Hot Seat

Lap Twenty-Six

Miss Angry Renault’s name was Jenni Oglesby and she lived in a small complex of flats in Harrow, which was nowhere in the vicinity of our supposed hit and run. I wondered what tale she’d spun for Sergeant Lucas to explain her presence so far from home.

I drove out to her place on Monday afternoon. Dylan and I hadn’t gotten back from Strasbourg until Sunday night. By the time we’d finished up with the police, it was too late to catch a flight or train home. We’d stayed the night in a hotel and first thing in the morning, we grabbed a train to Paris, then took the Eurostar into London.

Since Dylan had to go back to work at Ragged, Steve came with me for backup and to be a witness. I didn’t want Jenni claiming I’d done something else to her. We arrived outside her place at two p.m. I tried her doorbell, but didn’t get a reply, so we parked across the street and bedded in until she came home.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Steve said. ‘You’re not meant to have any contact with her. If she tells the plod, you’re buggered. Everything that’s happened will be small beer by comparison.’

‘She won’t,’ I said, although it was more wishful thinking than a certainty.

‘How do you know?’

‘She lied about me running her off the road. That makes her moral compass a little distorted. She wants something.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She grassed me up to Chloe Mercer and Chloe spilled the beans to George Easter. It was unnecessary. The police are all over me and your insurance is likely to pay her out. Ruining my name doesn’t get her anything more.’

‘Other than making you desperate. And coming here is the mark of a desperate man.’

I knew coming here was a risk, but it was one worth taking, especially if I could expose Jenni as a fraud. I thought Steve would understand. ‘Are you saying we should go?’

Steve nodded. ‘Yeah, I am. This can do you more harm than good. She might still have something up her sleeve and there’s no upside from you confronting her. If she runs to the plod, then you really are screwed.’

Steve made a lot of sense, but I couldn’t listen to him. It still stuck in my throat that Jenni had the upper hand. I couldn’t let her get away with screwing me.

‘I have the element of surprise working for me right now. If I wait for her to do whatever she’s planning, I’ll be on the back foot. At least by confronting her today, I’ll rob her of any control.’

‘Aidy, drive away.’

‘I can’t. You can go, but I’m staying.’

Steve sighed. ‘If you stay, I stay.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Just thank me by keeping yourself out of a jail cell.’

It was something I hadn’t managed to do in the past.

Jenni arrived home just before five o’clock. She was driving a very new, shiny Ford Fiesta. The Fiesta, while not earth shattering, was a bump up from the clapped-out Renault I’d seen her driving before.

‘That’s her,’ I said.

The flats came with a small parking area in the rear, but she had to walk back to the street to let herself into her place. The second she drove towards the parking area, I jumped from my car and Steve climbed out after me.

‘No, you stay here,’ I said. ‘She might look at you and think I’ve brought a heavy along with me.’

‘Am I that scary to look at?’

‘No, but I want to look vulnerable.’ I held out my arms. ‘I’m desperate, right?’

Steve brought out his mobile. ‘I’m getting your meeting down on video. She said you wrecked her car last time. I don’t want her saying you wrecked her face this time.’

My stomach clenched at that thought.

I jogged across the street and waited for her by her front door.

When she emerged from the parking area, her jaw dropped at the sight of me standing on her doorstep. I smiled when I saw the look of shock on her face.

A large sticking plaster covered a purple bruise on her right temple.

‘Hi, Jenni. Remember me?’

‘Get out of my way.’

I held up my hands to say I wasn’t here to hurt her. ‘I just want to talk.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘No doubt, the same way you found me.’

She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Well, you are a public figure.’

‘I think that’s a little bit of an exaggeration.’

She shrugged.

‘Nice car,’ I said.

‘Well, I needed a replacement after what you did to my previous one.’

‘Come off it. We both know I didn’t crash into you.’

Another shrug.

‘What happened? Did you run off the road after you chased me? Or did you write it off on purpose?’

‘Are you a little dense? You crashed into me and left me at the side of the road.’

