Road Kill

Twenty-four

Mondello Park circuit was, as Daz had predicted, a blast. The organisers had obviously run so many of these events before that it was an easy and well-practised routine for them. We arrived, signed on, listened to the brief and laconically-delivered instructions on track etiquette and how the flag system worked, then were given our wristbands and the time of our session.

Even the weather seemed to be with us, the temperature considerably lower than yesterday. Modern bike engineering will stand up to Saharan operating temperatures, but I wasn’t so sure about the riders.

The sessions were graded according to ability. I knew Daz, Paxo and William would automatically go for the most experienced one. I put myself into the intermediates, as did Sean. When I raised my eyebrow at that he just smiled.

“Employee or not,” he said, “it’s not my bike.”

I was a little concerned at where Jamie would pitch, bearing in mind my promise to Jacob and Clare to keep him out of trouble. When we came out of the marshal’s office on the upper floor of the building over the pits, I spotted him below us with the rest of the Devil’s Bridge Club standing round like they were ganging up on him.

I nudged Sean’s arm. “Maybe they’re having a go at him as well,” I murmured.

By the looks of it, whatever they were telling Jamie wasn’t going down too well. He stood with his arms folded and his shoulders tense. Eventually he spun away from them and stalked towards the stairs up to the office. As he reached the top he saw us and must have realised that we’d witnessed the exchange. He paused, then came on scowling.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“They want me to go out with the fucking novices,” he said, his flash of temper surprising me. “Like they don’t think I can hack it with the big boys.”

“We’re only in the intermediates,” I said, hoping to mollify him but he only glowered all the harder.

“I know,” he snapped. “If you were all in the top group at least that might mean I could move up one.”

“Just go out and give ‘em hell in whatever session,” I said, aiming to be encouraging. “Better to be way out in front than getting lapped.”

Jamie didn’t reply to that one, just disappeared into the office looking ready to pull the arms and legs off somebody’s teddy bear.

“They’ve been pushing him to keep up all the way here,” Sean said, watching Jamie go with narrowed eyes. “I wonder why the sudden attack of conscience now?”

“Look on the bright side,” I said. “At least it means we don’t have to worry about him while we’re out on track.”

***

“Bloody hell,” I said half an hour later. “It’s going to rain.”

We were sitting in one of the stands overlooking the track, watching the early novice session warm up. The smell of two-stroke oil was heavy in the air.

William eyed the clouds overhead. “How can you be so certain?”

“I can feel it in my bones,” I said, rubbing at the dull ache in my left arm. “The pressure’s dropping.”

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow but didn’t contradict me outright. “Should make life more interesting, if nothing else,” he said and his eyes slid to the track as Jamie’s Honda came ripping into view.

Jacob’s genes were showing big time out on the track. Jamie zipped round the outside of another two stragglers as he came past us, riding like a man possessed, eyes locked on the next corner, totally in the zone.

“The kid’s got some talent,” Paxo admitted, watching him disappear.

“Mm,” I agreed. “Too much to be in with this lot. It makes it look like he’s just showing off. He ought to be up a group.”

Daz shrugged. “Well, he can always move up this afternoon,” he said casually. He checked his watch. “You two ought to be getting ready for your session. As soon as they’ve finished scraping those baby Aprilias out of the gravel trap they’ll be starting on the intermediates.”

Dismissed, Sean and I went to reclaim our bikes, lining up with around twenty others in the pit lane. Once the last group was all safely back in, they started letting us go out onto the track two at a time to avoid carnage in the first corner. Sean and I edged up towards the front of the group. My heart started to pump harder. Two more pairs in front of us, then one.

I clicked my visor down and started to let the ‘Blade’s clutch out until it was almost biting, upping the revs, holding it with two fingers tucked round the front brake. The bike felt as though it was bunching its muscles underneath me. The marshal waved us away.

Show time.

***

I must admit there was a part of me that had wondered how hard Sean would ride, bearing in mind I knew just how fiercely competitive he could be. It was something of a surprise, then, when he slotted in behind me at the first bend and stayed there.

After a few corners it became apparent that he had no intention of overtaking me, so I stopped worrying about him tangling me up and concentrated on reeling in the guys ahead.

