Hot Seat

Lap Twenty

I was on the clock the next day instructing at Brands Hatch’s racing school. Since landing a drive in the ESCC, I was something of a hot ticket and I’d picked up instructing work at several racing schools around the country because of it.

Track days consisted of teaching the basics of driving around a track to wannabe drivers who were getting their feet wet and at corporate events for entertaining clients. I liked instructing. The pay wasn’t great, but it was easy work.

The racing schools liked to use drivers with rising reputations. I arrived for the drivers’ briefing to see a number of stars from the single-seater and tin-top ranks, including Chloe Mercer. The schools also liked to use a few old hands, but I was surprised to see Tim Reid. I sat down next to Reid while Chloe did her best to ignore me.

After the briefing, the chief instructor assigned me a car. The school used BMW M3s, which was plenty of car for anyone to throw around a track, especially one as challenging as Brands. I sat behind the wheel. Before the student got to drive, I spent three laps showing them the lines around the track. Then they got fifteen laps to put what they’d learned in the classroom and from my demonstration into practice. To finish off, they got ten laps alone in the car to break a set lap time.

Punters spilled out from the briefing room underneath the race control tower and headed towards us. My passenger door opened and Detective Inspector Joan Huston climbed inside. It was a shock as I hadn’t seen her since the night of the murder.

She smiled at my stunned expression. ‘They tell me you’re good, so I thought I’d see for myself.’

I didn’t believe that for a second. ‘Great.’

I helped belt her into her four-point harness. ‘I’m going to show you the lines before I let you loose on the track.’

‘You’re in charge,’ she said.

I didn’t think so.

I put the car in gear and eased on to the track with the rest of the school cars. Brands is a fun track. It’s challenging, because unlike most tracks, it’s not flat. It undulates. Combine that with short straights and plenty of curves, and it’s a tough track to get right.

I wound the BMW up through the gears and into the Druids hairpin. Cones at the edge of the track showed where to brake, turn in, the apex and the exit point. I talked my way through the bend, explaining to the detective how I applied the power as I put the car through the corner and demonstrating how I approached each corner the same, but adapted for the speed of the corner and the approach. After the three demonstration laps, I brought the car in so that Huston could take over.

‘Did that make sense?’ I asked her as I strapped her into the driver’s seat.

‘Yes, you’re very good at this.’

‘Thanks. Now take it easy on the first lap. Get a feel for the car and the track. Most importantly, just have fun.’

The second we hit the track it was obvious this wasn’t Huston’s first rodeo. She took the BMW by the scruff of the neck and dragged it around the track kicking and screaming. She hit all the marks with precision. She drifted the car through the bends, clipping the apex every time. She had to be a veteran of a police driving course. I didn’t bother correcting her driving. There was nothing to correct.

Huston clocked a hundred miles an hour as she crossed the start-finish line to complete her first lap. ‘No suggestions?’ she said.

‘None needed.’

She smiled at me. ‘Good. Then we can have a little chat. You keep cropping up in my investigation. Did you know that?’

I felt myself sweating. ‘No.’

‘Yes. I found out that you questioned Jason Gates’ girlfriend. I had to twist her arm to get that nugget of truth from her.’

Huston let the statement hang in the air for the next two corners. She was looking to me to fill the gap. I wasn’t about to indulge her. I didn’t know what Carrie Russell had told her. I liked to think Carrie had told the police as little as possible, but that was wishful thinking. She didn’t owe me anything. Regardless, I wasn’t about to say anything that could screw me. Let Huston drag the answers from me. It would give me an idea of what she knew.

‘Nothing to say?’

‘We talked, that was all.’

My answer seemed to irritate Huston, because she pushed the BMW hard through Graham Hill Bend. The car skittered through the sweeping lefthander.

‘Feed the power in,’ I said. ‘Don’t floor it.’

‘What did you need to talk to her about? You said you didn’t know Jason Gates.’

‘I didn’t. I just thought if I talked to someone who knew him, it might help jog my memory about that night.’

‘What crap.’

Huston ignored my advice and went into the Surtees-McLaren-Clark curve complex too hard and fast. She missed the apex by a mile and lost a ton of speed.

‘You’re still getting on the power too early and too hard. Dial it back,’ I said.

Finally, Huston listened to me and was perfect through Paddock Hill Bend and Druids.

‘Did you know Jason Gates’ flat was turned over?’

This question was a potential trapdoor. If Carrie had told Huston she’d found me there, then I was screwed, but I was sticking to the rule — deny everything. ‘No. What was taken?’

Huston frowned.

Yep, she was testing me.

‘And why did you return to the crime scene? Before you deny it, the security guard identified you from a photo.’

No wriggle room there.

‘I remembered something from the night of the murder. When Jason was lying on the ground, just before he died, he pointed at something or someone. I went back to see if I could work out what it was.’

‘You should have called me,’ she snapped. ‘You don’t keep information like that from the police.’

‘I didn’t want to bother you if it was nothing.’

‘And was it nothing?’

‘I don’t know. I think he was pointing in the direction of the killer’s escape.’

Huston was silent for a moment as she powered the car smoothly through the Surtees-McLaren-Clark curve complex again. ‘The security guard says he helped you recover your phone from a drain.’

‘Yeah, I dropped it.’

‘Because you were about to call me?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Let’s cut the crap, Aidy. I don’t like finding you shadowing my investigation and I especially don’t like finding you one step ahead of me. Your interference slows my investigation down and helps the killer get away. You need to come clean with me or I’m taking you in. Am I clear?’

