Hot Seat

by Simon Wood

  ‘That’s something to be thankful for.’

  Barrington belted out a laugh and gathered up everything he’d brought in with him. ‘So can I assume you’re on board?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Lap Eighteen

  Barrington watched me get back into my car from the steps of the police station. My hands shook on the wheel. I was running on empty. I blamed that on a heady cocktail of fatigue and fear. The smart thing would be to find a hotel and crash for the night, but I didn’t feel safe here. I needed to get home.

  I drove as far as the next town and pulled into a petrol station. Barrington had planted something on me once. Would he do it a second time? I wouldn’t put it past him. While I refuelled the Honda, I searched it, but didn’t find any other surprises. That gave me the confidence to keep going.

  I crossed into France without any problems. In some ways, I hoped for problems. I’d take anything to get me out of this situation. Life was difficult enough with Andrew Gates cracking the whip for his aims. Now I had Barrington doing the same. Both demanded results and I got the feeling they didn’t care what happened to me in the process. Neither seemed like a good guy, despite one of them being on the right side of the law. I didn’t see how their investigations were connected, but Ragged Racing was the common denominator in both. I realized that getting to the truth meant I would have to go over the same ground as Jason had. Considering his fate, I needed an escape route. Maybe I should plead guilty to Lucas’ reckless-driving charges. I’d be no good to anyone locked up in jail, but it seemed to be the lesser of many evils.

  It was late by the time I reached the terminal for the Channel Tunnel, but that meant no wait. Less than an hour later, I was back in Britain and it never felt so good to be on home soil.

  The morning rush hour slowed my return to Windsor, so it was eight by the time I reached Archway. I was very shaky and needed sleep, but I needed help more. Steve and Dylan were already at work on Andrew Gates’ car collection. Dylan had his head under the bonnet of an MGA and Steve was up in the crow’s-nest.

  ‘Hey, it’s podium boy back from his travels!’ Dylan yelled across the workshop, more to Steve than to me.

  Steve leaned on the crow’s-nest’s railing. ‘Good job, son. We were expecting you back later.’

  ‘Hey, you OK? You look like crap,’ Dylan said.

  ‘I’m in trouble.’

  ‘Yeah, we saw the interview,’ Dylan said. ‘It’ll blow over. We know there’s no case.’

  ‘No, that’s the least of my problems. I’m in real trouble and I don’t see a way out without your help.’

  ‘You’d better get yourself up here,’ Steve said.

  Dylan followed me up into the crow’s-nest. He sat at my desk and I took the sofa. Steve handed me a mug of coffee. I let its warmth soak into my hands.

  ‘Talk, son,’ Steve said.

  ‘Jason’s death has taken on a new wrinkle,’ I said and told them about fun and games with Barrington.

  ‘This Customs guy sounds like a nasty piece of work.’

  As bad as Gates, I thought, but I supposed you needed nasty men to fight nasty men.

  ‘Do you think Barrington will make good on his threat?’ Steve asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Shit,’ Dylan said. ‘This crap keeps getting deeper and deeper.’

  ‘Then we deal with it,’ Steve said.

  ‘So Jason’s death is connected to drugs?’ Dylan asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. But his murder isn’t big on Barrington’s radar as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Did he mention Andrew?’ Steve said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who’s Andrew?’ Dylan asked.

  ‘Jason’s brother. He’s press-ganged me into service to find Jason’s murderer.’

  ‘What? Why didn’t you tell us earlier?’ Dylan watched the look I exchanged with Steve. ‘Oh, it seems that I’m suffering from Last To Know Syndrome. Maybe I should change that to why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Bollocks to sorry. Can someone please tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Hey, that’s enough,’ Steve said.

  ‘Like fuck it is. How could you two keep me in the dark about something like this? I thought we were family.’

  In my attempt to protect the people who meant the most to me, I’d made everything worse. ‘We are family,’ I stammered.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t fucking feel like it.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Steve said. ‘You’re right. We’re family. And family doesn’t turn on itself. Not when it counts and it counts now. Got me?’

