Hot Seat (15 page)

‘Possibly.'

It seemed more than possible. If Jason had stumbled upon a major drug-smuggling operation, the smugglers would kill to protect it.

‘Are you looking into it?'

‘The police are. If their investigation is connected to mine, it gives me another wedge to split this operation open. So, have I got your attention?'

I had a nasty feeling where this was going. The cat had stopped toying with its prey. It was time to kill the mouse. ‘You had me at a trumped-up possession charge. What do you want?'

‘I need an inside man to tell me if my suspicions are correct.'

‘I haven't seen anything remotely connected to drug trafficking.'

‘Then I'm wrong, but I still need an inside man to prove that.'

I sighed. ‘What if I say no?'

‘Then I'll make it my job to see that these drug charges stick and when I take down your team and mark my words, I will, I'll take you down with them.' Barrington leered. ‘Treat me badly, and I'll be your worst enemy.'

I was well and truly buggered. I should be scared, but I just couldn't summon up the emotion. Since finding Jason Gates' body, I'd taken too many body blows from too many quarters to feel much of anything.

‘You're pretty proud of yourself, aren't you?' I said.

Barrington grinned. ‘Just a humble civil servant doing his job.'

‘Nice. Why me?'

‘Ragged Racing is a tight unit. Everyone there has been part of the team for years. You're the new boy. That makes you the only one I can trust.'

‘You could have just asked for my help.'

‘And would you have agreed?'

I was a second too slow to answer.

‘That's why I needed a little leverage. I know it doesn't seem fair, but it's for the greater good and all that tosh.'

Cornered with no escape route, I conceded. ‘What do you want me to do?'

‘I have an undercover officer operating within the ESCC as we speak. Your instructions will come from that person. You won't see me again if you do your job correctly.'

‘That's something to be thankful for.'

Barrington belted out a laugh and gathered up everything he'd brought in with him. ‘So can I assume you're on board?'

‘Do I have a choice?'

‘Not really.'

B
arrington watched me get back into my car from the steps of the police station. My hands shook on the wheel. I was running on empty. I blamed that on a heady cocktail of fatigue and fear. The smart thing would be to find a hotel and crash for the night, but I didn't feel safe here. I needed to get home.

I drove as far as the next town and pulled into a petrol station. Barrington had planted something on me once. Would he do it a second time? I wouldn't put it past him. While I refuelled the Honda, I searched it, but didn't find any other surprises. That gave me the confidence to keep going.

I crossed into France without any problems. In some ways, I hoped for problems. I'd take anything to get me out of this situation. Life was difficult enough with Andrew Gates cracking the whip for his aims. Now I had Barrington doing the same. Both demanded results and I got the feeling they didn't care what happened to me in the process. Neither seemed like a good guy, despite one of them being on the right side of the law. I didn't see how their investigations were connected, but Ragged Racing was the common denominator in both. I realized that getting to the truth meant I would have to go over the same ground as Jason had. Considering his fate, I needed an escape route. Maybe I should plead guilty to Lucas' reckless-driving charges. I'd be no good to anyone locked up in jail, but it seemed to be the lesser of many evils.

It was late by the time I reached the terminal for the Channel Tunnel, but that meant no wait. Less than an hour later, I was back in Britain and it never felt so good to be on home soil.

The morning rush hour slowed my return to Windsor, so it was eight by the time I reached Archway. I was very shaky and needed sleep, but I needed help more. Steve and Dylan were already at work on Andrew Gates' car collection. Dylan had his head under the bonnet of an MGA and Steve was up in the crow's-nest.

‘Hey, it's podium boy back from his travels!' Dylan yelled across the workshop, more to Steve than to me.

Steve leaned on the crow's-nest's railing. ‘Good job, son. We were expecting you back later.'

‘Hey, you OK? You look like crap,' Dylan said.

‘I'm in trouble.'

‘Yeah, we saw the interview,' Dylan said. ‘It'll blow over. We know there's no case.'

‘No, that's the least of my problems. I'm in real trouble and I don't see a way out without your help.'

