Cog in the Machine Read online

  “It’s a done deal.”

  There was no reply. The radio crackled at the end of the transmission and Dom settled down for the painful wait until the lights signalled the start of the race, launching him into a three-hour stint in the most competitive driving environment he had ever entered.

  Tick tock, tick tock.

  The air was thick with engine fumes and the scent of hot rubber. His senses prickled as the adrenalin began to purge the nerves from his system.

  Sitting in the stripped-down racer, he looked around at his competition. Halted mid-grid on the left-hand side of the track, there was a car diagonally in front, a Porsche, and another BMW diagonally behind. Dom looked toward the Porsche and caught the man behind the wheel staring at him with all the contempt in the world. Probably what a rookie driver deserved.

  Dom winked at the driver and closed the visor of his helmet.

  The race was about to start. The start lights flashed.

  The countdown was beginning.

  The light grid was five lights wide and four lights high. The top two rows were green and the bottom two were red. The bottom two rows would countdown to launch one light at a time from left to right. ‘Go’ would happen when all the green lights were illuminated at once.

  Dom took a breath, hands twitching on the wheel, feet feathering the pedals. His heartbeat raced as though it was his blood coursing through the engine, powering the high-performance vehicle.

  First light.

  Second light.

  Third light.

  Fourth light.

  Fifth Light.

  Green. Go, go, go.

  His foot slammed into the floor of the cockpit. Tyres squealed as the car fought to grip the warm tarmac.

  The cacophony of twenty-five engines roaring as one. Like beasts charging into battle, all the vehicles surged forward, finding a path.

  They were off.

  Chapter 39

  In average suburban streets where average suburban people lived, doing all the things that average suburban people did, a couple of intruders had slipped in. Invading an environment where their very presence sent ripples of fear.

  A curtain twitched.

  A dog walker reversed their route.

  A car slowed down, and then sped away.

  Wade, six feet tall, pure taut wiry muscle gracing his slight frame, stood at the door waiting for a break in the passing audience.

  Gibbo, six four, stood on the pavement at the end of the drive. His large muscular frame squeezed into a t-shirt and jeans a size too small. It was a bad look for a man in his late forties, but not one that many would question, given the outwardly aggressive appearance portrayed. It didn’t do justice to the vicious nature that lurked under the hair and tattoos.

  The side of a fist rattled the door in its frame. There was a brief pause.

  Wade smashed his fist against the door again.

  Movement from inside stopped him before he did it a third time. The sound of a chain being attached was quite audible. No sooner was the catch clicked than a leg kicked out, breaking the chain. The occupant fell to the ground.

  Wade entered the house, closely followed by Gibbo.

  The person behind the door was out cold, a contusion growing from their forehead.

  “That was easy,” Gibbo said.

  “It always is.” Wade’s focus was on the prone figure before him.

  “Shall we have some fun now, or later?”

  “I’ll call it in first.” Although smaller and younger than Gibbo, Wade was no doubt the brains of the pair.

  Wade pulled a burner phone from his pocket.

  “Boss, we’ve got the leverage. Do you want us to do the work here, or somewhere more private?”

  There was a mumbled response, somewhat drowned out by the sound of pop music and the call was swiftly ended.

  “Bring the van round, Gibbo. We’re taking this one for a ride.”

  Chapter 40

  Everyone had a gift; an ability that would make others look on in awe. It might be natural or a skill honed over many hours of practice until practice became second nature.

  Dom’s was a bit of both.

  He’d loved cars as a kid. He didn’t need to know the names or the stats. He just wanted to drive them.

  Aged just fourteen years old, he and a school friend, Peter Jenkins, were walking home through the back alleys of Westbury-upon-Trym, a borough of Bristol, when they discovered a car with the driver’s door open and the keys in the ignition. It was a Vauxhall Cavalier, two-litre GSI in gunmetal grey. Without so much as an ounce of hesitation, Dom hopped in behind the wheel. Reluctantly, Peter climbed in too.

  “What are you doing, Dom?” asked the nervy young schoolboy.

  “Taking the quickest way home.” Dom smiled as he clicked his seatbelt and moved the seat forward.

  “It’s stealing!”

  “Not if we bring it back later. We’re just borrowing it, Pete.”

  There was a screech of tyre against rough tarmac as the young Dom floored the powerful saloon, hurtling down a back alley and onto a main road. Somewhere in his peripheral vision, he caught sight of a man in the rear-view mirror, running after the vehicle. The thought of nearly being caught only added to the excitement.

  The boys drove around in the car for almost an hour before the police stopped them. Dom earned six weeks in a young offenders’ unit for losing his joyriding virginity. It was worth every minute.

  From then on, he’d spent as much time in and around cars as was possible. Driving, fixing, stealing – whatever it was, Dom was involved. Time spent behind the wheel was time spent developing his skill. He was relentless.

  That was then.

  Now, in the most intense driving situation he had ever experienced, he dialled into that past, that instinct, that need, and was relentless again.

  It wasn’t even thirty minutes into his three-hour driving stint and he had taken the high performance BMW from sixteenth place to fifth. The driving skill was learned, perfected, repeated. His gift was the ability to see his manoeuvre before he executed it. Like a driving sixth sense; a subconscious guide picking his moves ahead of time.

