The Race (12 page)

Then I saw Tash. She was lying on her side in the grass, her long feet in their tatty hi-tops pointed uselessly towards the track. Someone was kneeling beside her, one of the track jerries.

Somewhere in another world Tou-le-Mar was crossing the finish line. Angela Kiwit glanced up at the time clock then fell to her knees. Melrose put on a late spurt to snatch a surprise second from Betty Talbot. Chaqu’un and the Empress brought up the rear.

“He’s been shot,” Del cried, and he really was crying, though I don’t think he knew it, hard little splinter-tears, forcing themselves out of his eyes like slivers of light. His face was ghastly, pale with an emotion I could not identify, fury and terror crumpled together like shredded paper. “They’ve killed him, Jen, those bastards.”

Then he was shoving past the barrier and on to the track and so was I. I was horrified by the thought of what I might see, but I knew I couldn’t let my brother face it alone.

The track was in chaos. There were track jerries everywhere, some standing in a line with their arms linked trying to keep back the gawkers, others huddled together in a group around the fallen Limlasker. Off to one side I could see two medics lifting Tash on to a stretcher. From what I could make out she was awake, beginning to regain consciousness anyway. I wondered where Brit was, if anyone had called her. She didn’t usually come to races, it wasn’t her thing.

The overhead TV screens had all gone dark.

Del dashed across the track to where Lim was lying. One of the jerries stepped forward to try and restrain him but Del just pushed him aside without a word. The man staggered and almost went flying. Hot colour was rising in his cheeks and I saw him reach for his tazer. I shot out a hand and grabbed his arm.

“Don’t,” I said. “He’s the dog’s owner.” My head was swimming. Inside my mind my words seemed unreal, lines from a soap script. They must have made sense to the jerry though, because he let us go past. I hurried to where Del was – on his knees in the dirt beside Limlasker. There was someone else there too, one of the blue-coated veterinarians who normally spend most of a race day hanging out in the drinks tent. He had a stethoscope pressed to Lim’s chest.

As I came to a standstill beside Del, the vet shook his head.

“The dog’s dead, I’m afraid,” he said. “A great pity.” He was stroking Lim’s sides and back, patting his fur with neat, swift touches, and I wondered if I’d misunderstood somehow, if Lim was alive after all and the vet was trying to bring him round. But then the vet suddenly stopped what he was doing and straightened up.

“There,” he said. He was holding something between his fingers, something that glimmered. “It went in at the belly. Whoever managed a shot like that was no amateur, I can tell you.” He held the thing up to the light, a tiny shard of plastic, or perhaps glass, it was hard to tell just by looking. Whatever it was, the vet was saying it had killed Limlasker. I was still finding it all but impossible to grasp what had happened.

My throat filled up with tears.

“We’ll initiate an investigation, of course,” the vet was saying. He opened his bag and took out a small plastic screw-topped container, the kind of thing normally used for storing medicines. He undid the lid and dropped the plastic dart inside. “I really am very sorry,” he said. He started to walk away then, but Del grabbed his arm.

“Hold it right there,” he bellowed. “I don’t even know your name.”

The man started backwards in Del’s grip. He looked wary, but not scared, and I guessed he’d had to deal with situations like this before.

“Ezra Forrest,” he said. He took what looked like a business card from the top pocket of his blue overall and handed it to Del. “We should have the results for you by Monday. If you’ve not heard from us by three o’clock, please feel free to call.”

Monday, I thought. I had the feeling I was supposed to be doing something on Monday, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what it was. Then I remembered that Monday was the day of the party Claudia was meant to be throwing for Lumey’s homecoming.

Del stood holding the veterinarian’s business card and saying nothing. There was a bewildered look on his face, as if he was struggling to remember where he was, and there was something in the sight of him that broke me in two.

I knew a part of my brother had died with Limlasker, that the person I had known was gone for good.

