The bone road, p.10
The Bone Road, page 10
She’d moved in with him straight out of hospital. Her old flat in Manchester had belonged to the cycling team and there was now a new girl in her room, in her team spot, living her life.
Yup, here was a picture of the housewarming. Just a few of them. None of the team had come. They were all too busy training for Rio with the new line-up. Jessie as the star, going for the gold medal. Heather had been relieved they hadn’t come – she couldn’t have faced seeing them. She resented that they didn’t keep in touch, but when they tried, it was unbearable. The month of the Olympics was the worst. She’d spent a lot of it on the sofa, drinking wine and yelling at the TV, but Ryan had made it tolerable. He’d helped her turn it into a game. Jesus. He’d even forced her to watch the women’s road race. The one she’d spent her entire life dreaming and training for, and for which the team had spent a year practising set-ups to help her win. She’d skulked around for days, and on the morning of the race, Ryan had presented her with a shot of tequila and sat her down and forced her to watch. He had sat with her, yelling at the TV screen all the way through the race. There were great gaping holes all through her memories of that summer but she did remember race day. He was supposed to be in Rio, but he stayed to be with her. He had sacrificed his own career for her. Or so she had thought at the time. Heather still wasn’t sure who or what she’d recovered into. She couldn’t fully remember who she’d been before. There were these ragged black holes, like her entire personality had been decimated by moths.
Here was another picture of her from that time. God, she looked young and so thin, like she’d snap. And those livid scars all along her hairline. She’d forgotten she’d looked like that. They’d had to shave her head and the hair took ages to grow back. Heather brushed her fingers along her skull and felt a bump – the metal plate – a tiny patch where the hair never grew, soft and smooth.
She flicked through another six months. And then, yes, here was another. She experienced a hot rush of anger. Ryan and her at the Tommy Hilfiger Sports Journalist of the Year Award. It turned out his sacrifice in missing the Olympics hadn’t been quite so absolute. They stood on the red carpet, Ryan in his tuxedo, smiling, handsome. His stubble carefully trimmed, eyes movie-star blue, wincing slightly against all the flashes, creases in the corners of his eyes. His arm protectively around her shoulders. Her memory of that time tended to play tricks. It was like watching a TV show, but the scenes were all sliced up and put together in a weird order – some of them missing – and no matter how much she concentrated, she could never quite figure out the right order or find the cut scenes. She still looked too thin, and her hair was short and spiky but at least it was a style. She held a walking stick, but not a crutch. She’d wanted to try and manage that night without one, but Ryan had insisted she take it, and they’d fought.
Heather couldn’t remember how she’d felt when she read the article for the first time. Maybe it was one of the blank spaces. Or perhaps simply her later fury had engulfed any earlier, softer feelings like a wildfire swallowing the gentle flames of a campfire. Up until this week, when Ryan disappeared, the ceremony had been one of the worst nights of her life. The accident itself had happened in the morning and she had been in surgery the same night and couldn’t remember anything until she was woken from the artificially induced coma five days later. The award ceremony, however, she remembered in wretched detail – everyone coming up to her, telling her how proud she must be of Ryan. It was odd, some things were missing, and yet others she could recall with cinematic clarity.
In her mind, she stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom in their flat in her white dress and tried to put some colour on her cheeks, apply mascara with a hand that shook. Ryan came in and stood behind her.
‘You look gorgeous.’
‘I don’t think I can do this.’
He frowned. ‘Sweetheart, they want to see you, not me. My article is all about you.’
Heather whirled round to look at him. ‘And did you think how I might feel about that? My lowest moment. The shittiest part of my life.’
Ryan sagged against the shower cubicle. ‘The article is about your bravery, about the cruelty of sport. Lost dreams.’
‘And yet somehow my lost dream is about to win you yours.’
‘I haven’t won, Heather.’
‘You will.’
As she applied her lipstick, she knew with absolute certainty that he would.
He looked desolate and Heather felt awful, and although it stuck in her teeth, she apologised. Even so, they were barely speaking when the cab arrived. Ryan helped her in and then put her walking stick in the boot.
