Hot Seat

by Simon Wood

  ‘Nope,’ Steve said.

  We combed the cars for a source of the additional weight and didn’t find it. There was no way of hiding it inside the cars because the interior and seats had been removed. My thought was it was sealed up in the bulkheads but without cutting those open, there was no way of knowing. Dylan found the source when he removed a wheel from my car to check under a wheel arch. The wheel slipped from his grasp, but failed to bounce.

  ‘Be careful,’ Steve said, offering Dylan his hand.

  ‘It’s the wheel. It weighs a ton.’

  ‘Someone needs to work out a little harder in the gym,’ I said.

  ‘OK, Mr Muscles, you pick it up.’

  I chased after the wheel, which was still rolling drunkenly towards the workshop door like it was trying to escape. I stopped its progress with my foot and lifted it. It was heavier than I expected. I remembered the flat bounce when Dylan had dropped it, so I dropped it again. There was little bounce to the wheel.

  I rolled it back to the car. I heard a rubbing sound as it rolled.

  ‘There’s definitely something up with this wheel,’ I said.

  Steve grabbed it and popped the tyre off one side of the rim. It should have been loose on the rim now, but something inside the wheel was keeping it in place.

  ‘There’s something inside this tyre,’ Steve said.

  Steve and Dylan were both big men with big hands. I was the little guy who bought women’s socks because they fit my size-six feet better. Steve and Dylan held back the edge of the tyre from the wheel rim and I slipped my hand inside. My stomach turned when I touched one of what had to be dozens of plastic bags from the feel of them. I grabbed one and pulled it out. It was a package of white powder. I had an uneasy sense of déjà vu taking me all the way back to a Belgian police station.

  I pulled out my mobile and dialled Claudia’s number. She answered on the third ring despite it being after midnight.

  ‘Claudia, we have a problem.’

  Lap Thirty

  I met with Claudia and Barrington the following morning at the Holiday Inn next to Heathrow Airport. The room overlooked the airport road and the drone of passing cars penetrated the windows. There was coffee and a collection of notepads on a circular table, with an empty chair for me. The whole affair came over more like a sales-rep meeting than a clandestine meeting for HM Customs. It made me wonder how big an operation Barrington was running. It seemed pretty small-time, but it could be the iceberg approach, where I got to see the tip and nothing more.

  Claudia brought out a digital recorder and placed it at the centre of the table. ‘Tell us everything you discovered last night.’

  I outlined every detail. Barrington hung on my every word. For once, he didn’t mock me or exert his power. I guessed I was being useful to him.

  ‘Now you’re sure it was drugs inside those tyres?’ Barrington asked after I was finished.

  ‘As sure as I can be,’ I said. ‘The tyres were packed with bags of white powder.’

  ‘Didn’t you open one?’

  ‘No way. I wasn’t touching that stuff. And I wouldn’t know cocaine from caster sugar.’

  ‘It better not be caster sugar.’

  ‘Who packs tyres with caster sugar?’

  That silenced Barrington.

  ‘Hiding the coke in the tyres is genius,’ he said. ‘I have to give the crafty bugger that. There’s no chopping the car up or hidden panels and the drugs come gift wrapped in an easy to transport package. They’re hidden in plain sight. There are dozens of wheels and tyres flying around, so everyone is going to ignore them.’

  ‘I bet these loaded wheels get put on at the end of the race and taken off when the cars are back at the workshop,’ I said.

  ‘Have you seen anyone take the tyres?’ Claudia asked.

  ‘Probably, but I haven’t been paying attention.’

  ‘Who’s responsible for changing them?’ Barrington asked.

  ‘No one special. All the guys are capable, from Rags on down, but Dylan’s part of the furniture now and he hasn’t seen anyone acting shady when it comes to the tyres. Which isn’t surprising.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Claudia asked.

  ‘If all the guys were involved, they’d either be cutting Dylan in or excluding him. Whoever’s switching wheels must be doing this after hours when no one is watching.’

