Road Kill (20 page)

I reached out an unsteady hand. “Sean—”

The drive alarm buzzer sounded so loudly in the hallway that it made both of us jump. The dogs kicked off again and Sean swore under his breath. He got to his feet and moved for the door, pausing to look down at me briefly as he passed.

“If we’re having visitors you might want to tidy up some,” he said, impassive, and went out.

I flushed, realising that my shirt was gaping open all the way down the front. My fingers fumbled with the buttons, then I hastily picked up the low table and set it back on its feet. When Sean returned I was on my hands and knees collecting bits of broken glass together.

“For you, I think,” Sean said blandly.

I looked up and found Sam hovering uncomfortably in the doorway. His eyes flicked nervously from my miserable face to Sean’s set and impenetrable features.

He cleared his throat. “Erm, have I come at a bad time?”

“Of course not,” I said, determinedly bright. “Come on in, Sam. Can I get you some coffee?”

Sam gave Sean another anxious skim, wavered and almost fled. But he’d come for a purpose and that was enough to make him stand his ground, however hesitantly. He sidled further into the room. “Well, I know it’s late and I don’t want to put you out or—”

“Just sit down and have a bloody drink,” Sean said tiredly.

Sam’s knees gave way at the deadly quiet in his voice. It was lucky there was an armchair behind him at the time.

“Oh, erm, yeah, OK,” he said, with a fearful little smile. His eyes were big and brown and pleading above his beard. “Thanks.”

“Good. I’ll make a fresh pot,” I said. I headed for the door, pausing only to throw Sean a warning glance. “Don’t bully him while I’m gone.”

That almost raised a smile. “I’ll try not to.”

In fact, when I got back I found Sean had shaken off his black mood and somehow drawn Sam far enough out of his shell to recount the tale of my spectacular reappearance at Gleet’s place. I think I preferred it when Sam was terrified and silent.

“So she comes screaming into the yard with this guy right on her tail,” he was saying, drawing air diagrams with those long skinny hands of his. “Charlie, she doesn’t turn a hair. She just heads for this dry stone wall and bails out at the last minute and bang! The guy slams the wall and down it all goes, with her still on top. House of cards. Didn’t she tell you?”

I put the tray I was carrying down onto the table with more of a clatter than I’d been intending.

“No,” Sean said softly, his eyes on my face as I handed him his coffee. “Funnily enough, she didn’t quite get round to mentioning that part.”

I looked away. “What happened after I got chucked out the first time, anyway?”

“Well, there were some nasty rumours floating around about Tess,” Sam said, nodding his thanks as he took a swig of his brew. He sat hunched forwards with his hands wrapped round his mug like the effort of recall made him cold. “There were a few people there who reckoned she wasn’t quite as sorry to see the back of Slick as she made out. They reckon she and Gleet have had a bit of a thing going, on the quiet.”

“Tess and Gleet?” I repeated, almost to myself. I remembered the way Gleet had behaved around Tess at the wake and realised that the suggestion didn’t surprise me. In fact, it didn’t surprise me at all.

“Well that would be a reason, I suppose,” Sean said, as though he’d read my mind.

Sam looked from one of us to the other. “A reason for what?”

I reached for the piece of broken fairing and handed it over. Sam put his mug down on the table and turned the brightly-coloured plastic over in his hands, frowning.

“This is from Slick’s bike, isn’t it?” he said at last. “Where did you get it?”

“Gleet’s workshop. Hidden away just about underneath that damned great dog of his.”

Sam snorted into his coffee. “So you’ve met the infamous Queenie and lived to tell the tale.” he said. “Puts you in the minority, by all accounts.”

“Yeah,” Sean said, wry. “Between that dog and his sister, sounds like Gleet is surrounded by tough bitches.”

That gained him a grin from Sam that came close to being relaxed, friendly. Sam held up the bit of fairing, twirled it in his nimble fingers. “So what does this mean, exactly?”

“Slick’s bike has gone AWOL,” Sean told him. “The police were supposed to pick it up from some garage near the crash site this morning but it had already been lifted.” He nodded to the fairing. “This would seem to indicate that Gleet might have it. What we’ve been trying to work out is why.”

“Supposing the rumours are right and he
did
have his eye on Tess,” I put in. “What better way for him to get rid of the competition than a nice convenient road accident? Everybody knew Slick rode like he’d left his brains in a box under the bed. Right on the edge. Gleet could have sabotaged the bike easily enough – hell, he built it. It wouldn’t have taken much.”

“So now he’s nicked it back to stop the police finding whatever it is he’d done,” Sam murmured. “Bit risky, isn’t it? What if Slick had spotted it? And what if the cops had carted the wreckage straight to their own impound yard?”

“On a Sunday?” I shook my head. “It would have been a good guess that they wouldn’t come for it until today.”

“OK,” Sean said slowly. “Let’s run with that for a moment. If Gleet fixed Slick’s bike in some way, why was Clare so convinced that someone in a Transit van had run them off the road?”

I shrugged. “Like you said, she might not have been thinking clearly when she said it. Christ, she was in tremendous pain, doped up to the eyeballs—”

“That wasn’t your gut feeling at the time, Charlie,” he cut in. “She told you the van had come after them and you believed her. You’ve got good instincts – trust them.”

“Yeah, but she also told me the reason she was out with Slick in the first place was because the Ducati wouldn’t start,” I said with just a touch of bitterness, “and I believed her about that, too.”

I had a sudden painful recall of my conversation with Tess just before I’d left Gleet’s. It would seem there were a lot of things Clare wasn’t telling me the whole story on. Even so, something stopped me from speaking out about her possible relationship with Jamie. I couldn’t do it in front of Sam.

“Hang on,” Sam said now, sounding puzzled, “if you’re saying Slick’s accident might have been down to Gleet, then who was after
you
tonight?”