  Brake – brake – brake. Change down. Turn in. Clip the apex. Power – power – power. Change up. Power. Change again. Power – power. Take him on the inside. Power – power. Beat him to the corner. Change down. Power – power – power.

  A voice crackled over the radio headset built into Dom’s helmet. “You’ve taken fourth place. Keep it up.”

  Dom didn’t reply. His mind was supplying him with the next set of instructions for the next series of bends.

  While his body was reacting to the mantra running through his conscious mind, he spied the next car. A Porsche, the same Porsche with the driver that had been eyeing Dom on the grid.

  Dom knew he was giving away fifty brake horse power and about thirty kilos, which didn’t mean much in the real world, but made a significant difference when cars were fighting for a second here and a half second there. Taking third place would be all about driver skill and nerve.

  He breathed, and began to push the car forward.

  Chapter 41

  The Tall Man didn’t think of himself as ‘the bad guy.’ Many of those who moved within the same circles overplayed the ‘bad guy’ role. To appear ruthless, heartless and vicious was part of the game. It was part of the Tall Man’s world, but not the be-all and end-all. He thought of himself as a cut above the rest of the pack. He was stepping up into the big leagues to play with the big boys.

  One more job and he would be able to step away from the lifestyle that had got him so much; just one more and then step away.

  Was it that easy?

  Not when the next big criminal gang was nipping at your heels. They would be using vicious, unlicensed, dangerous dogs to do the biting and they didn’t play by the rules.

  The Tall Man knew this. He was prepared for all eventualities and kept his circle small. Trust had to be earned,
it was not given freely. He kept his finger on the beating pulse of his organisation; he knew that some things were not as they seemed.

  He had taken a gamble with a few of the people he had let into his organisation and they were less than trustworthy. Somehow, the tight circle he habitually kept had been bleeding information to his nearest rivals. The risk he’d taken in committing to the job he had planned was already significant, and with another gang trying to crash the party, he could be overextended. Big deals, big plans could be derailed when you had traitors in your midst. And if they collapsed, they could take your whole organisation with them, like a run on a bank, but with more blood.

  The Tall Man wasn’t going to let that happen.

  He’d let certain information slip to a few key players and followed the trail. He’d discovered the fault-lines of betrayal. What was almost more, he’d found out how lax and greedy his people had become.

  He always maintained that he wasn’t ‘the bad guy.’

  Maybe now was the time to start.

  Chapter 42

  As much as he loved to drive, Dom was losing his love for the vehicle in which he had spent the last two and half hours of his life. He had just drained the last of his water supply, fed from a bottle via a pipe in his helmet, and he could feel the effects of dehydration taking their toll on his driving ability. The sharpness and accuracy with which he had been hitting the apexes had started to falter with each corner. Lap times had started to drop, initially by a tenth of a second or so, but his last reported time was three full seconds short of his average. Drivers behind him would be noticing, judging their moments to challenge, to take him, to show him he was out of his league.

  With only thirty minutes left of his stint behind the wheel, Dom wanted to finish strong, not weak.

  He currently held second place, a position he’d fought for and won an hour or so earlier. The only car he needed to beat was the Porsche. Dom had been in the lead at one point, but only because his nemesis had pitted for fuel. Two laps later, the high-performance BMW had been running on air, forcing Dom to pit and giving the advantage back to the Porsche and its driver.

  With a silent countdown running on his time in the urine-soaked driver’s seat, he caught sight of his target vehicle rounding the bend after the quarter mile straight that he’d just entered.

  Power – power – power. Change up. Power – power. Cut inside.

  Dom skilfully slipped through the smallest of gaps left by a Subaru Impreza he had lapped at least eight times. He reluctantly dabbed the brakes and changed down for the turn.

  Then he had a change of heart.

  He released the brake, hammering down on the accelerator and throwing the car into opposite lock, drifting the bend. It was an illegal move in the race but the bend was empty of opponents. Dom was able to keep maximum revs as he rounded the curve, letting the camber straighten his German-made, computer-assisted chariot and powering hard onto the short straight. The bend released him at maximum power, launching him toward the next curve.

  “Nice move.” Richards’ voice crackled in the headset. “But keep the drifting to a minimum. We want the car back in one piece.”

  “Ok,” was as much as Dom dared to say. He was too busy negotiating a left-hand chicane while overtaking a Nissan 350Z.

  “That fucker in the Porsche you’ve been chasing is having a mare of a lap. He’s just fucked up a bend and mistimed an overtake. If you’re gonna take him, now is the time.”

  “Gotcha!”

  Sure enough, as Dom hammered his charge onto the long straight at the starting grid, he could see the elongated rear fin of his rival’s car.

  Power – power. Change up. Power – power – power. Change up.

  The humid cockpit of the Beemer came alive. Dom’s vision narrowed once more. He could see the bend. He could see the manoeuvre. He could see the overtake.

  “That’s your fastest second half-lap all race. Take him!” The words from his headset pushed him on.

  Dom dropped the BMW into the Porsche’s slipstream, waiting for a gap.

