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‘Yep, because I’m driving this weekend —’

‘Really? That’s so great. Congrats.’

‘Thanks. I’m replacing Vandelay. One man’s tendon damage is another’s man golden opportunity.’

‘We’ll be racing each other, if the FIA doesn’t black flag me for my concussion.’

‘Oh, right.’ Billy knows that if a driver suffers a concussion like Franka did during her accident, the FIA, world motorsport’s governing body, rarely allows them to drive in the following race, as a precautionary measure. ‘I hope you can.’

‘Me too.’

They look at each other. A moment passes.

Billy opens his mouth to speak—but doesn’t say anything.

She raises an eyebrow. ‘Hmm?’

‘Well, umm, would you like to —?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. Great.’ He takes a moment, then: ‘What did we just agree on?’

‘You’re taking me to the La Dolce Vita Ball tonight, right?’

‘I am.’ He grins, then she does the same.

That wasn’t what he was going to ask her. He was going to ask her if she’d like to walk the track with him, though that question now seems redundant considering they’re now going on a date. Yes, he knows he’d decided not to pursue a romantic entanglement with Franka while working the case, but how much could it hurt to go to one little party?

~ * ~

They talk non-stop as they walk the three-and-a-half kilometres of bitumen. She knows a great deal about the racetrack, and therefore Monaco, as the circuit stretches almost the whole length of the principality. Not only does she remember every corner and what every straight is called, but she knows how and why they were named that way.

Billy is impressed. ‘I thought I knew this place pretty well, but, wow, where’d you learn all this info?’

‘My mother used to bring me to the race when I was a kid. Every season. It was the highlight of my year so I wanted to know everything I could about it.’

‘Your mum was a big fan of F1 ?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘She must be thrilled to see you racing here.’

‘She would have been. She died five years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right. Cancer is a bitch.’

He takes this in with a sad nod. ‘I lost my parents seven years back. Bus accident in Egypt. They were on holiday, if you can believe it.’

‘Oh God, that’s terrible.’

‘It was.’ Just thinking about it drains the life out of him. ‘I don’t know—what are you gonna do? You just have to get on with life.’ He takes a moment, thinks about it. ‘Though I do wonder if it’s the right life sometimes.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. You see all the wealth and privilege, here especially, and I don’t begrudge anyone anything, but then you consider all the people who have nothing, and never had a chance of anything because of their circumstance or birthplace or colour or whatever, and you wonder if your time and energy might be better spent helping those people. Teach them a skill or, I don’t know, just help them to . . . rise up. Of course people will say, oh, the middle-class white guy feels guilty so he wants to help those less unfortunate to make himself feel better—and you know what? Yes! It’s true. Middle-class white people
should
feel guilty, we
should
help out. Who else is going to do it?’ He catches himself. ‘Christ, sorry to bang on. I’ve never told anyone this stuff before.’

‘No, I like hearing you “bang on”, though personally I usually “prattle on”.’ She smiles at him, her face shining in the sun. ‘What you’re saying is, well, something I’ve thought about too. I guess other things were always in the way though. I was so driven to race F1, at this track specifically, which I did for the first time last year, that it took everything I had to make it and that meant everything else had to be put on the backburner.’

‘I know that feeling.’ They walk on in silence for a moment. ‘So, are you close to your dad?’

She shakes her head. ‘My parents weren’t married and he never took any interest in me. I always
wanted
the clichéd nuclear family but, well—it never happened. Anyway, after my mum died I tried to make contact but he just, he didn’t want to know.’

‘Prick. Sorry, I know he’s your dad and everything but, really,
prick
.’

‘No, no, that’s quite okay. He is a prick.’ She looks at Billy. ‘But what are you gonna do? You just have to get on with life.’ A moment passes. ‘See what I did there? I took what you said earlier and repeated it to make
my
point? I hope you don’t mind.’

‘You can do it any time you want.’

She smiles and they walk on.

