The Mercedes Sprinter van had seemingly followed us as far as the circuit entrance, and then kept going, making it difficult to tell if it really was tailing us or not. I’d felt secure inside the perimeter, among the crowds, but now I started to get an uneasy niggle at the back of my mind.
When we got to the pits, the boys were rowdily celebrating their performance. Daz in particular was in ebullient mood. He’d been trying so hard that he was bathed in sweat. When he unzipped his leathers his T-shirt was soaked through with it.
“What did you think?” he crowed when he spotted us. “Not bad, huh?”
“Indescribable,” Sean said shortly. “Where are Jamie and Tess?”
William had just grabbed a few bottles of mineral water and he returned at that point, handing one over to Daz with the faintest shake of his head.
“Why?” Daz said, still pumped up and cocky, taking a swig. “They not with you?”
“You know they’re not,” Sean said. I glanced at him. His voice had gone quiet and his body had that coiled look about it. And with a sudden clarity I knew why.
We’d been had.
Daz’s story of meeting the courier later, at the hotel, was just so much smoke. We’d been deliberately kept out of the loop. That was why they’d made Jamie go out in the lower grade session. It explained perfectly why he’d been so pissed off that Sean and I had chosen to go for the intermediate group. Daz and the others had wanted to make sure we were occupied so Jamie could slip away. If we’d gone for the same session as the others, Jamie could have moved up into the intermediate one and still been on his way while we were all occupied on the track.
And, wherever he’d gone, it had to have something to do with the diamonds.
Daz just grinned at us without replying as he watched the realisation take hold of both of us. Sean sighed, took a quick step forwards, wrapped his fists into the front of Daz’s open leathers, and simply swung him off his feet. He rammed the other man up against one of the pit garages with casual violence, all too fast for the others to react. They just stood and gaped. The only reaction from the nearest bystanders was to scuttle out of the way.
“Where have they gone, Daz?” he demanded tightly.
“I don’t know what you—”
Sean lifted him so his feet were barely on the ground and shook him viciously.
“Oh no, no bullshit. Not any more. Tell us now.”
Daz’s gaze swivelled briefly across mine. Anger kept my face cold and hard and he didn’t like what he saw there any better than he had done with Sean. There was the sound of running footsteps behind us but I didn’t turn round to check. I willed Daz’s nerve to break. We only had moments left.
“All right, all right!” he said. “He went to meet the courier, OK? To make the exchange. He should have called by now.”
“Where?”
Another hesitation. Another hard jolt. “The fuel station we stopped at on the way in. He was supposed to meet him there.”
“Now then, lads, what’s all this about, eh?” asked a voice behind us. I finally turned to find one of the pit lane marshals behind us. He was a big guy, rolling his shoulders reflexively inside his orange coveralls.
Sean relaxed his grip slightly and let Daz back down onto his heels. Daz jerked his leathers out of Sean’s hands and slid out from under him, angry and scared. And most angry that he’d been scared.
“Is the big feller causing you trouble, then?” the marshal persisted, nodding towards Sean.
For just a moment, Daz hesitated. If he said yes, the chances were Sean would be thrown out of the circuit and Daz must have known that I would go too. I could see the debate flitting through his brain on whether that would alleviate or exacerbate his problems. Jamie – and Tess, presumably – had gone for the diamonds and had not returned. He might just need us . . .
“No, everything’s fine,” he said, giving the marshal a bright smile. “He’s just jealous ‘cos I rode rings round him.”
The marshal eyed them both for a few seconds, face layered with doubt, then he shrugged.
“A bit of friendly rivalry is good,” he said, his tone a warning. “Just as long as it stays friendly, all right?”
***
“So, would you care to tell us what’s really going on, Daz,” Sean said tiredly when we were all out into the paddock and they’d parked up near to our bikes. “And for fuck’s sake make it the whole story this time.”
Daz had the grace to flush a little, hunching his shoulders. The adrenaline generated by the track was dissipating now and the cooling sweat made him shiver. It had started to rain again and that didn’t help.
“All he was supposed to do was go meet with the courier and Tess was supposed to verify the diamonds were kosher,” he said.
“When?”
“We rang the guy when Jamie came back off his session,” Daz admitted, flicking nervous glances at William and Paxo for support. “The two of them went to meet him while you were both out on track.”
Sean didn’t reply right away, just stood with his hands on his hips staring from one face to another as though he couldn’t believe their naive stupidity. He wasn’t the only one.
“You bloody fool, Daz,” he said quietly at last.
“It was a straightforward exchange,” William put in evenly, coming to his friend’s defence.
“Yeah – for a shit-load of diamonds you’ve already paid for,” I shot back. “Did it not occur to you that they might try and keep the cash and the diamonds?”
“Erm, actually, they don’t have the cash,” Daz said, not quite meeting our eyes as he confessed to yet another lie. “Not all of it, at least.”
Sean rolled his eyes. “So where’s the rest?”
“In the safe in my room,” Daz said. He caught the look of outright disbelief on our faces and flushed again, deeper this time. “Look, all Jamie was supposed to do was check the gear over with Tess, yeah? Then he was supposed to give us a shout over the radio and we were going to take the guy back to the hotel and give him the rest of his money. Now we can’t raise him, so he must have gone out of range. I don’t understand what’s gone wrong. It was supposed to be so easy.”
Sean flipped him a bitter and cynical smile. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what they always say.”
***
It took us less than ten minutes to get back to the fuel station where the clandestine meet was to have taken place. It was nearly twelve o’clock now and the forecourt was still bustling with bikers either on their way to the afternoon sessions at Mondello Park, or coming back in to refuel from the morning.
Beside the small squat kiosk itself there was the brick-built toilet block Jamie and Paxo had used earlier, and a large rutted car park at the rear. Two cars were parked on the rough gravel, an elderly battered Fiesta that looked as though it belonged to the kiddie serving in the petrol station, and a nearly new Audi A8 on Dublin plates. Was that, I wondered, the kind of car a dodgy diamond courier would drive?