Rider (10 page)

‘She’s upstairs. Quick!’ he yelled at them.

When they got to her side, Margaret looked dead.

His arm stung and his fingers were numb but the bullet hadn’t done any lasting damage to his shoulder. They stitched him up, put his arm in a cloth sling, and prescribed some painkillers. And now, in a family room in the hospital, two police officers sat opposite him and smiled at the lies he told them.

‘So let me get this straight, Mr Rider,’ the taller of the two officers said, notebook in hand, pen tapping against the arm of his chair. He had a cropped brown beard and large, penetrating eyes. ‘You went to Mrs Bernhard’s house—you said you were sleeping with her son?’

Kane looked at him. ‘I said I was her son’s boyfriend.’

‘Yes. Right. And now he’s deceased. Stabbed?’

‘You don’t believe me?’ he asked, looking from one to the other. ‘Call the station. Speak to Detective Thorpe.’

‘We believe you,’ the talkative officer said. ‘We just need the facts.’ He paused, looking back over his notes. ‘So, you go to Mrs Bernhard’s home and—what?—let yourself in? Because she wasn’t home?’ Kane nodded. ‘Where was she?’

‘Where was who?’ Kane asked, although he knew. He was stalling, thinking.

‘Where was Mrs Bernhard before she came home?’

‘She was supposed to be going to
London
with her husband.’

‘What changed her mind?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kane said.

‘Did she come home because she knew the men would be waiting for her? Was that her plan?’

‘No.’ Kane’s voice rose at the accusation. ‘She didn’t know them, had nothing to do with it.’

‘Nothing to do with what?’ the officer questioned.

‘Nothing to do with whatever they were looking for.’

The officer paused. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘So, these guys rock up, Mrs Bernhard comes home unannounced, and everyone starts shooting each other. Is that right?’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah. Pretty much.’

‘Pretty much,’ the officer repeated, writing it down. ‘What were they looking for?’

Kane dipped his head into his one usable hand and said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘I see. And you never saw these people before?’

He shook his head. The officer flipped his notebook closed and they stood.

‘Mr Rider, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that perverting the course of justice is a very serious crime. When forensics gets through with the scene, we’ll want to speak to you again. We have your details.’ They walked towards the door, and then the bearded officer stopped and turned back to Kane. ‘You know how lucky you were?’ he asked. ‘I’ve seen some nasty shoulder shots in my time. Torn tendons and ligaments.’ He touched his own shoulder. ‘Shards of bone lodged in muscle tissue. Nasty. Really nasty.’ He adjusted the hat on his head. ‘Another quarter inch,’ he said, ‘and that baby would have taken your shoulder clean off.’

* * *

He sat by her hospital bed and held her hand. When he had left her side to let the ambulance crew into her house, she had not died, merely passed out. She had lost a lot of blood, they told him later, at the hospital, but they would perform a transfusion and, in the young Asian doctor’s words, ‘She’ll be back to her old self in no time.’

‘Don’t let her hear you calling her “old”,’ Kane had said.

When the police had finished interviewing him he returned to Margaret’s bedside and sat vigil while she slept off the anaesthetic. Occasionally he removed his sling and worked some life into his arm, or paced up and down the room to stop the pins and needles settling into his legs. Mostly, he just sat there and watched the monitor beside the bed as it traced her heart rate in a constant fashion. She’d be fine, they had told him. They had removed the bullet and the internal damage, while traumatic, would heal in time.

Find him
, she had asked him as she lay bleeding on Ryan’s bedroom floor.
Stop him.

David’s involvement with
Dawson
, whatever that might be, was a mystery. Perhaps, Kane thought,
Dawson
had been making it up to frighten them at the end. If David and Dawson were in cahoots, then surely David himself would have searched his house for the missing documents, unless
Dawson
was double-crossing him. There was no need for the guns and the violence.

Find him. Stop him
.

Kane took Margaret’s hand again, squeezed it gently, and whispered, ‘I can’t do it, Margaret.’ He lowered his head, pressed his forehead against her hand. ‘Whatever David’s done…I just can’t. I don’t have it in me.’

If David
was
involved, Kane reasoned, he’d most likely have more hired guns at his disposal. How was Kane—twenty-four years old, barely an adult—supposed to stop him? What could he do?

He watched the trace of her heart rate as it drew across the oscilloscope’s screen. ‘I won’t do it,’ he said.

He sat in silence, watching the slight rise and fall of her chest, watching as nurses came in to check on her.

Later, when she was awake, he continued to hold her hand.

She was weak, her voice like gravel. ‘It’s his birthday next month.’

Kane nodded. He had been planning Ryan’s birthday present for months. ‘What kind of bastard kills a twenty-five year old?’ he asked.

‘The evil kind,’ Margaret said.

She closed her eyes and rested for a while and he dozed with his head on the bed beside her.

He woke when she touched his hair. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep. ‘You okay?’ he asked.

She smiled, touched his forehead, his temple, his cheek. ‘He loved you so much,’ she said.

