Quick (12 page)

Billy abandoned the golf cart because it was too slow and now he’s running as fast as he can, almost too fast, his steps unbalanced as one hand steadies the wooden mask on his face and the other holds the Taylor Made five iron he borrowed from the old couple.

Schumacher is just ten metres away, but he’s on the motorcycle and its engine is running.

Seven metres away.

The motorcycle’s rear tyre spins on the slick grass—then grips and launches the bike forward.

Three metres away.

Schumacher is getting away.

After all this he’s bloody getting away!

Billy dives, swings the five iron —

Wham.
It slams into the spokes of the motorcycle’s rear wheel —

The club snaps with a whip-crack and the bike wobbles, keels over and disappears from view. Billy thump-skids across a grassy knoll.

Where did it go?

Billy scrambles to his feet and looks over the edge of the knoll into a kidney-shaped bunker. Schumacher lies in the sand with his left leg caught beneath the motorcycle.

I have you now.

Billy doesn’t hesitate. He leaps into the bunker and lands beside the tangle of man and machine. The mask rubs on his nose but he doesn’t care. This is almost too easy.

Almost.

Schumacher swings an arm and releases a handful of sand straight at Billy’s devil mask and through the eyeholes. Momentarily blinded, Billy pushes a hand under the mask, furiously rubs away the grit.

He clears it as Schumacher pushes the bike off his leg, draws a pistol from a calf holster and swing it towards the Australian —

Thwump.
Billy kicks the weapon so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t sever the other man’s hand from his wrist. The gun rockets over the top of the bunker and disappears.

Schumacher scrambles to his feet, legs pumping hard to find purchase in the sand. Billy lunges for him—and misses, watches him clamber out of the bunker and sprint towards, he is sure, that pistol. The Australian wrenches himself to his feet, finds the edge of the bunker and runs after him.

~ * ~

Who the hell is this guy? Why did he attack me? And what’s the deal with that mask?

None of that actually matters. Schumacher just needs to find the gun, shoot him and be done with it. He has a Swiss Army knife in his pocket as a fallback but the pistol is what he needs. He sprints up a slight incline, reaches the top and looks for the weapon.

‘Damn.’ There’s a small lake in front of him. Actually it’s a water hazard, but it may as well be an ocean as far as finding his pistol is concerned. It could be anywhere in the water —

There it is.
Fifteen metres away, on the grass at the very edge of the waterline. He sprints towards it, ten metres, five metres away, bends to pick it up —

Crunch.
Jesus H! It feels like he’s been hit by a train. He gets a hand on the weapon but it’s immediately knocked free as he’s driven into the water hazard by the masked man.

He swings his left elbow at the guy. Unfortunately his funny bone connects with a sharp edge of the mask and he instantly feels seasick. Then his head is dragged under the surface and the cool water on his face snaps him out of it.

~ * ~

If he can’t swim then why, exactly, did Billy decide to tackle this guy into a large body of water of unknown depth? He can only put it down to being overzealous.

Schumacher twists out of his grip and slips away.
Bugger.
Billy’s furious, but it doesn’t last long. It’s immediately replaced by survival instinct. He thrashes his arms and legs, hopes that will keep him afloat. It doesn’t. He sinks like a stone and wishes he’d spent one
fewer
days driving at the racetrack and one
actual
day learning to swim.

His head goes under.

This is it, baby, this is it.

He’s not going to solve the case on the first day, he’s going to
drown
while failing to solve it —

His feet touch the muddy bottom. He pulls his body upright and stands. The water barely reaches his waist.

What the hell?

He turns, sees Schumacher sprint up the fairway. He’s slow, his clothes and shoes heavy with water. Billy wades across to the edge of the water hazard, sloshes out and chases him.

~ * ~

Schumacher sprints as fast as he can in his wet clothes, which isn’t very. He heads up the fairway and passes the bunker. He doesn’t bother trying to retrieve the motorcycle. He’d never get it out of the sand before the guy in the mask reached him. No, Schumacher has another form of transport in mind for his getaway.

~ * ~

Billy watches Schumacher head towards the golf cart.

He’s going to drive that bloody thing out of here.

The Australian’s pretty sure he can run as fast as the cart, but with that head start, which is about twenty metres, he’s not sure he’ll be able to catch it.

~ * ~

The golf cart is close but it’s taking Schumacher an eon to reach. It feels like he’s running up and down on the spot in these wet clothes. He can hear the masked guy’s footsteps on the grass behind him and they’re getting louder.

Schumacher reaches the cart, slides in and stomps on the accelerator. The golf cart jolts forward with a high-pitched whine, the instant torque of the electric engine propelling it to its twenty-four-kilometre-an-hour top speed in seconds. It’s not fast, but it’s fast enough. There’s no way the masked guy will catch him in it. Schumacher glances back to check how far away he is.

The gruesome red mask is
right there,
the guy only a metre from grabbing the cart.
I got you now.

The golf cart is right there. Billy is going to get this done on his first day after all. His legs and back, every part of his body, screams for him to stop but he pushes the pain from his mind and ups his pace one last time, reaches out, extends his arm as far as it will go, touches the back of the cart, grabs hold of it.

Schumacher turns the steering wheel and the cart is yanked from the Australian’s grasp. Billy lunges at it again, misses, tries once more, gets his hand on it, drags himself on.

Schumacher turns and throws a fist.

Oof.
It hits Billy in the gut. As it connects he glimpses something on Schumacher’s forearm. A small tattoo. Billy’s knocked backwards but just keeps hold of the cart.

A flash of sunlight from the right side of the fairway. Billy’s eyes flick to it. It’s a reflection off a car that punches through the tree line and speeds towards the cart.

