Lying Beside You (Cyrus Haven #3)(76)

I watch quietly, keeping my opinions to myself. Like everybody else, I want to know what Paulie was doing in the Little Drummer when Daniela Linares disappeared, but this isn’t the way to arrest him. He knew Maya, but there is no evidence he had any contact with Daniela. And his past acts of violence and criminal behaviour have been spontaneous or self-serving – brawls in pub car-parks, or nicking stuff from freight yards and warehouses.

Daniela’s abduction bothers me. If the killer is a sexual psychopath, he will be using these women to feed his fantasies, adding light and shade to events that he has already vividly imagined. In normal circumstances, Maya’s death should have been enough to keep him satisfied for weeks, or months, but instead he has taken a new victim within days. That suggests a rapid escalation, or a different motive.

Hoyle is communicating with officers on the track via a two-way radio, but there must be two hundred people in the starting area and pit lanes. I hear someone shout and see a scuffle break out. People are scattering. Paulie Brennan is dressed in a racing suit, carrying a helmet. He jumps into a hatchback with a painted number on the door. A detective reaches through the driver’s window and grabs the steering wheel, but the car accelerates along the pit lane, scattering the crowd, including a safety officer, who tumbles across the bonnet and bounces to his feet.

The Ford Focus accelerates into the straight, forcing another driver to brake hard and swerve out of the way. Paulie gets to the first corner, and steers across the apron, bottoming out and creating a shower of sparks.

Hoyle is yelling into the two-way, demanding the track be cleared. Organisers begin waving other drivers into the pit lane, until only Paulie remains on the track. The circuit is two miles long with a series of corners and chicanes, as well as two hairpin bends, where cars must slow down. This is where police and marshals gather, waving a red flag, signalling for Paulie to pull over. He ignores them and flashes past, grinning beneath his helmet. Raising his middle finger.

A police car pulls onto the track, giving chase, but that only seems to encourage Paulie. Now it’s become a race. He roars along the straights, before braking hard, changing down through the gears, and steering the hatchback through each corner. Pedal down. More speed. Another circuit.

Safety cars are sent out, to try to slow him down, but Paulie toys with them, weaving back and forth, before ducking inside them under brakes.

‘Don’t chase him. You’re making this a contest,’ I tell Lenny. ‘Let him get bored or run out of fuel.’

She looks at me helplessly. She’s not in charge.

Paulie’s hatchback roars past us again. Hoyle is arguing with the organisers, wanting them to deploy road spikes, but that’s not something they have at racetracks.

From my vantage point, I watch five cars being positioned across the tarmac, bumper to bumper. This is madness. They should be setting up the roadblock at the slowest part of the circuit, not the fastest corner.

Someone holds up a sign, warning Paulie to slow down as he weaves through a snaking chicane, both hands on the wheel, arms straight, eyes on the road. He’s in his element, driving towards a chequered flag. When he reaches the finishing straight, he accelerates, changing up through the gears. Hoyle is mid-track, with his arms raised, waving two red flags.

Taking a sharp line through the next corner, the hatchback bounces on the apron and fishtails as Paulie wrestles for control. At that moment, I imagine him looking up and seeing the cars ahead of him, straddling the track. He doesn’t slow down. He wrenches the wheel and steers towards the advertising hoardings that decorate the fences. He thinks there might be enough space between the last car and the safety railings. He’s wrong. I see a puff of smoke rise from the tarmac as he finally hits his brakes, but it’s too late. Rubber squeals and the car slews sideways. People are running for cover.

The crash seems to happen in slow motion, the crunch of metal on metal, and the final image of Paulie, raising his hands as the airbag explodes into his face and his head snaps forward and then back and the windscreen explodes around him, and the track becomes a junkyard.

Track marshals are on the scene within seconds, spraying fire retardant foam onto the spilled fuel. Paramedics come moments later, but there is no saving Paulie, whose body is trapped in the twisted metal.

Hoyle is immediately on the phone to the chief constable. I can hear him using phrases like ‘suicide by cop’ and ‘death wish’, making out that Paulie Brennan chose to die rather than being questioned by police.

‘We killed him,’ I say to Lenny.

‘He made his own choices.’

‘He was playing a game.’

‘He was resisting arrest.’

I know we’re not going to agree. The police will close ranks, singing off the same song-sheet, and come the inquest a coroner will decide on death by misadventure. Another Brennan dead. A skid mark removed from the world as easily as the oil and foam being hosed off the track.

Even if Paulie was involved in abducting Daniela Linares, where does it leave us now? Where does it leave her?

‘We follow the evidence,’ says Lenny. ‘We track her phone. We study the CCTV cameras. We identify the car. We investigate.’

I wish I could share her confidence, but I keep remembering the bondage marks on Maya Kirk’s body, the rope corset designed to subjugate and humiliate. I picture Daniela similarly bound and gagged. Waiting for his return. Terrified he will. More terrified he won’t.