  Barrington got up from his chair and paced up and down in front of the window. He flicked his thumbnail against his index finger as he paced. I thought I heard the gears turning.

  ‘We could go in now,’ Claudia suggested. ‘We’d have enough to bury Rags. He’d give up his connections for a deal.’

  Barrington turned his back on the mundane view. ‘No, I don’t want the mule, I want the network. I don’t want to risk Rags not talking.’

  ‘He’ll talk,’ Claudia said.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘Rags isn’t a pushover.’

  ‘I agree,’ Barrington said. ‘You say the wheels with the drugs in them are on the cars?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where are the cars going?’

  ‘We’re testing at Zandvoort in Holland next Wednesday.’

  ‘Why Zandvoort?’ Claudia said. ‘The ESCC has no scheduled race there.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘After catching a rival spying, Rags says he wants to test somewhere with a little privacy. Kurt Haulk has connections at the circuit and got us in.’

  Claudia and Barrington looked at each other.

  ‘So let me get this straight. Ragged Racing will be travelling to mainland Europe with almost a hundred kilos of cocaine to a secluded place where you have no business being,’ Barrington said.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘You want to catch them during the exchange?’ Claudia asked.

  Barrington grinned. ‘Oh, yes.’

  My emotions got stuck between floors. I’d be happy if Barrington wrapped up his investigation on Wednesday because it would mean our association was at an end, but so would my time with Ragged Racing. I’d told Russell Townsend I wouldn’t torpedo my drive for him, but it looked as if I’d be doing that for Barrington.

  I drove back to Archway to fill Steve in on the next phase. Instead of finding him hard at work, I came back to find half a dozen police cars and a police van filling the parking area. My stomach sank. This was it. Sergeant Lucas was finally here to arrest me. The heavy police presence seemed like overkill, but I supposed he was still pissed off over the van theft. I stopped the Honda behind a cop car, blocking it in.

  I climbed out and a uniformed officer came rushing at me with hands out.

  ‘You can’t go in.’

  ‘I think I’m the person Sergeant Lucas is expecting.’

  The cop gave me a confused look. ‘Wait here.’

  He disappeared inside Archway and a moment later, Steve and DI Huston emerged. Her presence confused me.

  Steve broke away from her and got to me first. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he whispered.

  ‘What did he say?’ Huston demanded.

  ‘He told me it was going to be OK. What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ve been led to believe that you’re in possession of the weapon used to kill Jason Gates, Mr Westlake.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Is this is a joke?’

  ‘No joke. Please come with me. I’d like you to explain this.’

  I looked to Steve for answers. He just shook his head in bewilderment.

  We followed her back into the workshop where half a dozen officers were ransacking tool cabinets and emptying toolboxes. Others were pawing over the cars Steve was restoring for Gates. It was like watching wild dogs tearing apart a defenceless animal.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to Steve.

  ‘I’d like your opinion on this,’ Huston said and pointed at the situation room.

  I groaned.

  She stopped in the doorway where a couple o
f officers were removing the whiteboards, using Steve’s tools. ‘What are these?’

  ‘What do they look like?’

  ‘It looks like a suspect board. Have you been running your own investigation, Mr Westlake? It goes some way to explaining why I keep finding your paw prints all over my case. How about you explain the rest?’

  ‘It’s nothing. Just idle speculation. There’s nothing wrong in that. Remember, I was a witness to Jason’s murder.’

  ‘Just a witness?’

  ‘Just a witness.’

  ‘Inspector,’ an excited voice shouted. ‘We’ve got it.’

  I looked at Steve. I read the dread on his face.

  A female officer burst from the toilets brandishing a cutthroat razor sealed in a plastic bag. Water dripped from the bag. ‘It was in the toilet’s cistern. There’s blood on it.’

  I closed my eyes. I knew what was coming next.

