Hot Seat

Lap Fourteen

The ESCC championship kicked off the season at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. I set off for Spa on Thursday, a day ahead of the team. I drove alone, happy for the distance from my problems. I didn’t want anything to do with murders and reckless-driving charges. I just wanted to race.

I reached Francorchamps just as night was falling on Thursday. I stopped the car at the roadside, giving me a panoramic view of Spa carved into the Ardennes. Twilight struck the circuit in all the right places, lighting up the black ribbon of tarmac. It was an amazing place to kick off my European racing career. The historic track is as frightening as it is exciting. It’s a real driver’s circuit, featuring the stomach-churning climb in Eau Rouge and the seemingly endless Kemmel Straight. Jim Clark was a master of this circuit, having won the Belgian Grand Prix four times in a row from 1962 to 1965. That was in the bad old days when the circuit was over eight and a half miles long and the weather could be different from one side of the track to the other. Even though safety standards had reduced it to half that length, it was still fearsome. It looked like paradise and I couldn’t quite believe I was going to race here. I was frightened and ecstatic at the prospect of following in the wheel tracks of Jim Clark and my dad.

‘I thought I was the only early bird,’ Haulk said.

Lost in the moment, I hadn’t heard him pull up behind me. ‘I wanted to play tourist before the race.’

‘Good. Our careers are short,’ Haulk said. ‘Enjoy these times, especially when someone is paying your way. Looking forward to the race?’

I took a big breath before answering yes.

Haulk cocked his head. ‘Nervous?’

‘A bit.’

‘You’ve got nothing to be nervous about. You drove well at Snetterton.’

‘Testing and racing are two different things, especially here.’

‘Give yourself a break and don’t overthink this. If you pile the pressure on yourself, you’ll screw up. Forget the expectation, the results, lap times and qualifying positions. Just focus on your driving and the results will come. You can’t let the other stuff get on top of you because it’ll drag you down.’

‘That’s easy for you to say. You’re at the top of your game.’

Haulk smiled. ‘Do you think someone cracked an egg and out I rolled out a championship contender? No, I worked hard to understand the sport and conquer my doubts.’ He snorted a laugh. ‘You should have seen my Formula Ford career. I couldn’t finish a sentence, let alone a race. I did so poorly that I switched from single seaters to saloon cars. I started over, focused on my driving and my results improved. In one season, I went from the back of the pack to winning races.’

I’d admired Haulk for what he’d achieved in the sport, but I now admired him for the way he went about his trade. At thirty-one, he was only ten years older than me, but he was a generation ahead of me in terms of experience. I thought the learning curve had been steep last season. It didn’t look like it was going to flatten out any time soon, if ever.

‘Let me ask you this,’ Haulk said, ‘what are you afraid of?’

‘Making a tit of myself.’

Haulk smiled and nodded. ‘I can’t fault that, but if you focus on the negative, you’ll never achieve the positive.’

‘Thanks, Yoda.’

Haulk frowned. ‘I’m trying to help you here.’

‘I know. I know. I’m sorry. You just make it sound so simple.’

‘That’s because the solution is always simple. How you achieve it is the difficult part.’

My dad never had this problem. He was a natural. He could get into any car and make it fly and not have a clue why. How I wished I had a little more of that DNA in me right now.

‘How much cash do you have on you?’ Haulk asked.

‘About a hundred euros.’

He grinned. ‘That should be enough.’

‘For what?’

‘You’ll see.’ He held out a hand. ‘Keys?’

Haulk drove me the short distance to the competitors’ entrance at the circuit. The security guard approached us and Haulk powered down the window. He put on a white-toothed grin when the guard recognized him. He pumped the guard’s hand two-handed while the guy showered him in praise.