“Good question.” Sean’s face was grim. “Here’s another one for you, Charlie – will they try again?”

Our eyes clashed and locked. “I’ll be more careful.”

“And just how do you intend to do that on a bike?”

Sam cleared his throat nervously. “Erm, maybe someone’s just trying to scare you off, you know?” he suggested, ducking his head. “I mean, maybe not you personally, but there’ve been a lot of complaints about the road racing up and down that valley every weekend. Could be that someone’s decided to take the law into their own hands, so to speak.”

“So why go after a bike on the Wray road, on a Monday?” I said, still looking at Sean.

Sam shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, Slick’s wake wasn’t any secret,” he said. “It would have been obvious that there were going to be loads of bikers up at Gleet’s farm. Maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I shook my head, still doubtful. “I didn’t get the impression that it was a random thing,” I said. “Whoever the guy driving that van was, he was waiting for me.”

“Or somebody like you – small bike, on their own, going dark, just starting to rain,” Sam said, ticking off the points on his fingers. “You were a perfect target.”

“Was Slick a perfect target, too?” I wondered. “Big bike, two-up, on a dry road in broad daylight.”

“We don’t know that it was the same van,” Sean said. “I don’t suppose you got the number, by any chance?”

I shut my eyes for a moment and a vision of the Transit sprang into my head, towering over me where I’d fallen in the yard. I remembered the black bull bars on the front end, the oval Ford badge on the bonnet, the blaze of the headlights. I saw again the way the van had slewed wildly out of the gateway, the rear door with the disintegrating window. But no registration number. Nothing. I opened my eyes again. “He must have taken the plates off.”

“Serious boy,” Sean said.

“I, erm, don’t suppose this might have anything to do with, erm, your work?” Sam asked.

“I’m not working at the moment,” I said automatically, then paused.

Clare had wanted to hire me as Jamie’s bodyguard and I’d agreed to do it. At the time I’d thought it was misplaced maternal instinct that had motivated her. Now I wasn’t so sure.

But even so, wanting me to stop the kid from riding himself into the ground – or the nearest telegraph pole – on this trip to Ireland was hardly the same as protecting him from a determined outside threat. And besides, there was no reason to assume the mysterious van driver had been after anybody but me. Unless he was following the basic rule of assault on a principal: first kill the bodyguard.

I looked up and saw from Sean’s face that he was thinking about Clare’s urgent request, too. I saw his eyebrow lift when I shook my head a fraction.
I’ll tell you later.

“What do you know about this trip to Ireland?” I asked.

Sam gave a short bark of laughter as he reached for his mug again. “The Devil’s Bridge Club outing?” he said. “Biggest bunch of loonies going. Half of that lot will come back in body bags, the way they ride.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realised what he’d said and shut up abruptly, taking a guilty gulp of coffee.

“I take it from that, you’re not a member,” Sean said.

Sam shook his head. “Oh no,” he said. “On my old Norton? They wouldn’t have me – even if I was quick enough.” His lips twisted in self-derision and he waved a hand at his battered black leather jacket and oil-stained jeans. “I’m nowhere near trendy enough for that lot.”

I digested the information for a moment. Questionable style and elderly Brit bike notwithstanding, Sam was a rapid and tenacious rider. I’d chased him through the Trough of Bowland’s narrow switchback country lanes often enough to know that for a fact.

“So who is a member?”

“Well Slick was, for a start. And your mates William and Paxo.”

“And the guy they were with tonight – Daz?”

“With the Aprilia?” Sam said, nodding. “Oh yeah.”

“And Gleet?”

Sam looked surprised. “No,” he said slowly. “In fact, I would have said Gleet was dead against ‘em. He was Slick’s mate, of course, but until tonight I’ve never seen him have anything to do with the rest of them. Funny, that.”

“Well it would seem they’ve buried the hatchet,” Sean said with a glance at me, “if what you’ve told me about tonight is anything to go by. Maybe they’ve relented about letting Tess go with them.”

“Mm,” I said. “What about Jamie? That bike of his is only a four hundred. Would they let him join?”

“Who? Oh, the kid at the wake?” Sam asked. He frowned and tugged at his lower lip. “I don’t think I’ve seen him before, but he did say Slick had given him a chance to prove himself, didn’t he? Maybe that’s what he meant.”

“Jamie’s from Ireland,” I murmured. “I wonder if that has anything to do with it.”

“Might do,” Sean considered. “Why are they going over there, anyway? What can they do there that they can’t do here?”

“Drink better Guinness?” I suggested.

“Only in the south,” he said with a smile. “The Guinness in Dublin is the best you’ll get anywhere.” He glanced at Sam. “Do you know where they’re going?”

Sam shook his head. “Search me. Why are you so interested?” he said, smiling a little weakly. “Not thinking of joining ‘em are you, Charlie?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”

He nearly choked on the last of his drink. “Hell fire!” he yelped when he could speak again. “Have you lost your mind? Why the hell would you want to do something as stupid as that?”

It wasn’t Sam’s outburst that worried me. It was the fact that Sean had gone very quiet and very still. I risked a quick glance in his direction but his face was a veneer of polite indifference. A muscle jumped, just once, at the side of his jaw, the only outward sign of tension. Ah well, I’d deal with that later.

I turned back to Sam. He took in my measured stare and coloured up, dropping his gaze. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s OK Sam, I know it looks crazy but I made a promise,” I said gently, talking as much to Sean as to him, thinking of Clare’s desperation that I should protect Jacob’s son. “I’m doing this for Clare and Jacob, and . . . what?”

Sam’s flinch had been unmistakable. “For Jacob?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “After all—”

“What else is there, Sam?” Sean cut in, his voice soft but dangerous. “What have you been leaving out?”