  ‘Turn around, Mr Westlake. I’m arresting you.’

  Lap Thirty-One

  A uniformed officer drove Huston and me into London. Neither of them spoke to me during the drive. Not surprising. I’d lost my status as a free person. Others now decided when I spoke and who answered.

  When we reached the station, Huston put me in the same interview room as before and left me there with the officer who’d driven us. It was familiar surroundings in an unfamiliar scenario. I’d seen the inside of a police interview room many times, but the charges levelled against me had always been minor. Until now.

  The door opened. Huston walked in with two officers carrying the whiteboards from the situation room. As soon as they leaned them against the wall, they left along with the silent officer.

  ‘You look nervous Mr Westlake. Actually, you look petrified.’

  A murder charge did that to me. I couldn’t see how Huston could make it stick, but you could make anything stick if you presented the information correctly. The room seemed smaller than it was. If they held me, my rooms from now on would be getting smaller and smaller.

  Huston laid her file and the razor, now in an evidence bag, on the table between us. She loaded a cassette tape into the recorder and started it.

  ‘Let’s get down to business,’ she said. ‘Things don’t look good for you, Aidy. I have the murder weapon and these odd jottings of yours. Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘I know this looks bad, but that knife was planted.’

  The look of disbelief on Huston’s face killed my will to continue with my defence. The truth sounded so weak. It always did when you had nothing but your word as backup.

  ‘I have your statement that we took the night of Jason’s murder. Is there anything you’d like to change?’

  I foresaw myself stuck in this room for hours while Huston pounded me with accusation after accusation and picked away at my statement. I couldn’t let that happen. It would be a waste of time and, worse, it gave the killer even more time to frame me. At least Steve knew I was here. I hoped he was getting me a solicitor. I needed to get out of here. I was on the verge of hooking Jason’s killer. I couldn’t do it from a jail cell.

  ‘Look, I’m not going to change one word of my statement. What I told you is the truth. I want to talk about what you found.’

  Huston held up her hands. ‘Good. I’m all ears.’

  ‘That razor. Assuming for one minute that it is the murder weapon, because at this point, you haven’t matched the blood, you won’t find my fingerprints anywhere on it.’

  Huston smirked and nodded.

  ‘But the important question is, if that is the murder weapon and I’m the murderer, why the hell would I keep it? If I had any brains, I’d have binned the weapon ages ago.’

  ‘Is that a rhetorical question?’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s a bloody serious question.’

  I knew I should be keeping calm but I couldn’t help myself. Now that Huston had me she wasn’t letting me go.

  ‘You kept the knife because you’re a collector.’

  ‘Seriously? You’d think I’d come up with a better trophy case than my toilet tank.’

  ‘You’re not that imaginative. You wouldn’t be the first.’

  ‘You know what else makes a mockery of me still having the razor? The fact you didn’t find it on me the night of the murder.’

  Huston only needed a second to come up with an answer. ‘You ditched it at the scene.’

  ‘And my gloves, because there won’t be any prints on it.’

  ‘And gloves. Thank you.’

  ‘So where did I ditch them? Because wherever I put them your people failed to find them at the scene. You see how none of this is making sense?’

  Of course she didn’t. She simply turned to her notes and flicked through them.

  ‘I’m thinking you ditched the murder weapon in that drain with Jason’s mobile. It explains why you returned to retrieve it. Why did you take the mobile in the first place – more mementos? God, I feel like an idiot for balling you out for touching it and destroying anybody else’s prints. There were no other prints. Just yours. That was clever.’

  Even dumb luck was conspiring against me. Unrelated and innocent events were fitting together to create a damning picture. My being covered in blood when the police found me just made that picture even worse.

  ‘As it stands now,’ Huston said, ‘I have you at the scene, I have you with the murder weapon, but what I don’t have is a reason. Care to shed some light on that?’

  ‘There’s no light to shed. I didn’t kill Jason.’