I had the feel of the bike now, and the advantage of being about two-thirds the weight of most of the other riders. By the time we were halfway through the twenty-minute session, we were only four away from leading the pack.

And then the rain started.

I did my best to overlook the first few splashes on my visor, but once the track had turned dark with it I couldn’t ignore it any longer. The contact patch with the road on a bike is so much smaller than a car’s that you really have to have ultimate faith in the compound of your tyres to go balls-out in the rain. I really didn’t have that kind of confidence.

I backed off the throttle and felt rather than saw Sean ease off behind me. Hard on our heels was a guy on a Yamaha R1 who’d been very upset when we’d carved past him a lap earlier. Now he was only too happy to regain his track position. For a second I debated on contesting his challenge, then let him go.

When the marshals brought out the chequered flags to signify the end of the session, we’d dropped back another two places. But, we were still up on our starting position and at least we hadn’t suffered the indignity of ending up in the kitty litter, as someone had, big style, with what had begun the day as a very nice Ducati 999.

Sean finally came up alongside me on the cooling-down lap, tipped his visor open and grinned at me through the gap.

“What happened to you, you wimp?” he shouted across. “We were right up there ‘til you chickened out.”

“Hey, I was just giving you a way out with honour,” I retorted. “You’re the one who’s on a borrowed bike.”

We cruised back into the pits and carried on through back into the paddock, along with the rest of our group. The rain was coming down harder now, the wind picking up restlessly under it.

We left the bikes parked up and took shelter in one of the open pit garages, listening to the inevitable post-session post mortem. The guy who’d dropped the Ducati took some good-natured stick but didn’t seem unduly bothered by the prospect of going home by recovery truck with what remained of his pride and joy.

There was no sign of any of the other Devil’s Bridge Club members, but I assumed Daz, William and Paxo would be getting ready for their turn on the track. As for Jamie, he was obviously still sulking and was nowhere to be seen.

The rain eased back to a light spit, enough that our leathers were adequately waterproof to venture out in it. Sean and I grabbed a coffee and a burger and found a seat in the stands to watch the boys do their stuff.

As expected, Paxo and Daz went through their grouping with single-minded determination, riding too aggressively for most of the other riders to cope with. In fact, they were so clearly racing each other – despite all the warnings that this was not a race – that I was amazed they didn’t get themselves black-flagged.

William was more circumspect but he still cut through the field with an efficient lack of drama. Despite the fact that this was supposed to be the session for the most experienced riders, the standard varied a lot. By the end of it Daz was just coming up to lap some of the tail-enders for the third time. He cut round one so close that he frightened the poor guy into a shimmy that nearly sent him off the track altogether.

Even Paxo didn’t have the stomach for that kind of suicide. He dropped back and the two of them finished with one other bike in between them. William was two places further down the order.

We strolled down to meet them as they came in. I half expected Jamie to be there, too, but he was still absent.

“I haven’t seen him either,” Sean admitted when I voiced my concern. “And there’s been no sign of Tess practically since we got here.”

The Mercedes Sprinter van had seemingly followed us as far as the circuit entrance, and then kept going, making it difficult to tell if it really was tailing us or not. I’d felt secure inside the perimeter, among the crowds, but now I started to get an uneasy niggle at the back of my mind.

When we got to the pits, the boys were rowdily celebrating their performance. Daz in particular was in ebullient mood. He’d been trying so hard that he was bathed in sweat. When he unzipped his leathers his T-shirt was soaked through with it.

“What did you think?” he crowed when he spotted us. “Not bad, huh?”

“Indescribable,” Sean said shortly. “Where are Jamie and Tess?”

William had just grabbed a few bottles of mineral water and he returned at that point, handing one over to Daz with the faintest shake of his head.

“Why?” Daz said, still pumped up and cocky, taking a swig. “They not with you?”

“You know they’re not,” Sean said. I glanced at him. His voice had gone quiet and his body had that coiled look about it. And with a sudden clarity I knew why.

We’d been had.

Daz’s story of meeting the courier later, at the hotel, was just so much smoke. We’d been deliberately kept out of the loop. That was why they’d made Jamie go out in the lower grade session. It explained perfectly why he’d been so pissed off that Sean and I had chosen to go for the intermediate group. Daz and the others had wanted to make sure we were occupied so Jamie could slip away. If we’d gone for the same session as the others, Jamie could have moved up into the intermediate one and still been on his way while we were all occupied on the track.

