Rider

by Merrigan, Peter J

  Kane sighed, turned back to John, and said, ‘Sorry, can you excuse me? I need a bit of air.’

  He headed towards the front door, but Father Mitchell had just come in and he couldn’t face another well-intended comment about Ryan. Instead, he ducked through into the kitchen and took the rear stairs up to the next floor.

  There were six bedrooms but never more than three had ever been used at once. David and Margaret shared the westernmost room, the master bedroom, and Ryan’s old room, still filled with his teenage life, was on the opposite side of the house. The rest were made up for guests and cleaned weekly.

  Kane paused outside Ryan’s old room, his fingers on the handle, and he pressed his forehead against the cold wood of the door. Then he entered.

  It hadn’t changed. Everything from the framed film posters on the walls to the scattering of teenager’s techno-toys that Ryan had seen fit to leave behind when he moved into the flat with Kane lay exactly as Kane had remembered them.

  He ran his finger over the spines of the old horror novels on the bookcase that Ryan loved so much, soaked himself in the room’s history, and sat on the edge of the king-size bed. From the moment David had married Margaret, they had lived in luxury. Neither boy had spoken much of their fathers. Kane’s dad had done a runner when he was three, leaving his mum to raise Kane on her own, and Ryan’s dad had died years before Kane met him.

  On the cabinet beside the bed, standing up in an ornate silver frame, was a photo of Kane and Ryan on a skiing trip when they were seventeen, Ryan’s arm over Kane’s shoulder, their sun goggles on their foreheads and toothy smiles on their faces. Kane picked it up and wondered, momentarily, why Ryan had left it behind. But their flat was filled with photos of other happy occasions. Ryan was seldom without his camera. He had developed his passion for photography from Margaret and, ever indulgent of his wife’s desires, David had built a darkroom for them behind the kitchen on the ground floor.

  Kane remembered the first time he’d been in Ryan’s bedroom, not long after they had first met. At sixteen, Ryan joined Kane’s school in the last term before their GCSEs after David had moved them from South Belfast when the house building had been completed. They hit it off almost immediately.

  One evening, after school, Ryan had brought Kane over while his parents were at an awards ceremony in town. Kane had been sitting here on the side of the bed, flipping through a stack of CDs, and said, ‘You can’t put Billie Holiday next to Urban Dance Classics.’

  ‘You don’t even know who Billie Holiday is,’ Ryan objected.

  It was true. But Kane held up the cover and said, ‘Doesn’t look like dance music to me.’

  Ryan had grabbed the case, sat it on the bed, and picked up his iPod. ‘You’ll love her,’ he said. ‘I love all that old stuff. Music, films, books. I should have been born in the twenties.’

  Kane had laughed. ‘You’d be like a hundred years old!’

  Ryan unravelled the earphones and passed one to Kane, who took it dubiously. He scanned for a track and said, ‘Listen.’

  Kane put the earphone in his ear and Ryan shifted closer, putting the spare earphone in his own ear. They sat side by side, their legs almost touching, as Ryan mouthed the words of You Don’t Know What Love Is in time to Billie’s melodic voice.

  Kane couldn’t concentrate on the song. All he could think of was Ryan’s leg, just there, the creases of their school trousers almost caressing each other. He looked up at Ryan’s face and Ryan looked back. They stared at each other.

  And Ryan smiled. Electric.

  Kane pulled back from the memory when Ryan’s door opened and Margaret entered. ‘Thought I’d find you up here,’ she said.

  He placed the photo back on the bedside cabinet and Margaret came and sat next to him on the bed.

  She took his hand and leaned her head on his shoulder. They said nothing. In time, Kane put an arm around her and they stared at the framed photo together, each lost in thought, perhaps each of them battling with the demons of their past.

  * * *

  David popped the lids off two bottles of beer and sat them on the kitchen table, easing himself into a chair. He pushed one towards Kane, who accepted it without a word.

  He scuffed his shoe on the linoleum.

  ‘To Ryan,’ David said and drank.

  Kane picked at the label on the neck of his bottle.

  ‘You can stay the night,’ David said. ‘If you need to.’