‘I don’t need it. I’ll lean on your arm.’
‘Take it.’
‘Why? Does it look better? The Olympian reduced to hobbling with a stick?’
‘No. Because if I have to go and take pictures or talk to someone, I don’t want you stranded. What if you need to go to the ladies’ room?’
They sat in furious silence in the back of the cab. She didn’t apologise again.
‘You told me to publish it.’
‘I don’t remember saying that.’
‘The things you don’t remember are sometimes pretty fucking convenient, Heather.’
The red carpet was filled with B-list celebrities, and it was co-sponsored by one of Ryan’s newspapers; they’d put on a good show in one of the best London hotels. Heather was certain everyone was staring at her. And everyone was telling her how proud she must be and commiserating on her own misfortune. Misfortune. That was a funny word. Miss Fortune. That’s what she’d been hit by. Not a bloody articulated lorry that had dragged her a hundred yards and shattered her pelvis and broken three vertebrae and smashed her skull so that her brain had swelled so much they’d had to remove a section of her skull – no, she’d had a tiff with Miss Fortune, the talent show contestant sipping cocktails over there at the open bar.
Heather had realised too late the combination of champagne and painkillers was making her feel peculiar. Colours whirled and the music was so slow that she was hypnotised by the rests in between the notes. She found she couldn’t speak, only nod. I’m truly broken now. Wobbling back through the throng, ignoring Ryan’s questioning glance, she sat back at the table ready for the ceremony to begin. There was a tower of lilies in the centrepiece; they smelled so sweet, like air freshener and death. The chandeliers were too bright, kaleidoscopic with vibrating light. Ryan swapped places so that he was sitting next to her. He took her hand. ‘Are you all right?’ he whispered. She nodded. Couldn’t speak. Painkillers.
‘Ryan Mackinnon! Ryan. Ryan.’
The room was on its feet.
And Ryan on the podium, dedicating the award to her, and the entire room definitely fucking staring at her now, applauding them both, and flashbulbs going off pop-pop inside her skull, and she worried that a stitch was coming loose on her scalp, only they’d been taken out months ago, but scratching at it as if it was really there. And Ryan pleading with her to stand up and take a bow, but she couldn’t, which everyone took as modesty and vulnerability, when actually Heather knew if she stood she’d throw up on the lilies. She wasn’t anyone’s motherfucking muse. She’d earn her own laurels, or she wouldn’t. She longed to give them all the finger. And she longed to put her hands over her ears so she couldn’t hear his proud speech. And then everyone was congratulating them both, and at last he took her home.
Later that night, as they stood in the kitchen, he looked at her with such sadness and said, ‘Did you have to put your fingers in your ears during my speech? What did you think I was going to say?’
And she realised she’d actually done it, not merely thought about it.
‘You achieved the peak of your career tonight.’ She paused. ‘But I wish it wasn’t about the end of mine. I wish I could be a better person, and just be proud and selfless, but I’m not.’
And then, they sat side-by-side on the kitchen floor next to his trophy and cried.
The barman set down her coffee and poured a single shot glass of rakia, but left her with the bottle. She tipped a little into her coffee, enjoying the tingle and burn. Then downed the shot. The buzz was almost immediate and she shuddered. She could bear it better this way. Heather closed her eyes. Where the hell was Ryan? And more than that, who was he? The man who stood by her after her accident? The man who used the end of her career to fast-track his own? The man who withdrew wads of cash and met other women while his girlfriend was sleeping? Women he called ‘Sweetheart’. Or was he just the man who loved her?
There was a sudden chill in the air. The sun had slipped behind the mountains and the sky was growing dark. Heather realised she had drunk several more shots of plum brandy. She ought to go back to her room and sleep it off. Grovelling around in her rucksack for some cash, she heard the whirr of a bike and as she glanced up saw a silver bike with a yellow stripe rush past – a Roubaix. Ryan’s bike. But it wasn’t Ryan riding it.
