CHAPTER THREE: DEAD BLOKES & DEFECTIVE COPPERS Part I

Christ, you lot are still here? Thought the human liver in the fridge might've been your limit, but nah, here you are, front-row seats for the next round of madness. You're brave or stupid, probably both. Takes one to know one.

Right. So, Martin had been in one of his moods, days on the couch staring at the ceiling like he was waiting for it to talk back. Blue had given up sitting with him and was sleeping under the kitchen table instead, which tells you how bad it got. Even the dog was bored with it.

I'd learned by now that you don't pull Martin out of a funk. You don't offer him tea, don't ask if he's alright, don't suggest he go for a walk or get some fresh air or any of that rubbish normal people say to each other, you just leave him alone and wait for something to spark him back to life. His brain needed a problem the way an engine needs fuel; without one, it just sat there, cold and dead, burning nothing.

He hadn't had a decent case in weeks, last thing that had come through the door was a bloke from Annerley who thought his neighbour was killing his chickens, Martin solved it in four minutes without leaving his chair — it was a carpet python getting in through a gap in the coop wire — and charged the bloke forty bucks for the privilege, after that nothing, phone didn't ring, visitors stopped coming, even Lestrade hadn't turned up with his usual folder of crime scene photos and his usual expression of a man who'd rather be anywhere else.

Martin was dying on the vine, and a bored Martin was worse than a busy Martin, because at least a busy Martin had something to aim his brain at, bored Martin played the violin at two in the morning and rearranged the blood slides in the kitchen until I couldn't find the sugar.

I was making coffee on a Tuesday morning, trying to navigate around a rack of glass slides that had appeared on the bench overnight, when I heard him sit up on the couch, fast, like a switch had been thrown.

"George." "What?" "Come here."

I walked into the living room carrying my mug; he was sitting upright on the couch, holding a piece of paper, an actual handwritten note on lined paper, folded in thirds, that had been through the mail slot sometime in the early morning.

"Read that," he said, holding it out. I took it and read it aloud:

"Martin. Body at the old Redcliffe Speedway complex off Anzac Ave, blokes setting up for a burnout event found the main building open around 2 am last night, whole place was dead, which is wrong because there's usually cars there on weekends for the meets, patrol went in and found a well-dressed male in the old announcer's box, ID in his pocket says Jack Winters, big-shot from Gold Coast who runs the burnout nationals circuit, No obvious cause of death, Blood on the floor but none of it seems to be his, Some weird shit written on the wall, nobody can work out how he got into the locked section, whole thing doesn't add up, can you get here before noon? Left everything as we found it. Would appreciate your thoughts on this one—Sean."

I looked up from the note. Martin's eyes had changed. That dead, milky stare from the past was gone. In its place was something sharp and hot, like a lighter catching on the first flick.

"Jack Winters," I said, putting the note on the table. "You know who that is?" "Enlighten me," Martin said, already on his feet and pulling on his jacket. "Winters runs Burnout Nationals. Him and his mate Blake Hendi, they're the kings of the scene, every major burnout comp, every touring show, every sponsor deal in the country goes through those two, they basically built the professional circuit from scratch, Summers, Powercruise, interstate tours — Winters and Hendi have their fingers in all of it." "And now one of them is lying dead in an abandoned speedway," Martin said, buttoning his jacket with quick, precise movements. "In a locked building, with someone else's blood on the floor and writing on the wall." He looked at me. "Get your boots on." "You want me to come?" "You know the burnout world, I don't and I might need someone to translate." Five minutes later, we were in a cab heading north toward Redcliffe.

The old speedway sat back from the road behind a chain-link fence topped with rusty barbed wire, place looks like it gave up on itself about fifteen years ago and has been slowly collapsing ever since, weeds pushing through the cracked asphalt of the car park, a faded sign out front — Redcliffe SPEEDWAY — with half the letters missing so it read RED IF PEED AY, which I thought was pretty funny but Martin didn't even glance at it.

Place had history though, you could see it if you knew where to look, old trophies in the front office, visible through the grimy window, faded posters on the walls inside — burnout champions from the nineties and early two-thousands, blokes with mullets and moustaches standing next to cars that were worth nothing then and worth a fortune now, dusty plastic chairs stacked in a corner where the crowd used to sit, Ghost of a Thousand Saturday nights hanging in the air like old cigarette smoke.

Now used for underground meets. The weekend boys would roll in after dark, set up their own lights and barriers, do their thing, and be gone before sunrise, council had been trying to condemn the place for years but couldn't be arsed doing the paperwork, So it just sat there, rotting, being useful to people who don't need permits.

Two marked police cars parked at the gate, a plain-clothes sedan behind them, yellow tape across the main entrance, a uniformed officer standing at the gate looking bored and cold.

Martin walked straight past him like the tape wasn't there."Oi," the uniform said. "You can't —" "Sean Lestrade asked me to come," Martin said without stopping. "Ring him if you want. I'll be inside." The uniform looked at me; I shrugged. "I'm with him," and followed Martin through the gate.