by Zoe Sharp
As it was, my attacker went down with a crash, overturning a chair. One of the dogs – probably Beezer – finally began to bark behind the kitchen door, frenzied little yaps that sounded neither big nor menacing. More’s the pity.
I flicked on the lights in the hallway and found that my intruder was a young man with longish dark hair, wearing a T-shirt and bike leather trousers. He’d been carrying a backpack that he’d dropped when he’d fallen and he was currently trying to clutch at all the points I’d hit with the hand that still worked. I waited until he had the breath to speak. At least I’d brought something to read.
“Fuck me,” he gasped eventually. It was more of an exclamation than an instruction. There was the faintest trace of an Irish lilt to his voice and something about his face was familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Certainly not enough to be able to justify him creeping about in Jacob and Clare’s house in the middle of the night, that’s for sure.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Fuck that!” he countered hotly. “Who the hell are you?”
“If you’d just answer the question,” I said mildly, rolling the magazine up again, “we’d get along a lot better.”
“You could be anyone,” he said, wary, rubbing at his throat and not taking his eyes off what I was doing with my hands. “I’m not telling you anything until I know what the hell you’re doing here.”
I sighed. If there was one thing my time in the States had taught me, it was how to communicate with stroppy teenagers in terms they’d understand. This one looked twenty at a push, but I’d be willing to bet he wouldn’t be allowed into a nightclub without having to show his ID.
“Tell me what I want to know,” I said, conversational, leaning over him, “or I’ll hit you again.”
He reared back, shocked, then a gleam of laughter appeared and a big grin broke through his natural mistrust. His shoulders came down a fraction.
“Well if you’re a burglar, you’re the prettiest thief I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “OK. My name’s Jamie – Jamie Nash.”
“Nash?” I repeated, confused. Jacob’s name was Nash. “But—”
He nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “Jacob’s my dad.”
***
I put the coffee down on the kitchen table in front of Jamie and sat opposite, picking up my own cup. He smiled in thanks and, now I knew the connection, I could see Jacob’s smile there, Jacob’s eyes.
The family resemblance was clear, but Jacob had never mentioned having any children. He rarely talked about his ill-fated marriage to Isobel but I suppose it wouldn’t have been kind to do so in front of Clare.
“How’s the arm?” I asked.
“I may play the piano again,” he said, rueful, flexing it gingerly, “but I wouldn’t bet on it. Where did you learn to hit people like that? With a rolled up magazine, for Christ’s sake.”
“Self-defence classes,” I said shortly and didn’t add that I’d been the one teaching them. “It means I’m classed as having had training and if I’d beaten you up with a chair leg they’d have thrown the book at me.” I smiled at him as I took a sip of coffee. “This way you’re the one who gets laughed out of court.”
He snorted. “Remind me never to ask you to housetrain a puppy,” he said. “You’d beat the poor little bastard to death inside the first week.”
“So you don’t know whereabouts in Ireland your dad might be?” I asked.
He’d just taken a drink of his own coffee and he shook his head vigorously and swallowed before he spoke. “Didn’t even know he was away,” he said. “Ironic, isn’t it? He’s over there and I’m over here.”
Beezer jumped up onto Jamie’s lap and bounced up and down a few times, trying to lick his chin. He stared at the terrier without really seeing her, ruffling her ears in a reflex gesture. “Shit this is bad,” he muttered. He glanced at me with an almost fearful curiosity. “About Clare, I mean. How is she?”
I repeated my father’s diagnosis, such as it was. “Do you know her well?”
His gaze passed over me briefly, then slid away. “Not really,” he said with an awkward shrug. “I haven’t really seen that much of Dad since he and Mum split up.”
Difficult to know how he’d be expected to feel about his father’s girlfriend, I suppose. Particularly as she was far closer to Jamie’s age than to Jacob’s.
I’d told him only the bare bones of the story. That Jacob was away somewhere in Ireland and that Clare had been in a bike accident in which another biker had also died. I didn’t tell him the rumours about what might or might not have been going on between Clare and Slick. As it was he’d taken the news in pale silence.
“So,” I said, sitting back. “Your turn. What were you doing breaking in to your father’s house at half-two in the morning?”
Jamie grinned. “Got in to Heysham earlier this evening and went round the town with a few mates after we got off the boat,” he said. “Then—”
“Boat?”
“Ferry,” he explained. “From Ireland.” And when I still looked blank he added, “That’s where my mother’s family hail from, so that’s where we went back to. Just outside Coleraine. In the north.”
I reached for my coffee cup again and waved him on.
He shrugged again, still fussing with the terrier. “Well, I was supposed to be meeting someone but they didn’t turn up,” he said, pulling a face, “so then I didn’t have any place to stay.”
A girl, I surmised. And he’d been hoping to get lucky. “And?”