~*~

The shard of high-density Perspex the vet removed from Limlasker’s dead body was soon identified as a dart from a Wiskop gun. Lightweight and easily concealed, the Wiskop had long been the weapon of choice for many mercenaries, insurgents and contract killers, and whoever fired the fatal shot, as the vet had suggested, was most likely a professional – Lim had been travelling at close to seventy miles an hour when the dart went in.

The Wiskop fires on compressed air, which makes it virtually soundless. The poison contained in the dart – a nerve agent – acts more or less instantaneously.

Tash was okay. At the time the attack happened she was so wired into Lim’s thoughts, so much a part of him that the suddenness of his death gave her a kind of mental whiplash. There was no lasting injury though, and three months after the Delawarr she started regular training with Clearview Princess. She never talked about what happened to Limlasker but then she never talked that much anyway. She told Del she didn’t want to compete in any races for a year.

“I need some time and so does Princess,” she said. Del agreed on the spot.

~*~

We never discovered who fired the shot or who had hired them. Kris Kruger sent Tash flowers when she was in the hospital. Some months later – after Brit left, that was – they started dating.

~*~

The track jerries removed Lim’s body from the track and took it away. One of them gave me a number I could call to reclaim it after the post mortem. The cops took a note of our names and addresses and then buggered off. Del kept asking me where Tash was, and I kept telling him she’d been taken to the meds tent. He was clearly in shock, which made me feel panicky, because losing it was not an option. We had things to do.

“Listen, Del,” I said. “I think we’d better ring Em.”

“What the hell for?” Del said. He sounded as if he’d been drugged.

“The money, Del, remember? We have to get the money by Monday.” I spoke as gently as I could, but I felt like shaking him. My brother was in deep trouble, the deepest. Fortunately we still had an escape route. Or so I thought at the time.

Del’s face seemed to darken. His expression changed from baffled to enraged. “I’m not taking coin from that bastard.”

“If you have any other suggestions to make then now would be a good time to share them.”

He stared at me speechlessly for several seconds and then waved his hand in front of his face as if batting away a fly. Stuff it, he was saying. Do what you want, see if I care. Go to the devil.

It took us ages to get away from the ground. The cops were everywhere by then, pulling people over, asking their questions, conducting random searches for weapons. Every time we got through one lot we seemed to come face to face with another. Fat lot of good they did, any of them. It was almost as bad outside the stadium – great crowds of people scurrying around like headless chickens, tweeting and snapping photos, speculating noisily about the identity and current whereabouts of the gunman. The bookies were besieged – no bets could be paid out until the track stewards were able to confirm that the race result would be allowed to stand, and that didn’t look like happening any time soon. There were journos everywhere too, suddenly. It was total chaos.

Del and I ended up at a cafe just around the corner from the Ryelands, a place I remembered from when I worked there and where some of us liked to go for a late evening snack when we finished our shift. I sat Del down at a corner table and fetched him a coffee, then went back outside to call Em. The signal was better outside. Also I didn’t fancy anyone eavesdropping.

Em answered on the second ring.

“Jen,” he said. I could tell from the tone of his voice that he already knew – most likely he’d seen the whole thing on TV.

“Hi, Em,” I said, just that, and then I started to cry, in great gutsy sobs too, like my heart was breaking. I hadn’t cried like that since Ali Kuzman told me it was over between us. All I can remember thinking was that I hoped my tears wouldn’t leak into the phone and fuck with the workings. It’s funny, the things that come into your head at a time like that. Em didn’t say a word – just let me cry until I was out of tears. We were able to talk after that. I was feeling a lot better, the way you always do after a good howling fit. I started telling Em he would need to get the money to Del the moment he could because the people who were holding Lumey would more than likely insist on being paid in cash. Del would have to draw it out of the bank in several chunks or it would look suspicious.

Em brought me up short.

“Everything’s in hand, Jen,” he said. “The money, I mean. Can you get Del to call me?”

“He’ll call you,” I said. I promised I’d ring him back later. I ended the call and went back into the cafe. Del was on the phone. As I approached the table he flung down his handset. It collided with his coffee cup with a dense little thud. A dark dribble of coffee began to trickle down from the rim towards the surface of the table.

