CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BUS STOP
Law I: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.
Law II: The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impress’d; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impress’d.
Law III: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions.
– Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Prinicipia Mathematica, 1687
• * ¢
The Mercedes Chancellor is a marvellous vehicle, the best European made limousine you can buy. More elegant than its American counterparts and more reliable than its Russian comrades, it has all the features one would expect from a very important people carrier. Comfortable seating for four or cosy seating for six. Eric’s car was the absolute top-end version with an armoured body and bulletproof glass. The passenger compartment was hermetically sealed to protect the occupants from gas attacks and the car’s fuel tank was specially constructed to be leak-proof and safe from explosions. The steel lined tyres could still run flat if punctured and with a 6-litre V8 beast of an engine, it could outrun most danger if the need arose. Most European heads of state had one of these, at least, those that could afford it. Russian billionaires and Middle Eastern oil Princes were among the few other customers who could afford such a luxury or could justify such security. If you wanted to attack someone in a Mercedes Chancellor, your best bet was to follow along patiently behind and run them over once they had stepped out of their car.
The London Routemaster was for its time a remarkable piece of British engineering. Beautiful, functional, robust and built to last, it symbolises the hectic yet historic nature of the city. Originally designed in the 1950’s, it was a product of some highly innovative engineering and proud craftsmanship. The Routemaster has an integral strengthened body removing the need for a heavy fixed chassis.
With a 97 break horsepower engine and a fully automatic gearbox, it could, when London’s roads allowed, attain a good head of speed. Some of those early models are still going strong, and they inspire strong feelings in many grease-covered men who underneath are still small boys. The man was one of those men. And he was pleased to back behind the wheel. He had kept a few keys and it had been a simple enough business to steal this bus.
Thanks to the mayor’s mania for bus lanes, the man had a satisfyingly clear run now and was able get quickly away from the depot and into the centre of London, without anyone being any the wiser. Before setting out he’d changed the sign to ‘Not in Service’, despite the fact this simply wasn’t true. This bus was in the service of the Lord. It would smite down his enemy. The man drove on humming hymns and thinking this happy thought. After about half an hour, it occurred to him that he had absolutely no idea where the Evil One would be.
So he did what any sane person would and drove to the library.
He parked up round the corner and went in to ask at the reference desk. The librarian on duty recognised him as one of the regulars and so listened patiently to what he said. None of it made the slightest bit of sense but there was nothing new in that. Carefully cross-examining him and employing the fine mind that she had previously been occupying with a crossword, she ascertained that he was interested in John Smith. Knowing him as she did, she found it rather sweet.
She showed him that day’s papers with the lurid story of Smith’s narrow escape from death. But he seemed to know it all already. He was clearly quite a fan. The man seemed to want to know more about Smith than the papers could provide. There was no crime in that; in fact it was quite understandable really. She hated to disappoint him, but despite what he seemed to think the library did know everything about everyone, if only you asked in the right way. She tried explaining to him that this wasn’t the case in several different ways but it didn’t seem to sink in.
Then she had a revelation. Maybe the man wasn’t beyond help. There was Google.
Within a few clicks she had found the unofficial fan forum where Smith’s most fanatical fans swapped whatever snippets and slivers they could find out about their hero. She showed the man how to navigate the site and where to find the most up to the minute gossip and speculation. This, at last, seemed to satisfy him. She left him happily clicking and scrolling and went back to her crossword.
The rest of the morning was uneventful and she managed to finish the whole puzzle. She had only had to google a couple of clues. Going off for her lunch, she saw that the man had gone too. He’d forgotten to close the windows he’d opened on the computer and left the mouse mat at a ridiculous angle. She quit the browser, straightened up the workspace and shook her head. These loonies weren’t too much trouble and one liked to help them out but they sometimes went too far.
ER1C pulled up to the kerb. Not used to waiting for someone to open the door for him, John had joined Eric in the back before Eric’s chauffeur Dave could get out to let him in. They were picking him up from his latest hotel to take him to Wembley for a look at the facilities. John ducked inside and as before, the floor was strewn with porn and the resident pornographer was lounging comfortably with a large whiskey in one hand and a cigar in another.
“Morning, shithead. Let’s get moving.” Eric greeted him cheerfully and the car joined the busy morning traffic. A little distance behind it a big red bus indicated too and pulled away from the kerb.
The 1965 RML that the man was driving had unladen weight of 7 3/4 tons and by the time it came into contact with rear-end of the stationary Mercedes it was travelling at slightly over thirty five miles per hour. Sir Isaac Newton’s wonderfully elegant laws of motion saw to it that a large part of this kinetic energy was transferred into the boot of the Mercedes, crumpling it’s crumple zones and sending it skidding forwards through the red light and across the box junction. The equal and opposite reaction made a few slight dents in the front of the Routemaster and brought it to halt straddling the pedestrian crossing. Meanwhile, the Mercedes continued forwards joining the counterflow of traffic somewhat earlier than everyone would have liked.
