Police truck

Tonight's the night that we got the truck
We're goin' downtown gonna beat up drunks
Your turn to drive I'll bring the beer
It's the late late shift no one to fear
- Dead Kennedys, 1980

By the time I’d sorted all that shit out for Lena, it was half three in the afternoon – though it looked a lot later and darker out there – and not only were the ferries still offline but Brisbane Airport had shut down flights, the wind just getting too vicious for the poor wee overpaid plane jockeys to drive in. I wasn’t getting to Adelaide tonight. Fact. Texted that Fact to Marty and got no answer whatsoever. That wasn’t passive-aggressive either. Didn’t bother messaging anyone else, particularly not the Executive Director (Talent Management). Even without planes, ferries or any sort of a working courier service out to here, I’d sure she’d find a way to have a Third Written Warning and/or Notice of Termination in my letterbox by 9am tomorrow. Tried to give Beth a call, but that went to messages, as it’d done at lunchtime. Phone off. Never mind. She’d be home soon.

Except… she wasn’t. Not by four. Not by five. By half five I was a little worried. By half six I was thinking of people to call. Obviously her family weren’t on that list, but there were a few people I knew from the school who might be happy to talk – though if the staffrooms were of the opinion Beth had been involved in having me taken off the active roster, it’d be a bit Planet Weird. Not to mention the fact that I had a certain outstanding disciplinary case with the Department of Education regarding my conduct with female students which would have inevitably been doing the rounds as gossip fodder. (Still no word on that, though I’d completely lost interest by now obviously. The wheels of government turn slowly etc.)

In the end I called Dave Christie who I’d worked with under Bill Howard at Dunwich State High, and again at Stradbroke Christian College – he’d also taken his thirty pieces of silver and carefully edited out any mention of evolution from his biology lessons. When asked, Dave seemed a bit vague on it. As he did on everything, given that he smoked like the Duffer in his heyday. He was pretty sure he’d seen her first thing coming in (‘first thing’ for Dave equating to ‘awkwardly late’ for Beth), but there’d been ‘some kerfuffle’ at morning tea and she’d left, gone home. Sick leave or something. That was it. And would Gasket be into playing his 30th at the bowlo. Probably not, Dave. Probably not.

Right, so do I call her place? Or do I do a dodgy drive-by? Dodgy drive-by. Stalkerriffic. Marcel Marceau had nothing on my take on ‘walking against the wind’ – it was starting to get ridiculous out there, branches were coming off trees and throwing themselves down the street at you, and yet it still wouldn’t fucking rain – as I struggled out to the ute and argued with the door. Wrestled it shut, buckled in, keys in the ignition… and my mobile phone rang. Which was in my back pocket. More wrestling – belt off, reach for the phone before they hang up. Just in case it’s Beth.

It’s not Beth. It’s the sound of someone sharpening something metal. A knife?

“Hear that?!”

“Erm, hi Emma… yeah, yeah I do…” Today just went from weird, to disconcerting, to scary, to OMFG-I-want-to-go-home.

“Remember? REMEMBER what I said I’d do to you?”

The line was breaking up a tad in the crappy weather, which added to the surreality of the conversation, as well as the amount of time it took to actually figure out what the fuck she was talking about.

“Emma, are you sharpening a fish knife by any chance?”

“YES. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’M FUCKING DOING.”

“Emma, why are you sharpening a fucking fish knife?” I couldn’t deal with this shit. Not now. “For starters, I was pretty sure you said it’d be a rusty, blunt one. And secondly, what the fuck am I supposed to have done to Beth?”

“You tell me,” she growled. “You tell me what you’re doing in the fucking gossip mags smeared all over some skanky newsreader in some bar…”

Yup, we’d definitely reached OMFG-I-want-to-go-home. Chucking the phone onto the passenger seat on Loudspeaker, I fired up the V8 and floored it out into the windtunnel that comprised my street. What fucking gossip mag? She gave me the name. They don’t deserve the publicity, so I won’t do the same. Take your pick from NW, Famous, Who (The Fuck) Weekly, OK!, Hello!, Fuck Off! and Venal Celebrity Cunts ‘R’ Us. Doesn’t matter which. They’re all gutter-dwelling slimepeddlers and bullshit merchants. They were also all on the compulsory reading list for the female staff in the SCC staffroom. Emma was nice enough to stay with me on the line – actually she was busy haranguing the fuck out of me for cheating on Beth, as I tried to explain as calmly as the voice that said KILL EVERYONE would let me, that I hadn’t – for the 90 seconds of driving-like-an-absolute-arsehole required to get me to the local shop. A gust of Former Tropical Cyclone Nigel Nofriends tried to pitch me into a passing Hilux as I jumped out.