“Who was that?” I said.

Del glared at me as if I’d said something obscene.

“Crace,” he said.

“Who’s Crace?”

“He’s the guy who’s arranging the handover, who do you think?”

“Did you tell him we’ve got the money?”

“Yes, Jen, I told him we’ve got the money. But it’s no fucking good.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“What I mean is they’ve reneged on the deal. Lumey’s gone.”

He stood up from the table, shoving it forward and scraping his chair loudly against the tiles. The coffee cup tipped over. Brown liquid coursed across the Formica and cascaded on to the floor in a frothy stream. Del looked at me as if I were vermin then pushed past me and headed for the door. The coffee cup rolled in a slow arc then fell off the table and smashed. I stood still where I was, only dimly aware that people were staring at me. I saw Del walk past along the pavement outside and then out of sight.

As I turned to go after him I noticed he’d left his mobile behind on the table. I picked it up, and after a moment’s consideration I pressed the redial key. There was the familiar hum and click as it tried to connect, then an automated voice told me that the number I was calling was no longer available.

~*~

It was difficult to know what to do. I stood outside on the street, trying to make sense of what had happened. People swept by in their dozens, finally leaving the area of the race ground in search of food, or friends, or the quickest way home. Del’s words rang in my head, that Lumey was gone. I still didn’t understand what he meant, and now he was gone, too. In the end I did the only thing I could think of, and rang Em again. He picked up at once. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for my call.

I told him what I knew, which wasn’t much.

“Go home, Jen,” he said, when I’d finished. “Leave Del to me. I’ll call him right now.”

I suddenly felt as if I might start crying again. “But I can’t just leave him,” I said. “I should do something.”

“We can’t do anything until we know what’s going on. I’ll call him and try to find out. I’ll ring you back as soon as I know what the situation is.”

“You can’t call him, though. He left his phone behind. I’ve got it here.”

“Then I’ll try his work mobile, or the house number. I’ll find him, Jen, don’t worry.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes, I promise. Please go home. I’ll feel easier in my mind if I know where you are.”

In the end I agreed, not because I thought it was the right thing to do necessarily, but because I was exhausted and upset and at the end of my rope. I kept going over everything in my mind, wondering how many other details Del had neglected to tell me, how much of his original story had even been true. Nothing felt real any more. All I knew was that I’d been a fool to go along with my crazy brother’s so-called plan.

If I’d said no at the start, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this mess now. I couldn’t help thinking that it – whatever it was – was somehow my fault.

Finally I was home. I made myself some supper and slumped in front of the television, watching an idiotic sitcom and waiting for something to happen. I was pleased to be inside my own apartment, relieved and comforted by the sight of familiar objects, the smell of food, the locked front door. My relief made me feel guilty but I could not let go of it.

Del’s mobile wouldn’t stop ringing. Each time it went off I jumped, thinking it might be a call from the mysterious Crace, but the display screen told me the various callers were all people I knew. Gra Rayner must have phoned a dozen times at least. There were also calls from Del’s deputy Lars Andersen, Lars’s wife Leah, Hellin Tresow. I didn’t pick up. It was Del’s job to talk to them, not mine. What was I supposed to tell them, anyway? I had no idea.

At around eleven o’clock Em called me on the landline. He told me he’d been trying to get hold of Del all evening but with no success.

~*~

I went to bed soon after that. I stayed fully clothed, partly because I couldn’t be bothered to undress but also because I kept expecting Del to turn up, or the police, and I didn’t want to be caught half naked when they did. Nobody came, though. I dozed on and off for a couple of hours then showered and changed. It was beginning to get light again. I thought of calling Em, but I didn’t want to wake him, and the idea of ringing Del made me feel afraid. It sounds stupid now I know, but I kept having this terrible fear that they were both dead, Del and Claudia I mean, that Del had murdered Claudia and then killed himself.

In the end the only choice left to me was to get myself over to Del’s place and find out. I was in a right state by then, and I reckoned that whatever I found when I got there, nothing could be as bad as the things I was imagining.