  The fight went out of Dylan. With all sincerity, he said, ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘This whole thing feels completely out of control,’ I said.

  ‘Then we need to dial it back in,’ Steve said. ‘Go home, Aidy. Get some sleep. Get some food. Clean yourself up. I’ll fill Dylan in. Then get back here and we can work out what to do next.’

  I loved the sound of the word ‘we’. Disaster got averted and tyrants got defeated with the word ‘we’.

  I made it home in minutes. I didn’t realize how close I was to sleep until I stretched out on the sofa. This was the first time I’d stopped moving since yesterday’s race and my body wasn’t used to it. It tingled as my every molecule fought to keep moving. My desire overwhelmed my body and I was asleep in moments. I’d planned to doze for an hour, but it was late afternoon before I awoke. I stood in the shower for longer than I needed to, then cobbled together breakfast, lunch and early dinner with what I found in the fridge. It was after five before I was driving back to Archway.

  I walked into the workshop to find the contents of the storage room filling the hallway out to the front entrance. Dylan emerged from inside. ‘Hey, you’re back.’

  He came over and slung an arm around my shoulders. ‘Sorry about earlier.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘You’re a twat for not telling me.’

  Name calling. The universal sign that all is good between two friends. I smiled. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Join us in the situation room.’

  I followed Dylan into the storage room-cum-situation room. The storage room was actually an unused office filled with spare parts, but now it was an office again – sort of. Steve and Dylan had been busy while I slept. They’d removed everything that wasn’t nailed down and pushed the storage racks to one end of the room to open up the space. On one wall, they’d mounted two classroom-sized whiteboards next to each other, pretty much covering the wall.

  ‘What’s all this?’ I asked.

  ‘Our murder board,’ Dylan answered. ‘There are so many players in this game, we need something to keep all the information straight. This way we can jot things down as we discover them. Cops do it all the time.’

  With a black marker, the board on the left-hand side had been divided up into columns with the heading, People of Interest. The names Jason Gates, Andrew Gates, Ragged Racing and HM Customs topped each of the columns. The right-hand board was, as yet, untouched.

  ‘Who came up with this?’ I asked.

  ‘Your man there,’ Steve said pointing a thumb at Dylan.

  ‘It’s cool, right?’ Dylan said.

  It was. I liked this. With so much happening, the murder board helped put the chaos in order.

  ‘And it’s not staying,’ Steve said. ‘Because I want this room back.’

  Dylan waved Steve’s objection away. ‘He’s got a thorn up his arse because he didn’t think of it.’

  ‘Thorn or no thorn, can we get on with this?’ Steve said. He tossed a marker at me. ‘You want to take us through this? We’ve been waiting for you to come back.’

  I pulled a red pen from the pack and wrote Victim under Jason’s name. That stopped the banter flying around the room.

  Now that I had their attention, I talked as I wrote. ‘Jason worked for
Ragged Racing for three years, then left the team a year ago to join Townsend Motorsport. He then digs into Ragged’s affairs, but not straight away. Whatever he was investigating was dangerous enough for him to dump his girlfriend, Carrie Russell, three months ago. After his death, someone ransacked his place, destroying everything he’d gotten on Ragged.’

  ‘Why was Jason investigating the team?’ Dylan asked.

  I wrote a question mark. ‘Customs says it’s drugs and Townsend Motorsport says it’s cheating.’

  ‘Maybe one led to the other?’ Steve suggested.

  Under Ragged Racing, I wrote: Suspect.

  ‘Who?’ Dylan asked. ‘Rags or the whole team?’

  I wrote another question mark. ‘I don’t know. It could just be Rags or it could be all or none of them. But here are a few items of interest. The whole team was at a restaurant just a few streets from where Jason was killed, which gives everyone access. Jason was killed with a fine-edged blade and Kurt Haulk carries a flick knife, which he says is a product of a misspent youth. And Jason had a set of Ragged Racing keys on him when he was killed. Someone gave them to him.’

