Going Round Again

Adrian Wright hated John Biddle with an intensity he could taste; could almost bite off and chew on; almost take between his teeth to grind and crush to nothing: which is roughly what he now had planned for John if, when, he could ever catch up with him. Until Wright had met John Biddle he had had a career; had had a life. Now, after their last encounter, in the toilet compartment on the train, an encounter which had seen Wright so conclusively defeated, on every conceivable level, both his career and his life lay in ruins around him. It was not just the fact that he had failed to live up to the trust his employer and their client had placed in him, or the fact that he had lost that client a million pounds in untraceable bank notes, it was also the way he had been humiliated by that bastard bean-counter Biddle, being left in the toilet compartment to be arrested, dressed in . . . well, dressed in something he could not even face describing to himself, let alone to anyone else who might demand to be told what had happened to him. On that fateful day he had had everything under control, right up to the time when Biddle managed to creep up on him unseen and push the muzzle of the gun into the small of his back. That had been a big surprise, and from that point onwards, everything had been out of his control. Wright knew now that he had been complacent, had totally underestimated his quarry, and had been forced to play the rest of the game to Biddle’s rules and not his own. But who, honestly, would have thought, based on the evidence of Biddle’s character and achievements up to that point, that he would have had the gumption or guts to arm himself, then plan and carry out the theft - because that was the way Wright still thought of the loss of the money, as a theft. Taking the cash with him on the train was, Wright could see now, a reckless thing to have done, and he only did it because he had blind faith in his own planning and in the abilities of his back-up team - the team that Biddle had left trapped, first on the southbound train heading for the airport, and then on a northbound one on its way back again. That had been the point at which the doubt had begun to nibble away at Wright’s confidence; a confidence then completely destroyed during the scene that unfolded in the toilet compartment on the second northbound train, that had seen him left handcuffed to the rail on the wall wearing just a skimpy pink leather thong and bodice that Biddle must have picked up in a fit of depravity in some seedy back-street porn-monger’s in the preceding few days. And when Biddle backed out through the closing door, leaving the compartment filling with smoke, taking the money with him, Wright knew that the game was hopelessly, irrevocably lost, and that he was well and truly in the proverbial shit.