Alex had to have known the impact was going to be serious. Had he had time to pull his knees up and take his hands off the wheel to prevent the shock wave from going through his body? Hopefully, but in a big shunt, panic takes over and you ignore the correct course of action.
I followed Alex’s fatal trajectory, snapping close-up shots of the marks until I reached the wall. Cars striking the wall over the years had left their mark in the form of gouges in the concrete. Amongst the collection of gashes, it was easy to recognize the fresh impact left by Alex’s car. Red paint and fragments of fibreglass were embedded in the gash left behind. I took a final shot.
I’d seen enough and returned to my car. No one seemed to have noticed my excursion. I drove out of the flea market over to Chicane Motorsports. I walked inside the cramped building filled with mannequins dressed in racing overalls and holding steering wheels. Chicane’s is big, but the customer area is small. The majority of the space is taken up with floor to ceiling racks filled with car parts.
At the end of one of the aisles, I waved to Chris who was sitting at his desk typing away at his computer. Chris owned Chicane’s, but never looked the part. I’d never seen him in a pair of jeans. He always dressed in designer clothes. Considering the oil and grease content of his business, it was a mistake to be that well-attired, but somehow, he never managed to get a drop of oil on him.
‘Hi, Aidy, what can we do you for?’
I held up my list.
‘I’ll get Paul.’
Chris called out for Paul, his only full time employee.
‘Coming,’ Paul’s familiar voice called back. He climbed down from a ladder and came out to the counter.
Paul was the antithesis of Chris. He was always grubby. His hands were black from oil and his complexion was leathery from a lifetime spent in the elements.
‘Watcha, Aidy. Is it that time of year already?’
‘It is. Time to make up for all the damage I’ve done this season.’
I pushed a box containing my rear shocks over to Paul. Oil from their leaking seals stained the cardboard. Paul looked them over.
‘For rebuilding?’
I nodded.
‘I’ve got everything on your list on the shelf, but the shocks will take me a week to turn around. That OK?’
‘No worries. I’ll take what you’ve got and I’ll be back for the rest.’
Paul grinned and scurried off to find the bearings, rose joints and everything else on the list.
Chris called out, ‘You go to Alex’s funeral yesterday?’
I peered down the aisle to see him. ‘Yeah.’
Chris shook his head. ‘Too bad. I can’t remember there being a death here.’
‘I can,’ Paul chimed in. ‘Barry Telfer, August bank holiday, 1972. He rolled a Ford Cortina at Church corner, broke his neck. Nasty.’
Chris rolled his eyes and I smiled. Paul was an encyclopedia of motorsport. He absorbed every race result, fact and rumour. If there was something he didn’t know, then it wasn’t worth knowing.
‘I sent flowers, but I didn’t go,’ Chris said. ‘It didn’t seem right.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said.
‘Did many go?’
‘Most of the regulars.’
Chris nodded. ‘Did Derek?’
‘No.’
Chris shrugged in a ‘what are you gonna do’ gesture.
‘Are you coming to the championship bash?’ he asked.
There was an end-of-the-season banquet to celebrate the season and to present awards, including the championship trophy. Under the circumstances, I hadn’t intended on raising a glass to honour Derek Deacon, but I changed my mind. I saw some value in attending. The dinner was an excuse for everyone to get dressed up, drink too much and forget how much money they’d spent on a season of racing. It meant people would be more forthcoming than usual.
‘Yeah, I’ll be there.’
Paul emerged from the shelves with everything I’d requested. He checked it all off against my list and when he was sure all was good, he rang it up on the register.
‘I hear Alex’s car is here.’
Paul stopped punching numbers into the till and shared a look with Chris.
Chris got up from his seat and came up to the counter. ‘Yeah, it’s locked up in the scrutineering bay.’
‘I know you’ve got keys to the bay. Do you think I could take a look?’
‘Why would you want to do that?’ Myles Beecham said from behind me.
Shit. Another minute and I would have pulled it off. Was dumb luck biting me in the arse or had he been watching me walk the track from the control tower? I turned to face him. He looked ready to throttle me. Obviously, he hadn’t gotten yesterday out of his system.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Some of the drivers agreed that no one should drive Alex’s car again. We’re looking to buy it to have it crushed.’ While that was true, I wasn’t planning to melt the car down until I’d gone over it. Just like the skid marks, the car would help me construct a case against Derek.
My explanation worked. The tension in the room broke and Myles seemed to shrink by a few inches as his suppressed anger bled out of him.
‘But why do you want to see the car?’ he said.
‘So I can make a realistic offer. We want to make a gesture, but none of us are made of money.’
Myles chewed that one over for a moment. I guessed he was deciding whether I was bullshitting him or not.
‘Come with me. I’ll show you.’
We crossed the paddock to the scrutineering bay in silence. This was no good. If I wanted to get to the bottom of Alex’s death, I needed everyone’s cooperation. That included Myles. ‘Look, I’m sorry about what I said at the funeral. It was uncalled for.’
Myles kept walking without looking at me. ‘That’s OK. Nerves are a little frayed at the moment. It’s a sensitive time for everyone.’
‘Sensitive times or not, I was rude.’
‘I appreciate you saying that.’
Myles unlocked the double garage doors to the scrutineering bay and swung them open. What remained of Alex’s car sat ruined in the middle of the bay. My mouth went dry at the sight.
The car was a mess. The impact had flattened the aluminium nose box, snapping off the brake and clutch master cylinders in the process. A pool of fluid stained the floor. Splintered fibreglass bodywork exposed the chassis underneath. A Formula Ford’s chassis is a spiderweb of tubular steel. It’s immensely strong, especially in a head-on collision, but Alex’s chassis had buckled. Only one tyre remained inflated. The other three were either punctured or hanging from buckled rims. The front wheels only remained attached to the car by the brake cables and the wishbone suspension assembly was nothing more than a knot of folded steel.
Despite the devastation, Alex should have survived. Formula cars are one giant safety cage. The wheel and suspension arrangement is designed to shear off so that it reduces the energy during a crash. The cars fold up like a garden chair, allowing the driver to walk away in one piece.
Crouching down to examine the cockpit, I discovered what had killed Alex. The harness mounts over his shoulders had sheared off during the high speed impact. Unrestrained from the waist up, his momentum hurled him head first into the steering wheel. Even with his crash helmet, he didn’t stand a chance. When the car hit the wall, physics took over. The deceleration was massive. His body went from one hundred and thirty to zero in the blink of an eye. The resulting force at which he would have hit his head on the steering wheel would have been staggering. I climbed to my feet, unable to speak.