ike many of the murdered, I know my killer.

Now I take her out of the dark and pull away the soft fabric that covers her body. I gaze lovingly at the soft gleaming profile of her belly and flanks, and smooth my hand over the voluptuous silken curve of her tank, like a woman's heavy breast.

She is Electric Blue with a golden flash down the side that finishes just short of a pair of gleaming chrome tailpipes. Not a laid back easy rider, but a crouching panther of a race bike. I straddle her, push the ignition switch and I'm rewarded by a throaty roar that vibrates up through my pelvis into the very pit of my stomach. We turn away from home, gunning the engine up the gears and after a tentative first corner I roll on the throttle and feel the acceleration of the bike kick me in the pants as it almost flies.

Only a mile down the road a dog runs out from the pavement, her owner shouting frantically to call it back but the animal freezes in fear, and because I'm too close to brake I'm forced to swerve violently, almost hitting the kerb in the process. The rear wheel loses traction and wobbles in violent protest before tucking back in behind me as we power away from the scene.

No casualties.

I head out into the country and ride some twisties, at first taking it easy round the sharp gritty bends but soon I settle to the task and the bike steers like a magic carpet, hugging the ground easily round the sharpest apex. It's warm and dry and the smell of wild garlic and cow parsley fills my helmet.

Left hander. Drop a gear, drift the bike out to see round the bend and tilt it as I start to turn and look for the exit, then shift my weight and hang off to pull the bike right over before powering out of the bend, tyres digging appreciatively into the warm tarmac.

There's a long straight section here, smooth as a runway and twice as long and the throttle just seems to open up of its own accord and two hundred horses gallop in synchronous motion beneath me. Eighty, ninety, one hundred, all the way to one-sixty in less time than it takes to look at the clock. The engine is screaming and I can smell the hot metal and baking oil.

As I crest the ridge I see the policemen in their car which slumbers by the road-side. One splutters out his sandwich and gesticulates wildly towards me, while the other is preoccupied by the boiling hot coffee he has jarred into his lap. I fly past them, determined to outrun them and I must be a mile away by the time I see the blue lights flashing in my mirror.

We are back in the twisties now and I'm moving like an oily snake round a U-bend, never even dipping the throttle as I find the racing line every time and the cop car is battered and crunched around the same bends, over-braking, under-steering and dropping further behind all the time.

But the cops have radioed ahead and as we hit the fringes of the city they emerge like jackals from the side-streets and converge on me. I duck and weave through the traffic but with the blues-and-twos they keep track of me and I'm forced to consider the possibility of capture. They'd bang me up. I couldn't stand to be locked away.

Salvation ahead. It's Tower Bridge and I suddenly realise that I'm in London, speeding towards the sluggish Thames. The bridge is lifting and the cars have queued up to wait the passing of a tall ship which is steaming up the river.

I see the gap in the traffic, glance behind at the cop cars and then slam on the throttle. The engine screams and the rev's climb into the red and I'm doing a hundred and ninety as I hit the foot of the rising road, shoot up the ramp and cannon off the end of the tarmac.

It's a great jump - a stupendous jump! It's the jump that everybody wants Steve McQueen to make at the end of The Great Escape. We're suspended in cool rushing air and I look down as we leap the gap and see the astonished faces of the sailors on the deck of the ship below.

The bike rotates slowly backwards as the ground rises up to welcome us and the back wheel slams onto the tarmac, with the rest of the bike following, writhing furiously beneath me and engine protesting.

We've made it. I can't believe it. I look behind and see the furious faces lined up on the bridge and I wave happily to them before disappearing into the side streets.

I drive slowly on my way home, waving to pretty girls who watch me admiringly, and nodding in a elder-statesman-like manner to other bikers. I even pull an emergency stop and watch as a mother duck leads six fluffy yellow powder puffs across the road.

I'm warm and tired and still free.

I bring the bike home, wipe her over with a damp cloth and push her into a dark recess.

What shall I do now ? I could rewrite my life story, or resume the design of my perfect home, or maybe I could listen to the conversation going on outside.

They're talking about me again and although they've been told I may be able to hear them, they can't quite believe it, so they still say things they wouldn't want me to hear.

"The decision has to be yours, I'm afraid."

"Yes, I understand. So the tests...?"

"The brain-stem tests show no activity. He looks alive but it's really only the machines keeping him that way. We need your permission to turn them off."

Yes.

Please.

"I'll need some time to think about it."

"Yes of course. Take as long as you need."

Well, he's wrong of course but why would I care ? Because when I swerved to miss the dog I hit the kerb and the bike folded beneath me, hurling me fifty yards against a concrete bollard which snapped my spine and scrambled my cortex, leaving me to awake here in the darkness, my senseless body gone.

One way communication. Incoming mail only.

Inside my head I screamed for - how long? Days? Weeks? Maybe only minutes. I lose time very easily in here.

Now I am like a science-fiction brain, preserved in a bubbling tank of fluid, but without the benefit of a tinny, alien voice to communicate my universe-conquering instructions to mindless minions. The only sense I have is hearing. It tortures me with my sweet wife's patient entreaties while my mother sobs in the background and my father stands mumbling impotent reassurance. And beneath that I hear the bleep and wheeze of machines, the banging of doors, the scuff of feet in the corridor, the doctors' breathing as they poke and peer at me, and the faintest rustle of the nurse's starched uniform.

So I can wait a little longer for my freedom.