The Way Back

by Dominique Kyle

The six o’clock deadline was for Wednesday this time. So the cars could be sent out to Belgium by Thursday in time to be checked over before the Free Practice testing sessions on Friday. The gear box manifold had been made and when it was stress tested, a fault had been found, and everyone was scurrying around working through the night to make a second one, on edge that the fault might have been caused by some undiagnosed weakness in the metal that had been supplied, and that therefore it could happen again.

  On Tuesday evening, Jo texted to tell me to listen to the latest episode of Stoxradio. It was good to have something to take my mind off the tense atmosphere in the factory.

  I streamed it through my laptop while I made my evening meal.

  Jonny was upbeat as usual. “Well folks, number 114 Cody Frost has messaged us to let us know that she’s retiring from the ovals to concentrate on her studies, so I sure you’ll want us to say on your behalf that we’re sorry to see you go, Cody, and we wish you all the best! So guys, the good news is that the tracks are going to be a safer place in future – you can stop taking cover behind the safety barriers and feel confident to leave the pits again!”

  Steve was sharing the hosting again. “I was chatting to Jo Satterthwaite and she said that Eve McGinty, our favourite invisible World Champion, is a bit disappointed that she hasn’t discovered the next female Champion yet. Though you can’t fault Eve on her evangelism for the sport, she’s always bringing in some new blood and gaining us publicity by some means or other…”

  “Not so invisible!” Jonny pointed out cheerfully. “I had numerous texts from our sharp eyed listeners to say they’d spotted Eve in the Williams Pit Team at Hockenheim, jammy devil!”

  “It’s nice to see her back on the track and enjoying herself again,” Steve added. “You can see she’s having great fun putting Nish Gilbraith in his place, and despite him being hailed as being a potential Senna, he certainly hasn’t got the hang of the full contact formula yet, though full marks to him for being a good sport and giving it a go! And I hear she’s not so far behind him on the Grand Prix Simulator at Williams – three point four seconds over ten laps, a little bird told me…”

  I was shocked. That was confidential information that Williams wouldn’t want escaping the four walls of the factory. I certainly hadn’t told anyone. And I couldn’t believe Mizo would, he was too professional. But Steve was an Auto Sports journalist that covered many formats and had endless contacts, so it could have been anyone.

  “Really?” Jonny laughed. “Maybe she’s wasted on the Stocks? But anyway, Eve, if you’re listening somewhere out there – the guys keep messaging me to say they know you’ve been forced to miss the qualifying rounds but they want to see you driving in the Championship from the back. So please call in and put all the fans out of their misery and tell us if you’re planning to be there!”

  Well that decided it. I switched the grill off and sat straight down on the laptop and messaged Stoxradio via their Facebook page. Hi guys! Course I’ll be there! So watch your backs! I felt a bit gutted though. If I hadn’t been in Italy for the main part of the season that title would be mine again. I hoped someone who really deserved it would get it, so I wouldn’t feel so insanely jealous.

  We all got into work early. Getting the cars ready was like a complicated jigsaw puzzle crossed with a Rubik’s Cube. The cars themselves had to be put back together here in the Factory Race Bay and the various spare parts had to be loaded into the truck ahead of them in a prescribed order to save them from getting damaged. But obviously we couldn’t put a lot of it together until the linking parts were there. And we also couldn’t load some pieces ahead of other pieces which weren’t ready yet because some component was just being stress tested or whatever. So the day alternated between frantic bursts of concentrated activity, and patches where we fidgeted and looked frustratedly at our watches and paced around.

  Alan made a phone call. Then he turned round. “It’s going to be at least forty minutes until we get the floors to the cars, so until then we’re completely stymied. So everyone take lunch now and keep your phones on and I’ll text you if it arrives earlier.” Then he looked at me. “Eve you go home and put some overnight things together.”

  I raised my eyebrows queryingly.