  ‘But you don’t know who?’ Steve said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Which means you can’t trust any of them. That’s not a good situation. You could be working with a killer, or working for one.’

  It was a thought I’d already had and one I was trying to ignore. ‘So what are you saying – I should quit the team?’

  Steve shrugged.

  Steve’s point was a good one, but it needled me. Ragged Racing was my big break. How could I contemplate giving it up, despite the dangers? I tried diluting that bitter pill with the fact I was involved in a sport where getting killed was always a potential outcome. There was danger on the track and off it. I could live with both eventualities. For now.

  ‘What you need is someone watching your back,’ Steve said.

  ‘How can he when any one of them could be the killer?’ Dylan asked.

  I saw the answer immediately. ‘So we go with an inside man.’

  Steve smiled and turned to Dylan.

  Dylan pointed to himself. ‘Me?’

  ‘You said you wanted a job at Ragged,’ I said.

  ‘That’s before I knew it was a den of potential thieves and killers.’

  ‘It’s a tough economy. Beggars can’t be choosers.’

  ‘Nice.’ Dylan was silent for a long moment. ‘Do you think you can get me in?’

  ‘I think I can sell it. Put it this way, I have a really big incentive to sell it.’

  ‘Woohoo. Lucky me. Can we move on to someone else, like the wanker who slashed my tyres?’

  I wrote: Dominic Crichlow. Heavy for Andrew Gates and wanker who slashed Dylan’s tyres.

  ‘The more interesting person here is this guy,’ I said and tapped the Andrew Gates heading with my pen, then wrote: Jason’s brother and loan shark.

  ‘Shouldn’t that be ex-loan shark?’ Dylan suggested.

  I shrugged. ‘We’ve only got his word for that.’

  ‘I know someone who we can talk to on that front,’ Steve said. ‘Give me a day to look into that.’

  Steve and loan sharks? I waited for him to explain, but he just stared at me.

  ‘Move on, son. It’s been a long day.’

  In the column for Customs, I wrote Barrington’s name with the suffix: also a wanker. ‘Barrington says he has someone working undercover in the ESCC. I’m hoping this person can help us, although I get the feeling that relationship is supposed to be reversed.’

  I added entries for Townsend Motorsport and Carrie Russell, under the classification of useful sources. The three of us then drew links between the various pieces of information we’d learned.

  Dylan took a pen from the pack and added an additional column. At the top, he wrote: Woman in the Renault. He tapped the title with his pen. ‘How’s this woman feature in all this? I find it curious that your problems with her started up just after Jason’s murder.’

  I frowned. ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘It’s a distraction. It gets you out of the way.’

  I wasn’t sure if I bought that story, but Miss Angry Renault was staying on the board for now.

  ‘That’s a whole lot of stuff up there, but I’m not sure what it all means,’ Steve said.

  ‘We have a handful of pieces to the puzzle, possibly to a number of puzzles,’ I said. ‘We need to be aware of them and focus on what we do know.’

  ‘Which is what?’ Steve said.

  ‘Jason was murdered. Motives and reasons will reveal themselves if we can establish why Jason was poking around Ragged’s transporter that night.’

  I shifted over to the second board and drew a horizontal line. At the top of the board I wrote: Timeline.

  ‘Where was everyone when Jason was killed?’ I said.

  At the centre of the line, I wrote the time and date Jason was killed. Working backward from Jason’s time of death, I added a milestone for the approximate time the team had left the restaurant. Then I added milestones for three months ago and twelve months ago and wrote: Breaks off his relationship with Carrie and leaves Ragged Racing. I drew a separate line connecting these two times and wrote: Somewhere Jason starts investigating Ragged’s affairs. And close to the start of the timeline, I wrote: Four years ago, Jason starts working for Ragged Racing.

  ‘Now, there are things that will need to be added to the timeline, but the questions right now are: why did Jason leave the team and when and why did he start digging into their activities? If we start adding everyone else’s activities to this timeline, we’ll know who killed Jason and why.’

  ‘And how do you suggest we do that?’ Steve asked.