He leaned his face against her hand.

‘And I know you love him, too,’ she said. ‘It’s in your eyes.’ When he looked up at her, she said, ‘I don’t care what they’re saying. About the drugs. We know him better than that, right?’ Kane sucked his lower lip into his mouth, a comfort action, and she continued, ‘No, honey, don’t look so sad. We need to put our feelings to rest now.’

‘To rest?’ he asked. ‘Forget all about him? Forget the last eight years of my life? Margaret, we were sixteen when we met. That
is
my life. I can’t pick up the pieces from this. He was everything to me.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying. We’ll always have our memories,’ she told him. ‘But we can’t let the past cloud the future. God knows it’s not much of a future, but it’s all we’ve got.’

‘Ryan doesn’t have a future any more,’ Kane said, petulant.

‘But he does,’ Margaret said. She reached out, touched Kane’s chest. ‘In here. You’ll never forget him. I doubt he’d ever want you to. But in time it’ll get easier. I don’t want you moping around. Keep Ryan in your heart, but don’t lay your own life aside. I’ve already lost Ryan’s father. Now this. We have to be there for each other now, you and me. We have to get by or there’s just no point.’

A nurse entered before Kane could respond. He knew the wisdom in her words, but it would be easier to speak them than perform them.

‘Time to change your dressing, Mrs Bernhard,’ the nurse said.

Somewhat forcefully, but polite, Margaret said, ‘Can you give us a minute, please, love?’

The nurse frowned, looked from Margaret to Kane to Margaret again. She nodded, said, ‘Two minutes,’ and then left them alone.

Kane stood, yawned.

‘I asked you to go to
London
earlier,’ Margaret said. ‘Will you do it?’

He stared at her. He was surprised she had remembered.

‘Go back to the house,’ she said. ‘In the nightstand by my bed there’s a…’ She lowered her voice. ‘There’s a small derringer.’

‘A what?’ Kane asked.

‘A pistol,’ she said. ‘David bought if for me a few years ago but I never used it. Get it and take it with you.’

‘Margaret, I—’ Kane said, and then the nurse returned. ‘I’ll wait outside,’ he said.

As he stepped out of the room, Margaret called after him, ‘Don’t forget, Kane. We have to be there for each other.’

* * *

In the morning, after little sleep, Kane called into work, checked that it was all right for him to stay off for an extra day or two. His boss was understanding. ‘Take all the time you need,’ she said. ‘If you want anything, just let me know.’

He got in his car even before breakfast, filled up on fuel, and drove to Portstewart, to
their
beach.

When he got there, he sat in the car for some time, staring out at the ocean. He wasn’t sure why he had come. Maybe in an attempt to feel Ryan’s presence. Maybe in an attempt to forget him.

He got out of the car and ambled over the sand dunes, walking down towards the shoreline. It wasn’t exactly beach weather, a brisk wind kicking sand around, and the beach was practically empty.

He pushed a hand into his jeans pocket, sighed deeply and stared out across the choppy water. A lone windsurfer rode the waves.

In one fluid movement, he was sitting on the sand, his legs crossed, his hand out of his pocket and both now hugging his elbows.

He watched the windsurfer flip over a wave in the distance.

His shoulder was still painful, but not unbearably so. He removed the sling and worked his arm up and down. How long had it been since he last sat here with Ryan? No more than a few months, he guessed.

A young kid came along the beach, dangling at the end of a dog lead. The dog, large, loping, bounded towards Kane.

The kid stopped, looked at Kane as the dog sniffed around him. ‘What’s wrong with your arm?’ he asked.

Kane kept his gaze out across the water. ‘I hurt it,’ he told him. The dog was nuzzling its wet, sand-crusted nose against his neck.

‘How come you’re sitting there on your own?’ the kid asked.

Kane ruffled the dog’s fur, his eyes sad. ‘Because I have no one left to sit here with me.’

‘Bummer,’ the kid said, and he yanked on the dog’s lead and walked on along the beach.

Kane, alone again, pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around them. There was no one left. Ryan was dead, Margaret was in hospital, and David was God knows where.

The kid had disappeared over a dune.

And the windsurfer had crashed and burned.

* * *

Margaret Bernhard had always been a tender and loving person. Kane could remember his first encounter with her as though it were yesterday, not long after Ryan had moved to his school and turned Kane’s world upside down.

Margaret was pruning a bush as they came up the drive.

‘What’s for dinner?’ Ryan had asked after dutifully kissing her on the cheek.

‘I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Can Kane stay?’

Margaret had looked up at Kane, a twinkle in her eyes. ‘So,’ she had said. ‘You’re the young man I’ve heard so much about.’ She pulled a gardening glove from her slender hand and motioned for him to shake. Her grip was firm, her eye contact steady. Kane felt as though he was under intense scrutiny. ‘You make sure you keep my boy smiling, okay?’ she said. ‘I want nothing but happiness for the both of you.’