by Simon Wood
‘Don’t lie to me, Paul. You’re here all day. Nothing gets past you and Chris. Now tell me.’
Paul went to duck past me, but I blocked his path. ‘I don’t know, Aidy. Really, I don’t.’
Dylan grabbed my arm. ‘He doesn’t know.’
Everyone kept their place inside the bay. The only sound to be heard was rain bouncing off the bay’s roof. Hearing it took the sting out of me.
‘I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’
Paul nodded, not saying a word.
‘Who else has keys to this place?’ Dylan asked.
‘Mr and Mrs Beecham, some of the race officials and the Hansen brothers for the race school. That’s it.’
I’d expected to hear Derek’s name amongst the group, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Derek wasn’t dumb enough to do this himself. He’d have someone do his dirty work to give him plausible deniability. He had Brennan to take care of his legal problems and he’d have someone here at the circuit to grab Alex’s car for him. The question was who would have done it for him? Any one of the people Paul had named would buckle to Derek’s demands if he showed up at their door.
Stupid. I’d screwed up. I had given Derek the opening he needed. I should have taken the car when I came for the press conference.
‘Who’s been here today?’ I asked.
‘No one besides us.’
I nodded. Paul wouldn’t lie. That meant someone had claimed the car the night before.
‘You need to go,’ Paul said. ‘I have to lock up.’
Dylan and I walked out into the rain and watched Paul lock the doors.
‘Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose my temper.’ I put out my hand. Paul hesitated before shaking it. ‘You’ll get me that tape, yeah?’
Paul nodded. ‘I’ll call you.’
The rain was coming down hard now.
‘Get in the van. We’ll drop you at the door so you don’t get wet,’ I said.
‘It’s OK,’ Paul answered.
I didn’t push the matter. I’d done enough damage. Dylan and I climbed into the van and watched Paul trudge back to Chicane’s. I gunned the engine and pulled away.
‘Where are we going?’ Dylan asked.
‘Myles’s place. Nothing happens here without his say so.’
I’d been out to Myles’s home only once at the end of last season. He had everyone back for drinks after the championship dinner. He and Eva lived in a six bedroom house sitting on an acre of land in Corsham.
The house was set back from the road. I turned down the long gravel driveway and parked in front of the three-car garage. My les wasn’t giving me the slip.
‘Keep a lid on your temper, Aidy. You can’t blow up at Myles the way you did at Paul.’
‘I know,’ I said, and I wouldn’t. Finding the car gone was a shock. Getting the runaround from Myles wouldn’t be.
Dylan pressed the doorbell. The chimes sounded like Big Ben was being kept hostage somewhere inside. It was a long minute before footsteps approached and Eva Beecham opened the door.
‘Hello, Aidy. I’m sorry. I don’t know your friend.’
‘This is Dylan.’
Eva smiled at Dylan. She made no offer to let us in.
‘Can we speak to Myles?’
‘He’s not here.’
‘When will he be back?’
‘I don’t know. What’s the problem?’
‘I came to collect Alex’s car, but it’s gone.’
The news failed to surprise her. I could tell without pressing her that she knew where Alex’s car had gone. She had her thumb on the pulse of everything at Stowe Park just like Myles. It also meant she wouldn’t be giving up information to me unless she and Myles had agreed to it.
‘You’ll have to take the matter up with Myles.’
‘I will. Can I wait?’
‘No. I don’t expect him back until late.’
I could have kept pushing, but I was wasting my time.
‘Just tell him I came by.’
‘I will,’ she said and closed the door before we’d even turned our backs.
In the van, I called Myles’s mobile. It went straight to voicemail, so I left a message.
‘We’ve got two choices,’ I said. ‘We either hang around on the off chance we’ll get Alex’s car or we go home.’
‘The car’s gone and there’s nothing we can do about it. I say we go home.’
