who was holding a pump-action shotgun.

As Preston looked along the line of mean, hostile eyes, he was overwhelmed by the reality of them, by their sheer weight of presence. He was in the company of legends and he was powerless to prevent himself from feeling thrilled.

They stood like this: Billy Young on the far left, his shotgun pointed at Preston's midriff. Next to him Ben Miller, a former professional footballer who went missing after a Wembley cup final and drifted into armed robbery to feed his booze habit. The Casey gang had sobered him up but he still had that back from the dead look in his eyes. On Ben's left was Sonny Wilson, his pistol angled at forty-five degrees in that peculiar trademark way of his. Then came Robbie Casey, brandishing two revolvers in hands that were crossed at the wrists. His blond hair had been cut short since his last appearance on camera, emphasising his boyish appeal and that air of forgivable mischief he carried. Robbie was possibly smiling under the red silk handkerchief tied around his face.

Pete was next in line, as serene and impassive as ever. His eyes gave nothing at all away. On Pete's left was Clayton Pepper, who, despite his presence here and now was still only a rumour of a man. The tall Ulsterman was concentrating on Preston's forehead from behind a Browning pistol.

"Richard Linton sends his regards," Pete Casey said at last.

There was no more small talk for the time being. Preston was swiftly and expertly bound to a chair by Clayton Pepper and left facing the exterior of the barn. He wondered how he was going to tell another policeman's wife that she was now a widow. What could he say when they asked why he was spared when their husbands were killed? For old times sake? Respect? To prolong the game that was as much an obsession of Pete and Robbie's as it was his own? He didn't know, he just didn't know. Who'd be a copper, eh?

"We're leaving now," Pete Casey said, resting a hand on Preston's shoulder."We're taking your car and that old Land Rover. The Glums have got their instructions, so it won't do you much good to scream for help. No one will hear you out here in any case. Five hours, Mr Deal, just enough time to see us safely out of the country and then you can stretch your legs."

Preston heard the Land Rover's engine rumble and protest and finally catch on. His own car started first time, but then it was brand new. That was another loss he would have to explain to the Home Office.

Robbie was the last to leave. He came and stood in front of Preston, his head tilted quizzically.

"You've put weight on," he said at last. "Still got that ginger nut, though."

"You look as though you've been ill," Preston noted."You're too thin. Not been eating well?"

"I got shot again," Robbie explained."It took me a long time to recover. Moving around all the time didn't help."

A whistle from the car. Robbie glanced over, frowning impatiently. He turned his attention back to Preston and put his hands to his ears. "What was that thing the spook was wearing?"

"A long range microphone of some kind. It's supposed to pick up conversation from the vibrations on a window pane."

"Really?" Robbie asked. His eyes were bright with boyish intrigue."Does it work?"

"I don't think he had the chance to find out, Robbie."

At that Robbie Casey laughed, simple and honest laughter."Yeah well," he said."He would have been better off with a shotgun in my opinion. See you, Mr Deal."

There was to be one last surprise. A short time after driving out of the farmyard they came back, reversing at high speed in Preston's own car. He gathered himself for the coup-de-grace, frightened and yet strangely grateful to them for not leaving him behind to face the explanations. All he hoped was that they untie him first. He would ask for that last shot of dignity before they riddled his body with gunfire.

The car door opened. Footsteps raced lightly across the dusty farmyard. One quick shot to the back of the head, he thought, and he wasn't surprised to discover that he didn't really want to die at all.

Robbie ran past him and went into the barn. He came out a moment later dragging one of the chairs from the card table. The battery operated portable television was under his arm. Wordlessly he positioned the chair against the wall and stood the television on the seat, then he squatted down and tuned in the picture. There was a blood stained ace of spades playing card stuck to the heel of his trainer.

"Cricket," Robbie announced."That should keep you going for a few hours." He stood up and spun neatly on the balls of his feet, pulling two finger and thumb pistols from an imaginary gunbelt. Something brilliant and dangerous flashed in his eyes, and for an instant he was neither the boy he used to be nor the young man he had become. Existing only in that instant of belief - of make believe - was the mythical outlaw Robbie Casey.

"It doesn't end here, Mr Deal," he said."It doesn't end here."

THE END