Into the shop, latest issue, page 13… awww, Jesus fucking Christ.

A couple of longish-lens shots through the glass from the far side of the Qantas Club of Selena and me – one with us close talking, one with her hand on mine, one with her air-kissing my cheek. And a lot of absolute lies and bullshit printed in the adjoining text about what ‘friends of the couple’ had to say about our secret romance.

Better get a lawyer, son. Better get a real good one.

“This is fucking fraud,” I declared. I couldn’t even begin to tell her how fraudulent it was, couldn’t find the words I was so gobsmacked. “That was the night before we came down to see you, for fuck’s sake. We spent it in a fucking VW Beetle, not some newsreaders’ bedroom.”

“Then tell Beth that,” she snarled, not apparently buying into what I was selling. “If you can get hold of her. I’ve been trying all fucking day.” She finished her diatribe by reminding me about what she’d said about how vulnerable Beth was and what responsibility I had not to hurt her, before reminding me I was a cunt, and hung up. After which I was told in no uncertain terms that if I was going to use that sort of language I was no longer welcome in the shop. And was I going to pay for that fucking magazine or what?

Just awful. I sank back into the car and motored around to Beth’s parents place, but no lights were on. It was only a quarter to six, I guess, but seemed dark enough to me. ‘Dark as Oprah’s arsehole’ as a fairly unenlightened western Queensland yokel I knew from college (no, not Dr Cletus) would have put it. I sent one last futile text into the ether: Beth, are you OK?

And wanted to add ‘I love you’ but the words somehow seemed trite and worthless. On account of love being the unlimited potential for pain and all.

Then I just drove around pointlessly for a while. I suppose I was looking for her, but it wasn’t any sort of organised search, just driving around the streets of Point Lookout because stopping would mean having to come up with something else to do next, and I was just headfucked. My bag was still in the back, under the tonneau cover, so I just drove out of town and headed out along the main island road, on the non-existent chance that the ferries were running again, or the equally slim shot that I’d come across that little yellow Beetle with the gaffa-tape racing stripes. Didn’t find it. Didn’t find anyone much. It was eerily quiet out on the roads – eerily quiet if you ignored the howl and thrash of the wind in the trees, of course – and everyone was hiding out safe at home, listening to the weather updates on the radio. The only signs of life I passed were one Wicked camper, pitching wildly in the crosswinds on the long straight (variously referred to as Quota Straight or Toogood’s Folly amongst locals, well me at least), and a couple of forlorn roadworks signs and traffic cones littering the re-metalled edges of the intersection where the road out to Amity Point (Beehive Rd) peeled off the main East Coast Road about eight kays north-east of Dunwich, just before the road winds into the range. I call it a range, it’s a couple of hills really, but the road goes around them and there’s actual corner speed advisory signs on some of the bends and armco railings and everything. Yes, it’s very exciting. The hills are big enough to slap a mobile phone repeater on and be able to service most of the open-road parts of the island, or as much as the major telcos can be arsed servicing. It was under the nose of that hill in line-of-sight of the tower (only just in sight, under the low-hanging cloud) that my mobile bleeped a message. I pulled over into the gravel on the outside of a 55km/h (advisory) right-hander. I’d never taken it that slowly in the history of my time on the island, and had no idea who came up with that rubbish. 55km/h in a hailstorm driving a three-wheeler Reliant Robin on tyres made of Romano cheese perhaps.

It was Beth.

sad. so sad

Message details – she’d only just sent that, it wasn’t delayed by network crappiness. She’s online. Sort of. I tried to call her – straight to messages again. Her phone wasn’t off, she was call-screening. Was that progress? I decided to make my case clear.

Beth those photos are total fraud. Sydney airport lounge last Fri nite. Had drinks with her then got on a plane and flew to Bris. You met me at the airport that night, you know nothing happened, it’s bullshit.