‘You'd better get yourself up here,' Steve said.

Dylan followed me up into the crow's-nest. He sat at my desk and I took the sofa. Steve handed me a mug of coffee. I let its warmth soak into my hands.

‘Talk, son,' Steve said.

‘Jason's death has taken on a new wrinkle,' I said and told them about fun and games with Barrington.

‘This Customs guy sounds like a nasty piece of work.'

As bad as Gates, I thought, but I supposed you needed nasty men to fight nasty men.

‘Do you think Barrington will make good on his threat?' Steve asked.

‘I do.'

‘Shit,' Dylan said. ‘This crap keeps getting deeper and deeper.'

‘Then we deal with it,' Steve said.

‘So Jason's death is connected to drugs?' Dylan asked.

I shrugged. ‘I don't know. Maybe. But his murder isn't big on Barrington's radar as far as I can tell.'

‘Did he mention Andrew?' Steve said.

‘No.'

‘Who's Andrew?' Dylan asked.

‘Jason's brother. He's press-ganged me into service to find Jason's murderer.'

‘What? Why didn't you tell us earlier?' Dylan watched the look I exchanged with Steve. ‘Oh, it seems that I'm suffering from Last To Know Syndrome. Maybe I should change that to why didn't you tell
me
earlier?'

‘I'm sorry,' I said.

‘Bollocks to sorry. Can someone please tell me what's going on?'

‘Hey, that's enough,' Steve said.

‘Like fuck it is. How could you two keep me in the dark about something like this? I thought we were family.'

In my attempt to protect the people who meant the most to me, I'd made everything worse. ‘We are family,' I stammered.

‘Well, it doesn't fucking feel like it.'

‘That's enough,' Steve said. ‘You're right. We're family. And family doesn't turn on itself. Not when it counts and it counts now. Got me?'

The fight went out of Dylan. With all sincerity, he said, ‘Yes. I'm sorry.'

‘This whole thing feels completely out of control,' I said.

‘Then we need to dial it back in,' Steve said. ‘Go home, Aidy. Get some sleep. Get some food. Clean yourself up. I'll fill Dylan in. Then get back here and we can work out what to do next.'

I loved the sound of the word ‘we'. Disaster got averted and tyrants got defeated with the word ‘we'.

I made it home in minutes. I didn't realize how close I was to sleep until I stretched out on the sofa. This was the first time I'd stopped moving since yesterday's race and my body wasn't used to it. It tingled as my every molecule fought to keep moving. My desire overwhelmed my body and I was asleep in moments. I'd planned to doze for an hour, but it was late afternoon before I awoke. I stood in the shower for longer than I needed to, then cobbled together breakfast, lunch and early dinner with what I found in the fridge. It was after five before I was driving back to Archway.

I walked into the workshop to find the contents of the storage room filling the hallway out to the front entrance. Dylan emerged from inside. ‘Hey, you're back.'

He came over and slung an arm around my shoulders. ‘Sorry about earlier.'

‘It's OK.'

‘You're a twat for not telling me.'

Name calling. The universal sign that all is good between two friends. I smiled. ‘I know. I'm sorry.'

‘Join us in the situation room.'

I followed Dylan into the storage room-cum-situation room. The storage room was actually an unused office filled with spare parts, but now it was an office again – sort of. Steve and Dylan had been busy while I slept. They'd removed everything that wasn't nailed down and pushed the storage racks to one end of the room to open up the space. On one wall, they'd mounted two classroom-sized whiteboards next to each other, pretty much covering the wall.

‘What's all this?' I asked.

‘Our murder board,' Dylan answered. ‘There are so many players in this game, we need something to keep all the information straight. This way we can jot things down as we discover them. Cops do it all the time.'

With a black marker, the board on the left-hand side had been divided up into columns with the heading,
People of Interest
. The names Jason Gates, Andrew Gates, Ragged Racing and HM Customs topped each of the columns. The right-hand board was, as yet, untouched.

‘Who came up with this?' I asked.

‘Your man there,' Steve said pointing a thumb at Dylan.

‘It's cool, right?' Dylan said.

