Rider Page 6

  For a second Kane thought about spitting in his face and suffering the consequences. If he was going to kill him, it would be better to get it over with. But cowardice overcame him. ‘I don’t know what you’re going on about,’ he said.

  Dawson was silent for a moment, as if contemplating his words. Finally, he said, ‘That’s not the answer I was looking for. I stopped playing games when I was six, Mr Rider. Now, I want you to tell me what you know, or Mrs Bernhard might just have a nasty accident.’

  He recoiled at the mention of Margaret. Was Dawson holding her hostage, too? What unthinkable acts would he do to her?

  ‘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.

  Chapter 7

  ‘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.

  Kane eyed the Swiss knife and half-closed the drawer. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  * * *

  No one could have heard the taxi pull up outside the electronic gates that had closed on near silent pneumatics after Dawson’s car and come through them.

  Margaret thanked the driver when he had taken her small suitcase from the boot of his car, handed him a little extra on top of the fare, which he took with a nod, and then she walked slowly up the long drive to the house.

  She was at the front door before the fact that every single light inside the house was on had registered in her mind.

  She saw the broken glass panel on the door and hesitated. There was silence from within. She dug her mobile phone out of her purse and dialled 999. ‘Police, please,’ she said. She spoke with them briefly, then ignored their advice to remain outside the property, and she pushed the door open.

  * * *

  Dawson and O’Reef entered Ryan’s room. The old man approached Kane and slapped the back of his hand across his face. Kane’s eyes filled with angry tears, his cheek stinging.

  ‘I’m not very happy, Mr Rider,’ he said levelly.

  Kane stammered. ‘I don’t know where it is.’

  ‘Shut up,’ he snapped. ‘I should have had you taken out the same time as your filthy boyfriend.’

  He drew his gun.

  ‘On your knees.’

  ‘Please—’

  ‘On your knees!’

  Kane looked around at Dawson’s men. They were stony-faced and unaffected. He could feel that familiar tightness in his throat and a stinging sensation in his eyes as he slowly lowered himself to his knees beside the writing desk. His mind was turning somersaults. What can I do? How can I save myself?

  Dawson levelled his gun against Kane’s head. ‘You have one last chance before I decorate the room with your brains. Do you know where it is?’

  Kane couldn’t speak, his mouth dry, coppery.

  Dawson cocked the trigger.

  It was then that, like a dream, Kane heard Margaret’s voice break through the fear in his head.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Beyond Dawson, in Ryan’s doorway, stood Margaret Bernhard, rifle in hand, the barrel aimed at Dawson’s back as steady as if she was preparing to shoot clay pigeons.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she said.

  Dawson slowly turned to her.

  Chapter 8

  ‘Margaret,’ Dawson said, his voice calm, his palms upturned in a placating manner. ‘How lovely to see you.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Margaret snapped. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ She edged a step further into the room, the rifle gripped tightly in her hands, its long barrel trained almost professionally at Dawson’s chest. ‘Kane?’ she questioned.

  O’Reef held his gun up, ready to fire should his boss give the command.

  ‘We’re just conducting a little business,’ Dawson said. He frowned. ‘I was terribly sorry to hear of your son’s demise. Most unfortunate.’

  ‘What do you know about that?’ Margaret asked, her eyes darting between Dawson and the other men—O’Reef with his gun pointed at her, Darren standing almost casually in the corner.

  Kane watched as Margaret held firm against the threat of death. He was powerless to do anything, to act in her defence. On his knees behind Dawson, where only seconds before he was about to be shot, his mind ran quick-time, searching for any way out of this.

  Dawson shrugged in answer to Margaret’s question. ‘He was a sweet boy,’ he said. ‘I liked him. I liked him a lot.’

  ‘I want you out of my house. Now.’

  Dawson laughed. Kane couldn’t see his face, but he was sure he was smiling. ‘I’m afraid we can’t do that, Mrs Bernhard. You see, my friend here’—he stepped aside to give Margaret a clear view of Kane in all his fear and pain—‘is helping me out. I’m in a bit of a quandary. Your son rather unfortunately stole something from me. Mr Rider was just helping me retrieve it.�
��

  ‘I don’t care what you want. Just get out.’ She jerked the rifle. ‘I’m not afraid to use this.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not,’ Dawson said.

  ‘Let’s kill them both,’ O’Reef said. Dawson told him to shut up and O’Reef lowered his gun just a little.

  ‘Kane, get up,’ Margaret said.

  ‘That’s not advisable,’ Dawson retorted.

  Kane didn’t move.

  The small, black gun in Dawson’s hand lolled as though he had forgotten it. ‘If you’ll kindly let us get on with our work,’ he told Margaret, ‘the sooner we’ll—’

  ‘My husband is—’

  Dawson cut her off with a chortle. ‘Your husband is in England. You should have been with him.’

  ‘That shows how much you know,’ Margaret said, her voice as steady as her hands. ‘He’s downstairs calling the police.’

  ‘We both know that’s not true,’ Dawson said. ‘Why aren’t you with him?’

  ‘I’m a woman,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m allowed to change my mind.’

  Dawson grinned. ‘How is David these days?’ he asked. ‘Still taking time out to play squash?’

  Margaret looked confused, her head twitching slightly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Dawson scoffed. ‘He and I go way back. Years, in fact.’

  Kane was just as confused as Margaret was, but Margaret had quickly composed herself.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘He was never any good on the golf course,’ Dawson said. ‘But on the squash court, you’d never tell he was a man in his fifties.’

  Margaret shook her head. ‘Get up, Kane.’

  ‘Silence!’ Dawson shouted.

  A shot went off and everyone ducked, followed immediately by another shot. Kane rolled forward, head dipped, shoulder taking the brunt of the fall on the carpeted floor, and knocked against the side of the desk.