‘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 penny 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.
I worked alone. It helped me decompress. Unscrewing bolts and disconnecting cables made order out of a chaotic weekend. There is no ambiguity in machinery. It does what it’s designed to do and nothing more. The distributor feeds electricity to the spark plugs. The fuel pump pumps petrol to the engine. Components don’t suddenly decide to kill a person because they don’t get what they want.
I had a decision to make: sell or keep the car. There’s no love lost on racecars. They’re tools, and disposable ones at that. In a few months, when next year’s improved cars came out, my trusty steed would be one step closer to obsolescence. Excluding wear and tear, a new car was going to lap half a second faster than my two-year-old Van Diemen. If I wanted to make a bid for the British Formula Ford National Championship next season, then I needed a brand new car. I could only pull it off if I could squeeze some extra money out of my sponsor and save every penny I could between now and next March. I knew Steve would help me out if I got close. He’d done the same with Dad.
I didn’t mind using Steve’s expertise, but I was reluctant to take his money. I knew the financial burden Dad had put on him. Despite winning a Formula One contract, Dad hadn’t lived long enough to be paid and he’d died broke. It almost bankrupted Steve.
I called it a day around nine p.m. I flicked on Steve’s computer in the crow’s nest and looked up the latest news on Alex’s death on the web. The death of a minor racecar driver had failed to make it as a national story. Its newsworthiness certainly hadn’t stretched as far as Windsor.
On the BBC Bristol website, I found RACECAR DRIVER’S DEATH INVESTIGATED and clicked the link. The story outlined yesterday’s events and mentioned that Alex crashed after contact with Derek’s car.
The story featured a quote from Myles. ‘Motorsport is a very safe sport and these tragedies happen very infrequently. My thoughts and prayers go out to Alex’s friends and family.’
Myles’s comment didn’t surprise me. It wasn’t like he was going to admit he could have prevented the crash if he’d expelled Derek from the race for making a death threat.
I read the rest of the article hoping to see what charges they were bringing against Derek. Instead, the police spokesman talked in terms of an accident investigation. Why weren’t they calling it a murder enquiry?
Like most drivers in the lower echelons of motorsport, racing isn’t a full time job for me. It’s something I have to squeeze in around a day job, so I was back at work on Monday. I’m a design draughtsman for a firm in Slough that manufactures industrial mixers. I don’t care much for the job. It isn’t a passion like racing is. It’s just something I do to pay the bills and give me the money I need to race. But the job isn’t without its perks. After hours, I use their CAD software to design my own replacement parts for my Van Diemen and get the parts fabricated for free by a local fabrication shop in exchange for some ad space on the side of the car.
The management cuts me a lot of slack when it comes to racing by being flexible with my working hours. Now that the season was over, they expected me to make up for their generosity.
On Tuesday, I received an email from Myles Beecham with the news that Alex’s funeral was going to be on Friday morning. The email had gone out to all the Formula Ford drivers. I looked for Derek’s name amongst the distribution list, but didn’t see it. It wasn’t much of a surprise. I doubted Derek even had an email address.
I put in a time off request for Friday with my boss. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t refuse.
After work, I drove over to Dylan’s. On the way over, I stopped in at a florist to order a wreath. The place unsettled me. Flowers marking every kind of celebration surrounded me. When I told the woman I wanted a funeral wreath, she brought out a sample book from under a counter as if death couldn’t be looked in the eye. I picked something out and she handed me a card to go with the wreath. I froze with the pen poised over the untouched card. What was the right thing to say? Best wishes? Condolences? All of it seemed so trite.
‘Most people write “sorry for your loss.”’
I nodded, wrote the words, and signed the card.
I arrived at Dylan’s flat in Maidenhead a few minutes before Redline began. Redline is a satellite TV show that rounds up the highlights of the weekly European race scene.