I got the feeling that she didn’t know I’d been inside Jason’s flat or about my association with Andrew. I wasn’t about to admit to either of these things, but I had to give her something. I decided on the phone. It wasn’t any good to me anyway.

‘I found Jason’s mobile phone at the murder site.’

‘You what?’ The temperature inside the car dropped ten degrees. ‘Don’t tell me you touched it.’

‘Yes.’

‘What the hell is wrong with you? Were you dropped on your head as a child? That’s tampering with evidence. I should haul you in right now.’

‘The phone was useless. It had shorted out.’

‘I don’t bloody care. You destroyed a vital piece of evidence. The second you found it, you should have called me.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Screw sorry. Where’s the phone now?’

‘I’ve got it in my car. It’s fried. I put a new battery in it, but I still couldn’t get it to work.’

‘You’re going to give it to me.’

‘OK.’

Huston jerked the wheel and pulled into the pits.

‘You’ve still got another five laps.’

‘I just want that phone.’

‘OK. Stop here.’

Huston parked the car at the start of the pit garages, away from the line of school cars. She followed me to the parking area behind the pit lane where the instructors parked. I pulled the phone from the glove box where I’d left it after unsuccessfully attempting to breathe life into it. She took it from me and wrapped it in a handkerchief.

‘I really should throw you in the cells. Maybe it would smarten you up.’

‘I really am sorry.’

She waved my apology away. ‘You’ve said that. What the hell did you think you’d get from it?’

‘I thought I could check for messages or see who Jason called that night, but we’ll never know.’

‘I don’t need the phone for that, love. I have the phone records. I’ve known for days who Jason spoke to the night he died.’

‘Who was the last person Jason talked to?’

Huston patted my cheek. ‘Stick to something you’re good at, like racing, because you’re a crappy detective.’

My mobile rang. It was Claudia.

‘Hey, Claudia.’

‘Aidy, I know who told George Easter about your reckless-driving charges. It was Chloe Mercer.’

‘That backstabbing cow,’ I said. ‘I’m instructing at Brands and she’s here.’

‘Aidy, don’t do anything stupid.’

‘I won’t,’ I said and hung up.

‘Problems?’ Huston asked.

‘Not if I’ve got anything to do with it.’

I raced back to the pits. I went from car to car looking for Chloe, ignoring the punters climbing in and out of the BMWs, but I didn’t see her. A handful of cars trickled into the pits. Chloe emerged from the second of these cars with her student. She was all smiles as she talked up her student’s performance. To the world, she was the consummate professional. Unfortunately, I knew differently.

‘You drive like that,’ she said to the student, ‘and you’ll do fine in the timed session.’

Chloe dropped the smile at the sight of me. I walked up on her just as her student headed back to race control.

‘That was a classy move leaking my private business to George Easter.’

‘People should know that you’re a dangerous driver.’ Chloe grabbed her helmet off the roof of the BMW and walked by me.

I snatched her wrist. ‘You should know the facts before you mouth off.’

She shook her hand free. ‘I do. Reckless driving. Driving without due care and attention. Leaving the scene of an accident. Those are the charges, aren’t they?’

Chloe was very well informed. ‘Where’d you get your information?’

‘From a fan. I received a very nice email via my website.’

I didn’t have to ask the fan’s name. Other than the police and me, only one person knew about the charges — Miss Angry Renault. She was the only person that would be interested in sharing the information. Why she’d go to Chloe was beyond me.

‘You can’t trust anything you read on the internet. No formal charges have been made. So you don’t know the facts and you should remember that before you mess with someone’s livelihood.’

Chloe smiled. ‘Rags giving you shit? Good.’

Seeing the disgust and resentment chewing up her expression saddened me and deflated my anger. ‘Does me having this drive piss you off that much?’

‘You don’t deserve it. You only got it on the back of your dad’s reputation.’

‘Why do you care? You have a Formula Three drive now, which is better than the ESCC.’

‘It’s the principle.’

‘The principle of being a bad loser.’

Tim Reid appeared between us. ‘You two cut it out,’ he whispered. ‘Everyone is watching. No one needs to see you two squabbling. If you’ve got dirty laundry, wash it elsewhere. Understood?’

Chloe snorted in disgust and stormed back towards race control.

‘Thanks for that,’ I said.

He looked back at Chloe as she was disappearing into race control. ‘She giving you a hard time?’

‘Yeah. She’s still bent out of shape over not winning the Pit Lane shootout.’

‘Well, she was the hot favourite.’

‘And I was the long shot.’

‘It’s over. You won. She lost. Move on.’

‘It’s hard to do that with her trying to ruin it for me. She’s the one who leaked the story about my reckless-driving case to George Easter.’

‘Really? You think she’s trying to disgrace you so that she can claim the title?’

I hadn’t thought of that, but it was an interesting point. No wonder she was trying to ruin my name. ‘Possibly, but who says she was in line after me?’

‘Rags does. You were his first choice. She was second. Remember I was part of Rags’ assessment panel.’

The PA paged Reid to race control.

‘They’re playing my song. We’ll talk more at lunch. Have a good one, Aidy, and don’t get any nutters.’

‘Thanks. You too.’

I turned around and found Huston standing by the pit garages, well within earshot. I groaned inside. She smiled.

‘I was starting to get a complex, but apparently you have a talent for annoying everyone. I see that I need to keep an eye on you from now on.’