Road Kill

William smiled in response. “Hey, who says I was feeling bad about it?”

We were back on the road ten minutes later. William must have passed on the news about Sean and me as we were getting suited up again in the car park. I didn’t hear how William put it but Paxo suddenly muttered a short sharp curse and threw down his gloves in disgust.

“In some circles,” Sean told him in a lazy drawl, “that would be taken as a challenge to a duel.”

For a moment I watched Paxo fight the urge to tell Sean what he could do with himself, in graphic detail. But the memory of their encounter in the hotel in Co Antrim was painfully fresh in his mind. He stood seething for a moment longer, then bent and snatched his gloves up again, yanking them onto his hands in black silence.

“Why are you doing this?” Tess demanded then, her thin face tight with suspicion. “I mean, what’s in it for you two, eh?”

Sean paused in the middle of fastening the strap at the neck of his leathers and flicked his eyes over me. “We gave our word to someone,” he said. “Nothing more than that.”

Jamie had tensed at the direction the conversation was going, I saw. He caught my eye with a look that was half plea, half threat.

“So you’re doing all this out of the goodness of your hearts, huh?” Tess said, her voice ripe with sarcasm. “Well, I just think it’s pretty convenient that until you two appeared on the scene we wasn’t havin’ no trouble. Now look what’s happened.” And with that she jammed on her lid, effectively slamming the door on further argument or denial.

William was in the middle of lifting his own helmet. He paused and threw us a dubious glance as Tess climbed onto the back of his bike. “Much as I don’t like to admit it, the lady has a point,” he said. “After all, anything you get for free these days is usually free for a reason – because it’s not worth having. So, are you two half as good as you seem to reckon you are?”

Sean didn’t respond immediately, just swung his leg over the Blackbird, twisted the key in the ignition and thumbed the engine into life. “Well,” he said then with a swift fierce grin, “let’s just hope you never have to find out.”

***

Compared with the kind of pace Daz had set north of the border, we had an almost leisurely cruise along the toll road round the western side of Dublin. It was just fast enough to keep a cooling draught rolling up over the FireBlade’s fairing. Every time we slowed I could feel the heat building inside my leathers and bouncing up at me from the shimmering tarmac. If the temperature didn’t let up a little tomorrow, I decided, this promised day at Mondello Park was going to be unbearable.

Since I’d acquired the FireBlade I’d done several track days with it – at Oulton Park in Cheshire, mainly, which wasn’t much more than an hour from my parents’ place, even allowing for traffic. I’d even had a day at the Superbike school at the new Rockingham circuit near Northampton, learning to lay the big bike down far enough through every corner to kiss my knee-sliders across the kerbs. It wasn’t as manoeuverable as my little Suzuki, but with any luck this previous experience meant I wasn’t going to make a complete fool of myself out there tomorrow. If only that was all I had to worry about.

From Dublin we headed slightly southwest and as we got closer to Naas, we started to pick up signs for Mondello Park. The number of bikes had increased into a swarm so that it was almost impossible to spot if the Suzuki with the Lucky Strike paintwork was still shadowing us, but I had faith that, if he’d been there, Sean would have spotted him. There was no sign of our friendly Vauxhall-driving thugs, either.

Naas itself seemed to be strung out along either side of a single main street and at first we struggled to find our hotel. There was a fair amount of reasonably good-natured banter over the radio from the lads about Daz’s duff navigational abilities.

“Are you absolutely sure you’re bent, Daz?” I heard Tess demand when we’d made yet another U-turn. “It’s just I thought it was only real men who would never ask for directions.”

When we did finally find the right turnoff it was to discover a massive modern hotel lurking at the end of what seemed to be an industrial estate. The building was all stainless steel and glass, artistically interspersed with dramatic swathes of stonework. As we pulled up in a line near the fountain by the impressive main entrance, I was aware of the sinking feeling that I hadn’t packed anything remotely suitable to wear at such a venue. Mind you, by the look on Tess’s face, neither had she.

As soon as we walked into the granite and marble-lined lobby I could tell it was a proper high-class hotel – rather than merely one with high-class pretensions – by the reaction of the staff. There wasn’t one. The polished professionalism of the chic-looking woman manning the reception counter never missed a beat as she smiled a welcome to this dusty bunch of fly-splatted reprobates and handled our check-in.

The room Sean and I were given matched the rest of the place – all sleek modern styling around a huge bed and a claw-footed bath in the en suite. As well as the usual mundane trouser press and in-room safe, you were given a DVD player and a PlayStation as well. We’d only been in there five minutes when there was a knock at the door from a member of the housekeeping staff offering to turn the bed down for us.

When she’d gone I said ruefully to Sean, “I don’t think I even own anything that would make me fit in here and, if I do, I certainly haven’t brought it with me.”

He grinned. “We’re going to have to do something about that when we get back,” he said. “Don’t take it the wrong way, but you’re going to need to blend in a bit more with the kind of people who’ve got the money to hire close protection personnel.” The grin took on a wicked tint. “Perhaps I should get Madeleine to take you on one of her infamous shopping raids on the West End.”

Madeleine and I got on much better now than we had done initially, as Sean well knew. But we still didn’t have the kind of girlie friendship where I could see myself squeezing into a changing cubicle with her at Versace in my underwear.

I grinned back and went into the bathroom. It was only once I was there that the true import of what he’d said sank in. Sean had assumed, almost automatically, that I was coming back to work for him.

I shut the bathroom door behind me and leaned back against it, momentarily staring at the limestone tiles on the opposite wall.

“Stay involved with Sean Meyer and you will kill again,” my father had said. “And next time, Charlotte, you might not get away with it . . .”