Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1)

by Vic Marelle

  And across the ring-road there would be more of the same, with even more cars, even more motorcycles, and even more visitors filling Coronation Park.

  Having completed the signing-on procedure he had collected the display number for the Olympic’s windscreen as well as an official printed guide to the event showing where each group of vehicles were displayed and the proposed time of each of the cavalcades. He had also been given a complementary discount voucher for a meal at a local restaurant chain. Pulling a tall stool up to the Mustard Club bar, Simon ordered a coffee and watched as more early arrivals signed on. Whether a man could be typified by the vehicle he drove Simon didn’t know, but he found that the reverse procedure, that of trying to identify the type of vehicle driven by participants as they signed on was fascinating. Owners of racing motorcycles were obvious, for although they had trailored their ‘bikes to the event, most of them were already wearing their motorcycling leathers. As he enjoyed the rich hot brew, assigning cars to owners for other participants became a challenge. Perhaps those wearing sheepskin jackets might own vintage cars and he considered that a slight man on the wrong side of 60 wearing a leather bomber style jacket might own the 50’s Jaguar he had passed earlier. A young man already clad in a fireproof race suit might logically be part of the team displaying a Ginetta prepared for circuit racing. He was unaware just how accurate his identification was.

  At an adjacent table, a short guy with thinning hair was assembling printed entry lists, name badges and bright yellow reflective jackets. Handling media signing-on for the day, ACC member Ian Bennett was also an experienced and internationally published freelance writer / photographer and, once his HQ responsibilities had been discharged, would spend most of the day photographing the event and amassing data for his feature commissioned by the Lancashire Life regional lifestyle magazine.

  ‘Where are the Italians?’ asked Charlton.

  ‘Over in the park,’ replied the media specialist. ‘The Alfas are over on the right just past Phil Read’s racing motorbike but the Ferrari’s are to the left, close to the dragster and opposite the local radio tent.’

  ‘Is your car over there?’ enquired Charlton. With Charlton’s Olympic being powered by an Alfa Romeo engine and Bennett owning an Alfa sports saloon, they shared an interest as well as club membership.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Once the ring road is closed for the cavalcades it will be impossible to get out of the park for a couple of hours or more and if I have to dash off I don’t want to be blocked in, so I put the 156 in the car park behind Disraelis. I might go to Dizzies for lunch anyway so it is convenient and the car parks are free on Sundays anyway. What about you?’

  ‘I am down in the street outside Costa Coffee,’ replied Charlton. ‘The Olympic isn’t a standard production car and it’s not an Alfa either so it didn’t fit into the brand areas; I am between Colin’s Anglia and a little bubble car!’

  Refreshed, Simon joined the group standing outside the café where the Clerk of the Course, or CoC, was giving his driver briefing. There was to be no overtaking, no exceeding 30mph, everyone had to keep an eye out for spectators wandering onto the course, etc etc etc. It was all pretty mundane and common sense – yet essential for smooth running of the event and to comply with the terms of the event insurance.

  Essential business over, Charlton walked over to his little coupe and positioned his number at the top of the windscreen. Taking a sheet on which the unusual specification of the car had been printed, he taped it to the inside of the passenger window then locked up the car. With three hours before the first cavalcade, he intended joining the hordes of visitors to enjoy the static displays. All 260 vehicles were now in-place and the whole town was already buzzing with visitors. Press reports would later estimate 15,000 visitors crammed into the town centre, three times that of even the best market day. Local traders would be more than happy, as would event organisers, but pushing through the crowd wasn’t easy.

  His target would be the Italians, so reaching the park he looked first for the Alfas. Turning right at the first junction he passed a large motorcycle display and motorcycle legend Phil Read, beyond which he could see the six cars representing the local Alfa Owner group. After spending time discussing engine tuning he retraced his steps to where the pathways branched and located the monster dragster, at the side of which was the Ferrari display. Alongside a Testarossa, a Mondial and a more recent Ferrari Enzo, was an F430, but it wasn’t the F430 he was looking for, it wasn’t the car he had followed or watched from his balcony.

