Road Kill (43 page)

Admitting defeat, I walked straight back to the bar. The majority of the Devil’s Bridge Club were still where I’d left them – only Tess was missing. Sean was lounging on one of the vast leather sofas facing the entrance. He had his arm resting along the back and a bottle of beer swinging lazily from his other hand.

But the relaxed attitude was a blind, as I was well aware. So was the beer. He’d barely drunk half of it over the course of the entire evening. He kept taking the bottle with him to the bar whenever he bought a round and coming back with the same one, still barely touched.

The result was that he was a lot sharper than the others. He looked up, took in my face and got to his feet immediately, steering me out of earshot round the far side of a pillar.

A waiter hurried past, heading for a small group who’d been celebrating a birthday on the far side of the bar. He was carrying a dessert with two lit sparklers stuck in the top of it and Sean waited until he was gone before leaning in close.

“What’s happened?” he demanded.

I filled him in briefly. “I didn’t see who it was,” I finished. “Have any of this lot moved?”

Before Sean could answer there came the click of heels and Tess appeared from the direction of the ladies’ room, still rearranging her short skirt. She smiled slyly at the pair of us as she went past and I had to control the urge to distance myself a little from Sean.
Come on, Fox, you don’t have to hide this any more.

“Well, that answers
that
one, I suppose,” I said, wry, watching Tess totter back to her seat. “But whoever was in the car park then went up the stairs like a rat up a drainpipe. No way could she have done that in those shoes. Anyone else?”

“Just one,” Sean said, and his face told me I wasn’t going to like it.

“Who?”

“Jamie.”

***

Getting Jamie on his own to ask him about his involvement with Reginald Post was no easy task. Tess seemed to have latched herself onto him and every time he went to get the drinks in she was with him. She certainly didn’t want to leave him on his own with me, that was for sure. Eventually, Sean took over distracting her long enough for me to slide in alongside him at the bar.

“So, what’s with you and Reg Post?” I asked quietly while the barman had gone off to fetch more bottled beer.

“What?” Jamie had been watching the bike racing on the TV and only pulled his gaze back to me with an effort. Again the resemblance to his father hit me square in the chest. “Who the hell is Reg Post?”

“Remember the Lucky Strike Suzuki that’s been tailing us?” I said. “That’s him.”

“What about him?” Jamie said, making a good job of sounding casually disinterested now. “We haven’t seen any sign of him since Bushmills.”

I shook my head. “He’s here,” I said. “I saw him in the car park less than half an hour ago.”

“Car park . . .?” Jamie repeated slowly, then gave me a slow smile. “Are you checking up on us?”

“Of course,” I said, allowing mild surprise to coat my voice. “I promised Clare and your dad I’d look out for you, and that’s what I’m doing.”

He shook his head, still wearing a look of bemused amusement at my actions. “I don’t know anyone called Reg Post and I don’t need you looking over my shoulder all the time.” He flipped a couple of euro notes at the barman and picked up the drinks. “You want to mollycoddle anyone, try Daz,” he said over his shoulder. “He seems to be the one who’s losing his bottle with this.”

***

We didn’t learn anything more during the evening, despite the fact that the boys should have drunk more than enough to loosen their tongues. In fact, I began to wonder how they were going to be sober enough by morning to find their way
to
a racetrack, never mind ride around it.

I was very surprised that everyone made it down to breakfast on Sunday looking more or less fit. Even so, there was a lot of strong coffee being drunk and not many fry-ups being eaten.

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked when the serving staff had cleared away the plates and brought another pot of coffee for the table.

“We have to have a plan now?” Paxo asked with a groan, clutching his head with one hand and reaching for the coffee pot with the other.

“Bearing in mind what you’re up to, it might not be a bad idea,” Sean said, sitting back in his chair.

Paxo tried to bristle at the remark but couldn’t find the energy.

“We get to Mondello Park, get out on the track and have some fun. Don’t forget to take your driving licence, by the way, or they won’t let you on the track,” Daz said, deliberately obtuse. “And don’t wear your radio and headset, either. They don’t allow them inside the circuit – they interfere with the communications gear between the marshals and race control, or something.”

I glanced at Sean but it was a moot point for him – he didn’t have a radio anyway. He shrugged.

“Better leave it behind,” Daz said. “If they catch you with it they’ll probably confiscate it, whether it’s switched on or not, and besides,” he’d added with a grin, “I would hate you to trash it if you drop the ‘Blade.”

“And here was me about to throw the bike up the track if you hadn’t said that,” I muttered, sarky.

“So, what about the exchange?” Sean said, not to be deflected and it was Daz’s turn to shrug.

“We meet this guy and make the exchange back here this afternoon – after we get back from Mondello,” Daz said, matter-of-fact, as though he was describing a far more conventional shopping trip. “Then we get back on the ferry tomorrow and go home. Back to work on Tuesday morning, eh lads?”

“Just like that?” I said, trying to keep my tone level. “Do you know him by sight – this guy you’re meeting? If not, how will you recognise him?”

Jamie’s eyes flicked to Daz as though he, too, wanted an answer to that one.

Daz just smiled and indicated Tess with a wave of his coffee cup. “Tess knows him,” he said airily.

Tess smiled slightly and said nothing. She was very quiet this morning, sitting hunched in her chair drinking coffee. I wondered if she was having second thoughts about this whole idea. She had managed, I noticed, to get her rings back on today and they glittered on nearly every finger.

“What about the money?” Sean asked and, once again, the boys exchanged unreadable glances. “How are you going to handle the hand-over of that without being fleeced?”

