Bradlee turned off the M4 at junction three, a little before Windsor, and headed down the A388
in the direction of Datchet. His face-off with Danny hadn't put him in a bad mood. Quite the opposite. Maybe he felt that some kind of altercation was an essential part of a decent night out, and he was pleased that the evening had lived up to expectations. He looked at his expensive watch. "Nearly there." Like he had a car full of schoolchildren.
The road had been ribbon-developed and there were streetlights along most of its length, and a hotch-potch of nondescript semis with long front gardens, bits of public green, modern industrial buildings and modest new estates, plus a watercourse that at first couldn't decide if it was a brook or a drain but soon became wider and might have looked pretty in daylight. It passed under the road more than once on its way to join the River Thames.
Page
40
Villainous Aspirations
Danny kept a wary eye on the water.
While it continued to run fast he could assume it was shallow and deal with it, but if it slowed, he'd be in trouble. His fear of water was so extreme that he couldn't even look at anything more than a few feet deep.
"Are we allowed to know where we're going?" he asked, warily.
"Don't see why not," said Bradlee.
"Horton, near Wraysbury!"
"Horton?"
"Industrial estate, bonehead."
They passed a broad village green on the left, with hairdressers and shops on the right, plus a few lovely half-timbered houses. In a couple of places the human development gave way to shrubs and open fields, but not often. Thousands of roads in England looked like this, turning suburban while they struggled to remain rural.
They took a right at a mini-roundabout.
"Fucking gorgeous village, Wraysbury,"
said Bradlee, after a while. "Right on the Thames. Little railway running all the way through it, Old Windsor meadow on the other side of the water, full o' cows, couple of boozers.
Course, you ain't gonna see the river from the road. But take my word for it, nice place. Cor,
Page
41
Villainous Aspirations
look at them poncey shops. Wassat? Antiques?
That was a butchers when I was a nipper."
Danny was relieved they wouldn't get to see the Thames, but puzzled by Bradlee's comment about the shop. "Don't you drive down this road every day?"
"What?" Bradlee frowned, and then grinned. "I used to live here. Went to Riverdale School," he said, which hardly answered Danny's question. "About a mile up on the right. There's a cut through these woods."
"I thought you were from Holloway," said Ronnie, sounding mildly disappointed.
"I am. The old man moved 'ere when I was seven, try to stop me mixin' with the wrong sort. Course, I could find 'em wherever I was. But he couldn't find no work, started doin' over houses, finished up inside, stupid git. I got my old lady to move us back to Holloway."
They turned left at a sign for Runneymead Road, through a band of trees and over a bridge. The river they'd been tracking for the last few miles ran beneath, its surface fast-flowing and uneven, twinkling in the streetlight.
Fast or not, it was now just a little too large for Danny to deal with, and he closed his eyes as they passed over it. There were new houses, then
Page
42
Villainous Aspirations
industrial buildings, but only on the right. On the left was a dark field.
"Fucking 'ell! Fucking 'ell!" Bradlee coasted along slowly then pulled in at the side of the empty road and turned off the ignition. "Just look at the state of this place! I used to play football 'ere when I was a nipper. Not on the fucking road mind, they were all fields back then.
What a right royal jacksie! Look what they done to it! We had flowers 'ere. Used to set fire to 'em.
Pitch weren't level neither. Bet they have to use the sports ground now, the nippers. All those rules. No smoking on the pitch. Real goalposts instead of ones what changes position dependin'
who's biggest. Poor fucker."
To Danny, it looked like a perfectly average trading estate. The freedom of the car had taken work out of the cities and to the edges of small villages like this one, creating a half-assed version of Silicon Valley close to the Thames. Most of the big US computer companies had settled around here, Japanese electronics companies too, and what little was left of the home-grown UK industry.
From where they were parked, over to the right he could see three company names on big factory units: Kawasaki, Xerox and Hitachi. Two Japanese, one American. All the units were
Page
43
Villainous Aspirations
roughly the same inoffensive height, three storeys masquerading as two. There was no sign of life in the estate, no people, no moving cars and only half a dozen parked, just visible behind the shrubs that hid the many parking lots.
"All 'cos you poncey computer geezers don't want to live in The Smoke," complained Bradlee. "Or most of you’s, anyway."