  Kane looked around the kitchen.

  ‘Are you going to stay there? Live there, I mean?’ David asked.

  Kane chewed his lip. ‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. ‘I really don’t know.’

  When Margaret came into the kitchen, her funeral clothes replaced with a dress that was equally as sombre, they could tell she had been crying. She looked at the beers on the table. ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

  Kane nodded, picked some more of the label off.

  ‘Drugs,’ David spat when the coffee had filtered through. He drank some more beer.

  Margaret sat a small bowl of sugar cubes on the table. ‘Don’t, David,’ she said. She poured the coffees. ‘We shouldn’t be worrying about the drugs, whether it’s true or not.’ She turned, a cup rattling on a saucer in her hand. ‘We should be worrying about who killed him. If I get my hands on the bastard, I swear, I’ll—’

  She stopped, her breathing quick and erratic. She sat the cup down. ‘Sugar, Kane?’

  * * *

  Sugar Kane. That’s what Ryan often called him.

  On their anniversary, three months ago, Kane had come home early from work, slaved in the kitchen, laid the table with a red tablecloth and made sure the cutlery and crockery and glassware was just so. He bought a bouquet of flowers to decorate the table, wrapped the gift he had bought for Ryan, and then he sat down and waited.

  Half an hour after Ryan should have been home Kane opened a bottle of wine and had a small glass.

  Then a large glass.

  When he heard the front door open, the bottle was almost finished and his head was fuzzy.

  Ryan came in, hanging his head in shame. ‘Babe,’ he said. He was two hours late.

  Kane shook his head. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Baby, please.’

  Kane stood and took his wine glass to the sink.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ryan said.

  Without turning round, Kane said, ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I got caught up.’

  ‘No shit.’

  Ryan came a little further into the room, looked at the food on the table, looked at the clock on the wall—after nine o’clock. ‘We can heat it up,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kane said.

  ‘It’ll only take a minute.’

  ‘Forget about it.’

  Kane dried his hands on a tea towel, dropped the towel on the counter, and paused. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then he turned, his face steely, and walked towards the bedroom. ‘Happy anniversary,’ he said.

  Ryan took his arm and stopped him. ‘I’m sorry, baby. It won’t happen again.’

  Kane closed his eyes, couldn’t look at him. ‘No excuses, Ryan. If you don’t want this, just let me know.’

  ‘What? Where’d that come from?’ He turned Kane to face him.

  ‘You’ve been absent for months,’ Kane said.

  ‘Work’s been keeping me busy. You know I want this. Us.’

  They faced each other, Kane’s cold stand-off versus Ryan’s puppy-dog sorrow.

  ‘You’re always busy,’ Kane said.

  ‘It’ll change, babe. I promise.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll tell work to give me a break. We can take time off, go away somewhere. London or something.’ He rested his forehead against Kane’s. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘You know I do.’

  Kane chewed on his lip.

  ‘You’ll always be my Sugar Kane.’

  And they kissed. They forgot about the food, about the argument. They went, instead, to bed, leaving a trai
l of clothes behind them as they went.

  * * *

  At three-thirty in the morning, Kane woke and walked out onto Margaret’s patio, shivering in the late August night. She had insisted he stay the night—demanded, even. The floodlights overlooking the back garden sparked as he stepped out and they lit up the night like the sterile light of day. The pool was covered and hibernating. He doubted anyone had been swimming in it in months.

  He breathed in the smell of evergreen. The grounds of the house were lavish. Inside, the home was modernity to the extreme. David Bernhard, a financial adviser for some of Britain’s top physicians and lawyers, had spared no expense on his home, his castle. It was state-of-the-art. The outside had been Margaret’s doing—the rockery, the shrubbery, the apple trees and the small vegetable plots. She had landscaped the grounds to perfection.

  Kane hugged himself against the cold. So that was it; it was over now. Ryan was pushing daisies and Kane had to move on, had to pick up the shattered pieces and start living again. It was impossible.

  He stood still and the floodlights winked out. Then he moved again and they came on.

