Rider

by Merrigan, Peter J

  Kane put his hands behind his head and stared up at the night sky. Ryan’s philosophical moments weren’t just alcohol-induced. Lately, it seemed he could fade out of the real world into his mind without any notice or warning. Kane often had to repeat a question before Ryan would acknowledge him. It wasn’t so much a distance as a detachment, Kane thought, like he was pondering the laws of the universe.

  Ryan was right, Kane thought. People are confusing.

  * * *

  After another hour of questioning, Wilson left Clark to finish up. When she took Kane through all the paperwork, she walked him to the front of the building and showed him out.

  ‘So you’re just letting me go?’ Kane asked.

  ‘Go home, Kane,’ she said.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Get some rest. You look like you need it.’

  He thought they all looked like they needed it. ‘But…Dawson,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, off the record? Thanks for that.’

  ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘You were part of it, though.’ She sighed. ‘We were planning on bringing him in. That’s the official take. Unofficially, I’m glad he’s off the streets and not tying up our hands.’

  ‘David was his boss?’ Kane asked.

  ‘Associates,’ she told him. ‘Dawson worked for many people but was bossed around by none.’

  Kane watched her as she put her hands in her pockets and stared down the street. ‘And what about David?’ he asked.

  ‘We have it in hand. We’ll find him.’

  ‘If he had something to do with Ryan’s death, I want to destroy him. Stab him the way Ryan was stabbed.’

  She touched his shoulder. ‘If ever we need you to do that, I’ll get in touch.’

  Kane looked around. ‘I can’t believe this is it. After all I’ve been through, this is it?’

  ‘Listen,’ Clark said. ‘Hang up your spurs, cowboy. Your involvement stops here. Leave it to the professionals, okay? Don’t go chasing bad dreams. If you pursue this, I will arrest you.’

  Her mobile phone started ringing and she unhooked it from her belt.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  Kane flatted his lips together. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Me too.’ And he walked away from her.

  * * *

  She watched him walking down the street and felt sorry for him. She knew it couldn’t have been easy for him, coping not only with the death of his partner but also the revelations that followed.

  She brought her phone to her ear. ‘Clark,’ she said.

  Wilson sounded like he was out of breath. She could hear his footsteps on stairs. ‘I’ve just spoken to the guys on the street,’ he told her.

  ‘What’s happening out there?’

  Kane was almost out of view now, his shoulders slumped, his gait slow and meaningless.

  ‘They’ve found him,’ Wilson said, referring to Bernhard. ‘He’s on the move.’

  ‘Where is he? Where’s he headed?’

  ‘They’re tailing him now. He’s going west.’

  ‘On his own?’ Clark asked.

  ‘He’s with three other men. One they recognise. The other two are just shadows. Intel has it Bernhard knows someone’s in town.’

  ‘Rider?’ she asked. How could he possibly know?

  Wilson said, ‘Bingo. I want him disappeared.’

  There was another voice on the phone then, someone passing by. ‘Not now, Dixon,’ Wilson said. ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  Clark laughed. ‘Kick him for me,’ she said. ‘He still owes me for that bet last month.’

  There was a brief exchange between Wilson and Dixon before Wilson said to Clark, ‘I want him in a safe house.’

  ‘I’ve just let him go,’ Clark said.

  ‘You’ve what? Get him back.’

  Clark started running down the street before he’d even said it. ‘I’m on it,’ she said and she ended the call.

  Chapter 12

  Kane was walking the few short streets back to the B&B so he could pick up his things and think about heading home again when he heard, some distance behind him, Clark’s voice calling his name.

  He turned towards her and saw that she was running as fast as she could.

  ‘Kane!’ she shouted again. She stopped in front of him, not even remotely out of breath. ‘You've got to come back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bernhard’s on the move. He knows you’re here.’

  ‘How?’ Kane asked. He looked around the street as though David would come strolling up towards him at any minute.

  When they got back to Interpol Headquarters, Clark led him up to Wilson’s office. As he sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, Wilson was on the phone. ‘Just keep me posted,’ he was saying. ‘Stay on him.’