  “You’ll be accompanying the cars out and helping to unpack them.” He hesitated, then said. “Take enough to last a week. We’ll put you in the pit stop team at Spa, and might just leave you out there to join the race team mechanics at Monza. After that the races move too far away for us to send you, so you might as well get as much experience as possible on this leg…”

  Back at the flat I only had twenty minutes to throw some things into a bag. Did I have enough clean knickers in my drawer? I wasn’t the best at housekeeping. And my period had just started. Not great if I was going to have a long journey by truck to Belgium. And in the pit stop team you were dressed in full face helmets and full body one-piece protective overalls that were not designed for the female plumbing needs. You could be stuck out there for hours on full alert and couldn’t be suddenly having to nip off to the toilet and spend hours peeling the suit down. But this wasn’t the time to admit to any ‘women’s problems’. It wasn’t so bad since I’d been on the pill, so I just had to make sure I had enough paracetamol and tampons with me. I searched in my draw for some night time pads. If I put big pads on as well then if I started to flood but couldn’t get to the toilet I’d have some back-up. If it hadn’t been for the whole time of the month stress, I’d have been ecstatic. I didn’t have time to text Nish to warn him that I was disappearing. No doubt someone would tell him where I was…

  They kept me out there for the duration and I helped reload the transporters after Monza and accompanied them back in the truck. It was an all-nighter again, but the driver was different. The last guy had been great fun and a real Grand Prix veteran and we’d talked for hours. This one was a dour old sod who took one disgusted look at who he’d been lumbered with and told me to shut up and go to sleep. So I did.

  I got stiffly out at Grove and Alan ordered me to help unload and dismantle again. I was determined to concentrate and keep up to the perfect standards expected of me despite my burning eyes and headache, and stiff neck from falling asleep against the truck window. This was where I had to prove I was up to the job.

  At five pm, Alan told me there was nothing more for me to do, and sent me home. I figured I’d call in on Nish to see how he was and to have a crack about the two races before dropping into bed. My poor bike had been sitting out in the sun and rain for two weeks, but it was good natured enough to start first time, and I headed off towards Wantage.

  I knew it was important to see Nish before doing anything else or he’d be offended. But I’d have to make it a short one as I was beginning to feel sick from tiredness. I rang on the doorbell but there was no answer. So I pulled my phone out and rang him. I could hear his phone ringing inside the flat so he must be in. Perhaps he was asleep. I rang the doorbell and knocked loudly. As I knocked the door swung open under my hand. He shouldn’t be leaving the door unlocked when he was asleep – not after having had a break-in. I’d told him that before.

  I wandered in and looked around. All the curtains were drawn. His phone was lying on the glass top of the coffee table but he wasn’t asleep on the sofa. I quietly pushed open the door of the bedroom. Nope, not there either. Nor the spare room. Nor the kitchen. I knocked on the bathroom door and called his name. Nothing. I didn’t want to barge in, but… No, the bathroom was empty. The shower was completely dry. I went back in the kitchen. The kettle was cold.

  I went back to his phone. He didn’t have a code on it, so after some speculative button pressing and screen tapping, I found my way through to missed calls. Myself. Sappho. Mizo x 7 this morning. I rang Mizo.

  “Where the hell were you this morning?” Mizo exploded as soon as he picked up. “I called and called and this is getting beyond a joke!”

  “Hey, Mizo, cool it! It’s Eve.”r />
  “Ask him where the hell he was this morning!” Mizo was still hacked off.

  “That’s the thing Mizo, I can’t find him… The front door was ajar, the flat’s empty and looks like it has been since maybe last night but he’s left his phone here, and you know how he normally carries that around attached to his hand like glue…”

  There was a short silence from the other end of the phone.

  “When did anyone last see him?” I asked.

  “When I was moaning about him at lunch someone said he’d done a good job at the F1 experience yesterday, and demonstrated the simulator they have for delegates in the Conference Centre but he’d looked pretty tired by the end, so we assumed he must just be too knackered to wake up again, and too embarrassed to call in and apologise.”

  It was my turn to be silent.

