Free Hunting for Crows by Iain Cameron Page B

overtures and chat-up lines, she’d still resisted all his attempts to get into her pants. To her credit, she was the only wife or girlfriend to make it out to Germany to watch them, moving her up a couple of notches in his estimation and making him want her all the more.
    They left Ludwigshafen, a town near Stuttgart, around midnight, although none of them had much of a chance to see either place, and headed west. They drove in convoy, Fast Eddie driving the first van, Nathan Connelly driving the second, and Derek behind the wheel of the third. The third van was reserved for people but still it included some items of kit they couldn’t fit elsewhere, so they were fighting for space with coils of cables, effects pedals, and several unyielding guitar cases.
    He was in the back with Peter, and at the front sat Barry, Derek and Peter’s wife, Emily, who was saving her train fare by hitching a ride home. It was a good job Barry was sitting there and not him, as the desire to slip a hand under her pretty, floral dress would be a temptation too far and most likely earn him a slap from Emily and a punch in the face from Pete.
    It wasn’t so bad where they were, as they had a couple of mattresses to sleep on, but he hoped the gear was well tied-up, as he didn’t fancy being woken from a dreamless kip with a guitar or an amp bouncing off his head. He bedded down and in combination with the number of Becks he had consumed earlier plus a small toke from the new consignment, he fell asleep almost immediately.
    He woke with a start, not because gravity had set loose a piece of kit, but on hearing a loud noise. He waited a second or two for his groggy head to clear before sitting up. The van was no longer in motion and yes, he could hear shouting outside, suggesting something was going on; he hadn’t imagined it.
    ‘What’s the beef out there, Pete?’
    Peter Grant stretched. He didn’t seem to sleep much and even though he did the most physically demanding job in the band, he was still the fittest and healthiest of the bunch. Now, how did that work?
    ‘I dunno, some ruck about waiting too long or something.’
    ‘Where are we?’
    ‘In Dover, in a long bloody queue waiting to go through Customs.’
    ‘Christ, did I snooze through Germany and a Channel crossing? That has to be some kind of record.’
    ‘You did, and boy do you make some strange noises in your sleep.’
    ‘Yeah,’ he said as he got up, careful to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling, and tensed tired muscles. ‘I must have been dreaming I was humping your wife.’
    Pete flexed those big drummer arm muscles and a few other ones on his face.
    ‘Only in my sleep mind, nothing else.’
    ‘Better not be,’ he said through gritted teeth.
    ‘Bloody hell, when you put on a face like that, you could play a villain in one of the Bond movies instead of playing drums in a rock band. I’m going out to see what’s going on before you explode.’
    He pushed open the doors. Before he could adjust, he was assailed by a combination of fresh sea air, the bright sunshine of a Dover morning and the rumble and grind of a traffic queue, making him flinch.
    A long line of vehicles, including their three vans, were waiting to be cleared by Customs but at least they were near the front of the queue. The shouting he’d heard was an argument going on between a Customs officer and a lorry driver, the latter complaining about the time he’d spent waiting and the Customs guy giving him back as good as he got.
    He wandered up the line to Fast Eddie’s van as the Customs guy seemed to lose the plot with the mouthy lorry driver and decided to give his load the complete tooth-comb treatment.
    ‘Christ, we’re gonna be here for ages,’ he said as he scrounged a light from Eddie.
    ‘That’s what you get for giving a bloody jobsworth too much lip. Be nice to the buggers is my approach.’
    ‘Yeah, you can be nice as ninepence because all our stuff is sprayed with Eddie’s