“It’s already been handed over,” Daz said, his eyes flicking around, never still. “Don’t sweat it, Sean. It’s all taken care of. You worry too much.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all wrapped up,” Sean said, putting his own cup down so precisely onto its saucer I could tell the depth of his anger. “How many times have you done this before?”

Daz’s smile slipped a little. “We haven’t,” he said quickly.

“Exactly,” Sean said tightly. “I’ve negotiated with terrorists and freedom fighters, guerrillas and rebels, from Afghanistan to South America. And they’re all the same in one basic respect – they’re crooked. They want what you’ve got and they’ll cheat it out of you if they think they can possibly get away with it.”

***

We left the hotel at a little before nine-thirty. Despite all my and Sean’s arguments, Daz remained stubbornly convinced that his purchase of the diamonds was going to go smoothly and he refused to let us in on the details. I could feel Sean’s frustration like my own.

It wasn’t far to Mondello Park. We followed the signs from the motorway and wound through the countryside into a thickening throng of bikes.

When we stopped at a fuel station a couple of miles outside the circuit the forecourt was a mass of brightly coloured cow hide, kevlar and plastic and the air rang to the roar of dozens of exhaust pipes that had not been chosen primarily for their silencing abilities.

As soon as we stopped Jamie and Paxo abandoned their bikes and shot off to the gents’, which was in a little block to one side of the kiosk. Either they were still trying to settle their stomachs after the beer of the night before, or their nerves at the prospect of getting stuck in to the track.

Sean pulled the Blackbird up alongside me as I edged the FireBlade towards the pumps.

“Our tail is back,” he said through his open visor.

“Which one?”

He smiled. “We picked up a white Merc Sprinter van almost as soon as we left the hotel,” he said. “He’s just pulled over about a hundred metres further up the road but the driver hasn’t moved. He’s waiting for us.”

I glanced in the direction he’d indicated and could see the van sitting between two parked cars. It was too far away and at too much of an angle to see the occupants but I had no doubts that Sean was right about their intent. The Sprinter was bigger than a Transit and correspondingly more solid. I couldn’t suppress a shiver at the memory of my last escape.

I paddled the ‘Blade forwards half a metre to repeat the information to William, who was just in front of me in the queue.

William paused for a moment. It was difficult to tell how he was taking it when all I could see of his face were his eyes. After a moment, though, he nodded and leaned over towards Daz, who was slightly in front of him. As he did so I was sure I caught sight of a wire disappearing into the top of his leathers from underneath the back of his helmet.

The sight of that wire sent a flare of uneasy temper through me. It could only mean that William was still wearing his radio. And if he was, that meant Daz and the others probably were, too. But they’d specifically told me to leave mine behind.

There were several reasons I could think of why the Devil’s Bridge Club would suddenly not want me to be able to listen in on their conversations. On today of all days.

And none of them were good.

Mondello Park circuit was, as Daz had predicted, a blast. The organisers had obviously run so many of these events before that it was an easy and well-practised routine for them. We arrived, signed on, listened to the brief and laconically-delivered instructions on track etiquette and how the flag system worked, then were given our wristbands and the time of our session.

Even the weather seemed to be with us, the temperature considerably lower than yesterday. Modern bike engineering will stand up to Saharan operating temperatures, but I wasn’t so sure about the riders.

The sessions were graded according to ability. I knew Daz, Paxo and William would automatically go for the most experienced one. I put myself into the intermediates, as did Sean. When I raised my eyebrow at that he just smiled.

“Employee or not,” he said, “it’s not my bike.”

I was a little concerned at where Jamie would pitch, bearing in mind my promise to Jacob and Clare to keep him out of trouble. When we came out of the marshal’s office on the upper floor of the building over the pits, I spotted him below us with the rest of the Devil’s Bridge Club standing round like they were ganging up on him.

I nudged Sean’s arm. “Maybe they’re having a go at him as well,” I murmured.

By the looks of it, whatever they were telling Jamie wasn’t going down too well. He stood with his arms folded and his shoulders tense. Eventually he spun away from them and stalked towards the stairs up to the office. As he reached the top he saw us and must have realised that we’d witnessed the exchange. He paused, then came on scowling.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“They want me to go out with the fucking novices,” he said, his flash of temper surprising me. “Like they don’t think I can hack it with the big boys.”

“We’re only in the intermediates,” I said, hoping to mollify him but he only glowered all the harder.

“I know,” he snapped. “If you were all in the top group at least that might mean
I
could move up one.”

“Just go out and give ‘em hell in whatever session,” I said, aiming to be encouraging. “Better to be way out in front than getting lapped.”

Jamie didn’t reply to that one, just disappeared into the office looking ready to pull the arms and legs off somebody’s teddy bear.

“They’ve been pushing him to keep up all the way here,” Sean said, watching Jamie go with narrowed eyes. “I wonder why the sudden attack of conscience now?”

“Look on the bright side,” I said. “At least it means we don’t have to worry about him while we’re out on track.”

***

“Bloody hell,” I said half an hour later. “It’s going to rain.”

We were sitting in one of the stands overlooking the track, watching the early novice session warm up. The smell of two-stroke oil was heavy in the air.

William eyed the clouds overhead. “How can you be so certain?”

“I can feel it in my bones,” I said, rubbing at the dull ache in my left arm. “The pressure’s dropping.”

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow but didn’t contradict me outright. “Should make life more interesting, if nothing else,” he said and his eyes slid to the track as Jamie’s Honda came ripping into view.