And, wherever he’d gone, it had to have something to do with the diamonds.

Daz just grinned at us without replying as he watched the realisation take hold of both of us. Sean sighed, took a quick step forwards, wrapped his fists into the front of Daz’s open leathers, and simply swung him off his feet. He rammed the other man up against one of the pit garages with casual violence, all too fast for the others to react. They just stood and gaped. The only reaction from the nearest bystanders was to scuttle out of the way.

“Where have they gone, Daz?” he demanded tightly.

“I don’t know what you—”

Sean lifted him so his feet were barely on the ground and shook him viciously.

“Oh no, no bullshit. Not any more. Tell us now.”

Daz’s gaze swivelled briefly across mine. Anger kept my face cold and hard and he didn’t like what he saw there any better than he had done with Sean. There was the sound of running footsteps behind us but I didn’t turn round to check. I willed Daz’s nerve to break. We only had moments left.

“All right, all right!” he said. “He went to meet the courier, OK? To make the exchange. He should have called by now.”

“Where?”

Another hesitation. Another hard jolt. “The fuel station we stopped at on the way in. He was supposed to meet him there.”

“Now then, lads, what’s all this about, eh?” asked a voice behind us. I finally turned to find one of the pit lane marshals behind us. He was a big guy, rolling his shoulders reflexively inside his orange coveralls.

Sean relaxed his grip slightly and let Daz back down onto his heels. Daz jerked his leathers out of Sean’s hands and slid out from under him, angry and scared. And most angry that he’d been scared.

“Is the big feller causing you trouble, then?” the marshal persisted, nodding towards Sean.

For just a moment, Daz hesitated. If he said yes, the chances were Sean would be thrown out of the circuit and Daz must have known that I would go too. I could see the debate flitting through his brain on whether that would alleviate or exacerbate his problems. Jamie – and Tess, presumably – had gone for the diamonds and had not returned. He might just need us . . .

“No, everything’s fine,” he said, giving the marshal a bright smile. “He’s just jealous ‘cos I rode rings round him.”

The marshal eyed them both for a few seconds, face layered with doubt, then he shrugged.

“A bit of friendly rivalry is good,” he said, his tone a warning. “Just as long as it stays friendly, all right?”

***

“So, would you care to tell us what’s really going on, Daz,” Sean said tiredly when we were all out into the paddock and they’d parked up near to our bikes. “And for fuck’s sake make it the whole story this time.”

Daz had the grace to flush a little, hunching his shoulders. The adrenaline generated by the track was dissipating now and the cooling sweat made him shiver. It had started to rain again and that didn’t help.

“All he was supposed to do was go meet with the courier and Tess was supposed to verify the diamonds were kosher,” he said.

“When?”

“We rang the guy when Jamie came back off his session,” Daz admitted, flicking nervous glances at William and Paxo for support. “The two of them went to meet him while you were both out on track.”

Sean didn’t reply right away, just stood with his hands on his hips staring from one face to another as though he couldn’t believe their naive stupidity. He wasn’t the only one.

“You bloody fool, Daz,” he said quietly at last.

“It was a straightforward exchange,” William put in evenly, coming to his friend’s defence.

“Yeah – for a shit-load of diamonds you’ve already paid for,” I shot back. “Did it not occur to you that they might try and keep the cash and the diamonds?”

“Erm, actually, they don’t have the cash,” Daz said, not quite meeting our eyes as he confessed to yet another lie. “Not all of it, at least.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “So where’s the rest?”

“In the safe in my room,” Daz said. He caught the look of outright disbelief on our faces and flushed again, deeper this time. “Look, all Jamie was supposed to do was check the gear over with Tess, yeah? Then he was supposed to give us a shout over the radio and we were going to take the guy back to the hotel and give him the rest of his money. Now we can’t raise him, so he must have gone out of range. I don’t understand what’s gone wrong. It was supposed to be so easy.”

Sean flipped him a bitter and cynical smile. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what they always say.”