Right. I felt good, sort of. For once, the facts were on my side. For once, I hadn’t actually been a complete cunt. Which I had a good chance to dwell upon over the nine minutes and twenty-three seconds it took to get a reply.

doesnt matter now. already crashed. hurt mself.

Crashed. Hurt. Ugly words. Words I didn’t like the sound of.

Where are you babe? Are you OK?

At the risk of repeating myself.

in hospital, came the reply at length. have to go. they will take this off me soon.

I love you Beth, you know that.

Fuck triteness. And fuck call-screening (I’d tried again.)

doesnt matter either. sorry.

So I sat there for a little while, contemplating what had just happened. Even got out of the car and walked for a bit, the roadside gravel crunching under my five dollar Newcastle Jets A-League thongs. It would have been worse if I hadn’t understood, I think. But I did, and that was the punch in the guts. The realisation that it didn’t matter whether I was wrong or right. That this was always, always going to happen, one day. That the end would come. That my line of work would put me in these sorts of situations. That shit like this came embedded with the life of being a Z-grade celebrity, which itself came as part-and-parcel of earning a living playing music for people’s entertainment. And that probably meant I’d never get to hold down a normal relationship with a normal girl. Certainly not one with Beth. Jeff’s words from the other night came back to me: When all the evidence you have is pointing one way, no matter how dodgy the source… it takes a lot to believe shit’s not happening that way.

Cunting fucking arseholes of the universe.

I walked a little longer in that eery post-apocalyptic atmosphere – almost dark, hellish black clouds away to the north which were beating down on Bribie or somewhere, yet here in the lee of the hills it was a little more protected. What do I do now? Throw a tantrum? Ride in like fucking Rambo and save her from the ‘hospital’? (Code for some sort of psych clinic, I figured.) Curl up and cry? Let it slide, give up and go back to being a womanizing fuck, starting tonight at the local backpacker haunts? Go home and get really fucking drunk?

Hmmm, could be a winner.

I’d walked far enough to reach the next left-hander, again a 55km/h bend (for whom? On what day?) A flash of orange-red caught the eye in the gloom. Roadworks cones. Either side of a mangled bit of railing. Hadn’t seen that earlier today. I jogged across the road to see why. Why was fairly self-explanatory; the cones hadn’t been there when I’d gone past earlier today. Perhaps the railing damage had, but this was about where the smoke from the bushfire had come up.

Yeah. About that.

Down in the gully, in a blackened stand of banksias and river gums, lay the burnt-out shell of a car – one which it didn’t take any sort of trained crash investigator to work out had hit the railing from the opposite direction I was coming from, the Dunwich side, at pace. It’d flipped over the bank, crashed through the bush and caught fire at the bottom. It was a mess, made even more so by the mangling of the doors and A-pillar around the driver’s side where they’d had to cut them out. Would have been a bastard to get down there, let alone put out, but they’d apparently managed. In this light, you’d struggle to identify the colour of the thing let alone the make, but judging by the bit of bonnet/boot/door/something which had come off in the initial roll down the bank and had ended up clear of the eventual fire, you could squint down the hillside and make an argument it was sort of a lemony yellow. Possibly even with the melted remnants of a Darwin fish.

already crashed. hurt mself.

Time to go get really fucking drunk, then.

Taylors Promised Land cab merlot, two for $25. Worked for me. This wasn’t a one-bottle night. I drove back from Dunwich at deliberately obnoxious speeds, burning on adrenalin, trying to shut from my mind the thought that I’d driven past while Beth’s car was burning away at the bottom of that gully, before the fireys had even got there. I’d rather be drunk than to be feeling this, happiness my little thing to miss, as Tim Rogers once (often) said. What could I have done differently? Nothing. Everything. Didn’t matter. This was always going to be endgame. Beth in hospital - probably an actual, proper, I’m-fucking-injured hospital, not just the clinic near Mt Coot-tha she usually spent her Christmases at, as I’d previously guessed - and me sinking into the couch watching shit on TV and obliterating myself on cheap-but-serviceable red. Wasn’t even my couch, or my TV. The signal was shit – terrestrial channels only, pay TV was a long distant memory. Digital too, so every few minutes when the wind gusted hard, the signal dropped out and I invented new swearwords.

