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.’