It was Sunday, no-one was out. Nothing was happening. Presumably people were in their houses getting ready for dinner, or doing whatever they do on a Sunday. I slowed down for the bridge approach. A few seconds later, I saw the flash of white through the trees. The bike wasn’t moving. They were parked by the river.

The dirt trail turned off just before the bridge. I stopped the car on the edge of the road and rolled the window down. The guys had their helmets half up on their heads. They were smoking and lounging around. One of them was sitting backwards on the bike. He had a ponytail flapping around behind his head. The other leaning against a tree. The ponytail guy looked at me. I looked at him. The thought crossed my mind again, ‘small town’.

I didn’t want to scratch Bertha. So I rolled the car over the lip from road to dirt trail. I let her go nice and careful down the incline. Ahead of me I could see the guys getting on the bike, fastening helmets. They hadn’t expected the big car to come down the dirt road. It never had before. Now they were scrambling.

The driver revved the little trail bike motor. The ponytail guy jumped on behind him and the driver let out the clutch. The rear wheel chewed dirt and spat it out in a long arc. I watched through the windscreen, bearing down on them. The bike leapt forward alongside the river. I could see what he was going for. A hundred yards downriver, the trail went tight. Trees closed in. The Mercedes would never make it through that. I hit the gas and got right up on their tail in half a second. The little bike looked puny from where I sat, like a flea or a mosquito.

The rider looked back at me. The same blue eyes and the helmet. White with a red and orange flame up the front. Like a mohawk haircut. I thought, ‘My man’.

‘Tactical contact’ is the art of knocking over a bike without hurting the riders too bad. The world is full of cheap little motorcycles, and military-aged males tend to enjoy riding them for all kinds of reasons. That’s why I was trained to knock over guys like that without killing them. It’s easier to kill, but the dead don’t talk.