“And nothing,” he said with the same kind of easy smile that Jacob was master of. “I suppose I just thought why should I shell out for a hotel when my dad’s place was just up the road, so I thought maybe I’d come and crash here.”
He hesitated, possibly realising that use of the word “crash” was not the best choice in these circumstances.
“So you bypassed the drive alarm and broke in through the study window,” I said dryly, draining my coffee cup and standing. “Don’t they have doorbells in Ireland?”
“I didn’t want to wake anyone,” he said, smiling easily. “I helped Dad dig that sensor in one summer when I was about ten. And the study window’s always had a dodgy catch on it.” He tipped the terrier back onto the floor and got to his feet, too.
“Besides,” he added, following me out into the hallway, “when I saw the car and the bikes were all here I wasn’t expecting them to be away – or that I’d be jumped by Lara bloody Croft on the way in.”
I led the way upstairs, turning off lights as we went. At the airing cupboard on the landing I dug out sheets and pillows and thrust them into Jamie’s arms, ignoring his surprised expression. I think he was probably hoping I’d offer to make the bed up for him. His mother, I reckoned, had a lot to answer for.
Jamie made straight for the second room on the left, pushing open the door and stepping inside before I could stop him.
“Erm, Jamie,” I called sharply. He stopped. “That’s where I’m sleeping and I’m afraid you aren’t invited.”
He cocked his head in my direction, taking in my rumpled shirt and jeans in a single sweeping glance that seemed to suggest he was giving me serious consideration. “Oh well, if you’re sure,” he murmured, backing out. “Although, as that used to be my room, technically speaking I’m not the one who’s in the wrong bed.”
For a moment I considered offering to move, but he was already grabbing for the handle of the door opposite instead. I shrugged, but slid the bolt on my door once I was safely inside. Then I climbed back into bed and slept like the dead for what remained of the night.
***
I woke around seven the next morning, courtesy of my in-built alarm clock. A lazy mist hung over the trees and the river, promising another long hot day ahead. I glanced down onto the forecourt and saw a snazzy little race-replica Honda RVF400 with a Northern Irish plate on it parked up next to Jacob’s old Range Rover. Nice bike. It seemed that in amongst the rest of the genes, Jacob
had also passed on his love of biking to his son.
I slipped into the bathroom first, then climbed into my leather jeans and a clean shirt, glad I’d made that detour. I looked in briefly to the bedroom Jamie had taken but he was spark out, lying diagonally across the bed in a face-down sprawl.
I went downstairs and let the dogs out, then rang the hospital again for news of Clare. Comfortable, they told me, which seemed absurdly optimistic of someone with as many broken bones as she had.
The sun was already throwing out warmth, beginning to heat up the stones of the old house. I drank my first coffee of the day sitting out on the terrace in peaceful solitude, soaking it up. The events of yesterday seemed remote, like a dream. I remembered my conversation with Sean and almost wondered if I’d imagined that, too.
Away to my right came the sound of water running down the drainpipe from the bathroom. Sleeping beauty awakes. I went back inside to put a fresh pot of coffee on.
I was halfway through filling a cafetière when the drive alarm went off. The dogs scrambled out of their beds, barking furiously like they’d been practising the drill. The combination of the two made me jump and slosh hot water onto both the kitchen floor and down the leg of my jeans. Good job they were leather or I’d have been scalded.
When I looked out of the window onto the forecourt, it was just in time to see the post van pull up outside.
“Oh yes, very dangerous he looks,” I told the dogs, sarky, as the mail dropped through the letterbox in the front door. They whined and avoided my gaze and looked embarrassed. I wondered if it was the alarm rather than the vehicle the dogs reacted to, like some Pavlovian experiment. Was that why they hadn’t kicked up a fuss last night?
Jamie arrived just as the coffee was brewed. He didn’t wait to be invited but helped himself, retrieving a mug from the cupboard next to the kitchen door without hesitation.
“Know your way around, don’t you?” I said, nodding to the mug.
He paused, startled for a moment, then he grinned at me. “That’s where they’ve always been kept,” he said. “Dad’s nothing if not a creature of habit.”
He was wearing the same leather bike trousers he’d had on the night before, and a clean T-shirt with a designer label on the front. He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table, turned it round and sat astride it, leaning his forearms on the back.
“I’ve rung about Clare and they tell me I can go in and see her this morning,” I said. “You want to come?”
He frowned for a moment, warring emotions flitting across his face.
“It’s not compulsory,” I put in mildly. “She may not even be awake enough to talk to.”
“No, no, I’ll come,” he said quickly. He nodded towards the kitchen window where we could just see his Honda outside and gave me a smirk. “If you’re feeling brave enough I can give you a lift on the back of my bike.”
“Yeah, I can well imagine that getting on the back of your bike would be a pretty quick way to a hospital,” I returned with an answering smile. “But no thanks – I prefer to ride my own.”