She’s not dead, I reminded myself through the haze of alcohol and loathing (self and otherwise). She’s not even that badly injured if she can send texts. Well, she’s got one arm that works. What the fuck do you want? I should eat something. Fuck it, there’s calories in this. Keep drinking. Maybe there’ll be flights tomorrow. Maybe not. Maybe I could go to Adelaide and punch Selena’s cuntfaced husband in the teeth for his part in all this. (My theory was Selena and hubby were headed for the divorce courts, regardless of any ‘understanding’ she seemed to think they had about her screwing around, and given that the publishers of that cunting fucking gossip mag was owned by the same Australian media magnate he worked for and was golfing besties with, this looked suspiciously like his first gambit in the game of legal poker.)

Because by the Jesus suffering fuck I didn’t feel like going to Adelaide and performing with Flange Gasket in a tent at the Big Day Out. Not tomorrow, not any fucking day in the near-to-distant future.

For one thing, that pathetic little gobshite Reid Burton – Brady Priddle’s chief eunuch throughout the life of deusexfuckingmachina – had been recruited out of Marty’s band to be second guitar. Marty’s idea, of course. Which meant it was Maddy’s and he had to wear the flak for it. A month or two back Mike Cross from Fairfax had reported me as saying he wasn’t worthy to play our riffs; it hadn’t been what I’d said, but sure as fuck it was what I’d meant. He wasn’t Gasket. I’d have rather Gasket played as a fucking three-piece. And they way things were looking, with that big fuck-off storm cell moving over the north of the airport, they would be. Without me.

Rage came on ABC2 around half-ten. It wasn’t really Rage, just some sort of Triple J flavoured music show on digital which was heavy on video clips, but if I say it was Rage you’ll get what I mean. I had no idea how it’d ended up so late so quick. Couldn’t account for the time. I’d eaten whatever was in the house, which was fuck all – cold leftover cannelloni, mainly – and the first bottle-and-a-half was gone. I was slowing down, the lifeforce ebbing away, staring blankly at music vids and bitterly sledging the content like the crazy old munter who abuses passing trains from under the railway bridge.

Audioslave’s Show Me How To Live came on. No idea why. Some sort of thing about movie-influenced videos I think. Show Me How To Live is basically the early ‘70s acid road movie Vanishing Point recapped in three and a half minutes. One man driving non-stop across the US to deliver a white 1970 Dodge Challenger 440, running from everything the law can throw at him. It’s a bleak and nihilistic movie – I’d seen it in college, one of the movie geeks on my floor used to rig up the projector in the common room and show rented videos of films he reckoned were must-see film auteur godliness. It wasn’t all film-geek wank, either - the John Woo/Chow Yun Fat Hong Kong shoot-em-up double bill of The Killer and Hard Boiled was a definite highlight. Vanishing Point was the second part of a 60s/70s road movie double bill with Easy Rider. By comparison, Easy Rider ended well. Vanishing Point ended as it began, with the movie’s anti-hero Kowalski choosing to die in a fireball, aiming his Challenger at a glinting gap of sunlight between the blades of the bulldozers set up as a roadblock by the California Highway Patrol on some lonely deserted highway. “You’ll never take me alive,” said he… actually, that wasn’t Vanishing Point as much as it was Waltzing Matilda, but it was the same underlying philosophy. There is no freedom in life. Death is the only true freedom there is.

Yeah, the sort of shit you want to be thinking while going through a breakup and halfway through your second bottle of red. It was almost a blessed relief when the power finally cut and the TV sighed to silence. Blackout. It’d taken long enough, given the storm and tempest outside. I picked up my bottle and tugged on a pair of jeans - OK, yeah, I’d been drinking in my boxers, I’m all class I realise. Even better, the only jeans I could find around the place were a pair of old Draggin Jeans, reinforced with Kevlar for falling off motorcycles on, which in this weather were sticky as hell and itched like buggery from all the sand I hadn’t washed out of them from my last R 80 blast down the beach. Still, it was better than baring my boxer-shorted arse to the world, even if the very now combination of scruffy motorbike jeans and Newy Jets pluggers weren’t setting any new fashion trends, so suitably outfitted, I wandered out into the maelstrom to get some fresh air.

