Hot Seat (26 page)

‘It looks like a suspect board. Have you been running your own investigation, Mr Westlake? It goes some way to explaining why I keep finding your paw prints all over my case. How about you explain the rest?'

‘It's nothing. Just idle speculation. There's nothing wrong in that. Remember, I was a witness to Jason's murder.'

‘Just a witness?'

‘Just a witness.'

‘Inspector,' an excited voice shouted. ‘We've got it.'

I looked at Steve. I read the dread on his face.

A female officer burst from the toilets brandishing a cutthroat razor sealed in a plastic bag. Water dripped from the bag. ‘It was in the toilet's cistern. There's blood on it.'

I closed my eyes. I knew what was coming next.

‘Turn around, Mr Westlake. I'm arresting you.'

A
uniformed officer drove Huston and me into London. Neither of them spoke to me during the drive. Not surprising. I'd lost my status as a free person. Others now decided when I spoke and who answered.

When we reached the station, Huston put me in the same interview room as before and left me there with the officer who'd driven us. It was familiar surroundings in an unfamiliar scenario. I'd seen the inside of a police interview room many times, but the charges levelled against me had always been minor. Until now.

The door opened. Huston walked in with two officers carrying the whiteboards from the situation room. As soon as they leaned them against the wall, they left along with the silent officer.

‘You look nervous Mr Westlake. Actually, you look petrified.'

A murder charge did that to me. I couldn't see how Huston could make it stick, but you could make anything stick if you presented the information correctly. The room seemed smaller than it was. If they held me, my rooms from now on would be getting smaller and smaller.

Huston laid her file and the razor, now in an evidence bag, on the table between us. She loaded a cassette tape into the recorder and started it.

‘Let's get down to business,' she said. ‘Things don't look good for you, Aidy. I have the murder weapon and these odd jottings of yours. Do you want to talk about it?'

‘I know this looks bad, but that knife was planted.'

The look of disbelief on Huston's face killed my will to continue with my defence. The truth sounded so weak. It always did when you had nothing but your word as backup.

‘I have your statement that we took the night of Jason's murder. Is there anything you'd like to change?'

I foresaw myself stuck in this room for hours while Huston pounded me with accusation after accusation and picked away at my statement. I couldn't let that happen. It would be a waste of time and, worse, it gave the killer even more time to frame me. At least Steve knew I was here. I hoped he was getting me a solicitor. I needed to get out of here. I was on the verge of hooking Jason's killer. I couldn't do it from a jail cell.

‘Look, I'm not going to change one word of my statement. What I told you is the truth. I want to talk about what you found.'

Huston held up her hands. ‘Good. I'm all ears.'

‘That razor. Assuming for one minute that it is the murder weapon, because at this point, you haven't matched the blood, you won't find my fingerprints anywhere on it.'

Huston smirked and nodded.

‘But the important question is, if that is the murder weapon and I'm the murderer, why the hell would I keep it? If I had any brains, I'd have binned the weapon ages ago.'

‘Is that a rhetorical question?'

‘No, it's not. It's a bloody serious question.'

I knew I should be keeping calm but I couldn't help myself. Now that Huston had me she wasn't letting me go.

‘You kept the knife because you're a collector.'

‘Seriously? You'd think I'd come up with a better trophy case than my toilet tank.'

‘You're not that imaginative. You wouldn't be the first.'

‘You know what else makes a mockery of me still having the razor? The fact you didn't find it on me the night of the murder.'

Huston only needed a second to come up with an answer. ‘You ditched it at the scene.'

‘And my gloves, because there won't be any prints on it.'

‘And gloves. Thank you.'

‘So where did I ditch them? Because wherever I put them your people failed to find them at the scene. You see how none of this is making sense?'

Of course she didn't. She simply turned to her notes and flicked through them.

‘I'm thinking you ditched the murder weapon in that drain with Jason's mobile. It explains why you returned to retrieve it. Why did you take the mobile in the first place – more mementos? God, I feel like an idiot for balling you out for touching it and destroying anybody else's prints. There were no other prints. Just yours. That was clever.'

