by Simon Wood
Hancock Salvage was the name splashed over the sides of Alex’s car in ten inch high letters. Hancock’s reputation preceded him. Hancock Salvage was the biggest salvage and car auction business in Britain. He’d sponsored several drivers over the years, but this was the first time I’d seen him at a race.
‘I’m glad to see motor racing isn’t as cut-throat as the salvage business,’ Hancock said with a laugh.
‘The racing world is filled with good people,’ Mr Fanning said, patting my shoulder.
The irony of the statement wasn’t lost on me considering the situation.
We chatted for a few minutes before I left them to the repairs. Everyone thanked me for my considerateness and I headed over to race control for the qualification times.
The head timekeeper emerged and posted the results on the wall before handing out copies to the eager drivers for their own records. I looked to the head of the times first. Derek’s mind games had proved ineffectual. Alex had taken pole position from Derek by three tenths, a pretty big margin. I couldn’t contain a smile but soon lost it when I saw my qualifying time. I’d qualified fourteenth. I was a second and a half off my times from just two months ago. I really needed to put my engine out of its misery.
Alex winning pole position served to incite the rumour mill. All anyone could say during lunch was if Derek was going to do something, he’d have to do it during the race.
In addition to being the track owner, Myles Beecham was the clerk of the course. He did his best to kill the rumour at the driver briefing. As clerks of the courses went, Beecham was the most pedantic, treating drivers like disobedient children. That was never more obvious than at his driver briefing. He reeled off his usual speech about drivers following track’s instructions and using mirrors during the race. Just as I thought he was finishing up, he added a caveat.
‘I know racing is a competitive sport by nature and there can be only one winner, but it’s not a contact sport. The best driver wins because he outdrives everyone else. Stowe Park has a reputation for fair and fun entertainment. I wouldn’t want anything to change that today.’
There it was. Derek was on notice. Myles was watching. As warnings went, it could have come with a keener edge. If Myles’s words were an attempt to shame Derek into behaving, he was wasting his time. Derek needed to be struck with something blunter than a verbal warning.
I looked over at Derek. He stood with Jeff Morgan and Matthew Strickland, his usual race day hangers-on. Morgan leaned in and whispered something. Derek shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t understand what Myles was talking about. It was a nice act, but I didn’t know who he was trying to fool.
‘Thank you,’ Myles said. ‘Good luck to everyone.’
Walking back to my spot in the paddock, I pushed Alex and Derek from my mind to concentrate on the race. I visualized a lap in my mind, picking out my braking points, turning points and apexes. I studied the starting grid to see who was around me and whether I needed to be careful of them at the start, as well as to concoct a plan of how I’d get the jump on them when the lights turned green.
When the announcement went out over the PA system for the Formula Ford drivers to make their way to assembly area, I needed to pee. After fifteen races, I hoped to be past this point, but nervous tension got me every time. Dylan fired up the engine and broke out his customary bag of sunflower seeds. He ate them all the time; especially when he was nervous and he was nervous anytime I hit the track. I left him to his munching and crossed the paddock to the toilets. I stood over the trough and tried to relax enough to go. I wasn’t the only one with this race-related bladder problem. Seven other drivers, including Alex, stood at the urinal with uncooperative prostates. By the time I managed to do what I intended on doing, Alex and I were the only ones left in the toilets. I get quiet before a race, putting all my energy into my thoughts, but I broke my custom.
‘Good luck today,’ I said. ‘I hope you win.’
‘Thanks. I won’t be back if I don’t.’
‘Moving up?’
He smiled. ‘No, moving out. Win, lose or draw, I’m retiring. Alison and I got engaged a while ago and the wedding is in the spring. As my wedding gift to her, I’m retiring from racing to concentrate on becoming a chartered accountant. If I’m going to be a husband, then I need to be a grown-up.’
He grinned and it took me a moment to return one. Alex had a promising racing career ahead of him. I couldn’t believe he was walking away from it. I knew I couldn’t.
