Road Kill

Twenty-three

The next day, Saturday, we rode down to Dublin. We left Portaferry just after breakfast, took the five-minute ferry trip across the Narrows to Strangford, then climbed through the spectacular Mourne Mountains to cross the border at Newry.

I’d been expecting more of a checkpoint but instead all I saw were the signposts suddenly swapping into kilometres, an extraordinary number of adverts for fireworks, and billboards proclaiming the innocence of the Colombian Three.

The main N1 road to Dublin was not dual carriageway for the most part, but it was wide enough for easy overtaking and, I was surprised to discover, most of the slower moving traffic obligingly put two wheels onto the generous hard shoulder to let you zip past with minimal exposure. Only the tourists seemed to stay out and hog the white line.

We made good time over the ninety miles or so, stopping only once just outside Balbriggan for fuel and a break in a little roadside café. We dragged two tables together and all sat, apparently a united group, but I could feel the divisions snake and rip between us. The tension was so manifest it practically needed its own chair. Nearly all the boys bore the marks of last night’s scuffle and Paxo was still limping slightly.

Sean went to the counter for the pair of us and came back with two bottles of mineral water so cold the outside of the glass ran with condensation. As he put mine down in front of me he reached out and casually brushed a strand of hair back from my face.

I froze at the simple intimacy of the gesture, without immediately knowing why. Then it hit me. In all the time Sean and I had been together before, we’d had to hide that fact from the outside world. In the army, regulations had forbidden him from fraternising with his trainees – certainly on the kind of level we’d risked.

And afterwards, in Germany and in America, we’d been doing our best to pretend that all we had between us was a working relationship. This openness was a new and vaguely disturbing development and, I realised as I gave him a belated smile, it was going to take some getting used to.

Paxo was still barely speaking to Daz. As soon as he’d finished his drink he muttered about going outside for a fag, colouring furiously as his unintentional double entendre sank in.

Daz sighed and would have followed him, but William put a hand on his arm.

“I’d leave him be, if I were you,” William said, his voice bland. “His preconceptions of you have taken a bit of a battering of late, but he’ll come round.”

Tess made a noise under her breath and pushed her own chair back, following Paxo outside. A moment later Jamie rose with a smile and went after her. Through the café window we could see Tess cadging a cigarette from Paxo as the three of them lurked together in the car park.

“Are they plotting my downfall, do you think?” Daz murmured.

“Well, somebody is,” I said. “We still need to find out who set Davey and his gang onto us in Portaferry. And we need to find out before you make this pickup on Sunday.”

William’s eyebrows climbed over the rim of his mug of tea. “You let them in on it, then?” he said evenly to Daz.

“I didn’t really think I could keep them out of the loop any longer, mate,” Daz said, sneaking a sly sideways glance at Sean as he spoke. “Without them we would have been in real trouble last night.” He rubbed ruefully at the plaster on his eyebrow.

William considered that one in silence for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. He eyed me assessingly. “You cut in on the cash, too?”

“Not interested,” Sean said briskly, speaking for both of us. He flashed a quick smile. “Although if it will make you feel better about it, I’ll invoice you for our professional services when we get back.”

William smiled in response. “Hey, who says I was feeling bad about it?”

We were back on the road ten minutes later. William must have passed on the news about Sean and me as we were getting suited up again in the car park. I didn’t hear how William put it but Paxo suddenly muttered a short sharp curse and threw down his gloves in disgust.

“In some circles,” Sean told him in a lazy drawl, “that would be taken as a challenge to a duel.”

For a moment I watched Paxo fight the urge to tell Sean what he could do with himself, in graphic detail. But the memory of their encounter in the hotel in Co Antrim was painfully fresh in his mind. He stood seething for a moment longer, then bent and snatched his gloves up again, yanking them onto his hands in black silence.

“Why are you doing this?” Tess demanded then, her thin face tight with suspicion. “I mean, what’s in it for you two, eh?”

Sean paused in the middle of fastening the strap at the neck of his leathers and flicked his eyes over me. “We gave our word to someone,” he said. “Nothing more than that.”

Jamie had tensed at the direction the conversation was going, I saw. He caught my eye with a look that was half plea, half threat.

“So you’re doing all this out of the goodness of your hearts, huh?” Tess said, her voice ripe with sarcasm. “Well, I just think it’s pretty convenient that until you two appeared on the scene we wasn’t havin’ no trouble. Now look what’s happened.” And with that she jammed on her lid, effectively slamming the door on further argument or denial.