  The Porsche twitched and weaved, trying to distract the driver in its rear-view mirror.

  As they approached the bend, Dom dropped a gear and powered into the gap left on the inside. It was a risky move. He felt confident. He had the edge.

  In his foresight, he may have seen the bend; the manoeuvre; the overtake. What he hadn’t seen was a different BMW shedding a wheel and stopping dead in the middle of the track.

  Tyres screeched.

  Brake lights glowed.

  Thin metal panels crumpled.

  Dom’s BMW clipped the stricken vehicle, flipping over sideways. There was air between the tarmac and German car. Too much air.

  Too much air and too much speed, the car was travelling in a way it was not designed for.

  The race was over.

  Chapter 43

  There was a stagger to his walk as the Boss made his way out of the pub. There was disappointment; disappointment because he wasn’t able to take full advantage of the barmaid. He’d managed to corner the petite woman when she took a crate of empty bottles out to the walled yard at the back of the premises. She’d protested. She’d fought. She’d even screamed. The Boss still managed to force his hand into her over-tight hipster jeans and felt some of the promise of her. But those fucking jeans were too tight and had stopped him getting as far as he wanted, giving her a moment to worm out of his grip.

  Oh well. Maybe next time.

  The Boss stood at the kerb waiting for his ride. He checked his phone. There were no messages since had Wade texted to say they were on their way.

  Pocketing the mobile, the Boss lifted a hand to his face, sniffing the fingers he had dug into the young barmaid’s vagina. Her sweet musk dancing in his nose, bubbling into his blood. Making him hard as a fucking rock.

  “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” The voice was angry but it sounded like a voice not used to anger.

  The Boss turned. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Yes, I’m talking to you.” A tall, skinny young man dressed in black trousers and a blue shirt was pointing a finger at him.

  “Fuck off, sonny, or you’ll regret pointing that finger at me.” The Boss’ face was neutral for the moment.

  “No, you’re going to regret assaulting my barmaid. I’ve called the police, so-” The man was cut off in mid-sentence.

  A conscience-free hand gripping the testicles was an infallible attention-getter.

  “I told you to fuck off, so fuck off, or I’m gonna rip your balls off and feed them to you. Do you get me?” The words were spoken in no more than a whisper, but they drilled home how comfortable the Boss was in this situation.

  “O… K…” It was as much as the young man could muster while fighting back tears of pain and fear.

  The Boss released his grip, but not before thrusting his forehead into the centre of the man’s face, smashing the bridge of the nose.

  As though timed to perfection, the white Transit van driven by Gibbo pulled up.

  “Everything alright, Boss?” Wade said through the open window from the passenger seat.

  “Never better.” The Boss grinned as he climbed in next to Wade.

  The van pulled away, leaving the stricken bar manager on the pavement, the Boss casting an eye into the payload area of the van.

  A figure tied at the wrists and ankles with a cloth bag over its head, laid on the dirty wooden floor.

  “What next?” Wade asked.

  “With a little help from our friend there – it’s time to get paid.”

  Chapter 44

  There is no feeling worse. Nothing comes close to the overwhelming sensation of pure panic when a situation is completely beyond control. The only calculable factors were speed and gravity, the rest was in the hands of fortune – good and bad.

  Dom was subject to both.

  The rolling of the BMW had taken an eternity to halt; or seven seconds according to the race
camera. Sixty metres of track and grass; five complete rolls, and the utter carnage of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds worth of German sports car. Dom was lucky to walk away, although he hadn’t emerged completely unscathed.

  The ambulance crew had insisted that he go to hospital for X-rays. He refused to go. His ribs were sore, possibly broken, but there was still work to do. And that involved driving.

  Sitting on a plastic chair, nursing a headache and a paper cup half-filled with tepid coffee, Dom gazed at the ruined vehicle. Muddy grass hung from the broken headlights, the roof was crumpled at the corners, and a wheel was missing. If it hadn’t been for the roll-cage, Dom would have been in need of a coffin.

  Or a ladle.

  His focus fell to the floor, though whether it was the gravity of his good fortune or the burden of his own personal disappointment, he didn’t really know. One of the two felt heavy on his soul; too heavy to let him raise his eyes from the oil-splattered concrete.

  Maybe it was the sound of roaring engines, or it could have been the cacophony of his own mangled thoughts, but he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps.

  Dom’s forlorn gaze was interrupted by a pair of dull black leather high-heeled boots.

  His eyes tracked up the shapely legs in figure-hugging blue jeans to a tight white tee emblazoned with the words Team Mach Tech.

  “Are you ok?”

  “I’m awesome,” he replied.

  “Stupid question, eh?” Georgia asked with a cautious look in her eyes.

  “I don’t think there are questions that wouldn’t seem stupid under the circumstances.”

  She carefully walked closer and placed herself down in the vacant plastic chair beside him.

  “Is anything broken?” she asked with her tongue firmly in her cheek.

  “My pride; my confidence; the car; maybe a rib or two - too many things to list, really.” He appreciated her effort and gave her the eye contact she wanted, with a smile.

  “At least your sense of humour is intact.” She placed a hand on his knee for comfort.