‘Someone will come for the drugs while you’re on the track.’
Claudia was out of the picture for this part. According to Barrington, she had to protect her cover. That was reasonable, but I got the feeling that he just wanted to be there at the kill.
Instead of driving, I flew into Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport first thing Wednesday morning with Haulk. The forty-minute flight trumped the eight-hour drive.
Rags met us at the airport. Haulk rode shotgun with Rags while I took the back seat.
‘How’s the setup?’ Haulk asked.
‘Good. Your name opens more doors than American Express. We’ve got the circuit to ourselves and we’ll be ready to hit the track by the time we get there. The best thing is that there won’t be any of Townsend’s spies on deck.’
Rags went on to outline the day’s game plan and I tuned him out. All I could think about were those packets of cocaine hidden inside the wheels of my car. Was Rags a mule? It sure looked that way. I tried to marry that up with the man talking ten to the dozen about lap times, tyre performance, and engine power and failed to get a match. If it was true, was Rags working alone? How many of the crew members were involved? I couldn’t see how this was going to end well.
We arrived at Zandvoort to find the cars in the pit garages with their engines running. Dylan brought over my kit bag. He’d stored it on the transporter so I didn’t have to take it through the airport.
I took the bag from him. ‘Anything interesting happen?’
‘Nope.’
I eyed the wheels on my car. ‘Are they the loaded tyres?’
‘As far as I can tell. Those are the wheels that we took off the other night.’
Surely we weren’t going to drive with ten kilos of coke in each wheel. The cars would handle like a bus and the drugs wouldn’t survive the beating. ‘Don’t take your eyes off those wheels after we do a tyre change.’
He nodded. ‘Barrington?’
I glanced out over the dunes. ‘He says our every move is being watched.’
Nevin called my name. ‘Aidy, we’re good to go. We just need the human component.’
‘Human component ready to go.’
Nevin handed me the checklist and as I changed, I called out the tasks. I kissed my mum’s St Christopher and got behind the wheel.
Zandvoort is similar to Snetterton in that it’s relatively flat with one corner after another with little respite. I knew it was going to be a challenging circuit and I struggled. I picked the wrong lines through the bends and each turn was a dance with the gravel traps. I knew I was slow. I could hear it in the engine noise. I just wasn’t pushing the power band. To compensate, I cut my braking distances and ended up slewing past my turn-in points.
‘C’mon, Aidy, pull it together,’ Nevin said through my headset. ‘Don’t let this place rattle you. You’re better than this.’
Zandvoort wasn’t getting to me, Ragged Racing was. Instead of watching for braking points, apexes and exit points, I saw tyres packed with cocaine. I saw people I admired, liked and trusted with my personal safety as possible drug mules. And worst of all, I was now picturing one of them as Jason Gates’ murderer. All of it ate away at me. Driving flat out at ten-tenths took single focus and I was nowhere near. I’d be better off driving blindfolded.
Rags’ voice came in over my headset. ‘You going to wreck my car?’
If Rags was breaking ranks to talk to me instead of Nevin, my driving had pissed him off.
‘No, sir.’
‘You’d better not, Aidy. You know what makes a good driver? Consistency. The ability to make lightning strike in the same place again and again. You, son, are too hot and cold. That’s no good to me. I’d rather have lukewarm. Pull it together or get off the track. Your decision. What’s it going to be?’
‘I’m staying out.’
‘Good. Back off. Wait for Haulk. Latch on to his tail and see how a real driver does it.’
I backed off and when Haulk ripped past me on the approach to the Audi S curve, I floored the accelerator. With momentum on Haulk’s side, he continued to pull away from me, but it wouldn’t be for long.
Nevin had asked for the human component. That was what I needed to be. I squeezed all thoughts of drug trafficking from my mind and put everything I had into keeping up with Haulk’s car. I mimicked his lines around the track. I put down mental markers where he braked, where he turned, where he clipped the apexes. I needed this information not only to learn the circuit, but to overtake him.
After five laps, I was keeping up with him, even when he pushed that little bit harder, then I reeled him in a tenth of a second at a time. In showing me his line around the track, he’d exposed his driving style. Just like a card player revealing his tells, I knew what Haulk was going to do. I watched for the telltale puff of exhaust smoke every time he changed gears and held the gear just that second longer before shifting to wring every last rev out of my engine. Every time the rear of his car rose up when he braked for a corner, I stayed on the power for a fraction longer. And I reeled Haulk in.
I could smell it as well as see it. The acrid stink of burnt exhaust fumes filtered through the vents in my car. Instead of repelling me, the scent spurred me on. I was on the hunt and I had my prey.
On the tenth lap, I crawled all over Haulk’s rear bumper as we went into the sweeping right-hander before the start-finish straight and, on the exit, I jerked out from behind him and drew alongside him. He saluted me as I breezed past.
‘Very impressive,’ Rags said through my headset. ‘Now bring it in before you go and ruin it.’
Both Haulk and I slowed for a cool-down lap and I rolled to a halt in front of my pit garage.
Dylan opened my door and helped me out of the car. ‘Mate, that was quick.’
‘Really?’
‘Telemetry doesn’t lie,’ Nevin said, holding his laptop. ‘Nicely done.’
‘Aidy, Nevin, over here,’ Rags called out.
‘Time for us to listen to our master’s voice,’ Nevin said, before addressing the crew. ‘I want fresh rubber all round and a full tank when I get back.’
I exchanged a look with Dylan. He knew what he was supposed to do.
We met Rags at the pit wall. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.
My heart fluttered.
‘I like how you responded out there, but I don’t want to have to give you a bollocking to get you to perform.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Get your act together. You just took the ESCC champion apart in ten laps. I want that every time without shouting for it. I meant what I said about you blowing hot and cold. I can’t have that. I want fast and predictable. Does that make sense?’
‘It does.’
‘So, is there a problem?’
Yeah, close to a hundred kilos of coke, I thought. ‘It’s an adjustment thing.’
‘There isn’t time for adjusting. You have to be on from the start.’
‘In the lad’s defence, we didn’t think he’d have a win under his belt at this point,’ Nevin said. ‘He’s doing better than we thought and our expectations are higher.’
‘Maybe so, but he’s shown he can mix it up with the best, so he has to do that race after race.’ Rags turned to me. ‘Can you do it?’
‘I can do my best.’
‘Not good enough. Can you do it?’
‘He can,’ Nevin said.
‘Then I’m making it your job to get the best out of him.’
‘Consider it done.’
Rags fixed me with his stare. ‘Are you going to break my heart?’
Quite possibly, I thought.
Rags briefed Haulk and me on a plan of action, which included a day of driving on full tanks, quarter tanks and tyre testing. Tyre testing meant we’d be burning through a lot of tyres. It would be easy to lose the cocaine-loaded tyres in the mix.