William was in the middle of lifting his own helmet. He paused and threw us a dubious glance as Tess climbed onto the back of his bike. “Much as I don’t like to admit it, the lady has a point,” he said. “After all, anything you get for free these days is usually free for a reason – because it’s not worth having. So, are you two half as good as you seem to reckon you are?”

Sean didn’t respond immediately, just swung his leg over the Blackbird, twisted the key in the ignition and thumbed the engine into life. “Well,” he said then with a swift fierce grin, “let’s just hope you never have to find out.”

***

Compared with the kind of pace Daz had set north of the border, we had an almost leisurely cruise along the toll road round the western side of Dublin. It was just fast enough to keep a cooling draught rolling up over the FireBlade’s fairing. Every time we slowed I could feel the heat building inside my leathers and bouncing up at me from the shimmering tarmac. If the temperature didn’t let up a little tomorrow, I decided, this promised day at Mondello Park was going to be unbearable.

Since I’d acquired the FireBlade I’d done several track days with it – at Oulton Park in Cheshire, mainly, which wasn’t much more than an hour from my parents’ place, even allowing for traffic. I’d even had a day at the Superbike school at the new Rockingham circuit near Northampton, learning to lay the big bike down far enough through every corner to kiss my knee-sliders across the kerbs. It wasn’t as manoeuverable as my little Suzuki, but with any luck this previous experience meant I wasn’t going to make a complete fool of myself out there tomorrow. If only that was all I had to worry about.

From Dublin we headed slightly southwest and as we got closer to Naas, we started to pick up signs for Mondello Park. The number of bikes had increased into a swarm so that it was almost impossible to spot if the Suzuki with the Lucky Strike paintwork was still shadowing us, but I had faith that, if he’d been there, Sean would have spotted him. There was no sign of our friendly Vauxhall-driving thugs, either.

Naas itself seemed to be strung out along either side of a single main street and at first we struggled to find our hotel. There was a fair amount of reasonably good-natured banter over the radio from the lads about Daz’s duff navigational abilities.

“Are you absolutely sure you’re bent, Daz?” I heard Tess demand when we’d made yet another U-turn. “It’s just I thought it was only real men who would never ask for directions.”

When we did finally find the right turnoff it was to discover a massive modern hotel lurking at the end of what seemed to be an industrial estate. The building was all stainless steel and glass, artistically interspersed with dramatic swathes of stonework. As we pulled up in a line near the fountain by the impressive main entrance, I was aware of the sinking feeling that I hadn’t packed anything remotely suitable to wear at such a venue. Mind you, by the look on Tess’s face, neither had she.

As soon as we walked into the granite and marble-lined lobby I could tell it was a proper high-class hotel – rather than merely one with high-class pretensions – by the reaction of the staff. There wasn’t one. The polished professionalism of the chic-looking woman manning the reception counter never missed a beat as she smiled a welcome to this dusty bunch of fly-splatted reprobates and handled our check-in.

The room Sean and I were given matched the rest of the place – all sleek modern styling around a huge bed and a claw-footed bath in the en suite. As well as the usual mundane trouser press and in-room safe, you were given a DVD player and a PlayStation as well. We’d only been in there five minutes when there was a knock at the door from a member of the housekeeping staff offering to turn the bed down for us.

When she’d gone I said ruefully to Sean, “I don’t think I even own anything that would make me fit in here and, if I do, I certainly haven’t brought it with me.”

He grinned. “We’re going to have to do something about that when we get back,” he said. “Don’t take it the wrong way, but you’re going to need to blend in a bit more with the kind of people who’ve got the money to hire close protection personnel.” The grin took on a wicked tint. “Perhaps I should get Madeleine to take you on one of her infamous shopping raids on the West End.”

Madeleine and I got on much better now than we had done initially, as Sean well knew. But we still didn’t have the kind of girlie friendship where I could see myself squeezing into a changing cubicle with her at Versace in my underwear.

I grinned back and went into the bathroom. It was only once I was there that the true import of what he’d said sank in. Sean had assumed, almost automatically, that I was coming back to work for him.

I shut the bathroom door behind me and leaned back against it, momentarily staring at the limestone tiles on the opposite wall.

“Stay involved with Sean Meyer and you will kill again,” my father had said. “And next time, Charlotte, you might not get away with it . . .”