  When David cleared his throat behind him he jumped. A bat or a bird fluttered overhead.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He rubbed his hands together and stood beside him. ‘You won’t tell, will you?’ he said as he pulled a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his dressing gown pocket. ‘She thinks I’ve given up. I have, really. But sometimes…’

  He didn’t finish. He absently offered Kane one and he declined. David rubbed his chest as he filled the air in front of them with silver-grey smoke.

  ‘Trouble sleeping?’

  Kane nodded. ‘Every time I close my eyes,’ he began.

  ‘I know,’ David said. ‘It’s a shock.’ The cigarette reflected in his eyes as he inhaled.

  ‘Thanks,’ Kane said. ‘For making me stay the night.’

  David nodded and smoked some more. ‘Want to talk about it?’

  Kane smiled ruefully and shrugged. ‘I just wish I was more of a help for the police. I—’ His voice was cracking.

  ‘Hey,’ David soothed, ‘Don’t cut yourself up. They couldn’t expect you to be a witness. You didn’t know it was going to happen. You couldn’t have seen anything.’

  ‘The guy was right there,’ Kane said. ‘I heard the car speed off. I should have looked up. If I’d looked, maybe I could have seen—’

  ‘Even if you got the number plate, the car was probably stolen. There was nothing you could’ve done. Be thankful your attention was on Ryan those last few minutes.’

  Kane sighed. He dug his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘I just don’t know what to do anymore. How do you move on after something like this? He didn’t just die. If he’d been sick maybe I’d have been prepared. I don’t know. But he was murdered, David. Murdered by God knows who for God knows what reason.’

  ‘You don’t think it was the drugs?’ David asked.

  Kane thought about the phone calls, the voice issuing threats. Your friend owes me something. I’ll be in touch. He thought about the note under his windscreen wiper and about the long silences from Ryan over the last few months, the random disappearances that he was starting to remember. ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure. I mean, so he was taking drugs. All right. But why kill him for it? Surely you’re not going to kill someone who pays you for drugs.’

  He paused, shivered.

  ‘Unless he wasn’t paying,’ he continued. ‘Maybe he couldn’t pay.’ He turned and cupped his elbows in his hands. He was ready to go back inside now. ‘Maybe he owed someone a lot of money. Maybe this drug guy—the dealer—maybe he got sick of waiting for it.’

  ‘That’s a lot of maybes,’ David said, stubbing his cigarette out on the pillar that supported one corner of the pool’s ceiling, ‘But it does sound plausible.’

  ‘Does it?’ Kane asked. He wasn’t so sure.

  Chapter 5

  ‘Coffee?’ Margaret asked. She moved across the kitchen in a tired shuffle, her head bowed, shoulders drooping. The beige dressing gown she wore looked new, much like all her other clothing, but she carried premature old age as she moved.

  Kane smiled sombrely and sat at the breakfast bar with a sigh. ‘Black, please.’

  She worked on her upper lip with her teeth as she handed him a cup and sat down opposite him, picking at an invisible spot on the countertop. She sniffled, sipped at her coffee, and looked away. Kane could see her eyes blinking frantically as she tried to hold back her tears.

  ‘I think they said it might rain later today,’ she offered, steering the conversation in a mangled and pointless direction.

  He didn’t respond, didn’t know what to say.

  Margaret returned her attention to the counter, scratching with a fingernail, rubbing with a thumb. She wet her lips with her tongue and sniffled again. ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I’m good,’ he lied. ‘Thanks for—you know—letting me stay the night.’

  Her smile was momentary, obligatory.

  ‘I’m letting David sleep late,’ she said. ‘He needs it.’ She sighed and sat back, her arms useless and everywhere—folded, unfolded, at her sides, in her pockets. And then her face dipped into her hands and she wept silently.

  Kane bit his lip. How could he comfort her when the only thing he wanted was comfort for himself?

  * * *

  Ryan had once introduced him to a friend. They’d bumped into him at a nightclub and Ryan immediately conspired with the guy in a corner before bringing him anywhere near Kane. ‘Kane, this is Randy.’