  With both his primary targets achieved, he wandered aimlessly around the other exhibits in the park. One and a half hours remained before he was due to drive the Olympic in the second of five scheduled cavalcades around the town. Just enough time to wander around the remaining park exhibits before returning to the town centre where he could grab some excellent cheap pub grub at the Queen’s Head. Having walked the entire outer path of the park and reached its furthest point, he turned to return to the entrance, cutting right through the centre and past the bandstand where a steel band was playing bright Caribbean style music. Pausing to listen, he marvelled how such sweet sounds could be hammered out – literally – from old steel oil drums. Ahead of him, over the heads of the crowd he could just see the perimeter fence, and above that the rooftop of the big supermarket. But over to his right, between the bandstand and some trade displays, was a row of Ferraris. Though he could only see their roofs, he was sure that he was not looking at the earlier group. Along with a Dino, these were predominantly F360 and F430 models, with neither Testarossa nor Mondial.

  Changing direction he strolled over to the group. Every one was red. Red was the most popular Ferrari colour but in a display of six or seven cars there would usually be at least one or two yellow or blue cars. As he approached, he was attracted particularly to the middle car. Recognising its registration, he walked over and checked its bonnet decals. All checked out. Peering in through the passenger side window, something struck him as not quite right. This car had non-standard seats and a special facia. Walking round to the rear of the car, he again checked decals. And again, all checked out. Working back along the driver’s side of the car, nothing seemed to be wrong.

  Taped to the driver’s window was an A4 sheet of paper on which the owner had typed the details of the car. Most of the cars on display had similar sheets, as of course was the case with Simon's own Olympic, their owners keen to set out car histories; some out of pride and others to cut down the tedium of repeatedly answering the same questions. Reading the sheet on the door glass of the Ferrari, the two anomalies that had irritated Simon – its registration as a Toyota and its custom interior – were explained. He had discounted the car’s registration being a cherished number and Toyota branding. He knew his Italian cars well and could identify the melodic howl of an Italian Vee engine instantly. As he had done. He had watched this car from his balcony and also followed it for several miles to where it had been garaged at the strange mansion in the country. Without doubt it was an F430. And also without doubt, its equally identifiable Italian Vee engine had sung like Pavarotti,

  Doubt had never been an issue. Indeed, he had never doubted the car’s heritage or identity, only that claimed for it. Yet according to the sheet he had just read, he had been fooled. Reading on he realised that there had not been any illegal switching of registration plates, nor had there been any fudging of details to fool the DVLA. What Simon was standing next to was a DNA 430, the car displayed to its left a DNA 360 and the car to the right a Karma. According to his event guide, this particular group of cars was being exhibited by the Replica Italian Car Club, the clue being the word Replica.

  The car he had followed and watched from his balcony wasn’t a Ferrari. The truth of it was that it was a humble Toyota with the outer panels chopped off and replaced by copies moulded in glass fibre to create a passable copy of a Ferrari. Very Passable. All the right badges and decals had been fixed in all the right places, the
master stroke being that of replacing the Japanese four-cylinder engine with an Alfa Romeo V6. It looked right and sounded right, only the Toyota interior spoiling the image. Without doubt the conversion had been very well done. Professionally done. Indeed, the result had fooled Simon and he was pretty clued up.

  The car might well be legal but why it should have been driven to the hidden car store in the country still puzzled him, as did why some of the registrations he had passed over to Debbie had raised some eyebrows and caused Inspector Radcliffe to jump on him.

  Why had that been?

  A good question. But one that without access to owner and address details he was no nearer to answering. Quicker and more accurate than taking notes, he took out his digital camera and shot a quick photo of the details sheet before making his way out of the park and back to the town centre.