I turned my head away, eyes squeezed shut as though to avoid having to see the words in front of me. My future was irrevocably bound up with Sean’s, I knew that. But, despite my brave words to my father, did that mean I was necessarily destined for a permanent career as a bodyguard?

Had I learned nothing from the disaster in America?

I opened my eyes. The hotel bathroom reasserted itself. I couldn’t avoid a wry smile as I realised that these very surroundings were an indication that no, I hadn’t learned anything. Here I was, on another assignment, another country, another babysitting job.

Besides – if I didn’t do this, what else was there for me?

Sean was just finishing a call on his mobile phone when I came back out.

“Speak of the devil – that was Madeleine,” he said as he folded the phone shut and put it back in his pocket.

“Well, you know her best,” I said sweetly. “And?”

“No large amounts of loose cut diamonds have been reported stolen anywhere in Europe,” he said, ignoring my jibe. “And the Suzuki with the custom paint is registered to one Reginald Post. It’s a Lancaster address. The name mean anything to you?”

I shook my head slowly. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Mm, back to square one, then,” he said, pulling a wry face. “I hope you’re not planning on sampling too much Guinness later though, Charlie,” he added, “because I think maybe tonight we should keep our wits about us.”

***

Perhaps with the previous night’s unplanned entertainment in mind, the boys opted to stay and eat in the hotel bar that evening, which made keeping an eye on them somewhat easier. By prior arrangement, Sean and I took it in turns to make some excuse to leave the group and do a number of quick and apparently casual sweeps of the hotel’s public areas.

Around ten-thirty I murmured something about the little girls’ room and strolled out of the bar. There was a widescreen TV over in one corner that had been tuned to one of the satellite sports channels. The highlights of that day’s Moto GP qualifying had just come on, so I didn’t think I’d be missed.

I started on the upper floors and worked my way down, passing through the foyer and sticking my head into the restaurant, before taking the stairs to the basement car park.

The underground car park was a maze of concrete on a single level, brightly lit and, if the number of empty spaces was anything to go by, far too large for the current capacity of the hotel. For the most part there were far more bikes than cars. The hotel must have been the favoured choice for those attending Sunday’s track day.

And there, in a line of others, tucked in a far corner, I found the Lucky Strike Suzuki. I approached it carefully, tried to remember if I’d noticed it earlier and couldn’t decide. But when I poked my fingers through a gap in the fairing, the engine casing was still warm to the touch.

I hurried back upstairs to the reception desk and asked nonchalantly if my old mate Reg Post had checked in yet. The young guy on the desk tapped away at his computer, frowning for a few moments.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but we don’t have anyone of that name registered,” he said, looking crestfallen at having to disappoint me. “Let me just check for you if he has a reservation . . . no, it doesn’t look like it. I’m really sorry about that, Miss.”

“No problem,” I said quickly. “He must be booked in somewhere else.”

The guy raised his eyebrows as though, in his opinion, there wasn’t anywhere else to stay in the area, but he was much too polite to actually say so.

I walked back across the foyer and hit the stairs to the basement again. Just as I pushed the heavy door open at the bottom, I heard the echoing roar of a bike engine bouncing off the bare concrete walls as it was revved up through a gear.

Instinctively, I broke into a run. As I did so I caught the flash of coloured fairing and the Lucky Strike bike shot past me, heading for the exit. I increased my stride, sprinting diagonally now to try and get ahead of him but by the time he was halfway to the redline in second I knew I was already beaten.

All I managed to see was a set of black leathers and helmet on a big figure who was hunched over the tank as he sped away. The brake lights flared briefly just before the sharp upward sweep of the exit ramp, then he was gone.

I slowed, cursing under my breath, knowing it was pointless to pursue him any further. Who the hell was he? And what had he been doing here if he wasn’t checked in?

Just in case, I made a quick detour to check over our bikes which we’d shifted underground after we’d checked in ourselves. They were still chained together in a line and nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

I stood, catching my breath and, in that moment of stillness, heard one of the doors out of the car park slam shut on its self-closing mechanism. My head snapped up and I silently berated myself for being stupidly slow. If I couldn’t get hold of the mysterious Mr Post, the next best thing was to find out exactly who he’d been here to see.