~ * ~

‘So you need to drive three hundred kilometres over the three practice sessions. That means at least thirty laps in each session.’

Billy sits in the Iron Rhino race car and nods at Thorne who hovers above the cockpit. ‘Got it.’ Billy knows the three hundred kilometres is a prerequisite to earning a Super Licence, the document he needs so he can actually drive in a Formula One race. Dieter paid the ten thousand euro fee and now Billy has to do the kilometres, which equates to ninety laps of the 3.34 kilometre track, before he can race.

The Australian is strapped into the Iron Rhino car for practice session one, the garage around the machine a hive of activity as wheels are bolted on and final checks carried out. Both of today’s practice sessions are ninety minutes long, though Billy is still sure he won’t be in the car at the end. He believes he’ll be replaced mid-way through the first session and won’t complete anywhere near three hundred kilometres. Yes, he’s been training for three hours twice a day all week, but that hasn’t made him fit so much as sore. His whole body aches and if anything he feels weaker for it. Even so, he will give it his all because he doesn’t want to embarrass himself.

Since they sorted out their relationship, Thorne has been surprisingly pleasant company, patiently explaining the intricacies of the car and its myriad systems to him. The buttons and dials on the steering wheel alone took the better part of three hours to understand. Billy realises it’d take months to fully comprehend the vehicle but at least he now has a handle on the basics, including the bafflingly complicated start sequence.

‘Take it easy for the first few laps. Be gentle on the throttle. Don’t chase the car. Let it come to you as the tyres warm up and you burn fuel. If you feel something’s not right bring it straight in.’

Billy nods again then pulls on his helmet.

‘Any questions?’

The Australian beckons Thorne closer.

The Brit leans in. ‘What?’

Billy looks him in the eye and keeps his voice low. ‘Did you know your fly’s undone?’

Embarrassed, Thorne glances down and finds that his fly is, in fact, zipped. He looks back at Billy, who grins and points a finger at him. ‘Gotcha—and thanks.’

Thorne cracks what could only be described as a tight, reluctant smile. ‘If you want to thank me, keep it off the wall and find a time.’

‘Okey-dokey.’ Billy has no illusions that he’ll ‘find a time’. He knows he won’t be competitive but he will try and keep the car off the wall. The Monaco track is extremely narrow and lined with unforgiving barriers and cement walls, so it will only take a tiny mistake to clip a wheel and destroy a suspension push-rod or break an axle. Unfortunately, when you’re attempting to ‘find a time’ you need to use every inch of the circuit and get very close to the barriers.

The portable starter motor is inserted and the turbocharged V6 rumbles to life. The tyre warmers are pulled off and one of the team members stands outside the garage, checks for traffic then gestures Billy onto the pit lane. He takes a breath, works the hand clutch and the accelerator, gets the car rolling—then lurches to a stop.

Stalled it. Just like the Gullwing back in Malaysia.

Well that’s embarrassing.

Billy raises his hand. ‘That’s me. My bad.’

He glances at Thorne who runs a hand through his hair like he wants to pull out a clump. Behind him Dieter’s granite face is set in an even more stolid expression than usual.

The portable starter motor is inserted and the Iron Rhino’s engine thunders to life once again. Billy takes another breath, works the hand clutch and the accelerator, gets the car rolling—and pulls into the pit lane.

The car crawls towards the track at the mandated eighty kilometres an hour. As he approaches the pit exit he remembers what the Brit said:
Take it easy for the first few laps. Be gentle on the throttle. Don’t chase the car. Let it come to you as the tyres warm up and you burn fuel. If you feel anything’s not right bring it straight in.

All good advice but just not Billy’s style.

He floors it.

~ * ~

The turbo-charged V6 snarls and the cold tyres spin up, cause the rear wheels to fishtail. Then the rubber bites the tarmac and launches the car onto the track.

Ohmysweetbabyjeezus.

The speed is mind-bending, neck sapping, heart pounding, makes the Gullwing feel like a tricycle. It sucks the air out of his chest and jams him into his seat with the violence of a shuttle launch. His body aches from the intense g-forces.

