Quick (13 page)

Billy is unhappy to realise that after being so close to capturing them
twice
he has just one, extremely tenuous, lead: the tattoo he saw on Schumacher’s forearm.

~ * ~

7

The hotel room is dark except for a sliver of light that steals in between the drawn curtains.

‘That was too close.’ Schumacher sits on the edge of the bed. ‘If it hadn’t been for that car the guy would have had me.’

‘Who was it?’

Schumacher shakes his head, turns to Hunt who sits on the lounge. ‘Don’t know, but he was wearing this, I don’t know, it was like a tribal mask, like something you’d buy as a souvenir. Very odd.’

‘How did he even know to follow you? And who was in the car?’

Schumacher shakes his head. ‘No idea either way.’

Senna leans against the far wall. ‘We have to presume he’s a police officer of some kind.’

‘Christ.’ Hunt is extremely concerned by this, tries to think it through: ‘Could he know who we are or —’

Schumacher shakes his head. ‘If anyone knew anything about us we’d already be under arrest. We just have to be careful next time.’ He glances at Senna. ‘How much did we get today?’

Senna turns to the large black swathe of velvet on the desk in front of him, studies the mound of sparkling, loose diamonds. He runs his hand across them, inspects them with a practised eye. ‘Low ball? Four million.’

Schumacher takes this in with a satisfied nod. ‘So, what’s the total so far?’

‘Twelve, give or take.’

‘And we need fifteen, so we’re so close.’

Hunt turns to Senna. ‘But not
that
close. I just—it can’t be a coincidence that we’ve had these . . .
difficulties,
for want of a better word, twice in a row?’

‘It
is
a coincidence, but even if it wasn’t, again, it doesn’t matter. We’re almost done.’

Hunt isn’t convinced. ‘I just have a bad feeling about it.’

Senna turns to him. ‘You have a bad feeling about everything. It’ll be fine.’

Hunt takes a breath. ‘I think we should postpone.’

Senna shakes his head. ‘Impossible.’

‘We should vote on it.’

‘There’s no point. You will lose. We continue as planned.’ Senna stares at Hunt for a long moment. ‘I promise it will be okay.’

Hunt nods but clearly doesn’t believe it.

~ * ~

8

The sun drops towards the burnt-orange horizon as Claude drives back to the Sepang track—five kilometres an hour below the speed limit.

‘If you’d been going this slowly on the golf course he wouldn’t have got away.’

Claude turns to Billy. ‘The grass was slippery.’

‘Are you going to apologise?’

‘For what?’

‘For what? Blowing the arrest.’

‘The grass was
slippery
.’ Yes, Claude knows he’s dissembling. The truth is it happened because he was rusty, not because the grass was slippery. The Frenchman now understands he can’t crack this case on his own. Knowing this and realising he needs to solve it to win Marcellus’s job makes him a lot more amenable to working with the Australian, whose involvement, he now accepts, will greatly increase the chance of success. Yes, the old German was right, there’s something special about this kid—not that Claude will ever let him know it. ‘So, you’re telling me that if you hadn’t left your pistol back at the track we would have that guy under arrest right now?’

‘Absolutely. It would have been all over before the guy climbed on the motorcycle. It was a huge screw-up and it’s on me.’ Billy stares at Claude expectantly. ‘So, are you going to apologise?’

‘The grass was slippery.’

~ * ~

The Australian turns and looks out at the passing countryside. What he has to do is stop worrying about the Frenchman’s lack of good manners and work out a way to catch Schumacher. So how does he do that? How does he use that tattoo, which is his only lead? What exactly is his plan?

I don’t bloody have one.

The car pulls into the Sepang circuit car park as the last of the spectators amble to their cars. Racing for the day is over and the place is almost empty.

Something catches Billy’s attention above the entry gate to the racetrack. He looks up and takes in a long row of flags. They’re from the twenty different countries Formula One will visit this year, everywhere from Australia to the United States to Italy —

‘Stop the car.’

The Frenchman does it. ‘What?’

Billy pushes open the door and steps out of the hatchback, moves to the gate, eyes glued to one of the flags high above. It is red and white with a crest in the centre. The crest depicts two men, dressed in robes, each holding a sword with a large crown between them. He points at it. ‘What country is that?’

‘Monaco.’

Billy glances at Claude as he exits the car. ‘You sure?’

He nods. ‘It’s on the French Riviera. Why?’

Billy studies the Frenchman. Should he tell him? Can he trust this guy? A couple of hours ago the bloke was talking about blowing Billy off and solving the case on his own. The Australian can’t help but wonder if he won’t will take what he’s told and leave Billy swinging in the breeze. On the other hand Billy would like to talk to someone with experience about the case. From his point of view, two heads are better than one and spitballing ideas with someone can often uncover something useful.

‘If I tell you, there’ll be no more of that “I’m-going-to-solve-it-on-my-own” bullshit you were banging on about earlier. We’re equal partners and we listen to each other’s ideas.’

The Frenchman thinks about this for a moment then nods. ‘
Oui
, I agree.’

Billy steps forward and stares Claude straight in the eye. ‘I’m not joking, mate. Screw me over and I will fuck you up. Is that clear?’

Claude takes it in with a grin. If the warning concerns him it doesn’t show. ‘Relax, no one’s going to screw you over.’

‘Really? As far as I can tell you’re making a
career
out of it. I’ve know you for less than a day and you’ve tried to arrest me, have me thrown off the case and obstructed my arrest of the prime suspect.’

The Frenchman looks at him with a level gaze. ‘Just tell me what this earth-shattering piece of information is.’

The Australian takes a breath, then: ‘I saw a tattoo, on the right forearm of the guy with the Schumacher helmet.’ Billy points to the spot, above the wrist.

‘So?’