Dylan echoed my thoughts, but a part of me didn’t want to leave with nothing. Even if I didn’t leave with Alex’s car, I wanted to leave with answers. But I didn’t see any point. Even if I camped outside Myles’s house until he came home, he wouldn’t tell me anything. A wall of silence was being built and this was just another section to keep me out.
I fired up the van and pulled onto the road. Myles’s home put us in the middle of the Wiltshire countryside, miles from the motorway. I followed a series of winding, narrow roads barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other comfortably. It was slow going. It was going to take twenty minutes before we reached the motorway. Just to add insult to injury, I ran into roadworks. The car ahead of me made it through before a workman put his hand out and dragged a barrier across the road. He said sorry and directed me down a farm lane.
‘Our day isn’t getting any better, is it?’ Dylan said as I followed the detour.
Hedgerows leaned into the road, narrowing it to a single lane track. If I was struggling, the moving van behind me had it worse. Its sides clipped the outstretched branches.
‘Do you know where this brings us out?’ I asked.
Dylan shook his head, broke out a road atlas and flicked through the pages. ‘The bloody thing isn’t even shown.’
A tractor reversed out of the field to our left and blocked the road. I slammed on the brakes. The van skidded on the rain-slick surface.
The atlas went flying out of Dylan’s hands as momentum threw him forward against his seat belt. ‘Jesus, Aidy. I would like to make it home in one piece.’
The tractor driver raised an apologetic hand. ‘Sorry. Just need to get something.’
I rolled down the window and called back, ‘It’s OK.’
The tractor driver reached down to his right and brought out a double-barrelled shotgun. He aimed it straight at us.
Dylan reflexively raised his hands.
I jammed the van in reverse and checked my mirrors for the moving van behind. I hoped the sight of my reversing lights would inspire the van to do likewise, but they’d already made their move. Both driver and passenger were out of the vehicle, shotguns in their grasp. I took my van out of gear and raised my hands.
‘Pull into the field,’ the tractor driver said, gesturing with his shotgun.
I heard my pounding heart in my ears. I exchanged a glance with Dylan. He’d turned pale. No doubt, I had too.
‘Move,’ the tractor driver said.
I drove the van into the wet field. Derek Deacon was standing there with rain running off his wax jacket. He held a shotgun, broken, between his big arms folded across his chest. He stared directly at me and grinned. His eyes disappeared as his thick face squeezed them shut.
If I had any thoughts about hitting the gas and mowing the murdering bastard down, they ended when Derek snapped the shotgun shut and aimed it at me. I stopped the van a respectful distance from the gun’s twin barrels.
‘Come on out, Aidy. We need to talk.’
Both Dylan and I opened our doors. Derek swung the shotgun around in Dylan’s direction.
‘This is just between you and me, Aidy. Your grease monkey stays put.’
Dylan didn’t have to be told twice and closed his door.
I stepped down from the van with my hands up. The two guys from the moving van jogged across the churned field. Not surprisingly, it was Derek’s boys, Morgan and Strickland. They looked like brothers, both heavyset with bulldog builds, but they weren’t related. Morgan stood out on account of his tattoos – a swallow
on each side of his throat. He came up alongside me and pressed his shotgun under my chin.
‘How’s it going, son?’
He grinned when I didn’t answer him.
‘Jeff, make friends with the grease monkey,’ Derek said.
Morgan climbed into the cab with Dylan. The shotgun was awkward within the tight confines of the van, but he made it work for him by jamming it against the side of Dylan’s head.
‘Box ‘em in, Tommy,’ Derek said.
The tractor driver eased the tractor forward and stopped inches short of the van’s bumper. Strickland ran back to the moving van and completed the box manoeuvre by pulling across the open gateway and providing a convenient shield from passers-by. I clung to Steve’s belief that Derek wouldn’t kill me if I had a witness like a drowning man to a life preserver.
‘C’mon, Aidy,’ Derek said. ‘Come a little closer. I won’t bite, but I can’t guarantee I won’t shoot.’
The joke won him a round of laughs from his gang.
‘Walk with me. We have a little misunderstanding to take care of.’