Great idea. The street was in total darkness, and if it’d been breezy earlier, now it was getting on for a bit windy. More power lines would come down in this. It was probably just as well the ones around me didn’t have any electrons in them at the moment. I wandered through town – passing next to nobody, bar the occasional police, fire or ambulance – and out to the headland, where I knew the path well enough not to need much more than the occasional dull illumination from a full moon desperately trying to burst through the cloud cover.

Don’t worry. I wasn’t getting near a cliff in order to explore any of those death-is-freedom motifs that were rattling through my head. I just wanted to be somewhere where I’d be alone. Free of sensory inputs. In peace. I didn’t want to die. Too many loose ends left afterwards. To unexist, perhaps. To have not ever been in the first place. That’d be… uncomplicated. But noone gets to do that, not even my buddy McCarthy, not even my brother Matt. And like I say, I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to sleep. I was tired. And I didn’t want to face the walk back along that path, not just at the moment as suddenly, mesmerically pissed as I realised I was.

So I curled up on the old bench on the lookout, and… got rained on.

It wasn’t really rain. It was like being repeatedly shat on by a particularly angry seagull. Huge, heavy, warm splats of rain – not drops, splats – gobbing from above. It was fucking annoying. How am I meant to sleep in this? And who throws a shoe? Honestly. I sat up, as the skies kept gobbing on me, slanted at an angle in the blustering winds. You know what, fuck this. I’m going home.

So I picked myself up, hurled the last of the wine over the cliff (it landed far enough away not to be audible as it smashed into the rocks), picked my way along the path back to the reserve – and only now realising how fucking ill-advised it’d been coming out here while it was so dark and I was so munted – while drunkenly singing to myself, ‘Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I wanna go to bed… I had a little drink about an hour ago, something something fuckin’ something else…’ I staggered out of the bushes and crossed the grass reserve, heading back towards civilization, a stupid smirk starting to ingratiate itself across my face. You’ll be alright, Angus. You silly cunt. Let’s get you home.

...After a slash.

The local council had recently re-done the public toilets on the reserve, even putting in whizz-bang eco-friendly solar-powered lighting at seemingly vast expense. It meant about the only lights that worked for miles around were in the public slashers. Suited me fine, I hadn’t broken the seal yet but by Christ did I need to. I staggered in… and look, gents, you know how it is. You need to hang one with urgency, the rest of the world just doesn’t exist in that moment. Sensory perception shutdown. Nuclear war could be going on in the adjoining stalls and you wouldn’t know, because you’re pissing like a horse and are thanking the Lord with every fibre of your atheist being for blessed fucking relief. It’s only as the flow begins to subside (sorry ladies for the mental picture) that you start waking up to your surroundings and start thinking ‘Jesus, someone’s slaughtered a fucking cow over in there’ or ‘Ah fuck, this isn’t the slashers, it’s the Prime Minister’s office.’

So yeah, that’s how I came to not notice the grunting and flailing from the middle cubicle. The sort of man-on-man grunting and flailing that one more aware of his surroundings than me might have associated with a gents’ public lavatory at half-eleven at night, even one out here.

Now, folks, I’m not homophobic. I absolutely support the rights of blokes to do unto other blokes as they see fit, so long as it’s consensual, it’s responsible, they clean up after themselves, and I don’t have to watch. Or hear. And look, as it is the etiquette at urinals is fraught enough without having to accommodate the social awkwardness of what to say to the two dudes going for gold in the stalls next door, though the masterplan seemed pretty clear to me: Piss hard, piss fast, and GTFO before you make yourself obvious. And don’t hang around long enough to flush. June Dally Watkins would have been proud of me. In no way shape or form.

So I finished what I had to do – with the worrying thought that Jesus I hope that’s still consensual in there, if it was to start with I wasn’t so sure it sounded as such now – and tiptoed past. The door was only a few feet away, all I had to do was run like buggery. (Ahem.) But, unfortunately, I’m a bit of a bastard. And like I say, I did have concerns.

So I paused at the door, rapped three times and wailed in a high-pitched accent, “HOUSEKEEPING!!!”

Then I ran like buggery.