  Twenty-Two

  Though not exactly the smartest pub in town, the Queens Head did offer good pub grub. An honest to goodness no-frills place, the meals were more than eatable and the coffee always fresh brewed ground, though admittedly from pods and not his favourite Bewleys. The bar was often quite busy but there was always a free table in one of the two front rooms. And the prices were rock bottom. So the Queens Head had become a favourite haunt. On market days, a morning rummaging around the stalls always drummed up an appetite and no matter what their plans had been they seemed to end up at the Queens.

  Pushing through the big old doors, he checked out the room to his right. Unusually, every table in the room was taken. And she wasn’t there. Backing out he turned around and checked the room to the left, but again, the room was full. MotorFest was certainly boosting local business. He could not remember a time when they had not been able to just wander in and have their pick of tables at which to enjoy a leisurely lunch.

  Although they preferred the cosy atmosphere in one of these two rooms, perhaps she had gone through to one of the tables in the beer garden at the back of the pub or was waiting at the bar. Then he saw her waving from across the room where she had managed to commandeer a table in the corner.

  Threading his way between the tables in the packed room he gave her a peck on the cheek and asked if she had ordered. She hadn’t. Actually she had only just arrived herself and been lucky enough to grab the last unoccupied table.

  ‘Your usual?’ he asked, adding, ‘but we will have to be quick, we need to be forming up for the first cavalcade by quarter to two and that doesn’t give us long.’

  Having ordered, Simon broached the subject of the Ferrari that wasn’t. ‘I’ve made a bloody fool of myself,’ he admitted, embarrassed as Debbie raised her eyebrows and smiled cheekily at him.

  ‘Again?’ she teased him, ‘what have you done this time?’

  While they waited for their meals he outlined how his obsession with the Ferrari had turned out to be a complete blind alley. ‘I should have thought of a replica panel set,’ he said. ‘After all, I’ve built three kit cars myself and my own car is quite a mix of parts, so it should have been obvious to me. Instead of that I wasted loads of time chasing it around the countryside and going up virtual blind alleys. I feel a real Pratt.’

  ‘Perhaps not that much of a waste of time,’ replied Debbie. ‘If you hadn’t followed it then you wouldn’t have seen the other cars or noted their registrations, so I would have really been in the shit about the plates in the Green Fields workshop.’

  ‘Hell, I am sorry about that Debbie,’ he countered. ‘Your guys must be really touchy. It was nothing more than getting a few details so why the problem? I didn’t think for even one second that it would have got you into any trouble.’

  Debbie looked at him seriously, locking eyes with him and puckering her lips before answering him. ‘Well I did Simon. I knew the potential consequences. It wasn’t just unauthorised use of police systems, as far as the owners of the cars were concerned it was also invasion of privacy. It’s set out in official procedures and there is no ambiguity. Get found out and it is a sackable offence. No questions asked.’

  ‘Christ Debbie,’ he responded. ‘If it was that critical and you knew, why did you do it? You should have said no.’

  Her eyes still locked on his, her expression saddened. ‘If you have to ask that sort of question,’ she responded, ‘it would be pointless me explaining. But it wouldn’t be the first pointless thing I have done, so for the record, I did it for you you daft sod.’

  Smiling sheepishly he took her hands in his across the table. ‘No, my love,’ he said. ‘I am the daft sod. But you know that I would never ever do anything to hurt you. So, if it is a sackable offence but the info I gave has helped, where do you stand now? What’s the state of play? And what was the relevance of the other cars out in the country? What is that place anyway?’

  ‘Too many questions Simon,’ she said. ‘And most of them I cannot answer because if I did I would definitely be out of a job. At the outset I thought that nobody would know what I had done but when you gave me the details from the country place – it is a former Catholic college by the way that was bought by a developer but hasn’t yet been developed – I dug a little deeper and got myself into the position where if I did not pass on my findings then I would have been in even deeper water for withholding information. For a time it looked as though no matter what I did I would be on the dole. At the moment it is about fifty fifty. That’s quite an achievement, believe me.’