"Do you have children, Bradlee?" asked Danny.
"What fucking business is it of yours?"
There was silence for a minute, then Eric asked, "Where is this Moorhen place?"
Bradlee motioned beyond the Kawasaki block at a red brick building with a distinctive sloping roof, making it look, at least from this side-on view, like the end of a third division football stadium. "That has to be it, down there."
He showed no sign of starting the car and moving towards it.
It was far larger than Danny had anticipated, though when he thought about it, the only reason he'd assumed they were going somewhere small was that he'd never heard of the company.
Ronnie wound down his window. Danny followed his example, dropping the barrier that isolated him from the outside world. The air
Page
44
Villainous Aspirations
smelled sweet. It was a pleasant evening warmed by low cloud, not a breath of wind, and with the motor switched off there was barely any noise, just the occasional loud truck or motorbike from the A-road they'd turned off, muffled by the bank of trees.
The view from the passenger side of the car was entirely different to the buildings on the driver's side. Here was a small tarmac pavement, then a tall wire mesh fence, for some reason another footpath on the other side, this one of concrete and weed, and then a long dark field finishing with a hill in the distance and lights from a handful of houses scattered upon it.
"Oi, not in the car."
Ronnie held his cigarette pack and lighter.
"It's not even your fucking car, Bradlee."
Bradlee glared. Ronnie put them back in his trouser pocket with exaggerated, sulky movements, and shot his watch in frustration.
On the wire fence were signs - Warning, Law Enforcement Guard Dogs on Patrol. With the Audi parked between the fence and the buildings, they gave the impression it wasn't the estate that was protected but the dark and empty field beyond the twin footpaths. Danny imagined Alsatians in black trousers, jackets and peaked caps wandering on the grass.
Page
45
Villainous Aspirations
"Got dogs," said Ronnie.
"Got signs up saying dogs," replied Bradlee. "Not the same thing."
"Anyway," said Eric, "they're probably all busy yapping on Internet chat rooms right now."
After a couple of seconds he added,
"Certainly got security cameras. Must be a dozen or more."
"Yeah, I know all about them," said Bradlee. He seemed oddly relaxed, mesmerised.
He wasn't looking at Moorhen but out across the field, maybe lost in a childhood memory, or, like Danny, finding the view more compelling than it should have been. The decay of the concrete path, the pitch darkness of the field and dots of habitation beyond, none of these things were beautiful in their own right but somehow they managed to come together in a composition.
Ronnie opened his door and swung his knees out, then lit a cigarette with his bum still on the seat but his head outside the car. Bradlee reached for the internal light above the windscreen without looking at it, and ran his stubby fingers along until he found the switch, but otherwise didn't react. The open door increased the connection between the inside of the car and the outside, between the occupants and the silent, dark field.
Page
46
Villainous Aspirations
Despite the strange circumstances, it was a moment of quiet peace, of everything being in its correct place in the world - one that caught Danny by surprise.
“When the enterprising burglar isn't
burgling,
When the cut-throat isn't occupied in
crime,
He loves to hear the little brook a-
gurgling
And listen to the merry village chime.
When the Nutter's finished jumping on
his mother,
He loves to lie a-basking in the sun.
I hate fucking coppers, each and every
fucking one!”
Who was that? Sullivan. No, Gilbert - he wrote the words. They were from Pirates of Penzance.
He was a big fan of poetry, but it was Sharon who was the fanatic. And being more of a romantic than he might casually admit, he'd learned over one hundred of her favourites so he could recite them to her at odd times. Nothing as gross as one a week, more like two or three a year, when the timing was exactly right and the
Page
47
Villainous Aspirations
poem fitted. Many were wasted, never recited, but it was still worth it to see the stars in her eyes.
Memorising them had been remarkably easy. He'd found that the meter and rhythm of poetry provided its own checksum, a bit like the checksums in computer data. The lines themselves seemed to have a completeness that was noticeably broken by a single wrong word, or, in the excerpt that had just run through his mind, by the missing end of a verse.
Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is not a happy one!
Some rational aspect of his head had, on this occasion, edited out the reference to police.
Eric clearly hadn't been caught by the magic of the moment. "What we waiting for?"
And in the lightless car, under a moonless, starless cloudy sky, Bradlee lit a cigarette himself and replied, "Darkness, dummy."