Road Kill

by Zoe Sharp

  ***

  We didn’t learn anything more during the evening, despite the fact that the boys should have drunk more than enough to loosen their tongues. In fact, I began to wonder how they were going to be sober enough by morning to find their way to a racetrack, never mind ride around it.

  I was very surprised that everyone made it down to breakfast on Sunday looking more or less fit. Even so, there was a lot of strong coffee being drunk and not many fry-ups being eaten.

  “So, what’s the plan?” I asked when the serving staff had cleared away the plates and brought another pot of coffee for the table.

  “We have to have a plan now?” Paxo asked with a groan, clutching his head with one hand and reaching for the coffee pot with the other.

  “Bearing in mind what you’re up to, it might not be a bad idea,” Sean said, sitting back in his chair.

  Paxo tried to bristle at the remark but couldn’t find the energy.

  “We get to Mondello Park, get out on the track and have some fun. Don’t forget to take your driving licence, by the way, or they won’t let you on the track,” Daz said, deliberately obtuse. “And don’t wear your radio and headset, either. They don’t allow them inside the circuit – they interfere with the communications gear between the marshals and race control, or something.”

  I glanced at Sean but it was a moot point for him – he didn’t have a radio anyway. He shrugged.

  “Better leave it behind,” Daz said. “If they catch you with it they’ll probably confiscate it, whether it’s switched on or not, and besides,” he’d added with a grin, “I would hate you to trash it if you drop the ‘Blade.”

  “And here was me about to throw the bike up the track if you hadn’t said that,” I muttered, sarky.

  “So, what about the exchange?” Sean said, not to be deflected and it was Daz’s turn to shrug.

  “We meet this guy and make the exchange back here this afternoon – after we get back from Mondello,” Daz said, matter-of-fact, as though he was describing a far more conventional shopping trip. “Then we get back on the ferry tomorrow and go home. Back to work on Tuesday morning, eh lads?”

  “Just like that?” I said, trying to keep my tone level. “Do you know him by sight – this guy you’re meeting? If not, how will you recognise him?”

  Jamie’s eyes flicked to Daz as though he, too, wanted an answer to that one.

  Daz just smiled and indicated Tess with a wave of his coffee cup. “Tess knows him,” he said airily.

  Tess smiled slightly and said nothing. She was very quiet this morning, sitting hunched in her chair drinking coffee. I wondered if she was having second thoughts about this whole idea. She had managed, I noticed, to get her rings back on today and they glittered on nearly every finger.

  “What about the money?” Sean asked and, once again, the boys exchanged unreadable glances. “How are you going to handle the hand-over of that without being fleeced?”

  “It’s already been handed over,” Daz said, his eyes flicking around, never still. “Don’t sweat it, Sean. It’s all taken care of. You worry too much.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all wrapped up,” Sean said, putting his own cup down so precisely onto its saucer I could tell the depth of his anger. “How many times have you done this before?”

  Daz’s smile slipped a little. “We haven’t,” he said quickly.

  “Exactly,” Sean said tightly. “I’ve negotiated with terrorists and freedom fighters, guerrillas and rebels, from Afghanistan to South America. And they’re all the same in one basic respect – they’re crooked. They want what you’ve got and they’ll cheat it out of you if they think they can possibly get away with it.”

  ***

  We left the hotel at a little before nine-thirty. Despite all my and Sean’s arguments, Daz remained stubbornly convinced that his purchase of the diamonds was going to go smoothly and he refused to let us in on the details. I could feel Sean’s frustration like my own.

  It wasn’t far to Mondello Park. We followed the signs from the motorway and wound through the countryside into a thickening throng of bikes.

  When we stopped at a fuel station a couple of miles outside the circuit the forecourt was a mass of brightly coloured cow hide, kevlar and plastic and the air rang to the roar of dozens of exhaust pipes that had not been chosen primarily for their silencing abilities.

  As soon as we stopped Jamie and Paxo abandoned their bikes and shot off to the gents’, which was in a little block to one side of the kiosk. Either they were still trying to settle their stomachs after the beer of the night before, or their nerves at the prospect of getting stuck in to the track.

  Sean pulled the Blackbird up alongside me as I edged the FireBlade towards the pumps.

  “Our tail is back,” he said through his open visor.

  “Which one?”

  He smiled. “We picked up a white Merc Sprinter van almost as soon as we left the hotel,” he said. “He’s just pulled over about a hundred metres further up the road but the driver hasn’t moved. He’s waiting for us.”

  I glanced in the direction he’d indicated and could see the van sitting between two parked cars. It was too far away and at too much of an angle to see the occupants but I had no doubts that Sean was right about their intent. The Sprinter was bigger than a Transit and correspondingly more solid. I couldn’t suppress a shiver at the memory of my last escape.

