by Simon Wood
‘Yes, it is. I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry don’t mean shit after the mess you’ve made today. Jesus Christ, the first double-podium finish of the season and all anyone will be talking about is your reckless-driving charge.’ Rags finally drew breath. ‘How bad are the charges?’
‘Bad.’
‘Bad enough to lose your licence?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve said that already.’ Rags shook his head. ‘I’m thinking I made a mistake with you.’
My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. I’d gone from hero to villain at the flick of a switch.
‘But I’m going to cover for you,’ Rags said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me. I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for everyone connected to this team. This ship is sinking because of you and I’m going to fix that leak. Got that?’
I nodded.
‘In the meantime, I suggest you clear this mess up.’
‘I will.’
‘See that you do. Now, get out of here before you really piss me off.’
I let myself out and Rags slammed the door behind me. Claudia was standing a discreet distance from the transporter. She squeezed out a sympathetic and pained smile. I walked over to her.
‘I pretty much ’eard everything.’
I groaned.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Can we get out of here? I’m feeling a little exposed at the moment. Hey, lock up your daughters, here comes that dangerous driver.’
Claudia smiled and her warmth helped soothe my angst. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘Back at the hotel.’
‘OK, I’ll drive you.’
I grabbed my kit bag from the pit garage where everyone universally ignored me. I decided that was marginally better than getting a bollocking from them.
I skipped changing out of my racing overalls. At this point, I just wanted to get the hell out of there, so I climbed into Claudia’s Peugeot.
Relief washed over me as she put distance between us and Spa.
‘I just want to know one thing,’ Claudia said. ‘Are the claims true?’
‘No.’
Claudia nodded. ‘Then that’s good enough for me. I’ll do what I can to defend you to the press.’
I could have hugged Claudia at that moment. For once, someone believed in me.
‘Now, there are going to be questions from the sports media. I will ’andle them. I’ll work with Rags to ensure that the ESCC, Ragged Racing and you are all singing off the same hymn sheet.’
Singing off the same hymn sheet? Claudia had been hanging around far too many English people.
‘OK. Thanks.’
She pulled up in front of my hotel. ‘I’m ’ere to make you look good.’
‘You have your work cut out for you.’
She laughed. ‘No doubt, Aidy. As soon as you ’ave anything, please call me. From what you’ve told me, these claims won’t stand up. When they don’t, I’ll make you look like an ’ero.’
‘I’d like to see you do that. Thanks for the ride.’
I climbed from the car and she flashed me her million-euro smile.
‘There’s one thing you can do to help me,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Find out who leaked the news to George Easter.’
‘I’ll do that. Au revoir, Aidy.’
I left her, then showered and changed before checking out. I still had the room for the night but I didn’t want to play black sheep for everyone at Ragged Racing.
I pulled out my mobile to call Steve and found I had a text from Nick Ronson. I’d forgotten all about meeting him. I opened the text. He wanted to meet in his hotel room at seven p.m., but I wasn’t hanging around for another four hours. I called Ronson’s number and told him to meet me in thirty minutes.
Ronson wanted to meet in Liege. It was a good place. It was far enough away from Spa that we wouldn’t be spotted by anyone leaving the circuit and not too out of the way from my drive back to England. I plugged the address into my car’s sat nav and pointed the car north.
As soon as I hit the road, the adrenaline high I’d been riding since the race petered out and fatigue set in. Maybe driving three hundred and fifty miles back to England tonight wasn’t such a good idea. I set the cruise control and let the car carry me along.
I didn't want this meeting with Ronson anymore. It could wait until we were back in England. I was more interested in how George Easter knew about the reckless-driving charges. Obviously, someone had leaked the details, but I couldn’t see Sergeant Lucas being the culprit. Smearing my name didn’t help his case one way or another, but it did help Miss Angry Renault. The bigger issue here was how the hell had she worked out my identity?
My thoughts were broken by the wailing siren and flashing lights of a police car climbing all over my rear bumper.
‘Shit,’ I murmured. Just what I needed. A ticket on top of everything else.
I knew they couldn’t be pulling me for speeding. I’d set the cruise control for the limit. I pulled the car over.
Two highway officers approached the car, one on each side. I powered down the window for the one coming up on my door.
The policeman rattled something off in French.
‘Je ne comprends pas,’ I said. It was one of those key phrases I’d never forgotten from French class: ‘I don’t understand.’ If I was going to race in Europe, I needed to possess a tourist’s understanding of a couple of key languages.
The policeman huffed in disgust and shared something with his colleague. I’m sure it wasn’t complimentary.
‘Do you speak English?’ I asked and got a brusque headshake.
I smiled in an attempt to break the ice, which brought out a sneer. The cop snapped his fingers and rattled off more impatient French.
I still didn’t know what he wanted or why I’d been pulled over, but I knew the preliminaries. I handed over my driver’s licence, insurance and lease for the car. It was all in English, so I wasn’t sure how much help it was to him.
