Tunnels 04, Closer

pentangle printed on it. In the passenger seat his girlfriend was sipping a can of cider, giggling tipsily as she watched Drake approach.
    "Think you're police or sumthing?" the driver drawled insolently as Drake stopped in front of him. "What'ya going to do now?" He flicked his cigarette at Drake, who stepped to the side to avoid its trajectory. As it struck the road with a shower of tiny sparks, Drake extinguished it with his boot.
    A further two men of approximately the same age as the driver were in the rear of the car and competing with each other as they provided non-stop, drunken banter. This was punctuated with coarse laughter, as if a pair of donkeys was braying at each other. Drake heard them saying, "It's the Five-0," and "Buzz off, fuzz."
    Then, as the driver made out that the vehicle parked in front was the latest model Aston Martin, he straightened up sharply, a resentful sneer spreading across his face. "You rich tosser!" he yelled. "Get back to the city where you scum belong." Still using his car door as a shield, he brandished his fist in Drake's face.
    In less than the blink of an eye, Drake had covered the space between him and the driver, and had seized the man's arm, twisting it so that he was spun around and pushed up against his car. The driver tried to fight back with the elbow of his free arm, but Drake slammed his head hard against the roof of the vehicle. It made a satisfying thud, and the driver's girlfriend stopped giggling with a yelp, then gave a piercing squeal as she dropped the can of cider in her lap.
    "Oi, mate! You can't do that!" the driver objected, still held in a lock by Drake. "That's assault and batteries!"
    He tried to use his free arm again, this time to punch out. Drake retaliated by slamming the man's head against the roof even harder than the first time. The other passengers were now completely silent and craning their necks to see. Drake put his mouth very close to the driver's ear and spoke in a threatening whisper. "Want some more?"
    "But what did I do?" the driver whined.
    "You know what you did, and from now on I'll be watching you. If you step out of line again, so help me, I'll kill you," Drake growled. The driver's already pale face turned even paler. "Now get out of here," Drake shouted, throwing the driver into his seat. He watched as the car crept off, moving at a very sober speed.
    Drake returned to the Aston Martin and slid behind the steering wheel, gripping it with such force one of his knuckles popped. As he stared straight ahead, he seemed to be transfixed by the scene through the windscreen. Illuminated by the headlamps, the branches of the trees were being whipped by the wind into a frenzied animation.
    As they sat side by side in the car, Eddie couldn't help but notice that Drake was shaking with fury.
    Eddie broke the silence by clearing his throat.
    Drake remained staring straight ahead, his voice strained as he spoke. "Come on -- out with it, Eddie. Tell me I'm a bloody fool for doing that, and they might report it to the police. Aston Martin involved in road rage incident ," he said, as if reciting the title of a newspaper article.
    Eddie shook his head. "No, I'm not concerned about that. I was going to say we've more in common than you'd like to admit.
    "And if I said I didn't want to know, would it stop you from telling me why?" Drake responded brusquely.
    Eddie went on regardless. "We're both driven by the same thing -- we're both incredibly angry. And that anger is always there, eating away at us."
    "I've never seen you lose it," Drake interposed.
    "We control it in different ways. Or try to," Eddie said. "And the paradox is that as it destroys us, it also defines us -- making us who we are." He paused for a moment while he found the right words. "It's as though we're perpetually on a knife edge, always on the move, always striving for something, but all the while that knife edge is cutting deeper into us." He took a breath. "You know about how I got to be this way, but you've told me next to nothing about yourself. What happened to make you like this?"
    "You did," Drake replied. "You Styx."
    A fox gave an almost human cry from somewhere in the undergrowth close to them, but Drake remained staring straight ahead through he windscreen. "A lifetime ago," he began, then swallowed. "I was an undergraduate at Imperial... there were three of us: Fiona, Luke and me, and we didn't mix much with the other students. We didn't have time for them, while