Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (51 page)

Even now,
fifteen years later, he couldn’t remember the details of what
happened that night. He recalled, inasmuch as he could recall
anything, that they had consensual sex and that he treated her
well, but the bruises on her thin body and the invisible tears to
her young organs told a different story. By the time he had sobered
up, the girl had been interviewed by the police and admitted to a
hospital, where she had been subjected to a rape test whilst her
mother and father waited outside, bemused and confused.

“
She was
supposed to be at a friend’s house…… we didn’t even know she owned
a dress like that,” they were later quoted as saying.

Jonathan had
fully recovered from his hangover by the time he picked up the
local evening newspaper. He had even managed to attend his final
tutorial. The lead story shook him to the core and he knew at that
moment that his life was over.

Even through
his drunken stupor he had appreciated that the girl was slightly
built, not yet a fully developed woman, and somehow he had liked
that about her, but never in his wildest imaginings had he thought
that she was a virgin and had just turned 14 years old. As he read
the article he swore out loud, to the consternation of a crowd of
tourists walking by. He forced himself to read on. The police had
his fingerprints on her handbag and the girl, Olivia, recalled that
she had been raped on a college campus with historic buildings but
was confused as to which one it might have been. Any scintilla of
hope about evading justice that Jonathan might have held onto
evaporated when he turned to the inside pages.

The sketch was
masterful. His mother would have loved it on her living room wall.
It might just as well have had his name written underneath. The
girl had obviously spent the wee small hours awake and staring at
his sleeping face before making her escape. If there had been any
doubt about who the sketch portrayed it was removed by the
description of his tattooed shoulders, a colourful eagle whose
wingspan reached from shoulder to shoulder with the words “Freedom
from Tyranny, Freedom from Government” written below. It was only a
matter of time before the police spoke to Inky the tattooist and
came knocking at his door. When they did, he couldn’t be
there.

Since then,
and for the intervening fifteen years, Jonty had stayed one step
ahead of the authorities. He changed his appearance, he made money
where he could and now he led an ever decreasing band of hapless
bikers who lacked the imagination to break free from the “Warriors”
and its less than charismatic leader.

But today all
that was to change; today Jonty was about to rejoin civilised
society, today Jonathan Derek Latimer would emerge from the shadows
and face the music.

***

Bricko propped
up his Harley and walked purposefully over to the trailer that
housed Jonty and his latest girlfriend. He tried the door. It was
locked, but he pressed his shoulder to centre of the door and
pushed until the thin metal bowed and sprang open. The door crashed
against the trailer wall and Bricko stepped into the
bedroom.

Jonty was
awoken by the crashing door and assumed the worst, which would have
been that the Angels or the Predators were mounting a revenge
attack. He flung back the covers and made a grab for the old gun he
kept by the bed. Bricko yelled at him.

“
Put it down,
Jonty, its only me, you prat.” Jonty was standing naked beside the
bed, holding his chest.

“
Bricko, Dog,
what are you doing? Couldn’t you have knocked?” Jonty pulled the
covers from the bed and covered the bottom half of his slack,
pallid torso and in so doing left Dani, his girlfriend, naked on
the bed. Bricko looked at the girl and snorted with disgust. Her
pubescent body was thin, almost emaciated and undeveloped. Bricko
wondered whether the girl was even a teenager.

“
This,” spat
Bricko, “is what is going to send us all to prison.” He looked
purposefully at the young girl, who looked terrified. He walked
over to Jonty and slapped the newspaper into his bare chest. Jonty
took the paper and looked at the front page before dropping the
covers and abandoning all thoughts of modesty.

“
Not again,”
he wailed to nobody in particular. “Not again!”

***

Ten minutes
later Dani and Jonty were partially clothed. The girl was sobbing
pitifully and Jonty sat ashen faced on the bed, looking at photos
of himself and the other Warriors selling dope, getting stoned and
partying with very young semi naked girls.

Bricko had
been sitting on the edge of the bed trying to comfort the
distraught girl, while Jonty watched his future unravel in
newsprint before his eyes for the second time in his life. Bricko
stood up and walked towards the trailer door.

“
You know,
Jonty, you are a moron. We had a good thing going here and you’ve
blown it with your appetite for girls barely in their teens. You
must have seen this coming.” He shook his head and pushed his way
through the crowd of confused bikers who had gathered in the
doorway to see what the commotion was all about.

Bricko was in
his trailer throwing a few personal objects into a scruffy holdall
when Jonty appeared in the doorway.

“
Bricko,
mate, don’t let it all end like this.” Bricko continued packing
without answering or even looking up. Jonty covered his face with
his hands and asked “What are we going to do now?”

The other
biker zipped up his case and moved towards the door. “Well, Jonty,
I don’t know about you but I’m leaving. If the newspaper and that
Max Richmond bloke have told the old Bill where we’re living, we
can expect a visit tomorrow at the latest.”

“
I guess it’s
time to move on, then.” Jonty looked around the camp; it wasn’t
much, but he had lived here for almost five years, off and on.
“I’ll have the Warriors out of here by morning.”

Bricko knew it
was already too late for the rest of them but he smiled a mirthless
smile and squeezed Jonty’s shoulder as he passed. Jonty placed his
hand over Bricko’s and asked solemnly, “Brothers?” Bricko, looked
into Jonty’s eyes and replied with a conviction he didn’t feel,
“Always, Dog, Always!”

The customised
black Harley was heading away from the camp on a rutted farm track
when Bricko heard the sirens a mile or so away. He looked at his
watch.

“
Forty five
minutes,” he said to himself. “That has to be some kind of record.”
Two minutes later he was on the A34 and heading towards a lock up
workshop on the outskirts of Newbury.

***

Bricko pulled
the Harley into the lock up workshop and closed the door. There was
a lot to do if he wanted to keep one step ahead of the police, who
by now would have Jonty and his gang in custody.

The biker took
off his jacket, pushed it into a large cloth laundry bag and sat on
an old easy chair. He unfastened his boots, slipped them off and
stood up. He was a good two inches shorter without the steps in the
boots. Slipping out of his leather trousers and grubby black tee
shirt, he revealed the webbing that held the bulky latex body suit
in place. Relieved to be free of the constricting latex, he stuffed
that, too, into the bag.

Standing in
front of the stainless steel sink the shorter, thinner biker
adjusted the shaving mirror before reaching for a set of Wahl
hairdressing shears. Setting the guard at number four, Bricko
pushed the shears across his scalp from front to back until his
long greasy hair lay on the black plastic sheet on the floor
beneath his feet. With his hair sticking up in an impromptu crew
cut no more than three quarters of an inch long, Bricko was
beginning to disappear.

The beard
followed the long hair, and when he was clean shaven Bricko filled
the sink with hot water and scrubbed every inch of exposed skin. It
wasn’t as good as a shower but nonetheless it felt good to be
clean. Looking into the mirror, he expected to see a different
person, but he had forgotten something. The transformed biker
leaned over the sink and popped out his contact lenses one at a
time, and the ice blue eyes were back to their original green.
Satisfied at the transformation, he smiled at his reflection and
said out loud,

“
Welcome
home, Max”.