Rider (12 page)

When Kane looked up, he asked ‘What is all of this? Who are you?’

‘Detective Superintendent Wilson,’ the man said. ‘Pat Wilson. This is Detective Ann Clark.’ The woman smiled warmly at Kane and
Wilson
continued, ‘Now, I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, and this time I’d like some answers.’

‘How do you know Ryan?’ Kane asked.

‘What brings you to
London
?’

‘Did you meet him in
Belfast
? He’s never been to
London
.’

‘Why are you in
London
?’

‘How do you know him?’ Kane retorted.

Detective
Wilson
sighed. ‘Answer the question, please.’

‘You answer
my
questions,’ Kane said.

‘You’re not in a position to argue with us, Mr Rider. Answer the question or you’ll be spending the night in an eight-by-eight cell.’

He stared at
Wilson
, incredulous. ‘Fuck the cell. You sleep in it. If you know something about Ryan, I want to hear it. Tell me how you know him and then I’ll answer your questions.’

Wilson
was about to say something but Ann Clark put a hand on his arm to stop him. She smiled at Kane again. ‘Kane, Ryan Cassidy was working for us, doing us a favour.’

‘Working for Interpol?’

‘Not the way you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t an officer. He wasn’t like a secret agent or any of that Bond stuff.’

Kane waited, hopeful of an explanation.

‘Ryan…He stumbled onto something. He was just a civilian, shouldn’t have gotten mixed up in it, but he did. He approached the PSNI who got the UK NCB involved, as well as our men in
France
.’

‘
France
?’

She ignored his question. ‘We knew to some extent what was going on, but the evidence Ryan brought to us—well, it was pretty conclusive.’

‘When did you meet him?’

‘NCB sent us out there. We met with him a couple of times. There were questions we needed answering. Ryan was our only chance.’

She paused, cleared her throat. ‘Things were getting tense. Ryan was in way too deep. It was getting out of hand. We were getting ready to pull him out when—’

‘When he was murdered,’ Kane said. ‘Whatever you got him into got him killed. And now you want me to answer your damn questions? It’s your fault he’s dead, your fault that Dawson kidnapped me, almost killed me, shot Ryan’s mother who didn’t have any part in this, and now you want me to sit here and play cops and robbers all day?’ He was shouting but he didn’t care. ‘
You
murdered Ryan,’ he said.

‘We didn’t—’

‘It’s your fault,’ Kane repeated. Had he gotten it so wrong? Ryan wasn’t to blame for any of this. He was murdered because of Interpol.

Pat Wilson scraped his chair out from under him and stood. ‘Let’s call it a day,’ he said.

* * *

They put him in a little bed and breakfast in the middle of a terrace block not far from the station. The room was small and airless, sparsely decorated, a single bed with multi-coloured sheets against one wall, en suite shower cubicle, a window that didn’t open but let the noise from the street below in anyway. The overhead bulb buzzed like a wasp in a glass jar.

‘It’s only marginally bigger than a cell,’
Clark
said when she had checked him in and walked him up to the room. ‘But believe me, you’ll be more comfortable here. We’ll talk again in the morning and if we need you any longer we’ll see about swinging you an upgrade.’

‘I had a hotel,’ Kane said.

She nodded. ‘This place is…better.’

He knew what she was implying; this B&B was under their surveillance.

Clark
handed him the room key. ‘I hope I don’t have to remind you not to do anything rash in the middle of the night, like taking off. Seriously, you don’t want to get Detective Wilson upset.’

Kane looked around the room. He was at a loss—about pretty much everything in his life right now.

‘Well,’
Clark
said. ‘Good night, then.’

When she turned to leave, Kane said, ‘Did…’
Clark
stopped, looked at him. ‘Did Ryan ever…?’ He didn’t finish the question, didn’t want to know the answer.

She smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All the time.’

Once she had gone, Kane sat on the bed, leaning against the wooden headboard, and pulled his knees up to his chin. Outside, a car sounded its horn, one long, droning hum splashing around his head, and a motorcycle sped by. His world was crashing again and he couldn’t hide from it.

Ryan was…what? He was inside his brain, raking up old memories, rattling though the wardrobe of chained-up emotions.

There were still so many unanswered questions. And he decided, there in that tiny little room, there in the darkness of night, that he wasn’t going to leave
London
until he had answers to them all.