Using the gun, Derek gestured for me to join him. I dropped my hands and fell in alongside him. We looked like friends, except he cradled the shotgun in his arms, casually pointing it at me, his finger on the trigger.
We headed deeper into the field through the steady rain and further away from the safety of the road. I glanced over my shoulder. The field sloped downward from the road and Dylan and the blockade diminished from view with every step.
‘Dylan won’t come to any harm,’ Derek said, ‘if you listen.’
If. Had that been the ultimatum he’d issued Alex?
‘I have to hand it to you, Derek. That was all very slick with the staged detour, the tractor and everything.’
‘You liked that?’ Derek said with a grin. ‘It’s very simple when you know how. All it took was a few friends and a heads-up that you were going to the track today. I’ve had someone on your tail since you came off the motorway.’
Considering all the choreography needed to sideline me, Derek obviously wasn’t a stranger to this kind of work, but none of it would have been possible without one vital component – a snitch. He needed to know where I would be and when. It wasn’t hard to guess who was on Derek’s side. Myles was the only person who knew I was going to be coming to Stowe Park today. He could have told someone else, but his disappearing act put him at the top of the list.
‘We have a problem, Aidy.’
‘Do we?’
‘Yes. You. You’re our problem.’
Derek stopped. I took the opportunity to face him while staying out of direct line of the shotgun barrels. We were a long way from the edges of the field without anything for me to hide behind if I ran.
‘You going around saying I killed Alex is upsetting me.’
‘You did threaten to kill him and you were the closest person to him when it happened.’
Derek fixed me with a piercing stare. ‘I didn’t kill Alex.’
I nodded at his shotgun. ‘And you’re doing a bang-up job of demonstrating your innocence.’
I was being surprisingly ballsy considering how shit scared I was, but my remark worked, forcing Derek into a begrudging smile.
‘Whether you like it or not, the police investigated Alex’s death. They found no foul play. I was never a suspect.’
‘Thanks to some influential friends.’
‘It pays to have friends in high places.’ Derek smirked. ‘And in low places. It still doesn’t change anything. I didn’t kill Alex, despite what you may think.’
‘OK, tell me this. Why is there this veil of secrecy surrounding Alex’s death? Why is it no one wants to talk about it? And why is it, should anyone question your involvement, they get guns pointed at them in an open field?’
Derek shook his head. ‘I don’t know why. All I can tell you is that I’m well liked in these parts. People are willing to go out of their way to protect me. Nothing more. Nothing less. As to why Alex’s death is being brushed aside, you’re asking the wrong person.’
Something spooked a flock of birds from their roosts. They sawed into the air, squawking and crowing. Instinctively, Derek spun around with his gun. He followed their skyward progress, anticipated their move and fired both barrels. Two birds fell from the sky, dead.
‘Vermin with wings,’ he said. ‘The only reason they exist is to be a nuisance and, left unchecked, they ruin people’s lives. The problem is that they poke their beaks where they don’t belong and destroy everything they touch. They have to be eliminated before they do too much damage. It’s all for the greater good. You understand that, don’t you, Aidy?’
It wasn’t that hard to read between Derek’s widely spaced lines and see his less than subtle point. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘Good. I’m glad we understand each other.’
A panicked voice squawked over the walkie-talkie in Derek’s pocket. He ignored it, choosing to break the gun and eject the spent cartridges. He left the shotgun broken and unloaded. Seeing that, I knew Derek didn’t plan to kill me. Not today, anyway.
‘Is everything OK?’ the voice yelled into the radio.
Derek removed the radio from his pocket. ‘Everything’s fine. I had to teach a couple of crows a lesson.’
The response quieted everyone. If discharging a shotgun panicked Derek’s guys, I imagined the overdose of fear it must have sent through Dylan. I doubted he’d be so eager to help me after today. Derek switched the radio off and pocketed it.
‘I have one piece of advice for you, Aidy. If you’re going to mouth off, make sure you have some proof to back it up. Otherwise, I can’t say how people will react.’
