The race restarted after a thirty minute delay. Derek won with relative ease. Thanks to a couple of spins in the pack, I managed to hold on to ninth place.
Afterwards, I returned to the paddock, changed out of my race gear into civvies and collected my race licence from registration. The news floating around the paddock was that Alex was on his way to hospital for a check-up.
As Dylan and I loaded my car onto the trailer, we watched Derek and his crew celebrate his win and his most treasured title. Dylan and I shared a disgusted glance.
Dylan shrugged. ‘All’s fair in love and war.’
After we were done, I wanted to leave more than ever and draw a line under this season, but I still had work to do. We went to help my sponsor schmooze their prospective client. They left happy and Dylan and I returned to the paddock to make the hundred mile drive home.
The mood in the paddock had changed. Word had filtered down from the marshal’s station at Barrack Hill that blood had been seen inside Alex’s helmet. The fun and games of gossiping about Derek’s death threat turned into guilty silence.
Dylan and I headed home to the excited roar of an ignorant crowd. The race fans had been insulated from Derek’s threat against Alex. Their excitement jarred with the muted silence of an embarrassed paddock.
We arrived back at Archway, Steve’s classic car restoration garage, where I kept my racecar and found a message on the answering machine from Eva Beecham.
‘Aidy, it’s Eva. I have bad news. Alex passed away in hospital. I’m letting all the drivers know.’
The news turned my stomach and I dropped into the nearest seat. I was eight again, playing in the garden with my toy racecars, whipping them up and down the concrete path. Gran was leaning out the kitchen doorway asking me what I wanted in my sandwich, but I was lost in my own imagination where my dad and I were leading the race. From within the house, Steve let out a wail, a sound I’d never heard before. He appeared behind Gran and whispered something to her. She collapsed into him and sobbed.
I didn’t see what was coming next. What did I understand at that age? My parents were immortal. I thought they’d always be there.
I left my toys scattered over the concrete path. I didn’t run to my grandparents’ side. I walked. The sight of my grandparents in so much pain scared me. I stood by them and it took a minute for them to notice I was there. Steve dropped to his knees in front of me. Tears streaked his chalk-white face.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘I’ve got bad news, little mate,’ he said, and my world changed forever.
I sat in the darkness for hours after Dylan had left to go home. I heard the door open and my grandfather make his way through the workshop.
‘Aidy, you in here?’ my grandfather called from downstairs.
‘Up here in the crow’s nest, Steve.’
Circumstances had blurred the lines between us. He was my grandfather, surrogate parent and friend. To call him grandfather, grandad or grandpa just didn’t work. He was Steve.
He found me in the office overlooking the workshop. Archway Restoration sat underneath Windsor Railway Station. Because Windsor rises to a peak where the Norman castle sits, the station stood on top of a series of archways to ensure the trains didn’t have to stop on a slant. The archways had been enclosed decades ago to make business units. The place had plenty of funky appeal with its curved walls and the cobbled street outside. Steve owned the third of the six units sandwiched between a private gym and Mexican restaurant. He let me work on my racecar there and use his van.
Steve flicked on the office lights. I squinted against the sudden glare.
Steve stopped in the doorway. I don’t look much like my grandfather. My dad and I both took after my grandmother, who was short, slight and dark. Steve was tall and Nordic looking with strawberry blond hair. He possessed more than a passing resemblance to Steve McQueen which accounted for his success with the ladies.
‘I didn’t think you’d be back until tomorrow,’ I said.
‘I came home when I heard about Alex. Dylan told me. I called him when you didn’t answer your phone. Don’t switch your phone off on race days. You know I don’t like it.’
‘Didn’t Maggie mind you running out on her?’
‘She understands. I’ll make it up to her.’ Steve pulled out a chair and sat. ‘What happened?’
I outlined the events of the last twenty-four hours to him from Derek’s threat in The Chequered Flag to the details of the crash.
Steve said nothing until I’d talked myself out. ‘Alex’s death really seems to have affected you.’
It was a challenge I could hardly deny and I picked at a hangnail on my right index finger.