  “Are you genuinely worried about him?” Mizo said at last.

  “Actually, I think I am,” I decided. “He takes his work really seriously and if he accidentally overslept again he’d be mortified and ring you up straight away, I know he would. And he wouldn’t just bunk off a booked session with you. And I can’t imagine a single situation in which he wouldn’t take his phone, can you?”

  “Are you worried he’s topped himself?” Mizo spoke it out bluntly.

  “Ummm…” I thought about it. “I’m not sure. I don’t know him well enough. But I do know it’s the men that just suddenly do that without any warning, whereas women tend to talk about doing it all the time and then never actually get around to it.”

  “Ok,” Mizo suddenly sounded decisive. “You ring everyone that might know, including the local hospitals in case he’s collapsed or something and been carted off in an ambulance and I’ll ring one of the bosses to let them know what we’re concerned about.”

  After Mizo had rung off, I went to Sappho’s missed call and tapped on it to return it. “Hey Nish! What took you so long?” She greeted me.

  “It’s not Nish,” I said quickly.

  I explained the situation. She immediately denied all knowledge of his whereabouts. And then she sounded really worried. And that in itself worried me, because if he was in the habit of going walkabout and mysteriously disappearing she’d have immediately laughed it off.

  “I’ll ring Mum and see if she knows anything,” she promised me.

  “Ring everyone you can possibly think of,” I instructed, “and then ring me back to let me know either way. Ring his phone first and if I don’t answer on his, then ring mine. I’ll send you a text so you have my number…”

  But nobody knew anything apparently. I didn’t dare leave the flat because I wanted to be there when he came back. I ate stuff from his kitchen, sat on his sofa and watched his fancy TV, then went to the spare room and got into bed. At first I couldn’t sleep for worrying about him. None of the local hospitals had his name registered as being a patient. But finally, given I was so knackered, my eyes closed and I slept right through until morning, when the sound of a key turning in the front door jerked me sharply from my slumber. Thank God for that! He must be back! Maybe he’d just spent the night with a new girlfriend? Now I felt really stupid. He’d find me waiting for him in his flat and I’d come across as really needy.

  I quickly pulled my uniform back on and walked out. There was a strange middle-aged woman standing there, key in hand.

  “Who are you?” I asked blankly.

  “I’m the cleaner, love, who are you?”

  “Nish has a cleaner?” I exclaimed disgustedly. “Lazy bugger!”

  “Lots of people have cleaners now, dear – income rich and time poor! And the poor lamb’s been ill…”

  I glanced at my watch. Seven-thirty am. “Do you always come this early? Isn’t that a bit weird?”

  “I just fit him in, as and when…” She answered casually, pulling back the curtains. “If it’s early and he’s still asleep I just do the four rooms I have access to and leave again…”

  “You don’t know where he is, do you? He’s disappeared and no-one seems to know where he’s gone!”

  She glanced swiftly at me in response to my anxious tone. “I’m just the cleaner, love. He doesn’t confide in me…”

  I retreated to the kitchen and put the kettle on and checked both my own phone and Nish’s to see if anyone had texted. There was one from Sappho that had come in about one am. Nun of his frends no wher he is.

  Shit, I thought. I had a sudden instinct that this was going to turn out to be serious.

  Heskett called me up to his office about ten am. “Any news?” He asked.

  I shook my head. “No one – neither family or friends have the foggiest where he is. The hospitals haven’t anyone registered by that name. His sister seems really worried which means it’s out of character so…”

  Mr. Heskett stared ahead of him for a moment drumming his fingers on the desk.

  “Nowt much we can do, I guess,” I summed up.

  “You can’t be declared a missing person until you’ve been gone twenty-four hours,” Heskett answered. “And the last thing we want is to draw media attention in his direction if he’s just gone off on a short jaunt somewhere for unspecified personal reasons, so I guess we just sit tight. It’s not like he’s needed to drive or anything vital like that.” He glanced at myself. “Not a word to anyone at the factory. Apart from Mizo, no one must know.”