  He slammed the phone down and Clark asked, ‘Where?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Kane asked.

  Wilson ignored him. To Clark, he said, ‘Embankment. They’re still moving.’

  ‘Who’s his tail?’

  ‘Mickey Brown,’ Wilson said. ‘He won’t lose him.’

  Kane watched the exchange between the two detectives, only half able to follow the words. How could David know he was in London?

  Wilson looked at him, sighed. ‘You have no idea what you’ve got yourself into, have you? We’ll put you in a safe house, away from harm. Bernhard won’t find you.’

  ‘He’s actually looking for me?’ Kane asked.

  ‘Dawson’s dead and the news is out. He knows his wife took a hit, too.’

  ‘What’s he doing now?’ He looked from Wilson to Clark.

  ‘Coming after you, no doubt,’ Wilson said.

  Kane shook his head. ‘Why isn’t he going home?’ he asked. ‘If he knows Margaret’s in hospital—’

  ‘He’s too shrewd for that,’ Wilson told him.

  ‘But he loves her.’

  ‘Collateral damage,’ Wilson said. ‘If he does love her, he’ll send her flowers when he’s finished his business here.’

  Kane stood and curled his fingers into fists. ‘You still haven’t told me what’s going on.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Wilson said.

  Clark said, ‘It’s best if you don’t know.’

  * * *

  The safe house, a ground floor flat in a nondescript street in Central London, was run down but serviceable. It was one of eight houses that Interpol currently utilised throughout London and the Home Counties, under authority from the Met. In truth, it appeared more of a storage hold than a welcoming home, but as Clark opened the door and allowed the afternoon sunlight to fill the living room, dust mites dancing in the air current, she nodded almost to herself, and said, ‘It’ll do for now.’

  Kane and PC Burton—lending a watchful eye from the Yard—stepped in behind her.

  ‘You really think he’s coming after me?’ Kane asked, looking around at the grotty flat.

  ‘You want to take that chance?’ Clark said. ‘Burton, put the kettle on, will you?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Burton said and went to the small kitchen off the living room.

  ‘You can’t keep me here,’ Kane said.

  ‘It’s for your own protection.’

  ‘You said I wasn’t under arrest.’

  Clark pulled a dust sheet from the sofa and dropped it in a corner. ‘You’re not,’ she said. ‘But we still have the power to hold you. I can arrest you if it makes you feel better.’ When Kane was about to protest, Clark added, ‘Look, we’ll take Bernhard out soon. Until then—’

  ‘Take him out?’ Kane asked. ‘Kill him?’

  Clark smiled ruefully. ‘No. If only we had the authority to dispose of the bad guys, our job would be a hell of a lot easier. He’s too important to have him in a body bag.’

  Kane sat on the sofa and picked at a thumbnail. ‘The man’s a bastard,’ he said. ‘How could he keep this secret life from everyone?’

  Sitting down beside him, Clark said, ‘Everyone’s got s
ecrets, Kane.’

  ‘Drugs,’ Kane said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Kane shook his head. ‘Ryan had a secret. He was jacking up on heroin and I didn’t have a clue.’

  Clark looked away from him, chewed her lower lip.

  ‘What?’ Kane asked. She ignored him, adjusted the cuffs of her jacket sleeves. ‘What?’ he said again. ‘You can’t tell me he wasn’t doing drugs. I saw the coroner’s report.’

  She looked at him. ‘Kane.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Clark stood, sighed, walked away from the sofa to the old gas fire in the brace wall, and walked back to him as she spoke. ‘It’s true they found heroin in his system during the autopsy. But it wasn’t what he wanted. Not that.’

  ‘It never is, is it?’ Kane said. ‘But I didn’t know. How could I not have known?’

  ‘He did his best to keep it from you.’

  Kane stared at her, looking up from his seated position. ‘How well did you know him?’

  Clark sighed again. ‘NCB have been in contact with him for nearly six months.’

  ‘Six months?’ The idea that Ryan had been involved in this subterfuge for so long both shocked and confused him.