I belted back for the door and eased it open but the stairwell inside was empty. I went up as fast and as softly as I could, keeping to the outside of the walls. I didn’t hear footsteps on the tiled steps but suddenly the noise from the bar grew louder and quieter again, as someone passed through the door into the foyer.

Abandoning any pretence at stealth, I pounded up the last half flight and yanked the door open. The foyer area was empty. There wasn’t even any sign of the young man on the reception desk who’d been so helpful before. Damn.

Admitting defeat, I walked straight back to the bar. The majority of the Devil’s Bridge Club were still where I’d left them – only Tess was missing. Sean was lounging on one of the vast leather sofas facing the entrance. He had his arm resting along the back and a bottle of beer swinging lazily from his other hand.

But the relaxed attitude was a blind, as I was well aware. So was the beer. He’d barely drunk half of it over the course of the entire evening. He kept taking the bottle with him to the bar whenever he bought a round and coming back with the same one, still barely touched.

The result was that he was a lot sharper than the others. He looked up, took in my face and got to his feet immediately, steering me out of earshot round the far side of a pillar.

A waiter hurried past, heading for a small group who’d been celebrating a birthday on the far side of the bar. He was carrying a dessert with two lit sparklers stuck in the top of it and Sean waited until he was gone before leaning in close.

“What’s happened?” he demanded.

I filled him in briefly. “I didn’t see who it was,” I finished. “Have any of this lot moved?”

Before Sean could answer there came the click of heels and Tess appeared from the direction of the ladies’ room, still rearranging her short skirt. She smiled slyly at the pair of us as she went past and I had to control the urge to distance myself a little from Sean. Come on, Fox, you don’t have to hide this any more.

“Well, that answers that one, I suppose,” I said, wry, watching Tess totter back to her seat. “But whoever was in the car park then went up the stairs like a rat up a drainpipe. No way could she have done that in those shoes. Anyone else?”

“Just one,” Sean said, and his face told me I wasn’t going to like it.

“Who?”

“Jamie.”

***

Getting Jamie on his own to ask him about his involvement with Reginald Post was no easy task. Tess seemed to have latched herself onto him and every time he went to get the drinks in she was with him. She certainly didn’t want to leave him on his own with me, that was for sure. Eventually, Sean took over distracting her long enough for me to slide in alongside him at the bar.

“So, what’s with you and Reg Post?” I asked quietly while the barman had gone off to fetch more bottled beer.

“What?” Jamie had been watching the bike racing on the TV and only pulled his gaze back to me with an effort. Again the resemblance to his father hit me square in the chest. “Who the hell is Reg Post?”

“Remember the Lucky Strike Suzuki that’s been tailing us?” I said. “That’s him.”

“What about him?” Jamie said, making a good job of sounding casually disinterested now. “We haven’t seen any sign of him since Bushmills.”

I shook my head. “He’s here,” I said. “I saw him in the car park less than half an hour ago.”

“Car park . . .?” Jamie repeated slowly, then gave me a slow smile. “Are you checking up on us?”

“Of course,” I said, allowing mild surprise to coat my voice. “I promised Clare and your dad I’d look out for you, and that’s what I’m doing.”

He shook his head, still wearing a look of bemused amusement at my actions. “I don’t know anyone called Reg Post and I don’t need you looking over my shoulder all the time.” He flipped a couple of euro notes at the barman and picked up the drinks. “You want to mollycoddle anyone, try Daz,” he said over his shoulder. “He seems to be the one who’s losing his bottle with this.”

***

We didn’t learn anything more during the evening, despite the fact that the boys should have drunk more than enough to loosen their tongues. In fact, I began to wonder how they were going to be sober enough by morning to find their way to a racetrack, never mind ride around it.

I was very surprised that everyone made it down to breakfast on Sunday looking more or less fit. Even so, there was a lot of strong coffee being drunk and not many fry-ups being eaten.

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked when the serving staff had cleared away the plates and brought another pot of coffee for the table.

“We have to have a plan now?” Paxo asked with a groan, clutching his head with one hand and reaching for the coffee pot with the other.

“Bearing in mind what you’re up to, it might not be a bad idea,” Sean said, sitting back in his chair.

Paxo tried to bristle at the remark but couldn’t find the energy.

“We get to Mondello Park, get out on the track and have some fun. Don’t forget to take your driving licence, by the way, or they won’t let you on the track,” Daz said, deliberately obtuse. “And don’t wear your radio and headset, either. They don’t allow them inside the circuit – they interfere with the communications gear between the marshals and race control, or something.”