There was nothing to say. Derek had made his point very clear.
‘Let’s get you back to your van. Then you can go back where you belong.’
We headed back. The rise back to the road proved difficult to climb on account of the rain turning the earth into sludge.
‘By the way, what are you doing here today?’ Derek asked.
I wondered if this was a trick question. He knew why I was here. If he could play coy, so could I.
‘I had some business at the track,’ I said.
‘Did you come for Alex’s car? I heard you were going to have it crushed.’
Derek had robbed me of a piece of crucial evidence and now he wanted to gloat.
‘I was, but it seems to have disappeared.’
‘Is that right?’
We crested the rise. There was a look of relief on the faces of all the men waiting by the vehicles, those holding guns and those not.
I noticed the moving van. It had been a useful tool for boxing Dylan and me in, but it wasn’t necessary. They could have easily pulled the same manoeuvre with any vehicle. So why the van? A vehicle of that size could easily carry a single-seater racecar without the need of a trailer.
‘I’ve got a question for you, Derek.’
‘Ask away.’
‘Was this chat the only reason you pulled me off the road or did you have a secondary purpose in mind?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
I nodded at the moving van. ‘Did you plan on hijacking Alex’s car from me?’
Derek grinned. ‘Maybe.’
Suddenly, nothing made sense. If Derek had grabbed Alex’s car from the scruntineering bay, then he didn’t need to snatch it from me.
Derek nodded to his boys and they scurried back to their vehicles and got ready to leave. Dylan shifted into the van’s driver’s seat.
Derek opened the van’s passenger door for me and closed it when I got in. He peered over my shoulder into the back of the empty van. ‘If you think I took Alex’s car, you’re wrong. We were both too late for it. You should look outside of the racing community.’
He signalled to his guy to make room for us. Dylan didn’t wait to be told. As soon as there was a gap, he was back on the road and moving.
‘What did that mean?’ I asked.
‘I don’t care,’ Dylan said. ‘I’ll think about it when I’m a long way from here.’
Lap Eleven
‘We are so out of this,’ Dylan said. ‘We are so fucking out of this. Shotguns, Steve. They had shotguns. They weren’t for show. One word from Derek and we would have been dead. No ifs, ands or buts. Dead.’
Being held at gunpoint had been a sobering event for me, but not for Dylan. In the hours since the hijacking, he’d been storming up and down the workshop, bouncing off the walls and workbenches like a pinball reliving Derek’s roadside detour. I made no attempt to calm him. This was his way of dealing with the situation.
Steve had ignited Dylan the moment we got back to Archway when he asked, ‘How’d it go?’ Any chances of a calm and collected explanation went out the window.
Like me, Steve let Dylan rant. He wasn’t interested in an account from Dylan. He was waiting to hear it from me.
When Dylan finally ran out of steam, Steve asked, ‘You done?’
‘No, I’m not done.’
‘Well, I say you are. Take your foot off the throttle and get over here. I want to know what happened.’
Steve and I were standing around Graham Hill’s 1967 F1 Lotus. Steve was restoring it for ridiculous money for a collector in America. Dylan muttered something under his breath and trudged over to us.
‘Right, then,’ Steve said. ‘What happened?’
‘Someone took Alex’s car,’ I said.
‘Tell him what happened after that,’ Dylan chimed in. ‘That wasn’t the bad part.’
‘I get that,’ Steve said.
‘Will you let me finish?’ I said to Dylan.
Dylan put his hands in the air in surrender.
I filled Steve in. Dylan chipped in whenever I attempted to play down any part of our roadside encounter.
When I finished, Steve blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. ‘What do you want to do now?’
It was a damn good question. I’d attempted to come up with some information quietly in order to help kick start the police investigation, but somehow my actions had gotten loud and drawn too many people’s attention. People were shutting me out and I didn’t even have the luxury of the police to run to for help. I was pretty much buggered. Trying to do the right thing had thrust me into dangerous waters that were washing me down river, far from safety.