She stood up, clattering her head on the underside of the metal table and knocking over her chair. Unsteady, she peered down the road after the bike, hurtling past in the gloom. She began to chase after it.
‘Hey, you, asshole, get back here! That isn’t your bike.’
He sped up. She sprinted after it down the darkening street, but it was useless. The rider hunched over the handlebars, stood up on the pedals and was gone in a moment.
She jogged back past the café. She needed to get her bike and she needed to chase down that rider. A burly man stood in her path.
‘You pay for drink,’ he said.
‘Shit.’
Fumbling for her purse, Heather handed him a note and sprinted back towards the hotel. She unlocked her bike, grabbed her helmet and flicked on her lights in the gathering dark. She knew she ought to put on full reflective gear but couldn’t risk wasting more time. There was only one road out of Zikoč. It ran for miles before there were any crossroads. If she went right now, she had a good chance of tracking him. She felt dizzy, a cool fury pooling in her belly. Where had he found Ryan’s bike? What the hell had happened to him? Had Ryan sold it for even more cash? She took off out of Zikoč at top speed, narrowly missing a car that hooted, the driver swearing at her. She adjusted her helmet, heart hammering wildly, knowing it was a silly near miss that had been entirely her fault. This was exactly when riders made stupid mistakes and got hurt, when they were frantic and desperate to catch up with the race leader – that’s how she needed to think of this. Just another race. Nothing more, nothing less. The road was rough and uneven, the unmarked edge sloping down towards a dirty stream filled with discarded plastic drinks, bottles and old tyres. The incline was steep enough to get the blood going and Heather found a steady, even cadence. She was going to have to hope she’d pass the other rider somewhere along the road, and that there weren’t too many turnings. There was little chance he was as fast as her.
It was a spring evening, but the cold air spilled down from the mountains, making the lines of sweat along her back tingle. More sweat trickled down her forehead, stinging her eyes. Her mouth tasted revolting, the brandy sharp and nasty on her tongue. She could already sense the hangover brewing. This was not good form to race. Five kilometres. Seven. Eight. The road levelled off and soon she reached the outskirts of a village, skidding to a stop at a T-junction. No sign of the silver bike.
‘Shit.’
She kicked at the dirt in fury. Rage pulsed through her. She’d have to guess which way he had gone. She turned left and, as the road descended sharply, instantly regretted the decision. If it was wrong, she’d have to sweat all the way back up here. She passed a small supermarket and a line of parked cars, and dark stone houses on either side of the street, windows flashing with the lights of TVs inside. In a minute she was out of the village and back on a twisting road that ran through a dark valley. The road curved between boulders and cliffs so that the narrow beam of her headlamp never gave more than a ten- or fifteen-yard view of the road. She gave a cry of frustration. But how could she turn back when he might be hidden just beyond the next bend? She filled her lungs and pressed on.
She sliced through the black valley, the huddling trees looming in the darkness, the wind a roar in her ears. The next corner only another fifty yards. She leant into the bend and pedalled hard on the exit. Her legs were starting to burn. She really ought to stop and drink at one of these little brackish streams. But the next turn was just up ahead. The very last one. And as she swept round it, there he was, four hundred yards in front, bent low over the handlebars, bike rocking from side-to-side with the effort of his pedalling.
‘Stop!’
She knew it was useless, but it felt good to shout at him. He cycled faster still, hurtling towards the next bend. Heather swore as he vanished round it. There might be another junction or God knows what. She was not going to let him get away again. Blinking sweat out of her eyes, calm certainty descended. She had the total confidence that occasionally swept over her during a race. She flew at the next corner. She’d gained fifty yards, and a long straight stretch uphill through a tightly wooded road lay before them. She had him. Her legs pulled with an absolute power that in other circumstances she would have taken joy in.
A car passed her, headlights flashing, and she was forced to tuck in, losing her line and some of her momentum. The uphill section peaked, and the road turned sharply downhill, its surface becoming patchy and uneven. Ahead, the rider wobbled, and Heather realised he was feeling the press of her pursuit. Heather knew that on a bike her small stature was irrelevant. Being chased was unnerving, machine and rider hunting you down. Furious, she dug in, upping the pace, forcing him faster still, beyond the limits of his ability.