‘Wow. Congratulations.’
‘Thanks. Don’t tell Alison, she doesn’t know. No one does, and I want to make it a surprise after the race.’
‘Your secret is safe with me. Now I really hope you win.’
‘So do I.’
I followed Alex out as three other drivers went in.
‘What’s in your tea leaves, Aidy?’
The opposite of what’s in yours, I thought. ‘I hope to run in the national series next season and keep moving up through the ranks.’
‘And go as far as your dad?’
‘If I can.’
‘Take this from someone who’s a few years older. Don’t ever let this come between you and a happy life. This sport crushes more dreams than it creates.’
I was more than aware of this fact. The sport had orphaned me. ‘I won’t.’
‘Then you’re smarter than the average driver.’
The call went out again for drivers to make their way to the assembly area. We shook hands and wished each other luck before going our separate ways.
Two hours later, Alex was dead.
Lap Three
I hadn’t seen Alex die, just the accident. I’d gotten a good start off the line to take tenth place going into the first major bend at Wilts Corner. Wilts is a second gear right-hand turn and everyone made it through cleanly. Alex and Derek led the field, pulling away from the pack. They were side by side going into Barrack Hill. It’s a fast, right-hand kink that can be taken without lifting off the gas. Just. There’s no room for error. Get it wrong and there’s a concrete wall to catch you. Everyone was nose to tail going into the bend, making it hard to see anything at the front. I’d just grabbed fourth gear and was looking for my turning-in point when Alex’s car popped up on two wheels. The second it crashed back down, it slewed left off the track and into the wall.
Even though my view was obscured, I knew exactly what Derek had done to Alex. Like Formula One and Indy cars, Formula Fords are essentially just a cockpit bolted to an engine with the four wheels and suspension exposed. With these racecars, there’s the danger of interlocking wheels with another car. If you’ve seen the chariot race from Ben Hur then you know what I mean. When it happens, both drivers have to work together to get untangled. It’s usually achieved by the drivers matching each other’s speed and carefully separating, then going back to racing. It happens by accident, but it also happens by design. Locking wheels is a nasty technique for taking out a car. A driver slips his wheel inside and in front of the car he wants to take out, then slows down. Just taking your foot off the gas for a second will do the damage. The faster car rides over the top of the slower car’s wheel, sending it on to two wheels and breaking its suspension when it lands. It’s a tricky manoeuvre with the potential for taking out both cars, but usually the faster car comes off worse. To the spectator, it looks like an accident.
Derek had executed the manoeuvre with consummate skill and he exited Barrack Hill with no problem.
The black flags were out on the next bend, stopping the race. Everyone backed off and rolled around the circuit back to the start line. Course officials directed us to our new start positions on the grid before giving pit crews the go ahead to come onto the track.
I couldn’t believe Derek had gone through with it. OK, he’d pick up his tenth title, but so what? The Clark Paints Championship wasn’t some major title that meant something. It served as a nursery for new drivers cutting their teeth in motor racing on their way up to
Formula One and a retirement home for those who were long in the tooth and just wanted to keep racing. In the scheme of things, the title meant very little in the racing community beyond bragging rights. Derek would prove again he was a big fish in a small pond. If he really wanted to show the world what a great driver he was, he should have branched out a long time ago. I felt like pulling out of the race, but remembered my sponsor.
The race restarted after a thirty minute delay. Derek won with relative ease. Thanks to a couple of spins in the pack, I managed to hold on to ninth place.
Afterwards, I returned to the paddock, changed out of my race gear into civvies and collected my race licence from registration. The news floating around the paddock was that Alex was on his way to hospital for a check-up.
As Dylan and I loaded my car onto the trailer, we watched Derek and his crew celebrate his win and his most treasured title. Dylan and I shared a disgusted glance.
Dylan shrugged. ‘All’s fair in love and war.’
After we were done, I wanted to leave more than ever and draw a line under this season, but I still had work to do. We went to help my sponsor schmooze their prospective client. They left happy and Dylan and I returned to the paddock to make the hundred mile drive home.
