Hot Seat

Lap Twenty-Nine

Steve and I waited for Dylan’s call in Steve’s Capri parked a mile from Ragged Racing’s workshop. He called just after nine p.m. to give us the all clear. Finally, we were going to prove Townsend’s car tampering claims right or wrong. It was Wednesday night and my first crack at the team cars since the Norisring race at the weekend. The team hadn’t got back from Germany until today.

The moment we turned on to the street, the workshop door rolled up. A cone of light pushed back the night, shining a light on tonight’s risky activity. Steve drove the car straight into the workshop and Dylan brought the door down.

We had to work fast now. Steve and I climbed from the car. Dylan opened the boot and pulled out toolboxes and equipment. I grabbed the spec drawings I’d gotten from Townsend.

‘You sure no one’s coming back?’ I asked Dylan.

‘As sure as I can be. When these guys pack up for the day, they don’t return. In the last week, only Nevin’s come back. He just dropped by once to see how I was doing, but he hasn’t been back since.’

That was about as risk free as tonight’s adventure was going to get.

‘Does anyone suspect you?’

Dylan grinned and flung his arms wide. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? I’m the flavour of the month. They love me here.’

The plan had worked. Dylan’s role was to play the over-eager apprentice. In an effort to suck up knowledge, he’d asked to stay late so he could get the jump on the next day. Nevin had warmed to Dylan’s enthusiasm and assigned him tasks to do after hours. Dylan had been working until nine on a regular basis for over a week now.

‘They haven’t seen anyone as dedicated as me since Jason,’ Dylan said.

The significance of what Dylan had said hit us all hard and Dylan’s grin withered.

‘How do you want to do this, Steve?’

‘A quick metallurgy test,’ he said and produced a magnet.

I immediately got it and I smiled at my grandfather’s simple brilliance, but Dylan looked confused.

Steve went up to Haulk’s car and put the magnet next to the door panel, where it stuck tight. If Rags had wanted to lighten the cars, getting the bodywork reproduced in aluminium would be a great way of doing it. Once the paint was on, who’d know the difference?

‘You wily old git,’ Dylan said.

‘Wily, yes. Old, no.’

Steve brought out a couple of other magnets and tossed them to Dylan and me. We ran them over every body panel on both cars. Everything that was supposed to be steel was steel. Round one went to Rags.

‘OK, it’s time to get out our measuring sticks,’ Steve said. ‘Aidy, put a car on the lift.’

I fired up my racecar and manoeuvred it on to a hydraulic lift and raised it up. It wouldn’t be hard to manufacture wishbones that gave the car a couple of inches more width. It might not seem like much, but motor racing is a sport of degrees. A slight edge is all that’s needed to get ahead and stay there. If Rags had made a couple of illegal tweaks that gained his cars half a second a lap, that would equate to fifteen seconds over a thirty lap sprint race. Depending on lap speeds, a fifteen-second lead could work out to be between a quarter to a half-mile lead. That’s quite a cushion to have during a race. We measured the track, the wheelbase and the location of the suspension pickups. Everything conformed with the measurements on the design drawings. The story was the same with Haulk’s car.

‘Rags is playing it straight,’ Dylan said.

‘So far, he is,’ Steve corrected. ‘Now for the big test: let’s check their power.’

You could make a car go faster a million different ways, but the number one method was to add more power. Things in the ESCC were very controlled. To keep the racing close, the engines were limited to three hundred brake horsepower and were sealed with a metal tab to prevent tampering. If someone removed the cylinder head, they’d have to break the seal. ESCC scruntineers inspected the seals before and after each race. It was as foolproof a system as humanly possible, but the human element was always the weakest link. If Rags had bribed or coerced the right people, he could get his hands on his own supply of ESCC seals and replace them at will. For what it was worth, I checked the ESCC seals and they showed no signs of tampering.

I brought Haulk’s car around to the rolling road in the workshop. A rolling road is like a treadmill for cars. The driving wheels drop on to a set of rollers so the car can drive as fast as necessary and not travel an inch. In the meantime, a computer records everything from its speed and power output to its star sign. Steve and Dylan removed the plates covering the rollers and I dropped the car into place. I waited while Steve hooked the engine up to the computer and Dylan hooked an extraction hose to the exhaust. When Steve flashed me a thumbs-up, I pressed down on the accelerator. The car climbed up the rollers as its front wheels spun faster and faster. The whine of the engine was deafening in the enclosed workshop. Unfortunately, we weren’t in a position to open the doors to let the sound out.

‘More gas,’ Steve said and I pressed down on the accelerator even harder.

It was disconcerting to see the digital readout in front of me state I was travelling at the equivalent of a hundred miles an hour while the car was stationary. If the car jumped out of the rollers, it would fly straight into the brick wall in front of me.

Steve waved his hand under his chin in a throat-cutting gesture. ‘Kill it and bring me the other one.’

The result after two nerve-racking runs on the rolling road was that both cars produced the regulation three hundred break horsepower.

‘It appears that Russell Townsend is talking a lot of bollocks,’ Dylan said.

I was finding it hard to disagree. Townsend’s belief that Rags was cheating was turning out to be nothing more than sour grapes. I’d already had my fill of that with Chloe Mercer bitching about my unworthiness.

Our discoveries pleased me, because Ragged wasn’t cheating, but the downside of the cars being straight was that I didn’t have a motive for Jason’s murder.

‘So far, we’ve just eliminated the obvious,’ Steve said. ‘Now it’s time to see if Rags has indulged in some creative thinking.’

We spent the next hour examining the cars, checking everything against the design specifications and championship regulations. The cars checked out in every respect. They were straight.

‘Er, I think we’ve got a problem,’ Dylan said.

He had Haulk’s car up on Steve’s portable scales.

‘This car is heavy.’

‘How heavy?’ Steve said.

‘Close to forty kilos heavy.’

I was expecting an underweight car, not an overweight one. ‘That can’t be right.’

‘Come double-check it.’

Steve and I helped Dylan reweigh the car. He was right. Haulk’s car was forty-one kilos heavier than it should be. We weighed mine and found it to be thirty-eight kilos overweight.

‘Are we living in Bizarro world where heavier cars go faster than light ones?’ Dylan asked.

‘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.’