  Huston got up and went over to my whiteboards. They’d been sealed in plastic. She read our findings.

  ‘Frankly, I find this disturbing. What the hell is this?’

  I really didn’t want her reading the board, but it might be my ticket out of here. ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘A murder board. You’ve got suspects, a timeline, motives and suppositions.’

  ‘If I killed Jason, why would I have a murder board?’

  ‘I see a couple of sets of handwriting. Have you been talking this over with your friends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you and your pals have been playing detective while all the time you were the one who did it? Christ, that’s cold.’

  I was finished. It didn’t matter what I said, Huston would have an answer. I just dropped my head into my hands and a despair-filled laugh leaked out of me. If the situation weren’t so crazy, it would have been funny.

  ‘Something funny, Aidy?’

  ‘You’re making me out to be the greatest criminal mastermind since Jack the Ripper. Listen to yourself. Is any of this likely, let alone possible?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  A knock at the door stopped me from answering. Huston suspended the interview and stopped the tape. O’Neal let himself in. I hadn’t seen him since the night of Jason’s murder.

  ‘Got a minute?’ he said to Huston.

  She picked up the razor and her file and stepped out of the room. A uniformed officer replaced her. He stood by the door and dropped the weight of his gaze on me.

  I offered a friendly smile. My babysitter didn’t return it.

  After a couple of minutes’ silence, Huston’s angry voice penetrated the interview room’s walls. Both the uniformed officer and I whipped our heads around in the direction of the door.

  ‘You’ve got to be fucking joking!’ she shouted. ‘Shit.’

  A second later, the door flew open. ‘You’re free to go.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘All charges have been dropped. Sorry for the inconvenience.’ The apology came out with frost clinging to each word.

  I stood up. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Seems like you have some very powerful friends. So powerful that they don’t even have to leave their name. Just one word from them and you are magically free to go about your business.’

  The sudden rush of relief left me breathless.

  ‘Once we sign you out, you can leave and all
your possessions will be returned to you.’ She nodded in the direction of the whiteboards.

  ‘You can keep the razor since it’s not mine. Hopefully, it’ll help you. By the way, what made you think I even had the murder weapon?’ I asked.

  Huston said nothing.

  ‘An anonymous tip?’

  ‘Your freedom awaits, Mr Westlake.’

  ‘You might want to check out who tipped you off,’ I said, but Huston was already walking away.

  ‘This way, Mr Westlake,’ O’Neal said.

  O’Neal saw me out. Steve was waiting for me in the reception area and I hugged him.

  ‘I’ll just get your possessions,’ O’Neal said.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ I said to Steve. ‘Barrington?’

  ‘Yeah. I called him. He flexed his muscles and hey presto,’ Steve said.

  ‘At least he’s good for something.’

  ‘He says he hopes the same about you. He also said to remind you that you’ve got a job to do and you need to finish it.’

  Lap Thirty-Two

  The Zandvoort circuit sits on the coast just twenty miles from the heart of Amsterdam. Sand dunes hide the North Sea lurking behind. Steve had warned me to watch out for the sand. It’s not uncommon for it to blow in from the dunes to dust the main straight. It’s one of those little things that makes getting to know a track that little bit trickier. In its heyday, Zandvoort was a regular stop on the grand prix calendar, but the last Dutch Grand Prix was in 1985. Despite losing its Formula One lustre, it’s still a busy circuit for Dutch national titles and European championships. Regardless of our nefarious reasons for being in Holland, I was looking forward to driving here. The world was teeming with historic tracks that had hosted some fantastic races and I wanted to leave my tyre tracks on as many of them as I could.

  The team set off on Tuesday with Dylan. The convoy of two transporters drove from England to Holland via the Channel Tunnel. Dylan acted as my eyes. He called me with updates every few hours. There’d been no detours, stop-offs or meetings. They simply drove to the circuit, parked the transporters and went to their hotel for the night. I reported this back to Barrington.