  ‘He was a good asset,’ Clark said. ‘He shouldn’t have been, but he was.’ She sat back down beside him, watched his face. ‘The heroin…It wasn’t his fault. You have to understand that.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m going to lose my job here,’ Clark said. She pinned a strand of hair behind an ear. She looked towards the kitchen, making sure Officer Burton was still out of ear shot, and she lowered her voice. ‘I’m only telling you this because—look, I’m doing you a favour. You have a right to know.’

  Kane kept quiet, listened intently.

  ‘About four months ago,’ Clark said, ‘Bernhard knew Ryan was on to him, but he didn’t know how deep he’d gotten.’

  ‘How deep did he get?’

  ‘Deep enough,’ she said. ‘Listen to me, Kane. David Bernhard had Ryan injected with it. With the heroin. It was never much, just enough to give him a taste. They threatened him with larger doses, lethal doses.’

  Kane closed his eyes and listened to her voice as she told him what Ryan had relayed directly to her—the warehouse, Dawson, O’Reef, the heroin. When they knew he was getting too close to their dirty little secrets, they accosted him, strapped him into a chair in that dank storage unit in the middle of nowhere, tied a shoelace around his bicep to lock his veins and reveal them under the gloomy overheads, and stuck a needle in his arm.

  Ryan had screamed, tried to thrash about, but they had tied him down and gagged his mouth. And they stood back, Ryan had told Clark, stood back and watched as he tripped off his face. He was dizzy, tingly at first, but a rush of warmth quickly consumed his whole body and his brain was buzzing and alert and he felt euphoric, he felt alive.

  And the funny thing, Ryan had said, the absolute funniest thing, was that he could have sworn David Bernhard was standing in a recess, in the shadows, watching and smiling and smiling and watching.

  And he felt alive.

  And he felt fit.

  And he felt happy.

  When Kane opened his eyes again there were tears on his lashes. ‘Why?’ he breathed. ‘Why give him heroin?’

  ‘To keep him in line,’ Clark said. ‘To stop him chasing their tails. He wouldn’t grass on the one man who could…’

  ‘Make him feel happy?’ Kane asked, sensing the irony. ‘Make him feel alive?’

  ‘Drugs are like that, Kane. That’s not who he was and you know it.’

  ‘So this whole thing,’ Kane said, ‘all this shit—it’s all about drugs?’

  Clark shook her head. ‘The drugs were just a sideline.’ She glanced at the kitchen again, realised Burton must have heard at least part of their conversation and was staying out of the way, and she said, ‘It’s weapons, mostly. This is one of the biggest cartels we’ve ever seen, operating out of more than twelve countries. Mexico, Peru, the US, UK, Spain—’

  Kane stood. ‘Ryan was killed because of drugs and guns?’

  ‘No,’ Clark said. ‘Ryan was killed because of Bernhard’s greed.’

  ‘He loved David.’

  ‘But he didn’t trust him. Not at the end. He knew too much. The heroin was a way to put him off, get him addicted so that he needed Bernhard to keep supplying it. We were arranging rehab.’

  ‘But why?’ Kane asked. ‘Why get him hooked on drugs? Why not just kill him when they found out he was on to them?’

  ‘We could speculate forever,’ Clark said.

  ‘And you,’ Kane accused. ‘Why didn’t you stop it? Why’d you let him get addicted instead of pulling him out and saving his life?’

  ‘We didn’t know. He didn’t tell us about the drug-taking until it was too late. This is not a blame game, Kane. We did what we could with the information we had.’ She stood and touched his arm. ‘Believe me, if there was any other way, if he had told us from the start, we’d have fixed it. This is Bernhard’s fault. Ryan wouldn’t have started on the heroin if it wasn’t for him.’

  Kane nodded, resolve in his eyes. ‘You have to let me help. I can get close to him. Reel him in or something.’

  Clark shook her head. ‘I can’t allow that. He knows you’re here and he’ll know we’ve got you. You’re not friendly any more. I’ve told you before, let us deal with it.’

  ‘I can’t just sit here and wait for it to be over.’