But oh it hurts so good.

In a tenth of a second he remembers how much he loves to drive racing cars, how much he loves to be quick, how much he loves to win. Until now, he’s been so consumed with the Three Champions and Franka and learning this vehicle’s systems that he hasn’t thought about what it will be like to actually
drive
a truly fast car. It’s scary and exhilarating and nerve-racking and addictive all in the same moment. He laughs out loud, spontaneously, giddily, like a schoolboy, which is strange because even when he was a schoolboy he was never that giddy.

He’s been kidding himself for six years, thinking that flying planes or becoming a cop could somehow replace
this.
The adrenaline rush to end them all. Nothing else comes close, no matter how much he wished it did.

He approaches the ninety-degree right at Sainte Devote and brakes early to put some heat into the discs. The pedal is much lighter than the one in the simulator, thank God. He makes the turn then powers up the hill along the Avenue d’Ostende to the slight kink of Beau Rivage, which he will take at two hundred and seventy kilometres an hour on race day, but now, as he warms the rubber, is navigated at a more sedate one eighty.

He can feel the tyres begin to stick as the rubber’s heat increases, can feel the aerodynamics generated by the wings and bodywork press the car into the track. So much pressure is being produced that at one hundred and fifty kilometres an hour the car could drive along a ceiling upside down, the downforce much greater than its relatively light six hundred and ninety-one kilogram weight.

He knows the track well, not just because of his walk with Franka but from watching the race on television every year of his life since he was five. He hits seventh gear and lets the thing run— it just wants to go—then paddles down to third and brakes into the lazy left-hander at Massenet, which sends him past the Grand Casino, made famous by its regal appearance in countless Bond movies. He glimpses its beaux-arts, neoclassical outline to the right, he only knows those architectural terms because Franka mentioned them on their walk, then turns into a sharp right at Casino Square and launches the car down a short bumpy hill, making sure to avoid the large hump to the left.

Hard on the brakes for an eighty kilometre an hour U-turn at Mirabeau, then down and down again, even steeper than before, to an extremely tight hairpin called Loews, named after the nearby hotel. The corner feels like a suburban roundabout and is actually the slowest section of Formula One track in the world. It’s so tight it’s all but impossible for two F1 cars to go around it side by side.

Around and around and around he goes, it seems to take an eon, the car travelling at the school-zone speed of forty kilometres an hour, then a sharp right, then another, together named Portier. The track now runs along the rocky coastline, the Mediterranean glistening off to Billy’s immediate left. He only has a moment to enjoy the view then plunges into the Tunnel.

It’s a long, gentle right-hander that takes the track under the giant Fairmont Hotel complex and runs for half a kilometre. Hard on the loud pedal now, the speed builds and builds, the sweet buzz of the Renault V6 reverberating off the shiny white-tiled walls until the car blasts out of the tunnel’s far end and dives down the hill as it touches two hundred and ninety kilometres an hour.

Brake hard. His leg vibrates from the energy he’s putting through that pedal. He spoke too soon about the bloody thing, his thigh is singing from the repeated applications. A tight left-right-left chicane, one of the few places where overtaking is possible within this narrow concrete canyon, then a short burst up to the hard left at Tabac, watch the wall, watch that wall, one ninety, this thing just sticks and sticks, he only has to think about where it should be and it’s already there. It’s more than an extension of his body, it’s
part
of it, makes driving a V8 Supercar feel like riding an elephant.

Hard on the gas, build speed to two twenty at Piscine, a curt left-right, then big brakes, his left leg screaming now, into the slow right-to-left chicane called Swimming Pool, named, unsurprisingly, after the swimming pool in the nearby Aquatic Centre. Carry as much speed as possible into the short straight, before a very tight right at Rascasse. A short blast up to the Virage Antony Noghes, a tighty-righty named after the first bloke to run a Monaco Grand Prix, carry the speed but watch the wall, watch that bloody wall —