‘You didn’t know him well, did you?’ he said.
‘Not really.’
‘Then why are you cut up so bad? Is it because of your mum and dad?’
Hanging amongst the motor racing memorabilia on the walls was a picture of my parents. I got up and wandered over to it. It had been taken in the pits at Brands Hatch. Dad held my mum in his arms with his championship-winning Formula Three car behind them. They looked so happy. They died the day after the picture was taken, killed on the drive back. Dad lost control of his car and went off the road a few miles from the track.
I’d lost my parents when they’d been on the verge of a new life where dreams were realized. Alex’s death was no different. He’d been on the verge of a new life and it had been snatched away from him.
‘This has nothing to do with them.’
‘Then why are you so broken up?’
‘A man was murdered over a meaningless championship title. And if you want to know the worst part of all this, winning today meant nothing to Alex.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Alex and I were chatting just before the start of the race. He told me he was giving up racing to get married. It was going to be a wedding surprise for his fiancée. No one else knew. Not her or his family. He had everything going for him and now he’s dead. It’s so fucking unfair.’
Another life cut short. Maybe this did have more to do with my parents’ deaths than I cared to admit.
Steve studied me with a disapproving look. It was a familiar expression I’d seen throughout my life. He was picking apart something I said to get to the heart of the matter.
‘There’s more to this than Alex’s secret, isn’t there?’
I nodded. ‘Alex’s death could have been prevented if only I’d done something.’
‘If only you’d done something?’
‘Not just me, but any of us. It only would have taken one of us to report Derek to Myles Beecham or even to tell Alex himself. Instead, we stuck our heads in the sand and pretended nothing had happened. We were cowards and it got Alex killed.’
Steve chewed over what I’d said. ‘Sounds like a guilty conscience talking.’
‘It is.’
Steve nodded and put his feet up on the desk. ‘You’re right. You should have done something.’ He poked a finger in my direction. ‘Your silence helped get Alex killed.’
I knew he was throwing my words back in my face, but it took all my courage to keep looking my grandfather in the eye.
‘If that’s true, answer me this. Why didn’t you step in and put an end to this?’
I dropped onto the sofa behind me and sighed. ‘Because it was bullshit. It was nothing more than a scare tactic to intimidate Alex. That’s what I thought anyway.’
All the tension went out of Steve’s face. ‘That’s right. And that’s why no one got involved. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny no one honestly believed Derek was going to kill Alex. Drivers develop grudges, but no driver has gone out of his way to kill a rival to win a race.’
‘It doesn’t change the outcome.’
‘No, you’re right.’ He smiled at me. ‘You’re a good lad, Aidy. You’re being a little harsh on yourself.’
‘Not from where I’m sitting.’
Steve took his feet off the desk and sat forward with his elbows on the desktop. ‘OK, it’s time for a little different perspective. This could still be an accident.’
‘Oh, c’mon.’
‘No, hear me out. Let me ask you this. Forget the talk. Do you think Derek really intended to kill Alex?’
‘He got his wish, didn’t he?’
‘Don’t be so quick to judge. Look, it’s one thing to say you’ll kill a person, but it’s an entirely different thing to do it. Derek is a bully, I’ll grant you that. He uses threats to intimidate and he isn’t adverse to banging wheels in order to win. But is he a killer? I’m not so sure.’
I shrugged.
‘Have you considered that the situation may have gotten away from him? Maybe he intended to shove Alex off the track to get him out of the race and fate upped the ante.’
Was I letting my emotions and Derek’s reputation get in the way of my objectivity? I didn’t think so. ‘If Alex had gone off at any other corner, maybe, but Derek took him out at Barrack Hill, a flat out corner with no gravel trap or tyre wall for protection. If I wanted to kill another driver, Barrack Hill is where I’d do it.’
‘So it’s pretty cut and dry as far as you’re concerned,’ Steve said.
I nodded. ‘And the TV will prove it. Redline is showing the race on Tuesday. With everyone watching, Derek won’t be able to hide what’s he’s done.’