  ‘If you don’t just sit here,’ Clark said, ‘it will be over—for you. I’m sorry, Kane, but there’s nothing you can do.’

  They faced each other, staring hard, anger and frustration flashing between them.

  When Burton came back into the living room, carrying a tray of mugs and a teapot, the movement at his peripheral vision broke the spell and Kane relented. He said, ‘I want my boyfriend back.’

  ‘I know,’ Clark said. She touched his arm again. ‘I know.’

  Chapter 13

  As Clark entered Interpol’s headquarters that afternoon she was determined that this whole fiasco would end now. She owed it to Kane, owed it to Ryan. They had been sitting on this mess for long enough; it was time to act. The organisation to which David Bernhard belonged was escalating its operations both here in the UK as well as in France and Africa. If the guys in Lyon didn’t pull their fingers out soon, Interpol might miss the only chance they might have.

  Arms dealing was big business on the continent. Bernhard’s organisation had no name—not officially, anyway. On the face of it, they operated under multilateral treaty laws and the trading of guns and ammunition was not, in itself, illegal. What they flouted were the UN Security Council’s arms embargoes. Clark, Wilson and the rest of the teams entrusted with international safety measures could do little to stop the arms trade, short of enforcing import-export laws.

  But the arms business was simply a cover for global drug smuggling. Why they had decided to share these two cargoes, Clark could only ever hazard a guess. But to her, in light of the evidence they had amassed recently, Bernhard’s associates clearly hoped that if they were stopped for their arms activities they would get a slap on the wrist and their baseline drugs operations would continue unhindered.

  Taking down those acting illegally on UK soil—Bernhard, Dawson, the handful of others that NCIS had been following for some time—was not the full extent of Clark’s duties. Putting an end to the worldwide business was their ultimate goal and one she hoped they would achieve soon before anyone else should die unnecessarily.

  She swiped her pass card at a turnstile and headed towards the bank of lifts on the far wall. She had left PC Burton with Kane in the safe house, with a promise of coming back later with food.

  When Detective Jim Dixon hurried up with a toothy smile and walked along beside her, she said, ‘You owe me money.’

  ‘Give me a chance to win it back,’ Dixon said.

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘
Got your guy in a house?’

  ‘Got your own cases to be working?’ Clark asked.

  ‘I get the boring cases,’ Dixon said. ‘Tell Adams I want in on yours.’

  Clark pressed the call button for the lifts. Dixon was one of those unfortunate individuals with sharp weasel features and the stature of a tunnel-dwelling troll. At five-foot-very-little, if it wasn’t for his wisecracking tongue and his apparent desire to bathe in cheap cologne, Clark assumed he could enter a room unnoticed and remain there undiscovered indefinitely. Despite his appearance—or perhaps because of it—he had a string of women constantly on the go. Clark would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen it for herself. Whatever desire he aroused in these women, she failed to see it herself.

  ‘Wilson would never allow it,’ she said in reply to his request.

  Dixon pressed the call button after Clark had done so and stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. His tie had been done up wrong and ended about three inches below his belt. ‘Adams’ll tell him,’ he said. ‘Come on, you want me on your team, don’t you?’

  ‘As much as I want your nuts for breakfast.’

  Dixon sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Play fair,’ he said.

  Tired and irritable, Clark said, ‘What do you want, Dixon?’

  He looked her up and down. ‘I want to play with the big boys.’

  When the lift doors opened, they waited as half a dozen people got out, and then they stepped inside.

  ‘The case,’ Dixon said. ‘You can get me in. Come on, let me help. I’m going mad stuck up there with Biggs and his doughnuts.’

  ‘Get out of my lift, Dixon,’ Clark said as she pressed the button for the third floor.

  ‘Your lift?’

  ‘My lift,’ she said, and she pushed him out just as the doors closed. You could only manage to listen to Dixon for an extremely short period of time. If he wasn’t begging to be on bigger cases—he was currently working a national auto-theft case, a classic cut and shut outfit—then he was delighting everyone with the intimate details of his sexual conquests.

  Up on the third floor, she walked down the corridor to Wilson’s office and found him at his computer.