It’s Claude’s Hyundai.

~ * ~

‘Oh
merde!’
Claude realises the golf cart is dead ahead. He stomps on the brakes but the Hyundai’s tyres don’t grip the fairway’s closely cut grass and it skids. He tries to steer but it makes no difference to the vehicle’s trajectory. He really hopes it will stop in time.

Time slows.

The Frenchman sees two people onboard the golf cart. The one wearing a red helmet is one of the Three Champions. The other, who is wearing some kind of scary ceremonial mask, he is also sure, is the Australian. The Frenchman is impressed. He was a long way behind Claude on the gravel road but now he’s ahead of him. He’s got to hand it to the kid, he’s extremely good at the ‘hot pursuit’ thing. But why is he wearing the mask? Then Claude remembers he had said something about making sure they covered their faces, which, now he thinks about it, is a good idea. Where his partner was able to procure a mask at such short notice Claude can only imagine.

Time speeds up.

The Hyundai continues to skid towards the golf cart and Claude realises it’s not going to stop in time.

Damn, I really am rusty.

~ * ~

Bam.

The Hyundai hits the golf cart side on and catapults the electric vehicle into the sky. Billy holds on for dear life, then realises that’s probably not such a good idea as the cart turns over in midair. He releases it and drops to the ground.

‘Uuh!’ He hits the grass with a sharp exhalation of breath then watches the golf cart land on its side, bounce once and disappear into the overgrown thicket that lines the edge of the fairway.

Billy turns to see the Hyundai skid across the grass towards him, his head in line with the wrecked radiator out of which whistles a jet of steam. He raises a hand in a vain attempt to stop the vehicle —

It slides to a halt with his palm touching the front bumper. Billy scrambles to his feet and glares at the Frenchman behind the steering wheel, his voice a low, furious whispered hiss: ‘What the hell are you
doing
man? I bloody had him!’

‘The grass was slippery.’

‘It’s
grass.
It’s
always
slippery when you’re braking from a
hundred kilometres an hour.’’
Billy points at Claude’s face. ‘And cover your bloody mug, they can’t know what we look like.’

The Australian turns, scans the fairway behind him, searches for Schumacher’s pistol, can’t see it anywhere. He needs a weapon and he needs it now.

‘What are you looking for?’

Billy glances at the Frenchman sheepishly, doesn’t want to tell him but realises he must. ‘I need a gun. I left mine back at the track.’

Claude reaches down to his right ankle, pulls an item from the holster strapped there and passes it to the Australian. ‘Use this.’

Billy studies the X26c Taser unhappily. ‘You carry
two
of these things?’

‘Instead of being critical I’d prefer you just thanked me and went on your way.’

Billy takes a moment then nods. ‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’ It’s extremely hard for him to say. To end the moment as quickly as possible he pivots towards the thicket, taser raised, and scans the tangled mass of foliage. It’s dark and foreboding. He can see no sign of the golf cart.

The Frenchman exits the car and falls in beside him. He has his taser in hand and a handkerchief tied over his nose and mouth.

Billy sees it and whispers: ‘You look like the cowboy from the Village People.’

Claude whispers too: ‘Thank you.’

‘Not a compliment.’

Claude’s confused. ‘The Village People were created by Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘They’re regarded as national treasures in my country —’

‘Omigod, would you concentrate on what we’re doing please?’

‘You were the one who bought it up.’

A large bush shakes to the left two metres away. They swivel towards it. Finger tight on the taser’s trigger, Billy grins. ‘I got you now you mutha —’

The plant explodes in flurry of movement—and a red squirrel leaps out and bounds across the fairway.

‘Jeezus!’ Startled, Billy watches it disappear up a tree. ‘Bastard.’ He takes a breath. ‘Man.’ Weapon up, he takes a step into the thicket, then another, scans the foliage—and sees the rear of the golf cart. It’s tipped on its side and empty. He surveys the brush around it, notices a two-metre-high chain-link fence behind the thicket. The chain-link has been pulled away from the fence post, allowing access to a gravel roadway on the other side.

‘Bugger!’

The Frenchman sees it to. ‘He slipped through the fence.’

‘We gotta go. He’s on the move —’

‘Drop your weapons down! Hands up to the air!’ It’s English as a second language but the message is clear.

Billy turns, sees the Frenchman drop his taser then raise his hands as a trio of Malay police officers sprint across the fairway towards them, pistols raised.

‘We’re from Interpol and in pursuit of a fugitive.’

‘Drop your weapons down! Hands up to the air!’

The Australian takes a moment then complies, furious.

~ * ~

It takes a good fifteen minutes to explain to the head of the local police department who they are and what they’re doing. Unfortunately by then Schumacher is long gone, presumedly to meet up with his Three Champion mates Hunt and Senna.

After Billy and Claude get the all clear from the Malaysian coppers Billy replaces the devil mask on the wall of the clubhouse and apologises to the club president for driving the dirt bike through the building. He also says sorry to the old couple for hijacking the golf cart and destroying their five iron. He buys them a new one at the pro shop, where he also purchases a polo shirt to replace the one he gave the old man for the bike. Claude pays for the damage to the cart with his Interpol credit card, which also pays for the insurance excess on the damage to the Hyundai when it’s replaced by the rental company. Overall it’s a pretty expensive afternoon.

On the upside, the officer in charge of the robbery’s investigation pledges to share anything that might come up during his investigation, including information regarding fingerprints lifted from the parachute, the motorbike or the combination lock. He even allows Billy and Claude to visit the jewellery trader whose office was robbed at Petronas Towers. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that, as usual, the Three Champions have not left any clues.