She was keeping to a script. She couldn’t afford to make a slip.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked.

‘You’re a menace to society.’

I thought my turning up on her doorstep would scare her into some admission, but it wasn’t working. I had nothing to shake her belief, but maybe I could force her into incriminating herself.

‘You know I’m not. You made the whole thing up. Why did you tell Chloe Mercer about this? It had nothing to do with her.’

‘I like motor racing and I’m a big fan of hers. I’ve been following her since she started. I thought the information would be helpful to her.’

And it was. It had put a serious dent in my reputation. But what were the chances that a race fan just happened to get into a near traffic accident with a racing driver she doesn’t like just so she can orchestrate a story to ruin him? The logical answer was it was almost impossible. I knew all about cruel luck from my parents’ untimely deaths. But my run-in with Jenni was different. Bad luck was never that organized. People were, though. Someone had wanted this crash to happen.

‘Big fan, huh?’

‘The biggest.’

‘What’s your favourite race of Chloe’s?’

Her arrogant confidence evaporated in a split second. She stared at me like I’d handed her a nuclear bomb to diffuse. That wasn’t the reaction I expected from Chloe Mercer’s number one fan.

‘Well.?.?. I.?.?. I.?.?. I don’t.?.?. there’s so many to choose from. They’re all my favourites, especially the races she won.’

Jenni Oglesby was full of crap. She was no fan of Chloe Mercer’s or anyone else’s or she would have known that despite coming close a few times, Chloe had never won a race.

Jenni recovered her composure. ‘You’re going to pay for what you did and it’s going to cost you more than the damage to my car. You’ll be finished by the time I’m through with you.’

I could see where Jenni was coming from. If she got away with this, it would cost me and not just financially. No team in the world would want me. She’d kill my racing career stone dead. I couldn’t let her do this to me, not when I was on my way to making a name for myself in this sport.

‘You’ll probably go to prison for this,’ she said. ‘You won’t like it there. No foreign travel. No TV interviews. No star of the future there.’

‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Just stop.’

She’d closed the gap between us. There was real pleasure in her expression. She was enjoying her victory too much. I resisted the urge to shove her away. I couldn’t give her any more ammunition to use against me.

‘It hurts, don’t it?’

‘Look, it’s time to end the game. You win. There’s no one here listening. It’s just you and me, so there’s no need to keep pretending. We both know what happened that day and we both know you made it up. I can’t prove it, but it doesn’t matter. I just want this to end.’

‘Is that right?’

Jenni’s look of triumph looked unbreakable, but I knew it wasn’t. It was time to disappoint her.

‘Yeah, as I see it, you’ve beaten me. But I’m not so sure about the cops.’

A twitch pulled at the corner of her mouth.

‘They’ve been by to investigate. They haven’t found any evidence to back up what you’ve said. I still don’t know where I supposedly ran you off the road, but I wonder if the skid marks back up your account? The analysis of skid marks is an accurate science. Did you know that? Worst of all, you don’t have a witness.’

‘So you say.’ A tremor had entered her speech.

‘I do say because if the case was iron clad, the police would have charged me by now.’

I was finally getting through to Jenni. The leer was gone and her confidence was waning.

‘When the truth comes out, and it will, the cops are going to come for you and not me.’

Jenni was silent now.

I had her. As much as I enjoyed seeing the tables turned, it made her dangerous. She could lash out just as Steve feared and drop me in a bigger and darker hole. She wouldn’t though, if I gave her a way out.

‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ I said. ‘Y’know? We can work this out.’

‘How?’

‘What do you want? It’s pretty obvious that you’ve gone to a lot of trouble, so you must want something. Are you really only interested in smearing me?’

The word ‘yes’ slipped between her lips, but fell short before completion.

‘What do you want, Jenni? What do I have to do to make this mess go away?’

A light returned to her face. I’d given her hope, which I prayed would lead to greed. She didn’t disappoint.

‘I want money.’

‘How much?’