Even dumb luck was conspiring against me. Unrelated and innocent events were fitting together to create a damning picture. My being covered in blood when the police found me just made that picture even worse.

‘As it stands now,' Huston said, ‘I have you at the scene, I have you with the murder weapon, but what I don't have is a reason. Care to shed some light on that?'

‘There's no light to shed. I didn't kill Jason.'

Huston got up and went over to my whiteboards. They'd been sealed in plastic. She read our findings.

‘Frankly, I find this disturbing. What the hell is this?'

I really didn't want her reading the board, but it might be my ticket out of here. ‘What does it look like?'

‘A murder board. You've got suspects, a timeline, motives and suppositions.'

‘If I killed Jason, why would I have a murder board?'

‘I see a couple of sets of handwriting. Have you been talking this over with your friends?'

‘Yes.'

‘So you and your pals have been playing detective while all the time you were the one who did it? Christ, that's cold.'

I was finished. It didn't matter what I said, Huston would have an answer. I just dropped my head into my hands and a despair-filled laugh leaked out of me. If the situation weren't so crazy, it would have been funny.

‘Something funny, Aidy?'

‘You're making me out to be the greatest criminal mastermind since Jack the Ripper. Listen to yourself. Is any of this likely, let alone possible?'

‘You tell me.'

A knock at the door stopped me from answering. Huston suspended the interview and stopped the tape. O'Neal let himself in. I hadn't seen him since the night of Jason's murder.

‘Got a minute?' he said to Huston.

She picked up the razor and her file and stepped out of the room. A uniformed officer replaced her. He stood by the door and dropped the weight of his gaze on me.

I offered a friendly smile. My babysitter didn't return it.

After a couple of minutes' silence, Huston's angry voice penetrated the interview room's walls. Both the uniformed officer and I whipped our heads around in the direction of the door.

‘You've got to be fucking joking!' she shouted. ‘Shit.'

A second later, the door flew open. ‘You're free to go.'

‘What?' I said.

‘All charges have been dropped. Sorry for the inconvenience.' The apology came out with frost clinging to each word.

I stood up. ‘I don't get it.'

‘Seems like you have some very powerful friends. So powerful that they don't even have to leave their name. Just one word from them and you are magically free to go about your business.'

The sudden rush of relief left me breathless.

‘Once we sign you out, you can leave and all your possessions will be returned to you.' She nodded in the direction of the whiteboards.

‘You can keep the razor since it's not mine. Hopefully, it'll help you. By the way, what made you think I even had the murder weapon?' I asked.

Huston said nothing.

‘An anonymous tip?'

‘Your freedom awaits, Mr Westlake.'

‘You might want to check out who tipped you off,' I said, but Huston was already walking away.

‘This way, Mr Westlake,' O'Neal said.

O'Neal saw me out. Steve was waiting for me in the reception area and I hugged him.

‘I'll just get your possessions,' O'Neal said.

‘Thanks for coming,' I said to Steve. ‘Barrington?'

‘Yeah. I called him. He flexed his muscles and hey presto,' Steve said.

‘At least he's good for something.'

‘He says he hopes the same about you. He also said to remind you that you've got a job to do and you need to finish it.'

T
he Zandvoort circuit sits on the coast just twenty miles from the heart of Amsterdam. Sand dunes hide the North Sea lurking behind. Steve had warned me to watch out for the sand. It's not uncommon for it to blow in from the dunes to dust the main straight. It's one of those little things that makes getting to know a track that little bit trickier. In its heyday, Zandvoort was a regular stop on the grand prix calendar, but the last Dutch Grand Prix was in 1985. Despite losing its Formula One lustre, it's still a busy circuit for Dutch national titles and European championships. Regardless of our nefarious reasons for being in Holland, I was looking forward to driving here. The world was teeming with historic tracks that had hosted some fantastic races and I wanted to leave my tyre tracks on as many of them as I could.

