The Way to Dusty Death Read Free

less than 180 miles an hour and who in the fraction of the second available to him had never even the most remote shadow of a chance to take the only braking or avoiding action that could have saved him.
    At the moment of impact, Jethou’s front wheel struck squarely into the side of Harlow’s front wheel. For Harlow, the consequences of the collision were, in all conscience, serious enough for it sent his car into an uncontrollable spin, but for Jethou they were disastrous. Even above the cacophonous clamour of engines under maximum revolutions and the screeching of locked tyres on the tarmac, the bursting of Jethou’s front tyre was heard as a rifle shot and from that instant Jethou was a dead man. His Ferrari, wholly out of control and now no more than a mindless mechanical monster bent on its own destruction, smashed into and caromed off the nearside safety barrier and, already belching gouts of red flame and black oily smoke, careered wildly across the track to strike the far side barrier, rear end first, at a speed of still over a hundred miles an hour. The Ferrari, spinning wildly, slid down the track for about two hundred yards, turned over twice and came to rest on all four wrecked wheels, Jethou still trapped in the cockpit but even then almost certainly dead. It was then that the red flames turned to white.
    That Harlow had been directly responsible for Jethou’s death was beyond dispute but Harlow, with eleven Grand Prix wins behind him in seventeen months was, by definition and on his record, the best driver in the world and one simply does not indict the best driver in the world. It is not the done thing. The whole tragic affair was attributed to the race-track equivalent of an act of God and the curtain was discreetly lowered to indicate the end of the act.

CHAPTER TWO
    The French, even at their most relaxed and unemotional, are little given to hiding their feelings and the packed crowd at Clermont-Ferrand that day, which was notably unrelaxed and highly emotional, was in no mood to depart from their Latin norm. As Harlow, head bowed, trudged rather than walked along the side of the Coronado pits, they became very vocal indeed. Their booing, hissing, cat-calling and just plain shouts of anger, accompanied by much Gallic waving of clenched fists, was as threatening as it was frightening. Not only was it an ugly scene, it was one that looked as if it would only require one single flash-point to trigger off a near riot, to convert their vengeful emotions towards Johnny Harlow into physical action against him and this, it was clear, was the apprehension that was uppermost in the minds of the police, for they moved in close to afford Harlow such protection as he might require. It was equally clear from the expressions on their faces that the police did not relish their task, and from the way they averted their faces from Harlow that they sympathized with their countrymen’s feelings.
    A few paces behind Harlow, flanked by Dunnet and MacAlpine, walked another man who clearly shared the opinions of police and spectators. Angrily twirling his racing helmet by its strap, he was clad in racing overalls identical to those that Harlow was wearing: Nicolo Tracchia was, in fact, the No. 2 driver in the Coronado racing team. Tracchia was almost outrageously handsome, with dark curling hair, a gleaming perfection of teeth that no dentifrice manufacturer would ever dare use as an advertisement and a sun-tan that would have turned a life-guard pale green. That he wasn’t looking particularly happy at that moment was directly attributable to the fact that he was scowling heavily: the legendary Tracchia scowl was a memorable thing of wonder, in constant use and held in differing degrees of respect, awe and downright fear but never ignored. Tracchia had a low opinion of his fellow-man and regarded the majority of people, and this with particular reference to his fellow Grand Prix drivers, as retarded