Rider Read Free

awkwardly grasping the receiver.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Mr Rider. This is Detective Thorpe. We spoke yesterday? The interim report is in on your friend, Mr Cassidy. I think you should come down to the station if you don’t mind.’
    ‘The station?’ Kane asked, still groggy from sleep.
    Detective Thorpe paused for the slightest hesitation. ‘There’s a few things we’d like to discuss.’

Chapter 2
     
     
    Detective James Thorpe showed Kane into his office at the police station on Antrim Road and he took a seat. When Thorpe sat down opposite him, behind his messy desk, he smiled.
    Kane looked at him. ‘You said there was a problem?’
    ‘I said there are a few things we’d like to discuss.’
    ‘Is something wrong?’
    ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said.
    ‘What is it?’
    He drank from a disgusting-looking mug of tea. ‘I’m sorry, would you like a drink? The tea’s like tar and the water cooler is warm, but you’re welcome to it.’
    ‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’ Kane pressed.
    ‘Mr Rider—Kane—how well did you know the deceased?’
    ‘Eight years. Why?’
    ‘And you’ve been…partners—is that right?—for eight years also.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You had a good relationship?’
    ‘I loved him.’
    ‘Yes, and you shared a flat?’ He consulted a sheet of paper from a file on his desk. ‘Six years, you told my colleagues.’
    ‘Yeah, about six years.’ Kane looked at the paper but couldn’t make out what it said, then looked back at Thorpe. ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘Mr Rider,’ Thorpe said. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. Some routine blood-work on the deceased, Ryan Cassidy, showed up a few anomalies.’
    ‘What sort of anomalies?’
    ‘Were you aware of Mr Cassidy’s use to heroin?’
    He couldn’t think. His head felt light and his fingers went numb.
    When Thorpe spoke again, his voice was only a vague whisper in Kane’s ear. ‘We need a blood sample from you. It’s in your best interest to submit one voluntarily.’
    * * *
     
    Kane scratched uselessly at the corner of the plaster on his arm, the mark of Thorpe’s blood-sample request, and stared at the blank TV screen. The remote control was in his hand but he hadn’t turned it on.
    Heroin. How had he missed it? Why didn’t he see the signs? But then, he had to admit he didn’t know what the signs were . Had Ryan’s mood ever changed? Were those big wide eyes natural or induced?
    Thorpe had told him where Ryan had injected himself, had said it was only traces of the substance, but enough to suggest semi-regular use. There weren’t many needle-marks, but he should have spotted them if he’d been looking properly.
    His mind was listless, wandering from one splinter of thought to another. He thought back to two nights ago. He and Ryan had just come out of the nightclub. Ryan had been trying to talk him into going to a party at someone’s house. He forgot who.
    Ryan had taken his hand and they walked along the street towards the nearest taxi rank. That was when a man bumped into him. The guy could have been their age, could have even been a teenager or someone in his forties; his hoodie hid his face.
    It was a split-second affair. ‘Sorry, mate,’ the guy had said. And he kept walking. And then Ryan was on the ground, a gaping knife wound in his chest and fear in his eyes. Kane had given no more thought to that man until much later when he told Thorpe.
    The phone rang and pulled him from sinister thoughts. He scratched the edge of the plaster again and rose to pick up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
    But there was no one there.
    * * *
     
    Two years ago, he had sat between Ryan’s legs facing out onto the Atlantic from a quiet corner of Portstewart where they often spent the weekends in the summer months. Ryan’s chin was resting on Kane’s neck, his arms around his shoulders, his breath warm and sensual on his cheek. Their skin was still wet from a recent swim, where he had caught Kane in the water, held him