For a few exciting moments, it looked like it would sail unscathed between the traversing taxis, but one driver was changing lanes and travelling a little too fast. He swerved but was unable to avoid clipping the mangled rear left side of the limo. It sent both cars into a complex sliding clockwise dance that still obeyed Newton’s laws though the mathematics was now a lot more complicated. Shortly thereafter, it became an interesting and non-trivial N-body problem, as any number of other cars coming in both directions were now unable to avoid joining the dance.
Piccadilly Circus was busy to start with. The normal marauding hordes of shuffling tourists and impatient Londoners all hurrying in every direction. More often, in the case of the tourists, ambling a few steps one way before changing their minds, turning through ninety degrees, taking a few more steps in this new direction before finally deciding this was a good spot for a photograph and taking a few steps back to point their cameras up at the bright advertising screens. All to the annoyance of the gritty and grimy locals who had just danced this way and that trying to get past and then at the last moment, just as they sped for a gap, four hundred pounds of flabbiest sub-prime American bovine would step back to frame his shot and flatten the slight and wiry Cockney.
Right now everyone was a sightseer, hundreds of cameras were capturing the photogenic column of black smoke and hundreds upon hundreds more people where crowding in behind these, all eager to see what was going on.
The traffic was jammed in all directions. Lots of the drivers thought that honking their horns would help the situation and these annoyed other drivers, who sounded their own horns in displeasure, which upset a few more. Others amused by this music added their own lackadaisical syncopations. The whole place was chaos. It was like Piccadilly Circus.
The Routemaster’s radiator had broken from its mountings and water was hissing gently from it. This was hardly interesting compared to the multi-car pile up in the middle of London’s famous Piccadilly Circus. None of many the tourists watching noticed the bus driver hang his jacket on the back of his seat, climb down from his vehicle and wander off.
* ¢
Things might not have been so bad for the Mercedes and its passengers if it were not for Eric’s untidy reading habits, his huge Cuban cigar and a rare lack of ice aboard ER1C. The first impact knocked his heavy tumbler of neat Bourbon out of his hand and the next sent his glowing Havana flying after it. Unadulterated by ice, the firewater caught fire easily and doused the magazines that littered the floor of the vehicle. Too many of these caught fire for Eric’s stamping to have any positive effect and so he satisfied himself with kicking the burning papers away from himself. This had the effect of spreading the flames further but it allowed Eric and John to bundle out of the passenger door without getting too badly singed.
Out on the road, they shut the door behind them and surveyed the scene. The back of the Mercedes was slightly crumpled.
“I still get two or three death threats a month but those are mostly from fundamentalist Christians and other fruit-bats. I don’t take them seriously. You should read some of them; they threaten me with plague, pustules, pestilence, and pillars of fire. All that Old Testament crap, not much interest in Loving thy Neighbour those lot. But they are very funny, I am thinking of collecting the best and publishing a book.” Eric looked back at this flaming Mercedes Benz and the slightly dented Routemaster. “I cannot remember any of them threatening me with a London bus.”
Eric was the most cheerful John had ever seen him.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Eric asked. “To face death and feel alive?”
“I can’t decide.”
“Where did the driver go?” Eric was only half listening; he was hunting around and quizzing bystanders on what they might have seen.
“Why do you assume it was for me? I would have thought you would have many more enemies that me? Haven’t there been several attempts on your life before?” John asked.
“If you discount the war and certain other episodes I would rather not talk about then yes two or three people may have tried to kill me. But the last one was over thirty years ago. Today, I am seen as just another businessman. I don’t have enemies, I have competitors.”
“I don’t.”
“Maybe you do.” Eric was lost for just a moment. “Anyway chop, chop, we’ve still got to get to Wembley. Let’s leave Dave to sort out this mess. Which do you think is quicker, bus or tube?”
•
The man was as disappointed as when mummy forgot to flush the toilet and he found out that Simon the goldfish had not gone to live with the other fishes in the river.
That day he had also found out about death and how even people you thought you could trust will lie to you.
Simon the goldfish was the only pet the boy ever had. The boy had loved Simon. He could watch for hours as Simon swam from one end of his rectangular little tank and back to the fake plastic weeds at the other. Each circuit of his home a little different from the one before never hurried and never worried. It soothed the boy’s nerves to watch the light reflecting off Simon’s golden scales. With his inscrutable black eyes it was hard to tell what Simon was looking at, much less what he was thinking about. But the boy knew that Simon could recognize him. And that Simon knew that the boy was his friend. He was sad when Simon was dead. He kept Simon’s tank with filled with water. Even without Simon there it was a special place. It looked so calm, peaceful and colourful the plastic weeds could not be more green while the pebbles seemed to have every colour under the sun.
First his own mother, and now that priest. No one could be trusted. He really was alone.
Somehow he made it home. He lay down and wept.
Eventually, exhausted, he slept.