  It was a bit agonising. I had to try not to be distracted. I had to follow the parts around again. I had to discuss the differences that driving in the Far East was going to make. The likelihood of sudden heavy evening rainstorms, the intense heat and the humidity, the sky high temperatures of the tarmac.

  During my lunch break, my phone began to ring. Sappho. I snatched it up. “Yes? Any news?”

  I could immediately hear the panic and a sob in her voice. “Yes!”

  I gripped the phone really tight. “What?”

  “He’s been kidnapped!”

  I was taken aback. That was the last thing that I could have ever expected. That sort of thing only happened in films! “How do you know?” I managed feebly.

  “Mum got a phone call.” I could hear the hysteria in her voice. “They said that if we don’t do what they say then they’ll cut his fingers off one by one. And then they’ll torture him and then they’ll kill him, in that order.”

  I swallowed hard. This was completely surreal. “What do they want you to do?” I asked with a shake in my own voice now.

  “They haven’t said. They say they’ll kill him straight away if we go to the police. They say we’re to wait for them to get back in contact with their demands.”

  “Sappho, what are we going to do?” I exclaimed, with a trickle of cold dread.

  She burst into tears. “I don’t know. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life, does it?”

  My stomach was clenching and I felt sick and helpless.

  “I wish Dad was here,” she sobbed. “He’d have known what to do…”

  “Just stay with your mother for now, and support her,” I advised with outward coolness. “Where do you live?

  “Charney Bassett,” she said.

  “Can I come over?” I asked. Though what I imagined I could do, I don’t know.

  She hesitated. “I guess…”

  “Where exactly in Charney Bassett?” I established.

  “It’s just called ‘The Manor’. It’s off the main road as you come in.”

  “I’ll be a while,” I said. “Because I’m at work right now. But keep me informed won’t you? Immediately they make contact again…”

  “Don’t go to the police and don’t tell anyone at all!” She warned.

  “I won’t go to the police, I promise.”

  She didn’t seem to notice that I hadn’t promised to tell no-one at all.

  I went straight to Heskett’s office. He wasn’t there. I walked along the corridor. In the executive conference room I could see an important meeting going on. All posh suits and Mr. Williams in his
wheelchair and Claire Williams. Shit. I stopped short and hovered. Through the single window I saw someone glancing up and then ignoring me. I backed off. Then I looked really hard. Which one was Heskett? He was at the table facing the window but not looking. I waited till he glanced and then I hopped up and down gesticulating. He ignored me. I waited. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist looking back. While someone at the far end was talking, he stared back out at me. It’s important, I mouthed. He stared fixedly. I beckoned imperiously. Now, I mouthed. He suddenly made his excuses and came out.

  “This better be good,” he said with a fierce frown.

  When I told him he was motionless for a brief second. “I’ll have to tell the Williams.”

  I nodded. “But don’t tell them in front of all that lot will you?”

  “Of course not!” He reacted angrily.

  I knew the irritation in his voice was due to the stress of the moment. “And please don’t go to the police,” I begged.

  “That will be up to the Williams. They have contacts all over. I’m sure they’ll take advice and do what’s best…”

  “I’ve told his sister that I’ll come and see his mother. Is it ok if I leave now, or would you rather I wait till after five?”

  “No, you run along,” he agreed. “You can be our eyes and ears…” He turned on his heel and strode back into the meeting, and everyone looked expectantly at him.

  I saw him face the Williams and say something and then Mr. Williams said something to the others, and everyone started shutting up their laptops and picking up their briefcases to go.

  I quickly walked away.

  When I turned into the drive of ‘The Manor’, I thought seriously? I’d been driving for some time through an area where everything was built from an amazing pale golden stone and had exquisitely perfect gardens, and now ‘The Manor’ was revealed as exactly that. An old manor house set back up a drive with big lawns on either side with large beds full of flowers. We weren’t talking Stately Home, but we were talking extremely posh. I shouldn’t have been surprised really. I knew they had money.