Well, at least as far as the nearest patch of dark, anyway. Not staying to see how this one panned out would be a criminal act against the laws of practical jokery, surely. As the toilet door smashed open, I turned to see a short, thin, dark-haired bloke fumbling with his strides as he tried to run and dress himself at the same time, while haranguing the bloke in the cubicle behind him with a string of gutteral hysterics that sounded German. Sounded like Hitler giving it the ‘NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN’s actually. And while four NEINs are thirty-six this bloke – this kid – didn’t look half that. What was the age of consent for teh gaysex in Queensland? More than it was for straight sex, I thought. Thanks for that, Cletus legislators.

He staggered to his rucksack, which had been discarded near the entrance, and ran with the grace of a newborn giraffe into the night, dragging his pack behind him. His backpack had what I was pretty sure an Austrian flag on it. I was prepared to go out on a limb and say he was an Austrian backpacker. Also looked like I’d saved him from a sexual experience that wasn’t turning out in quite the way he was hoping for, so that was my one good deed for the day.

Out came the other bloke. Dressed as a cop, well mostly anyway. It's fun to stay at the YMCA, apparently. Hat, badge and everything. Nightstick… best not think about what he might have been up to with that… radio, gun holster. Under the pale glow of the fluoros, he looked pasty and sickly. Drawn. Strung-out. Downwind, I recognised the smell, too. Speed sweat. In my lairier days I’d dated (very briefly) a Goth chick who used a fair bit of speed. OK, by lairier I mean second year in Brisbane. She was a mate of Karen/Desparia the failed Goth and even more failed flatmate. She was wild as hell and fucked like a banshee, but to put it mildly, she stank. So did this guy, and given how far downwind of him I was, probably much, much more so. He had the demonic, white-eyed look of someone who had been on it far too much for far too long. And if it was ice he was on, so much the worse for the effects…

And at that point, we recognised each other. Erm, so this is awkward.

“Hi Brad,” I said. “Been keeping well?”

Actually I wasn’t that interested in finding out, so rather than hanging around to hear, I’ll admit I just fucked off. Toogood bellowed a purple streak of furious incoherent offensiveness after me, but I could run faster, seeing as though I didn’t have my trousers around my thighs. “Put some pants on and make yourself scarce,” I called back to him. Quoting Tony Martin: it’s always made of win.

Ah, bless. A family best avoided, on balance.

I ran all the way home. Not just out of fear and self-preservation, also because Mythbusters had said the only reliable way to speed up alcohol metabolism was through exercise, and I’d decided I needed to get jack of all this fucking grog I’d had and get my shit together. Of course that just reinforced how massively pissed I actually was, but it didn’t stop me planning ahead or thinking things through. The power would be down forever and a day, I knew that. Surely Energex were getting callouts to half of Brisbane, and we always got forgotten out here anyway. However usually, when the power lines went down out here, they went down between here and the Amity turnoff – the whole island didn’t usually go down in a thunderstorm. There was probably half a chance that Amity Point still had power. And being as I was the local caretaker of Mount Road Motorcycles’ Stradbroke Island branch office (i.e. the old beach house and lock-up shed where the Martins kept their water toys) with a bunch of keys to match, there was probably half a chance I could find somewhere for the night where I could recharge my phone, listen to a radio for cyclone updates and make a coffee tomorrow morning. It’d also be handier for the ferry once that shit was back on. And if all else failed, there was always the Martins’ tinnie and outboard. Not really the weapon for taking on the cyclonic swell in Moreton Bay, but needs be as needs must, or something.

Back at the house, by Dolphin torch, I repacked my bag into a waterproof rucksack I’d used when touring up the Queensland coast on the old BMW R 80 G/S. It hadn’t been aired out in living memory and smelled ranker than a rank thing (though not quite as rank as a heavy methamphetamine user) but if there was any scope of getting wet – and there was if those clouds above finally decided to stop farting about and open up properly – then it was worth the risk, particularly with phone chargers and laptops and CDs and the like in there. That done, I skolled more water than there existed in Wivenhoe Dam, had a much more at-ease slash than my last one, and crashed out on my bed – still in damp motorbike jeans which felt like sandpaper-lined cardboard, and an old Mount Road Yamaha T-shirt which stank of red wine and armpit.
Then again, I’d just been through a breakup: fair to expect that every T-shirt should have a wine stain. Thanks v. much Timmy Rogers (again.)