Haulk belted out something to the guard in rapid-fire French that left my schoolboy French in the dust. He waved an arm in the direction of the track then at me. I waved. The guard and Haulk laughed, no doubt at my expense. Haulk continued to bombard the guard with perfect French. He stopped after a minute or two and then made a ‘what do you say?’ gesture with his hands. The guard teetered on the brink of a decision which I guessed wasn’t leaning towards the positive, judging from his expression. Haulk put his hands together in prayer and bombarded the guard again. The guard smiled, shook his head, then nodded. Haulk took the man’s hand two-handed again and pumped it hard. I noticed he had pressed the hundred euros I’d given him, along with a hundred of his own, into the handshake.

‘Say thanks to René, Aidy.’

‘Merci, René.’

René waved my thanks off and opened up the gates. Haulk put the Honda in gear and drove through, waving to René as we passed by.

‘That was smooth.’

‘Be good to everyone in the sport, not just the fans and organizers, because everyone holds the keys to something you want.’

Haulk guided my car through the paddock and stopped in the pits. ‘OK, we don’t have long. René says he can cover for us for about forty minutes.’

‘I’m going on the track now? In this car?’

‘A night drive isn’t the best way to teach you, but it’s better than being blindfolded.’

I swapped seats with Haulk and drove on to the track. I shouldn’t be doing this, but I couldn’t turn down the opportunity of a driving lesson. I accelerated hard on to the track and the climbing turn of Eau Rouge loomed ahead like a wall. This was going to be fun.

Haulk gave me minimum input on my first lap, letting me find my lines. Spa’s biggest obstacle is its topography. There’s not a flat section to it. You’re either climbing or falling. The uphill portions give you grip, while the downhill ones steal it away. I had the better of the circuit climbing to the highest point, but I struggled on the long, seemingly endless downhill part. I either slithered or crashed through Revage, Pouhon and Fagnes where the corners are not only falling away, but have no camber to counterbalance with the lack of grip. Haulk stopped me after my first lap.

‘Stop. Stop. Stop!’ Haulk barked. ‘You’re fighting the car and you’re braking too late. This isn’t a Formula Ford. This car is heavy. You have to kill some of its momentum. The engine is in the front. The balance is all different. Understand the car. Then drive it.’

He talked me through a lap, telling me when to brake and when to hit the power. He taught me his lines around the track, including the little tricks that you only picked up from years of experience driving here. His inside knowledge was worth its weight in gold. I owed him big for this.

After five laps, I had a feel for the circuit. I swept through the bends, using the uphill sections to cut my braking distances and the downhills to carry the car along. Instead of fighting the continually changing topography, I took advantage of it. I was in control of this car now.

After eight laps, my brakes faded on me. When I pressed down on the pedal, it felt like a sponge under my foot. This wasn’t my racecar. It didn’t have high-temperature brake fluid and it was probably boiling at the callipers. But I didn’t care. I worked around it for the next couple of laps, until Haulk made me call it quits.

‘I think you have the measure of this place,’ he said. ‘Now let’s get out of here.’

I thanked René on the way out, then drove back to the lookout spot where Haulk had left his car. We met back up at the hotel and I bought Haulk a drink in the bar.

‘You drove really well out there tonight,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand the nerves.’

‘I’m out of my comfort zone.’

‘Why?’

‘This is the first time I’m racing without my grandfather and my best friend as my crew.’

The answer had come without thought and hearing it stopped me. I hadn’t realized this was a problem until I said it. Steve and Dylan’s presence always put me at ease and gave me confidence, but instead of looking to them for support, I’d almost gone out of my way to sideline them.

Haulk echoed my thoughts. ‘Then involve them.’

‘I was trying to grow up.’

‘Forget that. What’s grown up about motor racing? If you need to have a lucky rabbit’s foot in the car with you, do it. Half of racing is psychological. You have to have a good mental grounding if you’re going to do well. If you need your grandfather and best friend around, get them.’

‘I swear, you are Yoda.’

Haulk smiled and kicked back his beer. ‘Maybe I am. Using my Jedi powers I detect another problem.’

