Watch Your Back

5-Raised Stakes.

It was now 1am, and Edmund was still jamming merrily away.

His mood had significantly lifted after a whole bowl of spaghetti bolognese, and a quick return to his old life before Hawes and the police force had allowed him to forget a little about the painful reality of having to lose it all.

He'd picked something with a really heavy beat, and could feel the vibrations rattling through the walls, spreading deep into Edmund's chest. He was standing at his mixing desk, dancing on the spot as he spun sounds and played with frequencies, mind completely elsewhere.

Then, suddenly, from the door, a disturbance, someone - a lot of someones - pushing their way in. There were shouts and squeals from down below, but it was only when Edmund saw that Bumble had put the house lights on that he cut the music.

A group of six men - wearing black, faces masked by balaclavas, had dragged Tiger into the centre of the room. While Tiger could have fought back - he was bigger and stronger than all the men - Edmund spied the sleek black barrel of a pistol in at least three of the intruders' hands. One of them was pointing it at Tiger, the others, threatening the crowd of partygoers who were all cowering by the walls.

Edmund absently picked up Bumble's illegal backpack of crap, as he noticed Tink was not behind the bar. He imagined she'd be ducked down behind it, as she had an emergency phone down there which she usually used if guests got a little rowdy. He imagined it'd work well enough in a hostage situation - if that was what this was.

He looked back at the dance floor Bumble was now squaring up for a confrontation, in full smooth-talker mode.

"There's no reason for this" he was saying. "You could have just got in touch with me privately."

"I don't know you" one of the masked men replied.

"Well, you clearly know this place" Bumble countered. "And everyone who's anyone knows I own it. Please let my bouncer go - unless it's him you're after, of course..."

As he took in Bumble's words, Edmund realised that he should have left immediately. His friend was merely stalling to give him time - it was how Bumble usually operated with people who were toying around with the law, or any sort of trouble. Playing for time was the only real way Bumble could help him out without risking his own neck, and ultimately, Bumble's neck was what mattered most to Bumble.

Without waiting to hear another word, Edmund shouldered the backpack and sneaked down the stairs of his bat  cave, taking the back door into the storage cupboard, and, with some difficulty, levering himself through the tiny box-window at the back. He then considered his options.

He couldn't take Tiger's car - it was far too risky, and easy to be tracked. His bike was in the front hall, and he couldn't get to it without going back through Andromeda.

"Fuuck" he breathed, as he realised his only real weapon was his own encyclopaedic knowledge of Oxford's back-streets. And even then he didn't have his bike. "Fuck."

Edmund didn't dare hang around any longer, closing the window behind him and running off down the back alley behind the Andromeda Club, taking a right, and crossing the bigger road before ducking into another alley, and continuing to move.

Edmund's inner monologue was sticking in a never-ending loop of fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck, which was doing absolutely nothing for his concentration, to the point where he nearly walked right out in front of a bus. That shook him up a little, however, he reckoned, not nearly enough. He was finding it utterly impossible to think straight, and he ducked into a corner shop, bought himself a Red Bull with what he hoped was a real fiver from the Illegal Backpack of Crap, and chugged the whole thing right there on the street.

He didn't even notice the car pull up beside him until the front-seat passenger door was already half-open. The car was small, and white. A Fiat. Not the sort of car Edmund has expected as his pursuers' vehicle of choice. The driver leaned over the passenger seat.

"Get in the car, you fucking halfwit! Hawes was right about your lack of self-preservational skills..."

"Anna?" Edmund exclaimed, unable to believe his eyes - or his ears. But the Russian accent was unmistakable. "What...?"

"Are you just going to stand there and let them shoot you in the head when they find you? Get in the fucking car!"

Edmund obeyed, slinging the backpack into the back seat of the Fiat and closing the door. He hadn't even got his safety belt on when Anna swung the car round in a U-turn and set off down the street.

"How did you find me?" he asked her incredulously.

"Shut up, shitface. I've been driving round trying to pick you up for fifteen minutes. In case you didn't have the brain cells to go to ground."

Edmund winced a little, as Anna took a hard right and they hit a speed bump a little too quickly.

"Where are we going?" he asked, as Anna slammed on the brakes at a set of traffic lights.

"Never you mind. What's in that backpack of yours?"

Edmund hesitated uncertainly. Anna took her eyes off the traffic lights to look over at him.

"What's in the backpack, dickhead?"

"Are you gonna insult me every time you address me, or have you just forgotten my actual name?" Edmund retorted, pride decidedly bruised at having been called 'shitface', 'dickhead' and 'fucking halfwit' in the space of three minutes. Anna rolled her eyes as the lights turned green, and put her foot on the accelerator without gracing Edmund with an answer.

"I forgot" she continued eventually, as they left Oxford and turned onto a back road. "That you haven't the faintest idea who or what we're up against. You're not the slightest bit prepared."

"That backpack has a pistol, a silencer, bullets, fake money, real money, fake I.Ds and bank cards, and an encrypted phone with changeable SIM card in it" Edmund pointed out, his annoyance bubbling over into irrationality. "Plus a few other extras. I may not know who I'm up against, but I'd like to think I'm vaguely prepared."

Anna pulled abruptly into a lay-by and turned to stare at her passenger.

"You're a policeman!" she exclaimed. "How the hell did you get hold of any of that!"

"Was a policeman" Edmund corrected sourly pulling the backpack from the back of the car into his footwell. "Big thing, that 'was'. And I don't particularly fancy revealing my sources to a police pathologist, thanks."

Anna looked incredulously from man to backpack, before starting the engine of the Fiat and manoeuvring back out onto the road.

"Aren't we stopping here?" Edmund asked, as the adrenaline - and the anger - began to ebb away slightly. The young woman beside him shook her head.

"No. We're going to London."

"Why London?"

"It's easier to hide in London than in Oxford. Trust me."