Thanks for the reviews - glad you like it so far.

I do not own Mighty Boosh etc.

They had been travelling for about two hours. Vince (Noir - rock and roll star, as he told Howard after about ten minutes of travelling in silence. Howard had neglected to tell Vince his name) had been talking for most of the journey. Howard couldn't work him out. He didn't seem scared of him, or angry, or even to remember that Howard had used him a human shield, held a gun to his head. He seemed more like a kid being taken to Alton Towers or something. At first he found it irritating to the point of wondering if he could put a bullet in his brain without having to pull over onto the hard shoulder. However, after a while it became like background noise and then later still, enjoyable to listen to. It wasn't that he had said anything meaningful or profound, it was just that he was so full of youthful exuberance, a real sunshine kid, Howard thought with a smile as he listened to Vince extol the virtues of Mick Jagger. If anything, he was the nervous one, his hands drumming on the wheel as he tried not to think of how close things had been earlier to all coming to an end for him. How it went so badly wrong. Jim. Jackie. The kid helped him with that – helped him not to think. Nevertheless he still couldn't fathom what on earth he was doing here with him. Everything had slipped out of his normally tightly reigned control.

"Can I not open my eyes now?" Vince begged. Howard glanced over at him, noticing how his eyelids looked almost translucent, like a baby bird's. Once they had pulled out of central London, Howard had told him to close his eyes so he wouldn't see where they were going. The truth of the matter was that every time he saw out the corner of his eye that Vince was looking at him, he nearly ploughed the van into oncoming traffic.

"I don't want you to see where we're going,"

"Why not?" Vince screwed up his face and peeked at him through one eye. Howard batted his hand over the younger man's face, laughing, as though they were two mates mucking about. He couldn't help it, this boy's good humour was infectious.

"Because you'll tell the police,"

His hand lingered on Vince's cheek for half a heartbeat too long, until he noticed a small smile playing at the corner of his lips,

"What?"

"My plan's working,"

"What plan?"

Howard couldn't figure out for the life of him what the boy was talking about and felt more than a little unsettled that he may have been manipulated in some way. He couldn't be an undercover cop, surely. His hand twitched towards the back where the gun lay, but he didn't make a move for it. Vince left his eyes shut but he was almost laughing,

"Oh come on! I've seen you switch cars, I've caught a good look at your face. I'm way too much of a liability. You'd have to be an idiot to let me go alive, and I saw from your friends back in the bank that your lot aren't bothered about a little bit of killing,"

"You wouldn't be able to identify me Sir, I'm like a shadow, like a ninja. I blend into the background, like human wallpaper,"

"Sorry mate, your face may be as ambient as lift music but I've got a photographic memory. I could pick you out of a crowd of thousands,"

"I doubt it," Howard heard the edge of smugness creeping into his voice. His blank generic face was one of the reasons he did so well in this game. Hell, a couple of years ago he went back to a bank that he turned over a few weeks previous, got served by the pretty little clerk that had bled mascara tears all down her face as she had begged him for her life, and she didn't even bat an eyelid at him. That had been a stupid risk, he knew, but he had got away with it. This little shit hadn't caught that much of a look at him.

"2946578" Vince replied triumphantly.

"What's that?"

"The code to open the safe. See I told you I had a good memory. I can memorise anything. Also, I only have to listen to a music track once and I can tell you exactly how long it is, to the second. You can test me if you like. And I never forget a face,"

"What are you, some kind of child genius or something?" Howard muttered, concentrating on the road as he flicked the indicator.

"Shit off, I'm twenty two! And besides, I'm not a genius - I can barely even read. I'm just good at remembering things is all,"

"Well if you know what's good for you, you had better not remember my face. Anyway, what was your plan?"

"To make myself so loveable that you wouldn't kill me,"

At this Howard laughed again. He couldn't even remember the last time he laughed like that. For a moment he wondered if he was going mad, if the insanity of the situation and the horror that had gone on before was catching up with him. He had his friend's blood all over his shirt, for fucks sake and half the country's police out looking for him and here he was laughing at the jokes of an inane kid that he had never even met before.

"What are you talking about, you got into this van out of your own free will, you little psycho. I was going to leave you in the other car. Just out of interest, what were you playing at there?"

"I dunno. I just wanted to see where you were going,"

"Where I was going! I've just robbed a bank, I was hardly going to be going to a fucking holiday camp!"

"No what I mean is….I'm sick of my life. All my friends are the same, only interested in drinking and drugs and fucking and bitching,"

"Isn't everyone?"

Vince was starting to get flustered, and swiped his thick fringe out of his eyes in a frustrated motion. At some point he had opened his eyes again, Howard noticed.

