An extract from The Director's Cut by Nicholas Royle, available now as an Abacus paperback, priced £9.99.

The black Mercedes braked sharply on the hard shoulder a few yards ahead of them, its rear wheels spitting gravel.

'Come on,' Richard shouted, grabbing her hand.

He opened the rear door and bundled her in. As Harry Foxx pressed his foot to the floor and gave the power steering a nudge to get the big car back on to the road, with scant regard for the vehicles coming up behind, Richard performed a basic introduction.

'Harry's my driver,' he said to Jenny as the acceleration gently forced him back into his seat. 'He's always been the driver, in a sense, right since the early days. Like Bruce Dern in The Driver, or Dennis Weaver in Duel, he's very much the driver, if you take my meaning.'

Richard smiled at Jenny Slade to drive his point home. She looked from Richard to Harry's rear-view mirror, then back to Richard.

'So, Harry drives the car,' she said, checking.

'Harry has always driven the car. Harry probably has sex as well.'

'No offence, but what the fuck are you two going on about?' demanded Harry Foxx.

'Sorry, Harry. Good drugs, that's all. In fact - ' he smiled at Jenny again - 'why don't we have some more?' Richard removed a wrap from the pocket of his jacket and unfolded it on a hardback A-Z that he asked Harry to pass him from the front passenger seat. Richard cut up the cocaine into two lines with a bank card he took from his wallet.

'I'd offer you some, Harry,' he said, 'only it's probably not safe to do drugs and drive. We don't want to have an accident, do we?'

Harry made no response.

Jenny Slade nodded slowly as she made sense of it all. Then she accepted a rolled-up twenty from Richard and bent over the A-Z. She couldn't have been unaware of the effect her bending over would have on him, especially since the loss of her Gucci top. Again, it was her obvious knowledge of the effect of her display that made it so powerful. Richard's cock was hard even before the coke numbed the back of his mouth. He took the blue-lensed glasses from his top pocket and put them on. Jenny Slade was already grinning with the effect of the drug.

'Where are we going?' asked Harry Foxx irritably.

'Just drive, Harry,' replied Richard. 'You're the driver, Harry. You've always been the driver.'

For one heart-stopping moment it looked as if Harry was going to take the first left off the roundabout at the top - 'For fuck's sake, Harry, don't leave London. I mean, I thought that was obvious,' bellowed Richard - but then he swung the car round to the right and indicated left to join the Westway. As Harry burned into the middle lane and took the speed up to seventy-five, Richard turned to Jenny Slade once more and, leaning forward, said, 'I believe we were interrupted, weren't we? A little unfinished business?'

Jenny Slade grinned again. Would nothing faze her, wondered Richard gratefully as she unhitched her bra-top from one shoulder and reached in with a free hand to release her breast. She didn't get both breasts out, because she understood how the male mind worked, or at least how Richard's worked. For him, this was the pinnacle of sexual arousal. There before him was one breast, in itself an object of such extraordinary aesthetic and erotic beauty. But more powerful even than that visible breast was the deliberate withholding of the other, its invisible twin. It was the promise of its release that aroused him more than anything else. He knew that if he decided to, he could reach across that short distance and free it himself. He could touch if he wanted to, and he did want to, so badly, but his conscience knew it was wrong. He fingered the blue glasses.

He watched Jenny as she moved her fingers over her breast, catching the nipple on the upstroke. She was looking past him, over his shoulder, at a blurred panning shot of Ladbroke Grove.

Fuck it, he thought, reaching across the expanse of taupe leather upholstery between them, and with two hands took hold of the bra top and pulled it up and over her head. Jenny Slade's breasts, straining upwards as he pulled at the grey Lycra, swooped back to their natural position with a grace that reminded him of the pantograph of an electric locomotive falling from an overhead wire back to its cradle. Jenny Slade offered neither reproach, nor encouragement. Instead, she turned her head to the front and gazed through the windscreen as Richard moved his hands slowly and firmly over her body. He moved forward and kissed her breasts. She leaned back against the door.

Richard kicked off his shoes and wriggled out of his trousers. He reached into his jacket for another wrap and cut four more lines on the road atlas. He held out the twenty to Jenny Slade. As she leant forward to snort her share of the drug, he caught her swinging breasts in his hands and massaged them. He accepted the rolled-up banknote and snorted up the crumbs.

'Harry,' he shouted. 'Harry, I haven't got anything.'

Jenny Slade and Richard Charnock collapsed into fits of giggles.

Harry Foxx muttered: 'Jesus Christ.' But he pulled out his wallet and extracted a condom, which he tossed over his shoulder into the back of the car. Richard tore open the pack as Jenny pushed down at her combats and moved into a more comfortable position. As he rolled the condom into place, Richard looked up and saw the curved lines of the cream-tiled former BR building at Warwick Avenue slipping into view. The Mercedes swept past its curiously rounded tower and shattered, graffitied windows at 100 mph.

As they sank into the dip before the Edgware Road flyover, Richard looked up and happened to glance into the rear-view mirror where his brain registered a fact so disorienting that his mind took several seconds to catch up: Jenny Slade and Harry Foxx were watching each other in the mirror. The extreme alienating effect of this caused Richard's lust to dwindle, and he moved away from Jenny Slade, somehow managing to be half-dressed before they reached the bottom of the flyover on the other side. As the car slowed for the lights on Marylebone Road, Richard reached across and opened the door on Jenny Slade's side.

'Please,' he said simply.

She looked at him as if he'd hit her across the face.

'Please.'

She shook her head, more in disbelief than a refusal to cooperate.

The lights turned green and the inevitable angry chorus started up from the cars behind. Harry Foxx watched in the rear-view mirror, his loyalties divided, and did nothing.

'You have to leave the car now,' Richard insisted.

Jenny Slade gathered her clothes under one arm and stepped out into the road. She shut the car door with a flourish, dropped her stuff on the pavement and stood with her hands on her hips as Harry Foxx, under orders, burnt rubber to get across the junction without colliding into the cars that were already crossing from both sides.

Richard twisted his neck to watch Jenny Slade get smaller and smaller as their speed climbed. He could still hear traffic horns, but now they were more of a fanfare than a rebuke.

When he stopped at the next set of lights, Harry Foxx switched off the engine and stepped out of the car. He turned and leaned back in, resting one hand on the headrest of the driver's seat, looking as if he was about to toss the keys into the rear of the car, but then seemed to change his mind and turned and walked away. Richard then watched in open-mouthed dismay as Harry Foxx dropped the keys down a grate on the far side of Marylebone Road, stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and sauntered off down Gloucester Place.