Except I couldn’t actually sleep. Not with a billion and one Shit Things happening in my head. Not with the wind ripping at the trees and those big heavy raindrops smashing into the roof. And not, I finally realised, with the sound of a diesel 4WD rattling away outside. The last was the quietest, obviously, and it was a bit like when you can’t sleep because of the low-pitched hum of a fridge-freezer in a too-quiet house – it’s only when it stops that you realise.

It stopped, and I realised.

Cracking the curtains slightly, I glanced outside, and threw up a little in my mouth. Police Rodeo. No cop lights or siren, but a handheld spotlight being trained on each of the windows in turn. I ducked out of the way just in time to avoid getting blinded by eleventy billion candlepower pouring through my bedroom window. Fuck fuck fuck this isn’t too good. It’s fucking Toogood. And no I didn’t mean that just then. He’s come back for… what? Revenge? Dessert? *shudder* All I knew was my plans to GTFO just got ratcheted forward a couple of notches.

Keeping low, I ducked downstairs to the garage. Of course, now was a relentlessly shit time to realise the bag I’d carefully packed and placed into the back of the ute wasn’t going to be much use to me if I couldn’t actually open the automatic garage door with no fucking power. And stuffing around with the release mechanism was enough of a bitch of a thing in broad daylight with power tools, let alone in the dark sans electricity and with a pissed-off, strung-out copper strutting up your outside stairs, possibly armed, inevitably dangerous.

Only one thing for it. The R 80 was pretty much full of fuel, and I could probably sidle it out the side door with a bit of luck and a lot of arse. If I could stomach the idea of sticking my bare feet (socks were upstairs) into my riding boots, which when stored down here in the garage seemed to be the preferred home of most of the nastier local species of spiders. I grabbed a can of surface spray, reached inside and liberally doused the inside of both boots. It was just as well I checked with the torch and discovered it was WD40 before doing the same with my gloves, which would have sucked.

Even in an emergency, even in a heatwave, even on Judgement Day you don’t forget gloves, boots, helmet and jacket (hanging on the door to the laundry). Not even the most profound of fuckwits makes that mistake more than once. Not even hard cases like Mick. Especially not hard cases like Mick. That was how you survived long enough to become known as one.

I slapped the side of my helmet to knock out any creepy crawlies, and belted my gloves on the tray of the ute. Wasn’t too worried about noise. Toogood clearly wasn’t, judging by the way he’d kicked my fucking door in and seemed to be having a one-man demolition party up there. I’d send the cunt the invoice from the housedressing rental company once he got out of rehab. Me, I was going to make as quiet a getaway as I could.

The side door from the garage, which led onto the pavers which ran up the side of the house, creaked a little as I eased it ajar – so now that fucking WD40 would have come in useful, yeah? – and chocked it open. Then I climbed onto the big old R 80 and began walking it through the garage, no mean feat given how heavy and unwieldy it was and how still-quite-pissed I was. Somehow, neither of us lost our balance. I propped it back onto its stand, gave everything a quick once-over with the torch – this fucker had to fire first time, so any dangling plug leads or whatever weren’t going to help me much. All looked set. And all was quiet, suddenly, apart from the POUNDING IN MY HEAD that was my pulse going apeshit.

I don’t really know to this day how I didn’t hear him coming down the stairs. Too madly zen-focused on the bike - zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, perhaps – and the helmet on would have dampened down my sensory perception. But there he was, bold as brass, obnoxious as fuck. Still dressed as a copper, a proper store-bought one, with pants on and everything. And something black and shiny in his hand. Could have been a baton, could have been a gun. Didn’t have time to find out. I hurled the Dolphin torch at him like a quarterback launching a Hail Mary to the endzone; he flinched and he ducked, but ended up ducking into it as the weight in the battery made it dip and tumble through the air. He wore it on his shoulder, the casing splitting apart and rendering the room dark again. Didn’t have time to check on him. Didn’t have time to get the bag, either, which was sitting under the tonneau cover of the ute. I wrenched the starter and the R 80 G/S fired lustily into life, unfurling smoke into the confined garage – a bit rich, but you get that from a month or two of neglect – and squeezed the throttle. Out the door, understeering hideously on the slimy pavers, front wheel tucking until it dug into the dirt on the outside and got some purchase – then kicking it shut behind me (I’d been very clever and had primed it to lock when slammed, wouldn’t hold him for long but enough to get down the road) I retargeted the big old bastard down the driveway and opened her up.