***
Jamie watched rather anxiously as I wheeled the Suzuki out of the coach house. He only relaxed when he recognised the bike for what it was and worked out how much smaller it was than his own four hundred. Size matters – it’s a guy thing.
Like my two-fifty, Jamie’s bike was no longer a current model but it was in good nick, with a titanium exhaust can and an after-market steering damper.
Jamie already had his helmet on and the Honda revving as I locked up. I kicked my bike’s engine over and, just to give it half a chance to warm through, took my time shrugging my way into the borrowed backpack containing the nightie and washbag full of bits and pieces that I’d thought Clare might appreciate. As it was, Jamie barely let me get my gloves on before he was away up the drive.
“Prat,” I muttered under my breath. I had no intention of racing him. Not when it meant going hand-to-hand with a load of dopey car drivers in the Monday morning rush-hour, that’s for sure. By the time I reached the top of the drive and pulled out into the stream of traffic on the main road, he was nowhere to be seen.
Maybe it was with the realities of the accident well forward in my mind, but I found myself riding more defensively than usual. A couple of vehicles behind me was a Ford Transit van with two men inside. Nothing sinister in itself, but Clare’s words in the hospital came back and made me twitchy. At the next opportunity I toed the Suzuki down a gear, hit the narrow power band, and hopped three cars further up the line.
I’d just pulled back in when there was a flash of high-beam headlights in my right-hand mirror. Three big bikes came thrashing past a rake of traffic to slot in alongside me with the neatness and precision of jet fighters.
I glanced over automatically. The lead bike was an Aprilia RSV 1000, all dressed up in race replica paintwork that made it look like a cigarette packet on wheels.
Behind that was a two-year-old special edition Ducati 996, with carbon trim on the exhaust can and the fairing.
Bringing up the rear of the tight formation was a sleek Kawasaki ZX-9R in lurid green. The riders were all wearing leathers to suit the bikes and they had their heads turned in my direction but the iridium coating on their visors gave them a completely blank stare. All I could see was my own reflection.
I nodded, the usual friendly acknowledgement of one member of the fraternity to another. They totally ignored the greeting, staring at me for a moment longer. Then, as if at some signal, the trio blasted away down the white line like they were overtaking a slow-moving mule train, leaving me feeling small and pedestrian and ever so slightly insulted in their wake.
***
If I’d bothered to wonder where the three bikers were heading, it didn’t take long for me to find out. About two of them, at least.
When I got to the hospital I found the Ducati and the Kawasaki both in the car park. They had pulled up on either side of Jamie’s machine, dwarfing the little four hundred like schoolground bullies. The Kawasaki rider was still on board. He was big enough for the bike to look small under him. Through the partly open visor I recognised William’s features, cheeks squeezed by the foam padding inside his helmet.
The Ducati rider had dismounted, leaving his own lid perched on top of the tank. There was so much carbon fibre covering the body of the bike it looked like it was covered in tweed.
The rider was small and dapper, in one-piece leathers that were obviously made-to-measure rather than off the peg. He had a thin pencil moustache that circled his chin, and dark hair that was spiked into a blond mini mohican along his crown. I wondered how on earth he kept his hairstyle intact under a helmet when I could never preserve mine.
He was currently standing nose-to-nose with Jamie. He had to rise up on his toes to do so. His back was towards me but their discussion didn’t exactly look friendly.
I ran the Suzuki in alongside them and cut the engine but they hardly seemed to notice me. There was no sign of the guy who’d been on the cigarette packet Aprilia.
“You’re in or you’re out, mate – now more than ever,” the Ducati rider was saying, pointing an accusing finger. His voice sounded tight but it was difficult to tell just how wound he was without being able to see his face.
“I’m in, Paxo, believe me!” Jamie protested. He was trying not to sound desperate and not quite succeeding. He flicked his eyes nervously in my direction and lowered the volume a touch. “I just can’t believe you’re still going ahead after what’s happened.”
“We’re too far along to back out now,” William said, his tone placid, almost lazy. “Life’s a risk. You either take it or you may as well just give up now.”
Life’s a risk. I remembered my defence of idiots like him to MacMillan and felt my anger climb. So it seemed that Slick had been road racing when he’d had his final crash, despite having a passenger on board. I got off the bike and yanked my helmet off, glaring at Jamie. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.
; “Does it mean nothing to you that your mate Slick’s dead because of what you lot have been up to?” I demanded bitterly. “Not to mention the fact that Clare might still lose her legs?
“Now look—” Jamie began earnestly.
All I did was turn my head slightly in his direction. He shut up.
“When I spoke to Clare yesterday she reckoned they were deliberately brought down,” I went on, my attention back on William and the Ducati rider Jamie had called Paxo. “Who have you been annoying enough that they want you dead?” It was overly melodramatic, but I was aiming for shock value.
“We don’t know what you’re on about, Charlie,” William said evenly, but I hadn’t missed the little anxious glances they’d shared.