Lap Four
I
spent Sunday stripping my Formula Ford down to its component parts. I raced a two-year-old Van Diemen. Although the car had gone less than fifteen hundred miles during the season, the punishment racing put on every component was a hundred fold greater than what a street car experiences. After tossing out bent bolts and worn out bearings, I checked the chassis for cracks and found none. I removed the engine for Steve to overhaul. On the whole, things looked good. It would take a lot of work to rebuild everything, but I wasn’t looking at much more than a couple of grand to get the car back into race condition.
I worked alone. It helped me decompress. Unscrewing bolts and disconnecting cables made order out of a chaotic weekend. There is no ambiguity in machinery. It does what it’s designed to do and nothing more. The distributor feeds electricity to the spark plugs. The fuel pump pumps petrol to the engine. Components don’t suddenly decide to kill a person because they don’t get what they want.
I had a decision to make: sell or keep the car. There’s no love lost on racecars. They’re tools, and disposable ones at that. In a few months, when next year’s improved cars came out, my trusty steed would be one step closer to obsolescence. Excluding wear and tear, a new car was going to lap half a second faster than my two-year-old Van Diemen. If I wanted to make a bid for the British Formula Ford National Championship next season, then I needed a brand new car. I could only pull it off if I could squeeze some extra money out of my sponsor and save every penny I could between now and next March. I knew Steve would help me out if I got close. He’d done the same with Dad.
I didn’t mind using Steve’s expertise, but I was reluctant to take his money. I knew the financial burden Dad had put on him. Despite winning a Formula One contract, Dad hadn’t lived long enough to be paid and he’d died broke. It almost bankrupted Steve.
I called it a day around nine p.m. I flicked on Steve’s computer in the crow’s nest and looked up the latest news on Alex’s death on the web. The death of a minor racecar driver had failed to make it as a national story. Its newsworthiness certainly hadn’t stretched as far as Windsor.
On the BBC Bristol website, I found RACECAR DRIVER’S DEATH INVESTIGATED and clicked the link. The story outlined yesterday’s events and mentioned that Alex crashed after contact with Derek’s car.
The story featured a quote from Myles. ‘Motorsport is a very safe sport and these tragedies happen very infrequently. My thoughts and prayers go out to Alex’s friends and family.’
Myles’s comment didn’t surprise me. It wasn’t like he was going to admit he could have prevented the crash if he’d expelled Derek from the race for making a death threat.
I read the rest of the article hoping to see what charges they were bringing against Derek. Instead, the police spokesman talked in terms of an accident investigation. Why weren’t they calling it a murder enquiry?
Like most drivers in the lower echelons of motorsport, racing isn’t a full time job for me. It’s something I have to squeeze in around a day job, so I was back at work on Monday. I’m a design draughtsman for a firm in Slough that manufactures industrial mixers. I don’t care much for the job. It isn’t a passion like racing is. It’s just something I do to pay the bills and give me the money I need to race. But the job isn’t without its perks. After hours, I use their CAD software to design my own replacement parts for my Van Diemen and get the parts fabricated for free by a local fabrication shop in exchange for some ad space on the side of the car.
The management cuts me a lot of slack when it comes to racing by being flexible with my working hours. Now that the season was over, they expected me to make up for their generosity.
On Tuesday, I received an email from Myles Beecham with the news that Alex’s funeral was going to be on Friday morning. The email had gone out to all the Formula Ford drivers. I looked for Derek’s name amongst the distribution list, but didn’t see it. It wasn’t much of a surprise. I doubted Derek even had an email address.
I put in a time off request for Friday with my boss. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t refuse.
After work, I drove over to Dylan’s. On the way over, I stopped in at a florist to order a wreath. The place unsettled me. Flowers marking every kind of celebration surrounded me. When I told the woman I wanted a funeral wreath, she brought out a sample book from under a counter as if death couldn’t be looked in the eye. I picked something out and she handed me a card to go with the wreath. I froze with the pen poised over the untouched card. What was the right thing to say? Best wishes? Condolences? All of it seemed so trite.