In the pale grey light of early morning, with office-bound traffic already filling the street outside the B&B, car horns and engine sounds penetrating the tiny window in some kind of osmotic ooze, Kane felt out of his depth, as though he was treading water three miles off shore with rapidly tiring legs.

He sat on the edge of the small bed in his underwear, face buried in his hands, as the pintsized kettle on the desk in the corner of the room came to the boil. A plastic cup and complimentary sachet of instant coffee lay beside it.

The kettle shook and rattled violently before switching itself off and he rose laboriously, tearing the sachet open and tipping the granules into the cup. Minutes later, he was staring out the window at the slow-moving traffic below, the cup of instant nestled in his hands. He blew on it and felt the steam rise against his eyes, hot and humid.

There was a brisk rap on the door, followed by the rattle of a key in the keyhole.

Kane turned, coffee in hand, as Ann Clark entered the room carrying his suitcase. She saw him in his underwear and quickly turned to face the door, her hands shooting up to shield her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

He laughed and blushed at the same time. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘You’re not my type.’

Clark
turned back to face him, offering a tight-lipped smile. ‘Present for you,’ she said, placing his suitcase on the bed. ‘We had someone swing by your hotel last night.’

She unzipped the case, flipped it open, and pulled out some clothes for him. The contents had already been messed with.

‘You’ve been through it,’ Kane said.

‘Of course.’

The photograph had been in there. ‘Find anything?’ Kane asked.

‘Nice pair of Mr Men boxers,’ she said. ‘Get dressed. Meet me downstairs. Continental or fry?’

Kane held his gaze on the suitcase. If she’d found the photo, she clearly wasn’t giving anything away. ‘If continental means better coffee than this,’ he said, placing his cup on the desk, ‘let’s do that.’

* * *

As they stepped out of the cheap hotel into the cool
London
morning, Kane sighed heavily. ‘Freedom,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you’re letting me walk free. No handcuffs?’

Clark
pointed along the street and they walked at a slow pace. ‘You were never under arrest, Kane.’ She clutched her handbag under one arm and held her phone in her other hand, either forgotten or glued there.

‘Are you always this professional?’ Kane asked, digging his hands deep into his jacket pockets.

‘Professional?’
Clark
queried.

‘Curt. Abrupt.’

She gave a half-shrug and said, ‘You’re in a chirpier mood this morning.’

‘Am I? I had time to think about things last night.’

‘Cheap B&Bs can do that to a person. What’ve you concluded?’

It was Kane’s turn to shrug. ‘Ryan is dead,’ he said. ‘I can’t change that. And so is
Dawson
, or whatever other name he goes by. That much I don’t
want
to change. But there are still a lot of questions and I want to find the answers to them. I need to.’

Clark
pointed to a small, clean-looking café and said, ‘Let’s eat here. I have a few questions myself and I’m hoping to get some answers, too.’

Kane settled at a pine-top table by the window and stared out at the
London
buses and taxis while
Clark
ordered some all-butter croissants and a pot of coffee. When she returned to the table and sat opposite him, the smile she offered was one that implied she was ready to talk business. Kane pinched his lips together and waited for her to get down to it.

She went straight for the punch. ‘What aren’t you telling us, Kane?’

‘What makes you think I’m hiding something?’

‘That response tells me that. Let’s not forget, Kane, in your words I’m professional. I’m good at what I do and what I do is read people.’

Kane pursed his lips, leaned back in the chair.

‘You think I’m full of it,’ she said.

‘No, I think I’m not the only one hiding things.’

Clark
pushed a stray strand of her shoulder-length brown hair back behind her ear and refused to look away from him. If she was good at reading body language, she was even better at hiding her own.

The silence stretched on until Kane couldn’t take it any more. ‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Tell me what you know,’ she said.

Kane paused, turning away from her and looking out the café’s window. ‘Last time I spoke to the police, I was taken from my flat and locked up in a warehouse and shot at.’ He looked back at her. ‘What makes you think I want to go through all that again?’

‘What have you got to lose?’

His short burst of laughter was cold. ‘My life,’ he said. ‘I may have lost everything else, but that’s one thing I’d still like to hang on to.’ He pulled his coffee closer to him and stirred some sugar into it.

‘Tell us where he is.’ Her voice was verging on impatient.

Kane looked up at her again. ‘Who?’

She shook her head. ‘Kane, we have to stop playing games.’

‘This stopped being a game when I held Ryan in my arms and watched him die.’ His voice was flat. The elderly Greek man behind the counter was watching them, dusting down the countertop like he had nothing better to do.

