Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [2]
The Range Rover was doing at least sixty. And on these roads, in these conditions, at this hour, that was hardly a good idea. Or a sober idea, for that matter. But then, not one of the singing, roaring, joking young men in the vehicle was sober. They were returning from the University Spring Ball in Exeter, they were wearing tuxedos, and they were wired. Roger Browne was the first to see the shabby Bedford van parked awkwardly at the side of the road. But then he should have been, as he was the driver. He slammed on the brakes, yanking down hard right on the steering wheel and for a moment it looked like they might just make it.
Then the wheels slipped on the wet road, the rear of the Range Rover backswiped the Bedford and the vehicle was rolling, the laughs and jokes turning to screams.
Animal was smashed sideways against the driver’s seat at the impact. His beer flew from his hand. The passenger window shattered, the door bulging inwards as if a giant had punched it.
The whole van rocked and slid across the road. The singer looked up to see the Range Rover rolling to a standstill on its side, and then he was climbing out through the driver’s door, and doing what came naturally to him: shouting obscenities.
‘You crazy bastard!Whassamatterwivya? Got hay for brains?’ He stood in the road, staring at the overturned vehicle, waiting for 8
someone to make a move from inside, making no effort to step forward to help. Eventually a head did pop out of a buckled door.
And when Animal saw the well-groomed, callow face, when he saw the tux; when he heard the young man’s cultured and indignant voice return his obscenities as he fell out on to the road, Animal began to see red.
Doc heard the rending of metal and shattering of glass as he urinated into the wind. He was about to turn to investigate when he spotted something glinting, half-buried beneath the rocks in front of him. He paused. He could hear Animal shouting now, which meant at least he wasn’t hurt. He realised with a dreamy languor that he really didn’t care either way. He glanced again at the glinting object and, responding to some impulse that was beyond his ken, he crouched down and tugged at it. It was a handle fashioned from some sort of bone and it resisted his efforts, so he tugged with all his weight.
Animal had the beer in him, and the fury too. If there was one thing in all this world he hated, more than coppers, more than bosses, more than anything, it was toffs. They made him just lose it. He’d done six months for ABH once when a toff in a pub spilled beer on him. Animal wouldn’t have given a toss if anyone else had spilled beer on him, shit he did it to himself all the time. But a toff...
He had the toff by his stoopid bow tie before the bleeder could even begin to wonder if maybe he’d made a mistake climbing out of his overturned Range Rover. Animal began shaking him, speechless with rage. ‘Look what you done,’ he growled into the wind as rain streamed over his shades. ‘Look what you soddin’
done.’ Behind him, Winston the drummer and Alf the bass player had also got out of the van. They stood in the rain looking at the dent in the driver’s door like they were slowly and stupidly trying to work out how it got there.
Animal threw the toff down. The young man looked terrified.
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He lay spread-eagled in the road, rain pooling under him.
Animal spat on him, and lurched over to the Range Rover, yanking at the stiff passenger door, his rage only just starting.
Roger lay frozen for a moment, the expensive tuxedo sticking wetly to his back, his trousers soggy. He had been sure the punk with the shades was going to kill him. When he looked up and saw the other two lumbering towards him through the rain, all ripped leather and big boots, he began to feel really afraid. He rolled to his feet and dashed off into the night, towards the tor.
Doc