The mood in the paddock had changed. Word had filtered down from the marshal’s station at Barrack Hill that blood had been seen inside Alex’s helmet. The fun and games of gossiping about Derek’s death threat turned into guilty silence.
Dylan and I headed home to the excited roar of an ignorant crowd. The race fans had been insulated from Derek’s threat against Alex. Their excitement jarred with the muted silence of an embarrassed paddock.
We arrived back at Archway, Steve’s classic car restoration garage, where I kept my racecar and found a message on the answering machine from Eva Beecham.
‘Aidy, it’s Eva. I have bad news. Alex passed away in hospital. I’m letting all the drivers know.’
The news turned my stomach and I dropped into the nearest seat. I was eight again, playing in the garden with my toy racecars, whipping them up and down the concrete path. Gran was leaning out the kitchen doorway asking me what I wanted in my sandwich, but I was lost in my own imagination where my dad and I were leading the race. From within the house, Steve let out a wail, a sound I’d never heard before. He appeared behind Gran and whispered something to her. She collapsed into him and sobbed.
I didn’t see what was coming next. What did I understand at that age? My parents were immortal. I thought they’d always be there.
I left my toys scattered over the concrete path. I didn’t run to my grandparents’ side. I walked. The sight of my grandparents in so much pain scared me. I stood by them and it took a minute for them to notice I was there. Steve dropped to his knees in front of me. Tears streaked his chalk-white face.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘I’ve got bad news, little mate,’ he said, and my world changed forever.
I sat in the darkness for hours after Dylan had left to go home. I heard the door open and my grandfather make his way through the workshop.
‘Aidy, you in here?’ my grandfather called from downstairs.
‘Up here in the crow’s nest, Steve.’
Circumstances had blurred the lines between us. He was my grandfather, surrogate parent and friend. To call him grandfather, grandad or grandpa just didn’t work. He was Steve.
He found me in the office overlooking the workshop. Archway Restoration sat underneath Windsor Railway Station. Because Windsor rises to a peak where the Norman castle sits, the station stood on top of a series of archways to ensure the trains didn’t have to stop on a slant. The archways had been enclosed decades ago to make business units. The place had plenty of funky appeal with its curved walls and the cobbled street outside. Steve owned the third of the six units sandwiched between a private gym and Mexican restaurant. He let me work on my racecar there and use his van.
Steve flicked on the office lights. I squinted against the sudden glare.
Steve stopped in the doorway. I don’t look much like my grandfather. My dad and I both took after my grandmother, who was short, slight and dark. Steve was tall and Nordic looking with strawberry blond hair. He possessed more than a passing resemblance to Steve McQueen which accounted for his success with the ladies.
‘I didn’t think you’d be back until tomorrow,’ I said.
‘I came home when I heard about Alex. Dylan told me. I called him when you didn’t answer your phone. Don’t switch your phone off on race days. You know I don’t like it.’
‘Didn’t Maggie mind you running out on her?’
‘She understands. I’ll make it up to her.’ Steve pulled out a chair and sat. ‘What happened?’
I outlined the events of the last twenty-four hours to him from Derek’s threat in The Chequered Flag to the details of the crash.
Steve said nothing until I’d talked myself out. ‘Alex’s death really seems to have affected you.’
It was a challenge I could hardly deny and I picked at a hangnail on my right index finger.
‘You didn’t know him well, did you?’ he said.
‘Not really.’
‘Then why are you cut up so bad? Is it because of your mum and dad?’
Hanging amongst the motor racing memorabilia on the walls was a picture of my parents. I got up and wandered over to it. It had been taken in the pits at Brands Hatch. Dad held my mum in his arms with his championship-winning Formula Three car behind them. They looked so happy. They died the day after the picture was taken, killed on the drive back. Dad lost control of his car and went off the road a few miles from the track.
I’d lost my parents when they’d been on the verge of a new life where dreams were realized. Alex’s death was no different. He’d been on the verge of a new life and it had been snatched away from him.