The team set off on Tuesday with Dylan. The convoy of two transporters drove from England to Holland via the Channel Tunnel. Dylan acted as my eyes. He called me with updates every few hours. There'd been no detours, stop-offs or meetings. They simply drove to the circuit, parked the transporters and went to their hotel for the night. I reported this back to Barrington.

‘Someone will come for the drugs while you're on the track.'

Claudia was out of the picture for this part. According to Barrington, she had to protect her cover. That was reasonable, but I got the feeling that he just wanted to be there at the kill.

Instead of driving, I flew into Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport first thing Wednesday morning with Haulk. The forty-minute flight trumped the eight-hour drive.

Rags met us at the airport. Haulk rode shotgun with Rags while I took the back seat.

‘How's the setup?' Haulk asked.

‘Good. Your name opens more doors than American Express. We've got the circuit to ourselves and we'll be ready to hit the track by the time we get there. The best thing is that there won't be any of Townsend's spies on deck.'

Rags went on to outline the day's game plan and I tuned him out. All I could think about were those packets of cocaine hidden inside the wheels of my car. Was Rags a mule? It sure looked that way. I tried to marry that up with the man talking ten to the dozen about lap times, tyre performance, and engine power and failed to get a match. If it was true, was Rags working alone? How many of the crew members were involved? I couldn't see how this was going to end well.

We arrived at Zandvoort to find the cars in the pit garages with their engines running. Dylan brought over my kit bag. He'd stored it on the transporter so I didn't have to take it through the airport.

I took the bag from him. ‘Anything interesting happen?'

‘Nope.'

I eyed the wheels on my car. ‘Are they the loaded tyres?'

‘As far as I can tell. Those are the wheels that we took off the other night.'

Surely we weren't going to drive with ten kilos of coke in each wheel. The cars would handle like a bus and the drugs wouldn't survive the beating. ‘Don't take your eyes off those wheels after we do a tyre change.'

He nodded. ‘Barrington?'

I glanced out over the dunes. ‘He says our every move is being watched.'

Nevin called my name. ‘Aidy, we're good to go. We just need the human component.'

‘Human component ready to go.'

Nevin handed me the checklist and as I changed, I called out the tasks. I kissed my mum's St Christopher and got behind the wheel.

Zandvoort is similar to Snetterton in that it's relatively flat with one corner after another with little respite. I knew it was going to be a challenging circuit and I struggled. I picked the wrong lines through the bends and each turn was a dance with the gravel traps. I knew I was slow. I could hear it in the engine noise. I just wasn't pushing the power band. To compensate, I cut my braking distances and ended up slewing past my turn-in points.

‘C'mon, Aidy, pull it together,' Nevin said through my headset. ‘Don't let this place rattle you. You're better than this.'

Zandvoort wasn't getting to me, Ragged Racing was. Instead of watching for braking points, apexes and exit points, I saw tyres packed with cocaine. I saw people I admired, liked and trusted with my personal safety as possible drug mules. And worst of all, I was now picturing one of them as Jason Gates' murderer. All of it ate away at me. Driving flat out at ten-tenths took single focus and I was nowhere near. I'd be better off driving blindfolded.

Rags' voice came in over my headset. ‘You going to wreck my car?'

If Rags was breaking ranks to talk to me instead of Nevin, my driving had pissed him off.

‘No, sir.'

‘You'd better not, Aidy. You know what makes a good driver? Consistency. The ability to make lightning strike in the same place again and again. You, son, are too hot and cold. That's no good to me. I'd rather have lukewarm. Pull it together or get off the track. Your decision. What's it going to be?'

‘I'm staying out.'

‘Good. Back off. Wait for Haulk. Latch on to his tail and see how a real driver does it.'

I backed off and when Haulk ripped past me on the approach to the Audi S curve, I floored the accelerator. With momentum on Haulk's side, he continued to pull away from me, but it wouldn't be for long.