It was. I liked this. With so much happening, the murder board helped put the chaos in order.

‘And it's not staying,' Steve said. ‘Because I want this room back.'

Dylan waved Steve's objection away. ‘He's got a thorn up his arse because he didn't think of it.'

‘Thorn or no thorn, can we get on with this?' Steve said. He tossed a marker at me. ‘You want to take us through this? We've been waiting for you to come back.'

I pulled a red pen from the pack and wrote
Victim
under Jason's name. That stopped the banter flying around the room.

Now that I had their attention, I talked as I wrote. ‘Jason worked for Ragged Racing for three years, then left the team a year ago to join Townsend Motorsport. He then digs into Ragged's affairs, but not straight away. Whatever he was investigating was dangerous enough for him to dump his girlfriend, Carrie Russell, three months ago. After his death, someone ransacked his place, destroying everything he'd gotten on Ragged.'

‘Why was Jason investigating the team?' Dylan asked.

I wrote a question mark. ‘Customs says it's drugs and Townsend Motorsport says it's cheating.'

‘Maybe one led to the other?' Steve suggested.

Under Ragged Racing, I wrote:
Suspect
.

‘Who?' Dylan asked. ‘Rags or the whole team?'

I wrote another question mark. ‘I don't know. It could just be Rags or it could be all or none of them. But here are a few items of interest. The whole team was at a restaurant just a few streets from where Jason was killed, which gives everyone access. Jason was killed with a fine-edged blade and Kurt Haulk carries a flick knife, which he says is a product of a misspent youth. And Jason had a set of Ragged Racing keys on him when he was killed. Someone gave them to him.'

‘But you don't know who?' Steve said.

I shook my head.

‘Which means you can't trust any of them. That's not a good situation. You could be working with a killer, or working for one.'

It was a thought I'd already had and one I was trying to ignore. ‘So what are you saying – I should quit the team?'

Steve shrugged.

Steve's point was a good one, but it needled me. Ragged Racing was my big break. How could I contemplate giving it up, despite the dangers? I tried diluting that bitter pill with the fact I was involved in a sport where getting killed was always a potential outcome. There was danger on the track and off it. I could live with both eventualities. For now.

‘What you need is someone watching your back,' Steve said.

‘How can he when any one of them could be the killer?' Dylan asked.

I saw the answer immediately. ‘So we go with an inside man.'

Steve smiled and turned to Dylan.

Dylan pointed to himself. ‘Me?'

‘You said you wanted a job at Ragged,' I said.

‘That's before I knew it was a den of potential thieves and killers.'

‘It's a tough economy. Beggars can't be choosers.'

‘Nice.' Dylan was silent for a long moment. ‘Do you think you can get me in?'

‘I think I can sell it. Put it this way, I have a really big incentive to sell it.'

‘Woohoo. Lucky me. Can we move on to someone else, like the wanker who slashed my tyres?'

I wrote:
Dominic Crichlow. Heavy for Andrew Gates and wanker who slashed Dylan's tyres
.

‘The more interesting person here is this guy,' I said and tapped the Andrew Gates heading with my pen, then wrote:
Jason's brother and loan shark
.

‘Shouldn't that be ex-loan shark?' Dylan suggested.

I shrugged. ‘We've only got his word for that.'

‘I know someone who we can talk to on that front,' Steve said. ‘Give me a day to look into that.'

Steve and loan sharks? I waited for him to explain, but he just stared at me.

‘Move on, son. It's been a long day.'

In the column for Customs, I wrote Barrington's name with the suffix:
also a wanker
. ‘Barrington says he has someone working undercover in the ESCC. I'm hoping this person can help us, although I get the feeling that relationship is supposed to be reversed.'

I added entries for Townsend Motorsport and Carrie Russell, under the classification of useful sources. The three of us then drew links between the various pieces of information we'd learned.

Dylan took a pen from the pack and added an additional column. At the top, he wrote:
Woman in the Renault.
He tapped the title with his pen. ‘How's this woman feature in all this? I find it curious that your problems with her started up just after Jason's murder.'