Torchlight smacked into the back of my neck. I turned to see the other cop waving his torch over the car’s interior.
The cop with my paperwork snapped his fingers at me and I turned back to him. He hit me with more French that I didn’t understand.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re saying and I don’t know why you’ve pulled me over.’
I hoped the language barrier would play to my advantage. If I was too much of a bother to waste time on, maybe they’d wave me on with a warning. If they didn’t go for that, I could call Claudia to play interpreter.
The cop shook his head at me and handed me my paperwork and licence back.
‘Thanks and sorry.’
Before I could put the paperwork away, the second cop yanked open the rear passenger door, dived across the back seat and grabbed something off the floor mat.
‘Jesus, what the hell?’
The cop fixed me with a disgusted glare and yelled something to his partner.
I didn’t get to see what the second cop had found before my door was thrown open and the first cop wrenched me from my seat. I released the seat belt before it throttled me. The cop slammed me against the side of my wet car. Rain soaked through my T-shirt and I shuddered from the sudden damp.
‘What’s going on?’
I didn’t get an answer, but my heart ratcheted up at the feel of handcuffs biting into my wrists. I was alone in a foreign country where I didn’t understand the language. I could just imagine what Rags was going to say when I dropped this bombshell on him – whatever it was.
The cops bantered back and forth. Their conversation totally excluded me despite the fact that it was about me.
‘Hey, hey!’ I barked.
It silenced the cops.
‘What the hell is going on? And if you don’t know what I’m saying, get a soddi
ng phrase book.’
The cops shared a glance before the one who’d dived across my back seat smiled. That smile chilled me more than the rain soaking through my clothes. He tossed what he’d found in the back of my car on the roof. It was a clear plastic bag filled with a white powder. No phrase book was required to explain what it was and how much trouble I was in.
Lap Seventeen
The cops put me in the back of their car and drove me to a police station in Liege. I was booked, printed, stripped of my possessions and dumped in an interview room. Thirty minutes later, two plain-clothes detectives blew in. One of them spoke to me in French. I shook my head and told them I didn’t speak French. They frowned as if my inability to speak their language was an affront on my part and continued to bark at me. One of them opened a file and stabbed a finger at a handwritten form. I assumed it was the arrest report. The other detective dangled the bag of white powder now contained in a plastic evidence bag, then tossed it in my face.
Didn’t anyone speak English in Belgium or was this a tactic to break me down? If this was their intention, it was working. My hands were slick with sweat and I didn’t have enough saliva to unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth. I was scared and isolated, but I’d had enough.
‘Look, find me someone who speaks bloody English or give me my sodding phone back so I can bring in an interpreter.’
One of the detectives put his face in mine and butchered the word ‘asshole’. He said something to his colleague and they gathered up their paperwork and the evidence and left.
The interview room seemed cavernous without the detectives.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ I told myself, but the promise was brittle and it broke on my tongue as I said the words.
The door opened and a tall, angular-looking man walked in. He was in his fifties with thinning brown hair, swept back in a poor attempt to hide the fact. One strong breeze and it would be all over the place. He smiled at me, showing a neat row of teeth that seemed too small for his mouth.
‘Adrian Westlake?’ he asked.
‘Thank God, someone who speaks English.’
‘I might speak English, but I’m not your friend.’
‘I don’t need friends. I just need someone to listen.’
‘That, I can do. I’m John Barrington, by the way.’
Barrington closed the door, took a seat in front of me and placed the file and the evidence bag the two Belgian detectives had been brandishing on the table.
‘Despite the language barrier, I’m assuming you know why you’ve been arrested.’
‘Drugs.’
‘Yes, drugs.’ Barrington held up the evidence bag. ‘Not a huge amount, but enough to exceed what can be considered for personal use. So, this bumps the charge up to intent to distribute and if you brought it from the UK, then we’re adding trafficking to this soup. Do you know the kind of time that carries in this country?’
‘What’s in the bag?’
Barrington laughed and leaned back in his chair. ‘Really? Ignorance is your defence? You know that isn’t going to fly.’
I wasn’t in the mood to dance with this guy. ‘Please just tell me.’
‘Cocaine.’
‘It’s not mine.’
Barrington laughed again.
‘Test my blood. Examine me. You won’t find any drugs in my system.’
Barrington shrugged. ‘That just confirms you’re a dealer or mule and not a user. It’s probably better you cough to a possession charge and hope for a lenient judge.’
‘If it was mine, you’d have a really good point, but it’s not.’
Barrington picked up the evidence bag and peered through it at the coke inside. ‘Hmm, your car, but not your drugs.’
‘Yes.’
Barrington flicked the baggie and wrinkled his nose. ‘Then riddle me this, Aidy. How did the drugs end up in your car?’
‘Someone put them there.’
Barrington dropped the evidence bag in mock shock. ‘Who’d do that? Got any suspects? Who’s been in your car? Tell me and I’ll run them in.’