Finding one: I’m quite pissed, as I wobbled through the turn onto my street, almost bouncing out of my seat as the shocks compressed. Probably too pissed to ride, but not so pissed to think sitting around to get my arse handed to me is a Good Idea.

Finding two: Bosch ignition is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I’d been so fucking nervous about this thing starting. So much I could taste the bile in the back of my throat.

Finding three: It’s greasy as fucking hell out here. It hadn’t rained much – no puddles or heavy surface water – but what rain was there was really sitting on the surface. The longer it goes between downpours, the uglier the road surface gets when it does rain, for two reasons – one a greater buildup of oil, diesel, roadgrime and shite, two the surface kind of bakes itself to the point where it repels water, rather than its natural porousity absorbing it a little. So now you know. Meanwhile, I’m fishtailing out of the intersection that pitches my street onto the main road and thinking: Easy does it. Just be cool. Seriously worn dual-purpose Metzelers weren’t really the thing to be trying to supermoto a R 80 G/S around the place on slick roads.

Still, I hit the derestriction sign out of town and I got to do something I’d always wanted to. Wind a motorcycle out as far as it would go on a public road. *cough* With some measure of justification, I mean. 110, 120, 130, 140… and there goes the direct turnoff to Amity, the dirt back road which ran almost directly between the two settlements. No matter. I really didn’t feel up to dirt, not in these conditions (on the road and between my ears) and besides, I wanted to put some space between me and Toogood before I made the turnoff, and a long straight was just the thing. That speedo needle was nearing 150. Not too bad for a bike only capable of about 170 out of the box… presuming I’d adjusted that new speedo cable correctly, of course.

Whatever the numbers, it felt fast. And scary. Too fucking scary, particularly in these crosswinds. I lifted off. I was running from demons that weren’t, strictly speaking, right on my hammer. Towards the end of the Quota Straight I glanced over my shoulder – the mirrors were vibrating too much at this speed to be any use – and could just make out a pinprick of light in the distance, almost definitely a police Rodeo. If I did this right, he wouldn’t know which way I went. Which was kind of the point. I wanted him wasting his time searching for me around Dunwich for as long as possible while I was making my plans in Amity Point.

If he’s on stress leave how the fuck does he get access to his work truck, just wander in and borrow it? Hey Chief, I’m just borrowing the ute to go kerb-crawling for Austrian backpackers? Fuck me…

And fuck me for not concentrating. The Quota Straight, such as it is, ends in a gradual sweep to the left, tightening as it goes, until it reaches the turnoff for Beehive Rd, which peels off right and heads off to Amity Point. There’s a turning lane for traffic leaving and joining the lane on my side of the road. Which isn’t my side of the road, because I’ve been looking over my shoulder too long. I belatedly tip the big pig into the turn, fighting the gyro effect to get it following the road curvature and me back into my lane. But by the time I’m doing that, it’s beyond time to hit the brakes, and I’m still in uncharted 130 plus territory. I grab a handful of brake. A flicker of front wheel lock – my eyes are on stalks – then it bites, and I bear down on the rear as well. I’m not going to make the turn. Just go straight on, I tell myself. No hang on, adrenalin overrules, I can do this. I move my weight across like a MotoGP rider as I pitch the R 80 G/S into the 90 degree right, pinching as much rear brake as I dare.

And then a little bit extra, just to tighten the line…

Look, it would have worked. It would have worked if I hadn’t been on a greasy road. If I hadn’t been crossing a patch of unswept gravel from the re-sealing works earlier in the day. If I hadn’t been riding a large, top-heavy gelandestrasser on fragged dual-purpose tyres. If I hadn’t still been travelling at over 80 when I’d made the decision to commit to turning in. And, I suppose, if I hadn’t been half-cut and riding like a complete fuckwit.

Anyhoo, the back went, the front tucked, and we both bounced and skittered down the road, then over the mown grass verge, then into the trees. I’m guessing the last bit. I remember the realisation that I’d lost the back, the horror at discovering I couldn’t get it back, then a crunch as stackhat hit bitumen, and a ringing silence.

I was tired, so I slept.