  I paddled the ‘Blade forwards half a metre to repeat the information to William, who was just in front of me in the queue.

  William paused for a moment. It was difficult to tell how he was taking it when all I could see of his face were his eyes. After a moment, though, he nodded and leaned over towards Daz, who was slightly in front of him. As he did so I was sure I caught sight of a wire disappearing into the top of his leathers from underneath the back of his helmet.

  The sight of that wire sent a flare of uneasy temper through me. It could only mean that William was still wearing his radio. And if he was, that meant Daz and the others probably were, too. But they’d specifically told me to leave mine behind.

  There were several reasons I could think of why the Devil’s Bridge Club would suddenly not want me to be able to listen in on their conversations. On today of all days.

  And none of them were good.

  Twenty-four

  Mondello Park circuit was, as Daz had predicted, a blast. The organisers had obviously run so many of these events before that it was an easy and well-practised routine for them. We arrived, signed on, listened to the brief and laconically-delivered instructions on track etiquette and how the flag system worked, then were given our wristbands and the time of our session.

  Even the weather seemed to be with us, the temperature considerably lower than yesterday. Modern bike engineering will stand up to Saharan operating temperatures, but I wasn’t so sure about the riders.

  The sessions were graded according to ability. I knew Daz, Paxo and William would automatically go for the most experienced one. I put myself into the intermediates, as did Sean. When I raised my eyebrow at that he just smiled.

  “Employee or not,” he said, “it’s not my bike.”

  I was a little concerned at where Jamie would pitch, bearing in mind my promise to Jacob and Clare to keep him out of trouble. When we came out of the marshal’s office on the upper floor of the building over the pits, I spotted him below us with the rest of the Devil’s Bridge Club standing round like they were ganging up on him.

  I nudged Sean’s arm. “Maybe they’re having a go at him as well,” I murmured.

  By the looks of it, whatever they were telling Jamie wasn’t going down too well. He stood with his arms folded and his shoulders tense. Eventually he spun away from them and stalked towards the stairs up to the office. As he reached the top he saw us and must have realised that we’d witnessed the exchange. He paused, then came on scowling.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “They want me to go out with the
fucking novices,” he said, his flash of temper surprising me. “Like they don’t think I can hack it with the big boys.”

  “We’re only in the intermediates,” I said, hoping to mollify him but he only glowered all the harder.

  “I know,” he snapped. “If you were all in the top group at least that might mean I could move up one.”

  “Just go out and give ‘em hell in whatever session,” I said, aiming to be encouraging. “Better to be way out in front than getting lapped.”

  Jamie didn’t reply to that one, just disappeared into the office looking ready to pull the arms and legs off somebody’s teddy bear.

  “They’ve been pushing him to keep up all the way here,” Sean said, watching Jamie go with narrowed eyes. “I wonder why the sudden attack of conscience now?”

  “Look on the bright side,” I said. “At least it means we don’t have to worry about him while we’re out on track.”

  ***

  “Bloody hell,” I said half an hour later. “It’s going to rain.”

  We were sitting in one of the stands overlooking the track, watching the early novice session warm up. The smell of two-stroke oil was heavy in the air.

  William eyed the clouds overhead. “How can you be so certain?”

  “I can feel it in my bones,” I said, rubbing at the dull ache in my left arm. “The pressure’s dropping.”

  He raised a disbelieving eyebrow but didn’t contradict me outright. “Should make life more interesting, if nothing else,” he said and his eyes slid to the track as Jamie’s Honda came ripping into view.

  Jacob’s genes were showing big time out on the track. Jamie zipped round the outside of another two stragglers as he came past us, riding like a man possessed, eyes locked on the next corner, totally in the zone.

  “The kid’s got some talent,” Paxo admitted, watching him disappear.

  “Mm,” I agreed. “Too much to be in with this lot. It makes it look like he’s just showing off. He ought to be up a group.”

  Daz shrugged. “Well, he can always move up this afternoon,” he said casually. He checked his watch. “You two ought to be getting ready for your session. As soon as they’ve finished scraping those baby Aprilias out of the gravel trap they’ll be starting on the intermediates.”

  Dismissed, Sean and I went to reclaim our bikes, lining up with around twenty others in the pit lane. Once the last group was all safely back in, they started letting us go out onto the track two at a time to avoid carnage in the first corner. Sean and I edged up towards the front of the group. My heart started to pump harder. Two more pairs in front of us, then one.

  I clicked my visor down and started to let the ‘Blade’s clutch out until it was almost biting, upping the revs, holding it with two fingers tucked round the front brake. The bike felt as though it was bunching its muscles underneath me. The marshal waved us away.

  Show time.