"No! Yes. I mean. You seemed different. From everyone I've ever met before. I wanted to see where you were going. I wanted to go along with you,"

Howard grimaced, pulling the car onto the grass verge. This kid was clearly wired up wrong. He shifted round in the seat to look at him, searching his face for some visible sign of madness. All he saw was the boy staring earnestly back at him, eyes wide and all serious. The problem was, Howard found fairly quickly that he was unable to look away. It was like the boys eyes were like the centre of the fucking universe of something. Spots of colour appeared high on the boys cheekbones, contrasting with the cream slopes of his face. Cream? Howard thought contemptuously; where the fuck did that come from? Vince's eyes flickered shut and his lips pouted slightly. For a moment Howard couldn't work out why he was doing that but then he realised. He had been inching towards Vince without even realising, for reasons he couldn't even fathom. The little prick thought he was going to kiss him – had wanted him to kiss him! Drawing his head back like he had been stung, he tried to wring a little satisfaction out of the hurt look in Vince's eyes when he finally opened them but he couldn't, none at all.

"Now this is where you get off I'm afraid," he said in as jovial a tone as he could, wincing as Vince's eyebrow quirked almost imperceptibly at the unintentional double entendre. "Go on, time to go. If you don't get out the car I might have to kill you, no matter how loveable you try and make yourself,"

He had been aiming for menacing but Vince's smile suggested otherwise, all gooey and sweet. He felt stupid and he hated it. He just wanted the kid gone. Trying as hard as possible not to flinch as the back of his hand brushed Vince's bare forearm, he leaned across and opened the passenger side door.

Vince looked at him with pleading eyes and Howard was pleased to find that he felt nothing other than indifference. Well almost nothing.

"It's raining," he whined, lifting a hand unconsciously to ruffle the back of his hair.

"So?"

"So? So look at me. I'll freeze out there," Howard glanced down at his thin t-shirt, the pale skin of his neck and wished he hadn't. The boy had a black leather jacket on but it didn't seem enough. He clenched his hands over the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

"We're hardly in the Arctic – we're only barely outside of the M25, there's a village a couple of minutes up the road, you can walk up there,"

"But how am I going to get home?"

"Not my problem, you wanted to see where I was going and now you have,"

He realised he sounded cruel but to be honest, he couldn't even understand why he had even indulged him for as long as this. Jim and Jackie would have both shot him and left him in the car in the viaduct back in London. Maybe he was going soft in his old age, he had heard of it happening to others, some people just seemed to lose their edge and start to make dangerous mistakes. Perhaps it was time to get out of the game before things got too out of hand.

"Go on, fuck off, get out of the car,"

Vince's eyes started to well up with tears and he gripped hold of the door handle, as though he was afraid that Howard was going to shove him out.

"I could help you, you can trust me you know. I could…oh I don't know, be your stylist or something? I mean, your outfit's severely lacking something isn't it. Plain black trousers, white shirt and tie, black trench coat and trainers? You look like the Matrix for chavs. You should mix it up a bit – maybe a stripey jumper and an eye mask – you know, old school,"

Howard didn't say anything at all. He knew if he opened his mouth he would end up saying something he would regret. The moment stretched out between them into infinity.

"But how am I supposed to get home?"

Howard gritted his teeth and stretched his arm out behind him to the back seat. Vince shrank back, fear in his eyes as they zoned in on the gun, making Howard feel triumphant and repulsed by himself at the same time. Leaning further behind him, he unzipped the holdall and grabbed a handful of money and thrust it into Vince's chest,

"Here, call yourself a taxi,"

Vince just looked down, beaten, as the money fell down into his lap, some spilling onto the seat and into the foot well. There must been at least a couple of grand but he just picked a couple of fifties between his thumb and forefinger and slid out of the car. He was half in and half out of the van, one foot on the ground and one still inside when he paused and looked up at Howard again, his chin stuck out defiantly,

"I won't tell the police anything you know,"

The corner of Howard's mouth pulled up into a smile as he realised he had forgotten about that as a possibility. At some point they had just become two men – strangers – the possibility of something more hanging unspoken between them. Vince spoke again, desperation making his voice catch.

"I can't call a cab, I haven't got a phone,"

"What? You must be the only person in the whole of England without one," Howard knew he was in trouble when all he wanted to do was pull Vince back into the van and find out why he didn't have a phone, find out more about him. Instead he just reached into the pocket of his long black trench coat and pulled out the latest Nokia. It wasn't even out in the UK yet – he had had to have it imported from Japan. He thrust his hand hard at Vince, throwing the phone at him. The momentum of it caused it him to step down off the running plate reflexively. Before he even had a chance to steady himself, Howard was gone in a screech of tyres.