‘This has nothing to do with them.’
‘Then why are you so broken up?’
‘A man was murdered over a meaningless championship title. And if you want to know the worst part of all this, winning today meant nothing to Alex.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Alex and I were chatting just before the start of the race. He told me he was giving up racing to get married. It was going to be a wedding surprise for his fiancée. No one else knew. Not her or his family. He had everything going for him and now he’s dead. It’s so fucking unfair.’
Another life cut short. Maybe this did have more to do with my parents’ deaths than I cared to admit.
Steve studied me with a disapproving look. It was a familiar expression I’d seen throughout my life. He was picking apart something I said to get to the heart of the matter.
‘There’s more to this than Alex’s secret, isn’t there?’
I nodded. ‘Alex’s death could have been prevented if only I’d done something.’
‘If only you’d done something?’
‘Not just me, but any of us. It only would have taken one of us to report Derek to Myles Beecham or even to tell Alex himself. Instead, we stuck our heads in the sand and pretended nothing had happened. We were cowards and it got Alex killed.’
Steve chewed over what I’d said. ‘Sounds like a guilty conscience talking.’
‘It is.’
Steve nodded and put his feet up on the desk. ‘You’re right. You should have done something.’ He poked a finger in my direction. ‘Your silence helped get Alex killed.’
I knew he was throwing my words back in my face, but it took all my courage to keep looking my grandfather in the eye.
‘If that’s true, answer me this. Why didn’t you step in and put an end to this?’
I dropped onto the sofa behind me and sighed. ‘Because it was bullshit. It was nothing more than a scare tactic to intimidate Alex. That’s what I thought anyway.’
All the tension went out of Steve’s face. ‘That’s right. And that’s why no one got involved. I’ll bet you a pound to a p
enny no one honestly believed Derek was going to kill Alex. Drivers develop grudges, but no driver has gone out of his way to kill a rival to win a race.’
‘It doesn’t change the outcome.’
‘No, you’re right.’ He smiled at me. ‘You’re a good lad, Aidy. You’re being a little harsh on yourself.’
‘Not from where I’m sitting.’
Steve took his feet off the desk and sat forward with his elbows on the desktop. ‘OK, it’s time for a little different perspective. This could still be an accident.’
‘Oh, c’mon.’
‘No, hear me out. Let me ask you this. Forget the talk. Do you think Derek really intended to kill Alex?’
‘He got his wish, didn’t he?’
‘Don’t be so quick to judge. Look, it’s one thing to say you’ll kill a person, but it’s an entirely different thing to do it. Derek is a bully, I’ll grant you that. He uses threats to intimidate and he isn’t adverse to banging wheels in order to win. But is he a killer? I’m not so sure.’
I shrugged.
‘Have you considered that the situation may have gotten away from him? Maybe he intended to shove Alex off the track to get him out of the race and fate upped the ante.’
Was I letting my emotions and Derek’s reputation get in the way of my objectivity? I didn’t think so. ‘If Alex had gone off at any other corner, maybe, but Derek took him out at Barrack Hill, a flat out corner with no gravel trap or tyre wall for protection. If I wanted to kill another driver, Barrack Hill is where I’d do it.’
‘So it’s pretty cut and dry as far as you’re concerned,’ Steve said.
I nodded. ‘And the TV will prove it. Redline is showing the race on Tuesday. With everyone watching, Derek won’t be able to hide what’s he’s done.’
Lap Four
I spent Sunday stripping my Formula Ford down to its component parts. I raced a two-year-old Van Diemen. Although the car had gone less than fifteen hundred miles during the season, the punishment racing put on every component was a hundred fold greater than what a street car experiences. After tossing out bent bolts and worn out bearings, I checked the chassis for cracks and found none. I removed the engine for Steve to overhaul. On the whole, things looked good. It would take a lot of work to rebuild everything, but I wasn’t looking at much more than a couple of grand to get the car back into race condition.