  ***

  I must admit there was a part of me that had wondered how hard Sean would ride, bearing in mind I knew just how fiercely competitive he could be. It was something of a surprise, then, when he slotted in behind me at the first bend and stayed there.

  After a few corners it became apparent that he had no intention of overtaking me, so I stopped worrying about him tangling me up and concentrated on reeling in the guys ahead.

  I had the feel of the bike now, and the advantage of being about two-thirds the weight of most of the other riders. By the time we were halfway through the twenty-minute session, we were only four away from leading the pack.

  And then the rain started.

  I did my best to overlook the first few splashes on my visor, but once the track had turned dark with it I couldn’t ignore it any longer. The contact patch with the road on a bike is so much smaller than a car’s that you really have to have ultimate faith in the compound of your tyres to go balls-out in the rain. I really didn’t have that kind of confidence.

  I backed off the throttle and felt rather than saw Sean ease off behind me. Hard on our heels was a guy on a Yamaha R1 who’d been very upset when we’d carved past him a lap earlier. Now he was only too happy to regain his track position. For a second I debated on contesting his challenge, then let him go.

  When the marshals brought out the chequered flags to signify the end of the session, we’d dropped back another two places. But, we were still up on our starting position and at least we hadn’t suffered the indignity of ending up in the kitty litter, as someone had, big style, with what had begun the day as a very nice Ducati 999.

  Sean finally came up alongside me on the cooling-down lap, tipped his visor open and grinned at me through the gap.

  “What happened to you, you wimp?” he shouted across. “We were right up there ‘til you chickened out.”

  “Hey, I was just giving you a way out with honour,” I retorted. “You’re the one who’s on a borrowed bike.”

  We cruised back into the pits and carried on through back into the paddock, along with the rest of our group. The rain was coming down harder now, the wind picking up restlessly under it.

  We left the bikes parked up and took shelter in one of the open pit garages, listening to the inevitable post-session post mortem. The guy who’d dropped the Ducati took some good-natured stick but didn’t seem unduly bothered by the prospect of going home by recovery truck with what remained of his pride and joy.

  There was no sign of any of the other Devil’s Bridge Club members, but I assumed Daz, William and Paxo would be getting ready for their turn on the track. As for Jamie, he was obviously still sulking and was nowhere to be seen.

  The rain eased back to a light spit, enough that our leathers were adequately waterproof to venture out in it. Sean and I grabbed a coffee and a burger and found a seat in the stands to watch the boys do their stuff.

  As expected, Paxo and Daz went through their grouping with single-minded determination, riding too aggressively for most of the other riders to cope with. In fact, they were so clearly racing each other – despite all the warnings that this was not a race – that I was amazed they didn’t get themselves black-flagged.

  William was more circumspect but he still cut through the field with an efficient lack of drama. Despite the fact that this was supposed to be the session for the most experienced riders, the standard varied a lot. By the end of it Daz was just coming up to lap some of the tail-enders for the third time. He cut round one so close that he frightened the poor guy into a shimmy that nearly sent him off the track altogether.

  Even Paxo didn’t have the stomach for that kind of suicide. He dropped back and the two of them finished with one other bike in between them. William was two places further down the order.

  We strolled down to meet them as they came in. I half expected Jamie to be there, too, but he was still absent.

  “I haven’t seen him either,” Sean admitted when I voiced my concern. “And there’s been no sign of Tess practically since we got here.”

  The Mercedes Sprinter van had seemingly followed us as far as the circuit entrance, and then kept going, making it difficult to tell if it really was tailing us or not. I’d felt secure inside the perimeter, among the crowds, but now I started to get an uneasy niggle at the back of my mind.

  When we got to the pits, the boys were rowdily celebrating their performance. Daz in particular was in ebullient mood. He’d been trying so hard that he was bathed in sweat. When he unzipped his leathers his T-shirt was soaked through with it.

  “What did you think?” he crowed when he spotted us. “Not bad, huh?”

  “Indescribable,” Sean said shortly. “Where are Jamie and Tess?”

  William had just grabbed a few bottles of mineral water and he returned at that point, handing one over to Daz with the faintest shake of his head.

  “Why?” Daz said, still pumped up and cocky, taking a swig. “They not with you?”

  “You know they’re not,” Sean said. I glanced at him. His voice had gone quiet and his body had tha
t coiled look about it. And with a sudden clarity I knew why.

  We’d been had.

  Daz’s story of meeting the courier later, at the hotel, was just so much smoke. We’d been deliberately kept out of the loop. That was why they’d made Jamie go out in the lower grade session. It explained perfectly why he’d been so pissed off that Sean and I had chosen to go for the intermediate group. Daz and the others had wanted to make sure we were occupied so Jamie could slip away. If we’d gone for the same session as the others, Jamie could have moved up into the intermediate one and still been on his way while we were all occupied on the track.