I shifted awkwardly on my stool. ‘Like what?’

‘Like Rags taking care of that spy the other day. It spooked you, didn’t it? I saw it on your face.’

‘It’s not every day you see someone hanging off an engine hoist.’ I turned my beer glass around in circles on the bar. ‘How much of that was show? It seemed like overkill.’

‘One thing you’ll learn about Rags is that he doesn’t do anything for show.’

The mix of adrenaline still coursing through me and the Belgian beer’s high alcohol content hit me harder than normal, leaving me a little light-headed.

‘There’s a lot of money on the line here and he’s worked damn hard to turn Ragged Racing into one of the premier saloon-car teams in Europe. He’s not going to let anyone take that away from him. Talk to your grandfather. He knows the score and what some people will do to learn your secrets. You fight to protect what’s yours. Plain and simple.’

I thought of Jason Gates lying on the ground with his throat cut. Would Rags go that far to protect what was his?

‘Has he roughed up spies before?’

‘Of course. It’s not the first time we’ve found someone poking around the cars. The other year, this was before I began driving for Rags, a crew chief from Griffin Motorsport quit the team to join Rags. It was all a ploy to see what he was doing.’

‘What did Rags do?’

‘You don’t see Griffin Motorsport around anymore, do you?’

I wondered how Rags had brought a whole team down. ‘What do you think Rags will do about Townsend Motorsport? He caught one of their mechanics red-handed and Jason Gates was found dead by our transporter.’

‘Are you saying Rags cut Jason’s throat?’

‘No, but he’s not the person I thought he was.’

‘You don’t have to know a person well to know whether they’re capable of murder.’

You’d be surprised, I thought. ‘I’ll be honest. Rags spooked me when he strung that guy up.’

‘A few body blows are a million miles away from killing someone.’

A note of irritation was building in Haulk’s voice. Time to switch gears.

‘How well did you know Jason?’

‘Pretty well. I liked him.’

‘What do you think he was doing that night?’

Haulk frowned. ‘Why all the questions?’

I shrugged. ‘Just trying to know him, I suppose. I was with him for the last minutes of his life and I’m trying to make sense of it.’

The tension went out of Haulk’s face. ‘That’s understandable. I hear the police gave you a hard time.’

I wondered where he’d heard that from. ‘Yes, well, you know cops. Everyone’s a suspect until proven otherwise.’

‘And even then.’

Both of us smiled.

‘So, Jason was a good guy?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why’d he leave the team?’

‘He said he had a better offer from Townsend.’

‘Can’t knock that. Did he stay friendly with the crew?’

‘Yeah, particularly with Barry Nevin. Barry had taken him under his wing. They were close.’

Nevin had attended Jason’s funeral. ‘I’ll talk to Barry about Jason.’

‘Do that. I think Jason’s death affected him as much as it’s affected you.’

‘What do you think Jason was doing with our transporter that night? Do you think he was breaking into it?’

The frown was back on Haulk’s face. I didn’t care. Right now, I needed answers more than I needed a teammate. ‘Why do you think Jason was killed?’

The barman came over, breaking the moment by asking if we wanted another round. One Belgian beer was more than enough for me, but Haulk ordered another. Just as the barman turned to pour his drink, Haulk asked for an apple from a basket over the bar. The barman tossed one to him and he snatched it from the air.

Haulk reached into his jeans’ pocket and brought out a flick knife. I jumped at the sound of the blade snapping open. It was long and thin with a fine edge from years of honing. DI Huston had said the weapon used to kill Jason had a fine edge, probably a cutthroat razor.

Haulk sliced off a section of apple and popped a slice into his mouth, then he noticed me staring at the blade.

‘A product of a misspent youth,’ he said, handing me the weapon. ‘It’s gotten me into a lot of trouble in its time, but just like a bad friend, I can’t bear to let it go. So what was your question again?’