  ‘By asking some questions that are bound to annoy quite a few of these people,’ I said, pointing to the people listed on the murder board.

  ‘I’ve got a lot of time on my hands at the moment,’ Dylan said. ‘I’ll Google Ragged Racing, its history and its drivers and see if anything interesting falls out.’

  ‘I think we’ve got a plan, gents,’ I said.

  Music from the Jumping Bean Mexican Cantina next door was filtering through the thick brick wall that separated it from Archway. The happy hour crowd had moved in.

  ‘Dinner’s on me.’

  While we waited to be shown to our table, Dylan said, ‘You realize that you’re following in Jason’s footsteps, don’t you?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And that ended with his murder.’

  Driving back from Belgium, I’d come to the same conclusion, but my situation wasn’t the same. ‘I’m much better off than Jason.’

  ‘Why?’ Steve asked.

  ‘Jason didn’t have you two watching his back.’

  Lap Nineteen

  The next morning, I drove Dylan up to Ragged Racing’s home in Banbury. A number of teams, covering the gambit of motorsport from circuit racing to rallying, called the Oxfordshire town home. With convenient motorway access, close proximity to a handful of tracks and reasonable rents, it made sense to establish a home there instead of anchoring a team to one particular circuit.

  My reason for going to Rags wasn’t just to get Dylan a job and make him my inside man. I needed to make peace with Rags. I hoped that the couple of days since Spa would have mellowed him and he would have gotten over the shock of my police problems. It didn’t sound like he’d mellowed all that much when I’d called him to let him know I was coming. I definitely wasn’t going to mention being picked up for drug possession.

  I parked in one of the Ragged Racing-only spots in front of the warehouse that served as all things Ragged Racing. We got out of the car and walked over to the entrance.

  ‘Do you think this is going to work?’ Dylan asked.

  ‘God knows with the way my luck is going.’

  ‘Defeatism. That’s the attitude.’

  I glanced over at Dylan. He grinned and banged me on the back.

  ‘Snap out of
this, mate. You know you can do this. Am I right?’

  Dylan was right, but I never liked to overestimate my chances. Chance always had the upper hand.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ Dylan mocked.

  ‘This one is in the bag,’ I answered as I opened the door.

  ‘Hmm, I love it when you’re forceful.’

  My crew was poring over my racecar. I should say what was left of my car. Various body panels had been removed and all four wheels were off. Nevin was hunched over the engine bay when he spotted us. He left the carcass of my car and jogged over.

  ‘I didn’t know you were dropping by, Aidy.’

  ‘I’m just here to see Rags.’

  Nevin nodded. ‘Yeah, I thought as much. Look, I don’t know the details and I don’t need to. You’re a good driver and the boys like you, despite the black cloud you brought with you last weekend. Just be honest with Rags and it’ll be sunshine again.’

  ‘Thanks, Barry.’

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  Dylan introduced himself.

  ‘Do you mind showing Dylan around while I talk to Rags?’

  ‘No probs.’

  I left Dylan with Nevin and went in search of Rags. The last time I’d been in his office was when he called me in to sign my one-year contract. It had been the best day of my life. Today could be the polar opposite.

  The door was open and Rags was on the phone. I knocked on the door. He pointed to the chair in front of his desk and I took my place in the hot seat.

  ‘Have I let you down before? No, that’s right, I haven’t. I’ll get it to you. OK? Good. Talk to you soon.’ Rags hung up and dropped his mobile on his desk.

  ‘Problems?’ I asked, wondering if the call had been about me.

  ‘Not as big as yours.’

  Ouch.

  ‘You said you wanted to talk.’

  ‘Yeah, I just wanted to say sorry again. I talked it out with my grandfather and you were right. I should have gone to you straight away about the police issue.’

  ‘Damn right, you should have.’

  ‘I know. Lesson learned.’

  ‘I bloody hope so.’ Rags leaned forward and put his elbows on his desk. ‘I won’t say I took a risk picking you for this drive, but there were more qualified drivers in the shootout. In fact, you were the least accomplished in the pack.’