‘It was that crest.’ Billy nods at the Monaco flag which flutters in the breeze above.

‘Are you sure?’

He nods. ‘Two guys holding swords with a big crown between them. It’s not something you see every day, unless you live in Monaco, I guess.’

Claude stares up at the flag and thinks aloud. ‘Why would someone want that tattoo?

‘They were born there? They live there? A lot of drivers do. They want to win there? It’s the only F1 race that really matters.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Yeah, I say so. Christ, visit Wikipedia occasionally would you? You might learn something, like Monaco is the biggest race of the year. By far.’ The Australian turns and takes in a CCTV security camera that is perched above the entrance gate and below the line of flags. ‘That camera must link back to a control room, right?’

‘Why don’t you visit Wikipedia and find out.’

Billy ignores him and moves through the front gate, gestures for the Frenchman to follow. ‘Come on.’

Claude takes a moment, then follows. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To find the control room.’ Billy dials his phone.

~ * ~

There’s definitely an upside to owning a Formula One team. People pick up the phone when you call and they almost never say ‘no’ when you ask a favour.

After speaking to the Australian, Dieter rang Kellen Stockton, the longstanding head of security for the F1 championship, and organised for Billy and Claude to visit the security centre to review CCTV footage from the previous two days. Dieter lied to Stockton by telling him they needed to look at the footage because a development part had gone missing from the Iron Rhino garage and he wanted to see if any of the cameras had picked up what had happened to it.

~ * ~

Billy and Claude arrive at the large motorhome that houses the security centre and the prematurely bald Kellen Stockton ushers them into a small back room. He points them towards a computer terminal then shows them the desktop folder that contains all the security footage video files for the last two days.

‘We have thirty cameras overlooking the circuit, but only six point towards the pit paddock. You’ll need to look at footage from cameras nine through fifteen. There’s about three hundred hours in total, give or take.’

Billy nods. ‘Better get to it then. Thanks.’ Stockton takes his leave as the Australian takes a seat and works the computer terminal’s mouse. The first video file pops up and begins to play.

Claude sits next to him and studies the black-and-white image. ‘What are we searching for?’

‘The tattoo, and a helmet, either Schumacher or Hunt or Senna.’

Claude looks at Billy like he’s crazy. ‘
That’s
why we’re here?’

‘
That’s
why we’re here.’

‘The security cameras will be too far away to pick up a small tattoo on a wrist and the images are in black and white so we won’t be able to identify the colour of the helmets.’

‘Do you have a better idea?’

‘Umm—well, no.’

‘Then let’s watch these until you do.’

~ * ~

The Frenchman stifles a yawn. ‘That’s three hours I’ll never get back.’

Billy rubs his face, both surprised and dispirited. ‘Christ, we didn’t see diddley.’

‘I told you we wouldn’t.’

Billy nods. ‘We should call it a night.’ He stands and stretches his arms, clearly exhausted. ‘I need to take a slash. I’ll be back in a sec then we should head to the hotel.’

He receives no argument from the Frenchman.

~ * ~

The Australian exits the tiny room and steps into the warm night air. He moves straight to the Iron Rhino mobile home and hits the john, then heads back to the security centre via pit road. It’s just on eleven in the p.m. so most of the teams are closing up for the night.

On the way, Billy notices a group of people gathered outside the Williams team’s motorhome. A few smoke cigarettes off to one side while others sip drinks, though it doesn’t look like anyone is consuming alcohol—not a surprise considering tomorrow is a workday when even the slightest mistake could destroy a team’s chance of winning.

Billy scans the group, takes in the different ages, shapes and sexes, and checks all the bared forearms for tattoos. Most are wearing short sleeves and they are all tattoo free.

‘How did you land that drive?’

Billy turns to a couple of people in the shadows to the right. He can’t see them clearly. ‘Just lucky I guess.’

One of them, a guy in his early twenties with dark curly hair, steps into the light and regards the Australian with a searching stare. ‘You must be
really
lucky. I’ve never heard of you.’

Billy can’t quite place the thick, English-as-a-second-language accent, but it’s probably Spanish. ‘That’s okay, I’ve never heard of you either.’ Billy extends a hand towards the bloke. ‘Billy Hotchkiss.’

The guy leaves him hanging. ‘My manager tried to get me a reserve driver gig at Iron Rhino for two years. We offered them two million a season and they told us to fuck off.’

‘Like I said, just lucky.’

The thing about this guy, apart from the fact he’s extremely annoyed Billy landed the Iron Rhino job, is that he’s wearing long sleeves. Everyone else is rocking short sleeves, which makes sense because it’s thirty-five degrees with ninety per cent humidity, even this late at night, but this dude isn’t. Could finding the guy with the tattoo be as easy as identifying the only person wearing long sleeves?

‘But are you quick?’ That voice could only belong to a German. A second person emerges from the shadows. Billy takes in the
jolie laide
girl he noticed this afternoon. Alabaster skin, arctic-blue eyes, platinum hair. As she smiles her perfect white teeth catch the light. The only imperfection is a slight bump on the bridge of her nose that just makes her more appealing.

Billy is, once again, struck by her unconventional beauty. ‘Well I’m not slow if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘But how did you get the gig?’ The accent is clipped and steely and couldn’t match her Aryan vibe any better. ‘Inquiring minds want to know.’

And that includes the guy with the dark curly hair who Billy thinks is Spanish. ‘Yes, how much are you paying them?’

The one thing you don’t want to become in Formula One is a reserve driver who pays for his spot because that means you weren’t good enough to get the drive on your own merits. Many of the smaller, less well funded teams are happy to relieve drivers, if they have a rich daddy or a big sponsor, of one, two, maybe even three million US dollars a season for the chance that they
might
start a race if one of the team’s two regular drivers is unable to take the grid for some reason.