A Taste Of Things To Come...

[James Jago]

Dave looked out at the relentless battering rain and sighed. There was clearly no point in making the trip to Sywell; trying to take off from a grass strip in this downpour would be suicide. He resumed shaving, comforting himself with the prospect of a relatively leisurely breakfast before spending the day catching up with the paperwork and running a few errands.

The clock tower overlooking the market square could be faintly heard chiming eight as he negligently tossed a teabag into a mug and flicked on the kettle, taking a frying pan down from the wall-mounted rack above the hotplates. He compensated for the cigarettes by keeping other forms of self-indulgence to a minimum, but when faced with having to ride seven miles in pouring rain to spend the day in a draughty office with no heating to speak of, a couple of bacon and fried egg sandwiches was not self-indulgent. It was preventative medicine.

He prepared and ate his breakfast unhurriedly, and was just at the point of wondering if he could legitimately put off going in until the rain eased off when the telephone rang. He reached for it without standing and picked up the handset.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is that Mr David Savage?”

“Speaking,” Dave replied, sipping his tea.

“My name's Mary Malone. I'm trying to track down anyone who might have been an associate of Jonathan Parry...”

Dave's eyes narrowed. “Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time,” he said with feigned nonchalance. “Good friend of mine; met him when I was in the navy, worked with him on and off afterwards until he died. What's your interest in him, if I might ask?”

“His widow and son are friends of mine.”

The mug shattered on the kitchen floor. “Where can I find them?” Dave asked in a near-whisper.

“Got a pen?” He snatched a biro and a sheet of paper from the memo pad by the phone. “Have now.”

She read out an address, somewhere in the Oxford suburbs. “I'm leaving now,” Dave said as neutrally as he could. He hung up the phone with a hand that trembled noticeably, then went to the bedroom and changed swiftly into his leathers. Snatching helmet and keys from the hall table, he let himself out and nearly sprinted down two flights of stairs to the basement garages. Dave threw the tarpaulin off the gleaming Ducatti sportsbike and threw his leg over it, donning his helmet as he did so. He turned the key impatiently, drumming his fingers on the handlebars as he waited for the electric garage doors to open, and then for the satellite navigation system to boot up. He tapped in the address quickly, twisted the accelerator to maximum revs and let the clutch out whilst snapping the kickstand into its stowed position with practice ease. The bike surged forward as nearly a hundred brake horsepower booted it in the rear, its rider leaning his full weight on the handlebars to keep the front wheel on the ground, and left the grounds of the elegant apartment complex with a banshee howl and a spray of gravel.

Empty lines inserted for readability