1973 - Have a Change of Scene by James Hadley Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

Boys with long hair, girls with hot pants and see-through, milled aimlessly around and created noise. Most of them carried transistors which exploded into ear-shattering noise of pop.
    Further down the street I saw a flashing sign that spelt out: SAM’S CAFE
    Still keeping in the shadows, I walked past the cafe.
    Outside, in an orderly rank were eight Honda motorcycles: flashy, powerful with crash helmets hanging from the handlebars. The cafe was crowded. I had a glimpse of young people wearing the usual uniform young people dig for, and the noise erupting from the cafe was deafening.
    I walked to the end of the street, turned and walked back. I found a dark, smelly doorway and I stepped into darkness. From there I could see the cafe. I leaned against the wall and waited. My smouldering rage against Spooky was now like a forest fire inside me. I thought of the cards, ruined by tar, and my car.
    Around midnight, there was an exodus from the cafe. Kids spilled out, shouting and screaming and went running off down the street. Then eight thin youths came swaggering out: leading them was Spooky.
    All of them were wearing the same uniform: yellow shirts and cat’s fur pants and a wide nail-studded belt. They got astride their Hondas, slapped on their helmets, and then the air was split with the fiendish sound of powerful engines revving and revving. Then they shot off. The noise they made sounded as if the third world war had begun.
    I memorised the number of Spooky’s bike, then I walked to the end of the street, picked up a taxi after a wait and returned to the hotel. I stretched out on the uncomfortable bed and waited. While I waited, I smoked innumerable cigarettes and let the forest fire of my hate rage, then around 03.00, I got off the bed and went silently down the stairs to the hotel lobby.
    The nightman was fast asleep. I let myself out into the hot cement-dusty street and went in search of a taxi. Eventually, I found one on a rank in Main Street, the driver dozing.
    I told him to take me to Lexington. It was a ten-minute drive. Luceville was asleep. There were no cars to stop a fast run.
    The driver pulled up at the top of the street.
    ‘Stick around,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back.’
    It was the kind of street where vermin must breed. Either side, tenement blocks with old-fashioned iron fire escapes blotted out the sky. Stinking trash bins, newspapers scattering the sidewalk, used contraceptives and used sanitary towels lay in the gutters.
    I walked down the deserted, silent street until I came to the tenement block that had a plaque: No. 245: Spooky’s pad. I paused, seeing the glittering Honda motorcycle at the kerb. I checked the number plate.
    Here was Spooky’s pride and joy.
    I looked up and down the deserted street, making sure there would be no witness. The only witness was a lean, mangy cat that darted from the shadows into an alley.
    I turned the Honda on its side, then I unscrewed the gas cap. When the gasoline had made a big puddle around the bike, I struck a match, stepped back and tossed the burning match into the puddle.
     
     

THREE
     
    T he following morning, on my way to the office, I called in on a hardware store and bought a pickaxe handle. I took it to the office and put it by the side of my desk, out of sight, but where I could get it with one swift movement. I had an idea I might need it.
    Jenny came bustling in around 10.00, the usual yellow forms clutched in her hand and wearing the drab grey dress. I found it hard to recognise the same woman I had taken out to dinner last night.
    She thanked me again for the dinner, asked if I had slept well, to which I said I had slept fine: a lie, of course, as I had hardly slept at all. She peered at what I was doing and from the expression on her face I could tell she was surprised I was only at letter C. She wasn’t to know that Spooky had ruined the work I had done, and I wasn’t going to tell her. Then she took off.
    I thumped the typewriter and