  He looked randy. Kane thought he was off his head, juiced up on alcohol or drugs or both. Randy shook his hand and grinned yellow teeth.

  ‘He’s going to buy us a drink. Aren’t you, Randy?’ Ryan placed his hand on Randy’s shoulder. The music drove through the club like waves of invigorating energy.

  Randy looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at Randy. Kane looked at the floor.

  ‘Sure,’ Randy said. He bought margaritas and sat at their table, rubbing his nicotine-stained fingers together like he had an itch.

  Ryan leaned his head on Kane’s shoulder, always one for open displays of affection. He kissed his neck, his teeth touching his skin, his tongue flicking out to taste him. Randy cleared his throat between songs and Ryan smiled.

  ‘Got myself some dancing shoes,’ Randy slurred.

  ‘Dancing shoes?’ Kane asked.

  He nodded. ‘You know. Shoes. Like to dance in.’

  Ryan squeezed Kane’s thigh. ‘Randy wants to dance,’ he whispered. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  Kane shrugged. Ryan put his tongue in Kane’s mouth and he could taste the margarita. They disappeared onto the dance floor and Kane didn’t see them for nearly half an hour. His head began to spin and his heart accelerated, thumpthumpthumping inside his chest like it wanted out. And he didn’t know it then, but now he supposed Randy could have slipped something into his drink. Ecstasy or whatever. Something. Or it could have been Ryan.

  He gulped at his margarita, the paper umbrella whizzing to the ground as it spilled from the glass. Somebody trampled on it and he cursed. He leaned over to pick it up and nearly fell from his seat. He steadied himself against the table and opened his eyes wide then clenched them, then opened them again. He wondered how many drinks he had had.

  He felt sick. He felt dizzy. But he felt like he wanted to dance. And his heart was still pounding and he was sweating. And when Ryan came back with his dancing queen Kane stood and smiled and fell.

  ‘Whoa,’ Ryan laughed and sat him back in the chair. ‘Steady on. Are you drunk?’ Kane shook his head and the world went out of focus. Ryan’s face blurred into Randy’s.

  When his heart had slowed to a regular pattern and his sweat had dried on his face, Randy was gone and the music was shooting pains through his brain and Ryan was grinning at him like he owned the world.

  * * *

>   David put the phone down as Kane and Margaret came into the kitchen from the garden. They were discussing some sort of permanent memorial for Ryan, a tree or a statue.

  ‘Who was that?’ Margaret asked, kissing David on the cheek.

  ‘Just work,’ he said. He juiced an orange. ‘I have to go into the office. Not for long. Are you going to be okay?’

  ‘The office?’ she asked, sitting a tall glass flute on the counter for him.

  ‘It’s this London deal,’ David told them.

  ‘I thought that was cut and dried,’ Margaret said.

  ‘You have a deal in London?’ Kane asked.

  ‘It’s big,’ he said. ‘A very important client.’ He drained the orange juice into the glass. To Margaret he said, ‘Something’s upset our contact and we need to get it sorted or it might fall through. You’ll be all right? I’ll only be out for an hour. Two at the most.’

  Margaret nodded and smiled distractedly. Her attention was on a framed photograph of Ryan and Kane that hung next to the clock. David knocked back the orange juice, kissed his wife, patted Kane on the back, and left.

  ‘He spends too much time in the office,’ Margaret said, still looking at the picture. She took the snap two years ago with a black and white film. It was natural; Margaret hated posed photographs. Ryan was opening a Christmas present and Kane was only half in the frame, half out of focus, watching him. The huge Christmas tree sparkled in star-like kisses in the background.

  ‘It was a great Christmas,’ Kane said. ‘Ryan never laughed so much.’

  ‘Yes,’ Margaret said, her hand held to her breastbone. She turned away, obviously in pain.

  ‘What’s this deal David’s doing?’ Kane asked.

  ‘Sorry? Oh. I’m not sure. I never really understand these things. Some financial thing, I expect. Clematis,’ she said. ‘That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Opposite the apple tree. We could put a little plaque there. You know, with his name on it.’

  Kane followed her gaze out into the garden. The apples were ripe. Full of life.