‘Puši kurac!’ he shouted over his shoulder, sensing Heather closing on his back wheel. He took the next corner too quickly and, trying to correct his steering, lost his balance and ploughed screaming into a tree. There was a crunch of metal and bone and then absolute silence. Heather leapt off her bike and stared at him aghast. He lay sprawled on the ground before the tree, his legs twisted in an unnatural position, bleeding profusely from a cut above his eye. He was early twenties, with a snagged front tooth that, as far as Heather could tell, pre-dated his crash. Ryan’s bike rested several feet away, wheels spinning and spinning.
For an awful moment she thought the man was dead. She was filled with instant remorse. She’d wanted him to stop so she could ask him questions.
‘Why aren’t you wearing a helmet?’ she yelled. ‘Every dickhead wears a helmet.’
He stirred and opened his eyes. He wasn’t dead, but he looked like he wanted to kill her. Heather took a step back towards her own bike. He grabbed uselessly at her and tried to stand, but his body was broken. With a whimper, he slumped back down.
She looked at her phone. No signal. Bloody mountains.
‘I’ll go back to the little village we passed through and get help. I’ll send someone.’
He spat. It was mostly blood, but Heather thought there might be a tooth there amongst the earth and pine needles. She circled back to where Ryan’s bike lay, scuffed but unbroken. He swore at her when he saw her stoop to pick it up.
‘That’s not your bike,’ she said evenly, with a calm she did not feel. ‘I’m taking it with me.’
‘Screw you, bitch,’ said the man, with a heavy Serbian accent.
‘Before I go, I want to know where you got this bike. I know it’s stolen.’
He started to shout and swear in Serbian.
‘That’s fine. I’ll just tell the police that you were riding a stolen bike linked to the disappearance of an American tourist.’
The man looked at her with a mixture of anxiety and hatred.
‘It. My. Fucking. Bike. You. Crazy.’
Something in his tone made Heather look down at the bike again. Shit. He was right. With creeping horror she saw that the bike was not Ryan’s. It was the same silver, the same racing yellow stripe. But it wasn’t a Roubaix. If it hadn’t been for the brandy, the darkness and her own desperation, she would never have made such an absurd mistake.
She knelt down, filled with remorse. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for the damage.’ She reached into her rucksack, fumbling for her purse.
‘Get away. You dangerous. You crazy,’ he said, spitting more blood on the ground. ‘Go!’ he screamed at her, the whites of his eyes yellow in the moonlight.
‘Why did you try and get away?’ she asked.
‘Because you crazy! You ride like a crazy witch person. You try to run me off the road.’
She had seriously frightened this man and caused a horrible accident. Heather climbed back on her bike. ‘I’ll fetch help.’ She could try and blame it on all sorts of things, but it had been her fault. He was lying there bleeding beneath the tree in the darkness because of her. All power had gone from her legs. It felt like hours before she reached the last village she’d passed through and alerted them in the shop that there had been an accident on the road. She didn’t wait for the ambulance, but rode on to Zikoč. It was late when she arrived back at the hotel, shivering from exhaustion, still no closer to finding Ryan.
9
Simo disconnected the phone in frustration. So far no one in the Organised Crime and Drug Unit in Banja Luka would speak to him about the Petar Petrović case. He’d called a dozen times, asking if they knew of any gangs who used decapitation and removal of hands and feet as punishments. No one ever seemed to receive his messages; they were out working a case, or the person he needed to talk to wasn’t on duty. Simo decided that he’d give it another day or two and then he’d simply drive up there. He would get answers. He wasn’t a fan of the unit; they didn’t like working with officers in the districts and rarely shared information, insisting that they would never risk compromising one of their tightly protected sources. To Simo it smacked of bullshit. They had less than forty-eight hours to call him back before he showed up.
