I tipped my head up, tracking the light voice of the nurse.
“I need stitches in cubicle twelve. Can you do them?”
Nodding, I slid into the next space, pulling in one long steadying breath before I pushed through the polyester fabric that gave little privacy from the bay next door.
The man inside sat with his top off. Tattoos covered nearly every inch of flesh apart from an angry, swollen gash on his left-hand side. The same ink crawled up his neck, a thick, darkauburn beard cutting off any further ascent. Dropping my eyes, I scanned the clipboard.
“You are Reap?” I asked, glancing back at his face, and a sudden hit of familiarity, disappearing as quickly as it came.
He watched me quietly, like he couldn’t quite trust me, but had no other choice.
“Alright, Reap. Let’s have a look at you.”
Gently, I nudged my fingers around the wound. It gaped. The edges puckered where it was swollen, not fitting back together when I carefully pushed them closed. Reap didn’t move. Slow, long, controlled breaths. His chest moving in and out like he barely felt the pain. I glanced up, my eyes catching the little metal barbells through his nipples, the only part of his torso free of tattoos.
“Let me know if this hurts,” I mumbled, averting my eyes, hoping he hadn’t noticed that they lingered a little too long.
He was fit. His chest broad and hard. His stomach covered, not quite a washboard of ripples but smooth, toned, like he moved all the time. He sat still under my hands as I worked. Never wincing as I injected around the wound with the anaesthetic. Never flinching as the needle pinched or as I pushed the sides of his flesh back together. Just quiet. Controlled.
Through the blur of shouting, the stench, the heat, there was a stillness in him that didn’t belong to a man like him. His skin was a riot of tattoos and brutalised by piercings. Metal hung from the side of his lip, a row of rings climbing up his right ear, and a metal ring stretching the lobe of his left. Yet his presence was quiet. Heavy. Calm in a room full of chaos. And he watched. Not like he was scrutinising me, but with the kind of attentionthat made you wonder whether he was taking note of everything at once.
That familiarity was back. Heavy and gnawing. Like I should know something, but I didn’t. It wasn’t quite recognition. And it wasn’t warmth. Just a weight that tugged at something old, half-forgotten, and I dismissed it as fatigue.
“You on any medication, Reap?” I asked, securing the last stitch and covering my work with a sterile dressing. “Allergies?”
He grumbled something that sounded negative and I didn’t ask again, my attention fixed on the tray as I dropped the used dressing packet on top.
When I turned round again, he’d pulled his clothes back on, the myriad of tattoos nearly all hidden apart from the stains on his hands, the shapes inked into his knuckles and the creep of ink up his neck.
I followed the pattern, losing it in the thickness of his beard. And then his eyes. A mix of brown and amber. Too familiar. A threat of déjà vu. For a split second, I recognised something in him. A memory. Old. Fleeting. Like a dream. But I couldn’t grasp it. I’d seen him somewhere before. In the hospital, maybe? Or in the street? He wasn’t someone you would forget. He stood out.
The man called Reap pushed his arms into the thick leather waistcoat, pulling it over the black leather jacket he wore underneath. Then he pushed off the bed, nodded at me, his eyes sweeping across my face one last time. A tiny hint of a flicker in the amber.
As he turned, the embroidery on the back of the leather caught my eye. Three crowned skulls. They laughed like theyknew something I didn’t. And they watched me as he walked away.
Chapter Four
By the time I got back to theDog, the place was already loud.
Music thumped through the walls, droplets of condensation clinging to the glass, vibrating with the deep bass. Laughter seeped through the walls, into the potholed car park at the side of the building where Security Sam stopped the bike, tucking it into the only gap available and far too far from the protection of the cameras mounted high up on the walls.
Motorbikes filled the decaying tarmac, lining the kerb and spilling down the side street. Cars after them, mounting the grass verges, and parked up on the roadside bumper to bumper.
I slid my leg over the bike, readjusting myself after being squashed up behind Security Sam during the ride from the hospital.
“What you waiting for?” I grumbled, watching Sam nervously survey the camera angle.
“Would prefer to be under a camera,” he muttered, taking one last look at his bike before stepping in behind me.
The Harley didn’t catch the light like some of the others. Matt black, it clung to the shadows. Understated. No big, bulky fairings. Lean and efficient. Yet it pressed into the crumbling tarmac like it was ready, waiting for challenge. And that thing would answer one, for sure.
“If anyone fucks around near these bikes,” I paused, pointing to the black rectangles with the red light mounted on the side of the pub wall, “we’ll see them on there before they get a chance to do anything.”
“But the fire…” Sam started, glancing at his bike again like it was family he was leaving behind.
“Yeah. Well, we’ve got cameras now. And no one’s going to try anything when there’s so many of us here tonight.”
I glanced at the road outside the pub. At the row of cars tapering off into the darkness. Nothing moved. Even the wind had dropped, the fog rolling up the Tyne swallowing all sound.
