Rider (8 page)

‘Please,’ he begged. ‘I don’t know anything!’

Dawson
pinched the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger and sighed. In an instant he held Kane’s head down on the concrete and jammed his cigarette into his neck.

Kane screamed.

Dawson
held the cigarette there, concentration but no effort on his face. When he flicked the cigarette away, the burning sensation continued. He stood, looking down on Kane like a sentencing judge. He sucked his lips and turned away.

‘He doesn’t know,’ he said as he walked out of the room. ‘Pick him up.’

‘On your feet,’ one of the heavies commanded.

‘Get up.
Now!
’

They kicked him in the side until he worked himself onto his knees, struggling to keep his balance without the use of his arms. ‘Please…’ he begged. Their guns were inches from his face.

‘Fucking faggot,’ one of them said.

‘Get up,’ the other one reiterated.

His heart rate was soaring, thumping against his chest, his throat constricting, a cold sweat itching down his back. His salty tears caught on his lips as, with all the effort he could muster, he drew himself to his feet.

They pushed him out into the anteroom and
Dawson
walked purposefully towards him. He punched Kane in the stomach and Kane doubled over in pain.

Dawson
gripped his hair, pulled him upright again. ‘You’ve wasted enough of my time.’

‘Please, I—I don’t know anything about—’ He could taste bile rising in his mouth.

Dawson
punched him again, let Kane buckle to the floor.

‘Let’s go for a drive,’ he said.

His heavies helped Kane up from the floor. They gave him something to drink. The water was warm and cloudy but he guzzled as much as he could, spilling more down his chin and shirt than he actually drank. The man who held the bottle to his mouth—O’Reef, he thought he had heard the other one call him—was doing his best to help him drink it. His hands were still tied behind his back.

‘Do I have to be tied like this?’ Kane asked O’Reef. He didn’t answer. ‘What time is it?’

He led Kane outside into the cold night air. They rounded the corner of the warehouse and at the bottom of the path was a black hatchback. Its engine was running.

Kane looked around, trying to figure out where he was. A road ran off the drive, but other than that there was nothing, no landmarks that he could use to get his bearings, no road signs. Nothing. An empty field stretched off at either side of the road, electricity pylons extending into the horizon. Were they still in
Northern Ireland
?

O’Reef took his elbow and walked him down the drive to the car. He pushed him into the backseat, but before closing the door,
Dawson
came and leaned in towards him.

‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘You don’t know where it is. But you’re going to help me find it. You have no idea how much pain I can give you. Got it?’ He straightened up, walked around the car to the front passenger seat. ‘Blindfold him,’ he said.

O’Reef took a roll of silver duct tape and stretched a length across Kane’s eyes, patting it down so that he could see nothing. ‘Move over,’ he said and he got in beside him. Kane felt the muzzle of a gun against his neck. ‘I like this car,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me get blood on the upholstery. You sit there and keep quiet.’

Kane nodded complacently. With a gun in his face, he was a model citizen.

* * *

A police officer waved the taxi through and it pulled up at the drop-off point outside
George
Best
Belfast
City
Airport
. The rear passenger door opened and David Bernhard stepped out. He stretched his legs, twisted his head from side to side, and turned, leaning back in to take Margaret’s hand to help her out.

Margaret was staring blankly out of the far window. She didn’t take his hand.

‘Margaret?’

Discreetly, she wiped a tear from under an eye, refused to look at him.

‘Margaret, honey,’ David said. ‘We can’t miss the flight.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Sorry for what?’

She looked at him and her sigh was heavy. ‘I can’t go. I’m sorry. It’s too much, too soon.’

‘But…’

She shook her head. ‘You’ll be fine without me. I’ll only be in the way. Have your meeting and call me tomorrow evening.’

David looked at the taxi driver, looked back at Margaret. ‘This isn’t the time for—’

‘Grieving?’

He closed his eyes momentarily, and then got back in the taxi. ‘I won’t go,’ he said. ‘It was foolish of me. Someone else can do it.’

‘No one else can do it. You said so yourself.’ She took his hands, smiled at him. ‘Go. Seriously. I’ll be fine. I’ll get some sleep. I just need some time. To heal.’

David tightened his fingers around Margaret’s hands. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Go,’ she said. And she kissed him.

David paid the taxi driver double fare to get Margaret home again, and then she watched him disappear inside the terminal building before the taxi pulled away, turning out of the complex to double-back down the A2 the way they had come.

It was the right thing, she thought. David would be home in a couple of days and in the meantime she could try to piece her life together again. The pain of losing Ryan was solid, touchable, as though death lingered with her in the taxi.

* * *

O’Reef kept his gun trained on Kane for the duration of the journey, its muzzle pressed lightly against his side, just below his ribs. If he tried anything that O’Reef didn’t like he could be dead in seconds, so he sat still, leaning uncomfortably forward, his hands still bound behind his back, his eyelashes sticking to the tape over his eyes.

