right. People are worried about him.’
‘Hang on a sec. I’m desperate. I’ll be right back.’
He pushed through the door of the gents.
I turned to Jo. ‘Did you see that look on his face?’ I asked.
I noticed Jo’s eyes weren’t focusing and realized she was hardly going to provide any kind of insights at this stage in the evening.
‘He looked scared,’ I said.
‘Scared?’ said Jo. ‘What, of us?’
‘Go outside and keep an eye out.’
‘For what?’
‘Case he does a runner.’
Jo sloped off through the back door. I paced the small corridor for a few seconds. Another bloke lurched past us, wearing a purple tie-dye T-shirt. He pushed open the door into the toilets and went in. I caught a whiff of men’s urinal before the door closed in my face.
How long did it take for a man to take a piss? Not long in my limited experience. I counted to ten, a feeling welling inside me, a kind of certainty.
I cursed my own naivety as I pushed open the gents’ door. The guy with the purple T-shirt stood swaying at one of the stalls, his back to me. Otherwise the room was empty. Fuck. I must have sworn out loud, because the guy turned, frowned and ended up pissing over the floor, his pee splashing my Docs. I clocked the open window and swore again.
‘Did you get him?’ I yelled to Jo through the open space but there was no reply. I sprinted back through the corridor and out into the car park. Fifty metres ahead of me, his head ducked into the wind, Brownie was sprinting at full throttle. Jo stood in the smoky back porch. ‘That’s him,’ I shouted. ‘He’s done one.’
‘Shit,’ said Jo. ‘Where’s he off to?’
There was only one way to find out.
I filled my lungs with oxygen and took off after him.
The Chemic stands at the bottom of the hill on which the red-brick terraces of Woodhouse are built. There must have been a quarry somewhere close because the streets all have names like Back Quarry Mount Terrace and Cross Quarry Street. Brownie had taken off up the hill, away from the main road. That direction would take him through a dense warren of back-to-backs to his house on Burchett Grove.
Before I gave up drinking, I wouldn’t have run for a bus. But these last few months, I’ve had to do something with the time I used to spend getting wasted. That’s a lot of time to fill, I’ve discovered, and as I took off after him I realized that I’m actually quite fit. I’ve always been skinny, some would say malnourished, but lately I’ve added stamina to my frame.
I heard Jo running behind me, but I knew I was leaving her behind. That was another thing in my favour. Brownie and Jo both had alcohol in their systems, disrupting coordination and slowing their pace. I caught up to Brownie in next to no time, three streets past The Chemic, up a flight of stairs that led between the houses. The question mushrooming in my mind, as I grew nearer and nearer, was what I was going to do when I caught him.
‘Wait,’ I shouted after him. ‘Only want to talk to you.’
He didn’t reply, instead found an extra burst of energy and zoomed forward. I glanced behind and saw Jo appear round the corner of the street I’d just run up. Even from this distance I could see her breath like clouds of smoke around her. I hesitated a second or two, but then something pulled me forward, a natural desire for answers. Why had he legged it like that? He couldn’t be scared of two women. I increased my pace, noticing he’d crossed the street ahead, veering to the left. He wasn’t going home. I knew in the pit of my stomach where he was headed.
‘The Ridge,’ I shouted behind me, no idea whether Jo could hear me. ‘He’s running for The Ridge.’
Sure enough, he took the small side street that led nowhere. I heard the click of the gate that opened onto the scrub waste ground. Great. Did I mention I hate The Ridge?
Adrenaline pumped into my veins, endorphins kicked in – a heady combination. Like the acid freaks, who believe they can fly. I only wanted to ask him a couple of questions, for fuck’s sake. I pushed through the gate and followed into no man’s land.
It was pitch-black, obviously. It was past last orders and there are no streetlights on The Ridge. As soon as I’d taken five, six steps inside I knew it was a stupid thing to do. But then, I reminded myself, the same had to be true for Brownie. He had to be somewhere close, hiding out. He couldn’t keep running: too many tree roots, too many obstacles. And he’d make too much noise.
Instinct made me crouch, squatting on my haunches, allowing the air to go still so I could listen. Sure enough, as the silence settled around me, I heard a low panting to my right. It sounded like a dog, biding its time.
I stayed down, figured no one would be looking for me at ground level. My eyes grew a little more used to the dark, silvery light from the moon occasionally appearing between the clouds. I didn’t move until I spotted him, a dark shadow, huddled against a clump of bushes. I calmed my heart rate by breathing deep and waited for my moment.
When the moon ducked behind a cloud, I launched myself. I hit him at waist height, fastening both of my arms around his torso and using the whole of my body weight to knock him off his feet. We slid down the slope together, him desperately trying to stay upright, me pushing for horizontal momentum.
I won.
We crashed through bushes, through small clear patches of mud and grass. Halfway down his legs finally gave up the fight and we rolled the last half together, getting bashed by rocks, discarded glass bottles and broken branches. We didn’t stop until we reached the path at the bottom, the one next to the stream. The gravel hurt my knees as I threw myself on top of him, eager to maintain my advantage.
‘What the fuck did you run for?’ I shouted. Pissed off, because I’d caught my cheek against something on the way down and it hurt like hell.
I could barely make him out. All I knew was I was sitting on his belly and his legs were behind me.
‘Bitch.’ He didn’t shout, just said the word, like it was a quiet statement of fact. His tone made me madder, and I punched him right in the chest, dead centre, just below the solar plexus – took the wind right out of him.
He tried to throw me off, and I had to ride him like a bucking bronco. I had his arms pinned and his coordination sucked. He was fatter than he’d looked running up the hill.
‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ I said, when he’d got his breath back. ‘I wasn’t rude to you.’
‘Jesus, lady. What’s your problem?’
I don’t know whether the moon came out at that moment, or my eyes had become still more accustomed to the dark, or whether I had a moment of psychic illumination, but I realized something. The guy I was sat on didn’t have porcupine-pierced lips. This guy was old and smelled of piss and Special Brew. This wasn’t the guy I’d chased through the streets of Woodhouse.
This guy wasn’t Brownie.
