THE ALLEY

I heard the tall one before I saw him.

There is a particular sound a bicycle chain makes when a man is carrying it doubled in his fist and running — a dry metallic slap against denim, once per stride, and nothing else in the world sounds like it.

The alley behind the Rusty Spur runs between two long rows of brick, five metres wide, and at that hour the sun comes straight down the length of it from the west and turns the whole thing orange. I was forty metres in when the chain started behind me.

"Stop!"

That was the tall one. Six foot four, shaved head, a grey moustache that came down past his jaw, a tan leather jacket with the sleeves cut off at the shoulder. He ran with a long loping stride that ate ground and he was already eight metres ahead of the others.

I did not stop.

"You're not getting away!"

That was the young one, and his voice was higher and more ragged because he was sprinting. White sleeveless T-shirt, shaved head, a black spider tattoo climbing the left side of his neck, carrying a pool cue level at his hip like a spear.

Behind them, third, a short wide man of about thirty-five with black hair pulled up into a topknot and a red checked flannel shirt under a denim vest, swinging a wooden axe handle as he ran.

And last, a long way last, breathing like a bellows, an enormous bearded man in a blue bandana with a steel tire iron in his right hand.

Four men. I want to be precise about the number because it mattered a great deal.

I went past the green skip at about thirty kilometres an hour, put my left hand flat on the brick to take the corner, and came out into the dead end.

A steel roller shutter. A brick wall with no door in it. Weeds and broken glass.

I stopped in four paces and put my palm flat on the shutter.

It did not move.

Behind me the chain had stopped slapping, which meant the tall one had slowed to a walk, which meant he had seen the wall too.