Haulk had been the only person in my car lately. I didn’t see him as a cokehead.
‘C’mon, Aidy. Name a miscreant.’
‘No one I know.’
‘Aidy, Aidy, Aidy, you can’t give me that. Do you know how much trouble you’re in?’
‘I do, but I can’t change the truth.’
‘OK, let me get this straight. The drugs aren’t yours and no one you know put them there, so what are you saying?’ Barrington slapped his forehead. ‘Don’t tell me, someone planted them in the car. Am I right?’
Barrington was toying with me and it was beginning to irritate me. ‘You said it, not me.’
‘OK, I’ll bite. If someone planted them, then who?’ He spread his arms and waved them as if he was conducting a chorus. ‘All together now.’
‘The cops who brought me in?’
Barrington mimicked a rim shot. ‘I served that one up for you. Seriously, Aidy, bent cops? Is that the best you’ve got?’
‘They were the last ones in the back of my car.’
‘C’mon, son, you’re just wasting my time.’
‘I don’t think so. Why did I get pulled over in the first place? I wasn’t speeding.’
Barrington flicked through the arrest report, as if he didn’t know. ‘Faulty brake light.’
‘John, John, John, you can’t give me that. The faulty brake light line, really? You’re going to go with that?’ I more than enjoyed using Barrington’s mocking words back on him.
Barrington leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. ‘Why would Belgian cops want to set you up?’
That was a bloody good question and for a second, I didn’t have an answer, but only for a second. The traffic stop, drug bust and Barrington all rang false.
‘I don’t know, but something isn’t right here.’
Barrington’s smile broadened to the point where he exposed all his perfect little teeth. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my car. It’s brand new. A faulty brake light is possible, but unlikely, especially when you consider traffic was flowing and I had no reason to use the brakes before the cops pulled me over. And how bloody dumb would I have to be to leave a bag of coke out in the open?’
‘Interesting.’
‘And what’s more interesting is you.’
‘Me?’
I nodded. ‘Who are you? You haven’t produced any identification. You could be some twat off the street for all I know.’
‘Don’t be coarse. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘And how would you know? It’s the first time we’ve met, but you know me well enough to call me Aidy and not Adrian, like it says on my licence.’
‘Lucky guess.’
‘I don’t think so. I also find it weird that you haven’t asked me what I’m doing in Belgium or what I do for a living. But you already know, don’t you?’
‘OK, you got me.’
‘I’m not sure I want you.’
He reached inside the back pocket of his trousers. ‘I’m Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. I reach the parts that British police officers cannot reach. Some of the rules that tie the hands of your average bobby do not bind me. That makes me your best friend and your worst enemy.’
‘And what do you want with me?’
‘Your cooperation in an ongoing investigation.’ Barrington opened the evidence bag and tipped the bag of cocaine into his hand. ‘Someone is smuggling major quantities of this poison into Britain and I believe a team from the ESCC is responsible.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘And you want to hear the biggest joke of all? I think Ragged Racing is that team. How’s that for funny?’
I wasn’t laughing. Suddenly Jason’s death took on a different meaning. ‘Is Jason Gates’ murder connected to this?’
‘Possibly.’
It seemed more than possible. If Jason had stumbled
upon a major drug-smuggling operation, the smugglers would kill to protect it.
‘Are you looking into it?’
‘The police are. If their investigation is connected to mine, it gives me another wedge to split this operation open. So, have I got your attention?’
I had a nasty feeling where this was going. The cat had stopped toying with its prey. It was time to kill the mouse. ‘You had me at a trumped-up possession charge. What do you want?’
‘I need an inside man to tell me if my suspicions are correct.’
‘I haven’t seen anything remotely connected to drug trafficking.’
‘Then I’m wrong, but I still need an inside man to prove that.’
I sighed. ‘What if I say no?’
‘Then I’ll make it my job to see that these drug charges stick and when I take down your team and mark my words, I will, I’ll take you down with them.’ Barrington leered. ‘Treat me badly, and I’ll be your worst enemy.’
I was well and truly buggered. I should be scared, but I just couldn’t summon up the emotion. Since finding Jason Gates’ body, I’d taken too many body blows from too many quarters to feel much of anything.
‘You’re pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you?’ I said.
Barrington grinned. ‘Just a humble civil servant doing his job.’
‘Nice. Why me?’
‘Ragged Racing is a tight unit. Everyone there has been part of the team for years. You’re the new boy. That makes you the only one I can trust.’
‘You could have just asked for my help.’
‘And would you have agreed?’
I was a second too slow to answer.
‘That’s why I needed a little leverage. I know it doesn’t seem fair, but it’s for the greater good and all that tosh.’
Cornered with no escape route, I conceded. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I have an undercover officer operating within the ESCC as we speak. Your instructions will come from that person. You won’t see me again if you do your job correctly.’