I glanced at Sean but it was a moot point for him – he didn’t have a radio anyway. He shrugged.

“Better leave it behind,” Daz said. “If they catch you with it they’ll probably confiscate it, whether it’s switched on or not, and besides,” he’d added with a grin, “I would hate you to trash it if you drop the ‘Blade.”

“And here was me about to throw the bike up the track if you hadn’t said that,” I muttered, sarky.

“So, what about the exchange?” Sean said, not to be deflected and it was Daz’s turn to shrug.

“We meet this guy and make the exchange back here this afternoon – after we get back from Mondello,” Daz said, matter-of-fact, as though he was describing a far more conventional shopping trip. “Then we get back on the ferry tomorrow and go home. Back to work on Tuesday morning, eh lads?”

“Just like that?” I said, trying to keep my tone level. “Do you know him by sight – this guy you’re meeting? If not, how will you recognise him?”

Jamie’s eyes flicked to Daz as though he, too, wanted an answer to that one.

Daz just smiled and indicated Tess with a wave of his coffee cup. “Tess knows him,” he said airily.

Tess smiled slightly and said nothing. She was very quiet this morning, sitting hunched in her chair drinking coffee. I wondered if she was having second thoughts about this whole idea. She had managed, I noticed, to get her rings back on today and they glittered on nearly every finger.

“What about the money?” Sean asked and, once again, the boys exchanged unreadable glances. “How are you going to handle the hand-over of that without being fleeced?”

“It’s already been handed over,” Daz said, his eyes flicking around, never still. “Don’t sweat it, Sean. It’s all taken care of. You worry too much.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all wrapped up,” Sean said, putting his own cup down so precisely onto its saucer I could tell the depth of his anger. “How many times have you done this before?”

Daz’s smile slipped a little. “We haven’t,” he said quickly.

“Exactly,” Sean said tightly. “I’ve negotiated with terrorists and freedom fighters, guerrillas and rebels, from Afghanistan to South America. And they’re all the same in one basic respect – they’re crooked. They want what you’ve got and they’ll cheat it out of you if they think they can possibly get away with it.”

***

We left the hotel at a little before nine-thirty. Despite all my and Sean’s arguments, Daz remained stubbornly convinced that his purchase of the diamonds was going to go smoothly and he refused to let us in on the details. I could feel Sean’s frustration like my own.

It wasn’t far to Mondello Park. We followed the signs from the motorway and wound through the countryside into a thickening throng of bikes.

When we stopped at a fuel station a couple of miles outside the circuit the forecourt was a mass of brightly coloured cow hide, kevlar and plastic and the air rang to the roar of dozens of exhaust pipes that had not been chosen primarily for their silencing abilities.

As soon as we stopped Jamie and Paxo abandoned their bikes and shot off to the gents’, which was in a little block to one side of the kiosk. Either they were still trying to settle their stomachs after the beer of the night before, or their nerves at the prospect of getting stuck in to the track.

Sean pulled the Blackbird up alongside me as I edged the FireBlade towards the pumps.

“Our tail is back,” he said through his open visor.

“Which one?”

He smiled. “We picked up a white Merc Sprinter van almost as soon as we left the hotel,” he said. “He’s just pulled over about a hundred metres further up the road but the driver hasn’t moved. He’s waiting for us.”

I glanced in the direction he’d indicated and could see the van sitting between two parked cars. It was too far away and at too much of an angle to see the occupants but I had no doubts that Sean was right about their intent. The Sprinter was bigger than a Transit and correspondingly more solid. I couldn’t suppress a shiver at the memory of my last escape.

I paddled the ‘Blade forwards half a metre to repeat the information to William, who was just in front of me in the queue.

William paused for a moment. It was difficult to tell how he was taking it when all I could see of his face were his eyes. After a moment, though, he nodded and leaned over towards Daz, who was slightly in front of him. As he did so I was sure I caught sight of a wire disappearing into the top of his leathers from underneath the back of his helmet.

The sight of that wire sent a flare of uneasy temper through me. It could only mean that William was still wearing his radio. And if he was, that meant Daz and the others probably were, too. But they’d specifically told me to leave mine behind.

There were several reasons I could think of why the Devil’s Bridge Club would suddenly not want me to be able to listen in on their conversations. On today of all days.

And none of them were good.