It wasn’t too long before the car stopped and O’Reef ripped the tape off. Kane almost screamed with the pain as his skin and eyelids tried to go with the tape. They were parked outside Margaret’s house, which looked empty, all the lights out, and the gates at the bottom of the driveway closed. Even now, Kane thought, he couldn’t call for help. Margaret’s nearest neighbour was over four hundred feet away.

Dawson
turned in his seat, pointed at the gates. ‘What’s the code?’ he asked.

Kane looked at the electronic panel outside the driver’s door.

‘The code,’
Dawson
repeated.

Miserable, he told him. ‘Four, seven, two, four.’

The driver lowered his window and tapped on the keypad. After a second, the gates began to swing open. Ahead of them, the steep driveway resembled a runway, lit at evenly spaced intervals by small, ground-level solar-powered lights.

When the car was parked by the steps of the house, Kane was ordered out. O’Reef stood with him as the driver of the car tucked it out of sight at the rear of the house and he and
Dawson
returned. The driver put his elbow through a glass pane on the door, reached through and unlocked it.

As they stepped inside,
Dawson
said, ‘Mr Rider?’

The burglar alarm beeped its incessant warning.

‘Eight, nine, nine, two,’ Kane said, and O’Reef disarmed it.

Dawson
nodded at O’Reef who appeared to be Kane’s designated keeper. O’Reef pulled a knife from his pocket and cut the cord that bound his hands together. Kane sighed with relief and rubbed at his wrists. They were cut raw.

‘I’m trying my hardest to like you, Mr Rider,’
Dawson
said. ‘I’m counting on you to be good. Now, we know it isn’t in your flat. As I’m sure you’ve gathered, we’ve already checked.’

‘Thanks for not trashing the place,’ Kane said, his sarcasm thick.

Dawson
smiled. ‘My men are superior. They take great pride in their work.’ He turned, flicked a light switch. ‘But we have no time for that tonight. Darren,’ he said to the driver, ‘you and our new best friend start upstairs. O’Reef, come with me. I want this place searched top to bottom within twenty minutes.’

The one he called Darren took Kane’s arm and shoved him violently up the stairs. Dawson and O’Reef moved further into the living room and began tearing it apart.

Upstairs, Darren pointed to the first door on the left. ‘What’s in here?’

‘David’s private office,’ Kane said.

Darren opened the door and they stepped inside. The room was sparse. There was nothing but a couch, a desk and chair, and a filing cabinet. On the walls were framed newspaper clippings of David Bernhard with various dignitaries as well as certificates and honours in pride-of-place spots behind the desk.

‘Search the desk,’ Darren said.

‘I don’t know what I’m looking for,’ Kane said. ‘An envelope? A briefcase?’

‘You’ll know when you see it.’

Darren pulled at the cushions on the couch. It was evident that if the package
was
in this room—although how Ryan could get it in here without David knowing about it was beyond Kane—it could only be in the filing cabinet. With the couch cushions torn open and discarded on the floor, Darren turned to the filing cabinet. He tried to open the drawers but they were locked. He fished his hand down behind the cabinet and came up with nothing. He nudged it to test how heavy it was.

And then he withdrew his silenced gun and fired a bullet at the lock without warning.

‘Jesus!’ Kane said, shrinking back.

Ignoring him, Darren opened the drawers one by one, filtering through the confidential files, but he didn’t find what he was looking for.

* * *

They worked their way through the guest rooms without sight or sound of Dawson or O’Reef. Darren kept a close eye on Kane as they searched first one room, then another, methodically tearing things apart, pulling drawers out, overturning furniture.

When they entered Ryan’s old bedroom, Kane felt like he was out of options. If whatever they had been looking for was here, he was pretty sure they were going to kill him and be done with it once they had it in their possession.

This clearly wasn’t some sectarian operation by one side of the Catholic-Protestant divide or the other. As far as Kane could figure, this was something altogether more sinister.

‘Search,’ Darren told him.

Kane tried to protest. This was Ryan’s sanctum, not a treasure hunt. ‘It won’t be—’

Darren nudged him with the point of his gun. ‘Move it.’

On the writing desk were several old paperbacks and a few of Ryan’s dog-eared schoolbooks—filled, Kane could be sure, with his careful handwriting, blue ink lettering that was all straight ups and downs, serif flourishes on the letter
A
.

In the top drawer of the desk, as Darren dropped books and electronics from the bookcase, Kane found some of Ryan’s childhood artefacts: a Disney pencil case from Florida, a couple of small, plastic crocodile figures, the kind you’d get from a Kinder Egg, and a Gameboy with a couple of old cartridge games.

In the second drawer he found a Swiss army knife and some loose change from various foreign countries. He felt like he was breaking a trust with Ryan. He had been in this room so many times before, but seldom without him and never to snoop.

Kane looked around the room. He could almost feel his presence, hear his laughter, sense his touch. They had shared a lot here. Saddened, he sat back on his heels and sighed. It was no use. As much as he wanted to hate Ryan for what he had done, he simply couldn’t.

‘Anything?’ Darren asked.