***

It took us less than ten minutes to get back to the fuel station where the clandestine meet was to have taken place. It was nearly twelve o’clock now and the forecourt was still bustling with bikers either on their way to the afternoon sessions at Mondello Park, or coming back in to refuel from the morning.

Beside the small squat kiosk itself there was the brick-built toilet block Jamie and Paxo had used earlier, and a large rutted car park at the rear. Two cars were parked on the rough gravel, an elderly battered Fiesta that looked as though it belonged to the kiddie serving in the petrol station, and a nearly new Audi A8 on Dublin plates. Was that, I wondered, the kind of car a dodgy diamond courier would drive?

Of Jamie’s little Honda, there was no sign.

We pulled up alongside and climbed off the bikes. Sean turned a slow circle, eyes narrowed as he surveyed the scene.

“Spot on, isn’t it?” he said to me.

“No overlooking houses and the CCTV only covers the pumps,” I agreed quietly. “Yeah, it probably is.”

Sean indicated the door to the ladies’ loo. “You want to check in there for any sign of Tess while we do this side?” he said.

I nodded and did a quick sweep. Inside, the ladies’ had a cracked tiled floor, a grubby stainless steel handbasin and two cubicles with planked wooden doors. Neither of them were occupied.

I came out just in time to see Paxo come rushing out of the gents’ and vomit into the weeds by the side of building. I didn’t stop to ask him what was wrong, just pushed the door open and went in.

The gents’ toilet was bigger than the ladies’, with a row of four cubicles as well as the usual urinals along the wall opposite. It stank to high heaven – not an uncommon state of affairs for public loos. But in this case the smell was overlaid with another, more rancid tone.

Blood.

Oh shit. Oh please, not Jamie . . .

As I came in, William backed out of the largest cubicle right at the end of the row, clutching at the door jamb for support. Daz followed him out so fast they nearly tripped over each other’s feet. He looked up in alarm when he saw me approaching.

“Charlie, no!” he said. “Don’t go in there—”

I didn’t bother to explain to him that, whatever was in there, it was unlikely to be the first time I’d seen it. Or something very like it. I pushed past him, gathering myself for the shock, but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

The dead man was a stranger. He was sitting fully clothed on the pan with his body propped against the cistern and his head thrown back. The pose revealed the gaping wound across his throat, like he had a second mouth that was silently screaming.

The blood had soaked down through a good suit that had once been dark grey. His knees were together but with the feet splayed apart, revealing slender ankles in pale grey silk socks. His hands dangled straight down at either side. If he’d been wearing rings or a watch, they were gone. To one bloody wrist was chained a leather briefcase that was lying open and empty on the flooded tiles.

Sean looked up as I entered. He was crouched just out of reach of the blood, staring at the dead man with cool detachment.

“One ex diamond courier, I presume,” I said with as much composure as I could manage. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone with their throat cut and the memories that returned now were both abiding and abysmal.

“I would say so,” Sean agreed, rising. “Well, he’s no diamonds on him now, so that probably takes care of the why he was killed but, the question now is, who by?”

“Jesus, man, how the fuck can you two stand there and calmly discuss this?” Daz demanded, his voice a strangled squawk. “I mean, Jesus!”

“Good point,” I said to Sean, my voice bland. “We should get out of here.”

“Mm.” He nodded shortly, turned to the others. “Have you touched anything?”

They shook their heads but I carefully ripped out some paper hand towels from the dispenser and wiped the door jambs on both sides, just in case. I flushed them down the loo in the next cubicle, operating the lever with my elbow.

Outside again, the rain suddenly smelt fresh and clean, despite the petrol station fumes close by. Paxo obviously felt far enough away from the pumps to light up and when we emerged he was hovering next to his Ducati, puffing on a cigarette with all the fervour of an expectant father in a hospital waiting room.

“Right,” Sean said, swinging his leg over the Blackbird. “Back to the hotel.”

“Why?” William demanded with a trace of bitterness. “What the hell difference does that make?”

Sean just looked at him. “Does Jamie know you brought the rest of the money with you?”

The boys exchanged glances, then Daz said, “Well, yeah, of course he does. But it’s locked in the safe in my room.”

Sean jerked his head back towards the toilet block and its grisly secret. “After this,” he said grimly, “do you really think he’s going to let a little thing like that stop him?”