  ‘So why didn’t you go to Frank Davies then?’ he asked. ‘He’s your Inspector isn’t he? Why did you go to the other one. What’s he called? Raptish or something? He doesn’t know you all that well does he?’

  Looking at him soulfully she continued, ‘There were reasons,’ she said in a matter of fact way that prevented him pushing the point. ‘But Don, his name’s Radcliffe by the way, has been brilliant. Let’s just say that if I had gone to Frank with this my job wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of days,’ giving him a look that clearly telegraphed that the subject was now closed, adding, ‘and he wouldn’t have come out to talk to you over a coffee at your house either, he would have dragged you to the station like criminal.’

  Sitting in the coupe a short while later, all thoughts had turned to the soon to begin cavalcade. Lined up waiting for the Mayor to flag them off, all they could see ahead of them was a sea of faces. Everyone had left the town centre exhibits, the park was virtually empty, and fifteen thousand enthusiastic people now lined the ring road.

  ‘I’ve never seen this many people in Ormskirk,’ commented Debbie, ‘the atmosphere is fantastic.’ Six cars ahead of them the Mayor draped a union flag across the windscreen of the first car in the cavalcade, then, with a showman’s flurry raised it high to flag off the first car. Engines revved, children and their parents in the watching crowd cheered and waved, and the first cavalcade moved off.

  From the start line, the road went slightly uphill for a couple of hundred yards to a slightly banked right hand bend. Pavements both side of the road were packed up to ten deep with onlookers, waving and shouting as the stream of cars drove by. After a short straight, the road took a sharp left turn followed almost immediately by an equally sharp right to pass a church.

  In the Olympic, Simon enjoyed this section, the little car cheered on by the enthusiastic crowd as it swept through the bends, flicking the nimble little car first to the left, then to the right. Holding the Olympic in a lower gear as he exited the church right-hander so that the revs rose and a majestic Italianate howl reverberated back off the buildings on either side, Simon held the centreline of the narrow road. Before them was a section dubbed the Stokers Straight by a couple of club members since the most prominent feature along it’s length was a family owned furniture store of the same name. But to the drivers in the cavalcade, the undulating nature of the road added spice to the section which first dropped down from the church, then levelled out before dropping down again, leading in to a rise over a stone walled railway bridge just after the furniture store. The rises and falls were sl
ight, and in normal driving virtually unnoticed by most drivers, but with a cavalcade of almost thirty cars all held in lower gears and taking a racing line through the slightly banana shaped straight, everything seemed enhanced and drivers seemed to use the slight rises as launch ramps, the cars ‘becoming light’ as they peaked over the bridge, suspension travel at its greatest and tyres only just remaining in contact with the road.

  The drivers were enjoying themselves, and none more so than Simon.

  ‘It’s a pity we are held down to such a slow speed,’ he shouted to Debbie, noise levels in the coupe rising as the melodic howl bounced back of the houses as they flashed past. ‘The section round the church would have been great if we could have driven it a bit faster, and I would love to get my foot down along this straight.’

  ‘You’re not doing so bad as it is,’ she replied. ‘I thought you were told not to exceed the speed limit.’

  ‘That’s right. Your opposite numbers in the Lancashire force said that if the event did not conform to RTA we would have to have lots of special permits, risk assessments and so on, not to mention crowd control barriers.’

  ‘Road Traffic Act says 30mph on these roads but you went faster than that past Stokers,’ she observed as Simon dropped down off the bridge and negotiated another sharp bend.

  Grinning, Simon stole a quick glance at her before returning his concentration to the road. ‘Tricks of the trade my love,’ he said. ‘I dropped back before the church esses so that a big gap opened up between us and the car in front. That gave me the opportunity to go a bit faster on the straight to catch up because we are supposed to be fairly close together. They said it is a better sight for the crowd if we go past in a steady stream rather than big gaps between the cars,’ adding cheekily, ‘it’s not my fault if we got separated and I had to catch up!’