Ann Clark sat in silence for a moment. Then she said, ‘Tell us where he is. Tell us what you know.’

Kane ran a hand across the back of his neck and clenched his eyes. The world around him was going blurry.

‘Tell us what you know,’ she repeated.

He drummed his fingers on the table and for a full minute neither of them spoke. Then, finally, he said, ‘Shouldn’t you be taping this or something?’

* * *

Pat Wilson scraped his chair in as he sat at the interview table next to
Clark
. He leaned his elbows on the table, wrapped the thick fingers of one hand over the fist he had made of the other and pressed his thumbs against his chin.

Clark
reached out to press ‘Record
’
on the tape deck.

‘Wait,’ Kane said. She stopped, her finger hovering over the button, and looked questioningly at him. ‘What’s going to happen to me? Once I tell you what I know. Are you going to let me go? Lock me up?’

‘That all depends on what you tell us, Mr Rider,’
Wilson
said.

‘But it’ll go no further, right?’ he asked. ‘Whatever I tell you, it’ll stay between us?’

‘This is not a confessional booth, Mr Rider. Do we look like priests?’

Clark
said, ‘Whatever information you provide will be held in strict confidence. Of course, if it’s pertinent to our investigation, we’ll have to discuss some things with our team. But your name will never be used outside NCIS and the local authorities.’

‘Which authorities?’

‘We’re an international organisation,’
Wilson
said. ‘Our role is to coordinate and advise. Our work depends on local forces as well as partnership with foreign agencies. We operate within the mandate of the NCIS and the General Secretariat in
Lyon
,
France
. Whatever information you give us—’

‘Relevant information,’
Clark
cut in.

‘—will have to be passed on to the appropriate authorities. In this case, the Command Centre in Lyon and the Metropolitan Police here in
London
.’
Wilson
sat back in his chair. ‘Press the button,’ he said to
Clark
.

She glanced at Kane momentarily, and then pushed the button. ‘Commencing interview, twenty-first July, six minutes past ten. Case reference KR-681-E. Persons present, Detective Superintendent Patrick Wilson, Detective Ann Clark, and interviewee.’ She turned to Kane. ‘For the benefit of the tape, can you please confirm your name?’

‘Kane Rider.’

‘Thank you,’
Clark
said.

Kane shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

‘Let’s start with why you’re in
London
,’
Wilson
said.

Kane looked at the cassette recorder as the tape reel wound in its casing. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. Then finally, hoarse, he said, ‘I was looking for someone.’

‘Who?’

He stared up at
Wilson
’s surly face. ‘I think you know who.’

Clark
sat forward. ‘We’d like you to tell us who you’re referring to, Kane.’

‘Why?’

‘To show we’re not leading you.’

He looked down at his hands. ‘I was looking for Ryan’s step-dad. David Bernhard.’

‘Good,’
Wilson
said. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Why were you looking for him? What made you suspect he was in
London
?’

The questions were relentless. Wilson and Clark acted almost like a tag team, hitting him with question after question and barely giving him enough time to think. He figured it was their usual style—give a man enough time to think about his answer and you give him enough time to come up with a lie.

They asked him about David Bernhard, about Lucas Dawson, and about Ryan and even Margaret. It was clear they knew more about Ryan than Kane did. How much of his life had he kept from him?

They stepped up the interview a notch when
Wilson
asked, ‘What do you know of Bernhard’s involvement with Lucas Dawson and the murder of Ryan Cassidy?’

The room was stifling. Even
Wilson
had loosened his tie.

Murder. It sounded so surreal.

So real.

‘Nothing,’ Kane said. ‘Before Ryan’s death, before this whole mess began, I didn’t know a thing. I didn’t know David was involved in anything. I never would have suspected him if it wasn’t for
Dawson
.’

The detectives sat in silence, waiting.

‘Before
Dawson
died—when he was shot—he told us Ryan had some damaging documents that implicated David in something. I’m not sure what. I don’t know anything about any damn documents.’

‘And when you found Bernhard?’
Wilson
asked. ‘What then?’

Kane shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Talk to him. Nothing makes sense any more. Ryan’s dead. David was there for him. How could he be a bad guy in all of this? He loved Ryan. I don’t get it.’

Wilson
nodded and opened a paper file. He picked out a clear evidence bag that contained the photograph Kane had had in his suitcase and he slapped it on the table in front of him.