twenty-three
David stood at the crossing. Cars and trucks flashed by, bare yards away, the wind of their passing blowing exhaust in his face, but he didn’t move, either to step back or….
It had all gone to custard, as he’d known it would.
So what had been the point? All he’d achieved was to hurt Ramon, and use him for his own…
because he needed to… And it had worked.
He’d had sex. Now he knew what that was all about.
It had been fantastic, the feelings, the sensations…
how Ramon had touched him, made him feel, used him in a way too…
because Ramon had got his own agenda, sure he did.
David hadn’t minded that, he’d liked it in fact, being used by Ramon, wished it could have gone on.
So why was he feeling so terrible now? They’d both got what they wanted.
Surely that was it; that was all there was.
They’d each got what they came for, and he’d cut it off before it got too dangerous.
He’d got away. Here was the living proof.
Here he was, standing free… could go anywhere he wanted…
free to start again. Andalusia would be the place.
They had horses down there. He’d find somewhere, a small stud farm, somewhere out of the way.
So why was he standing at the on-ramp for cars going in the direction of Barcelona?
He didn’t want to go back to that city. Too much chance of running into Ned again…
or Ramon. He’d hurt Ramon so badly, he’d felt it.
The guy had just clamped up, gone quiet.
When David had split off, taken his leave, Ramon had barely nodded.
The guy hadn’t even tried. If he’d maybe said “stay, don’t leave,” would David have listened to him?
He was a criminal, running from his past, and Ramon was a cop.
Where could that ever lead them? David would end up behind bars, and so would Ramon if he helped him.
So the safest course of action, for them both, was for him to leave, get as far away as he could and forget all about this.
Still, if Ramon had said “stay”, he would have.
But he hadn’t. Why hadn’t he? So, he should leave, head south, not creep back into the jaws of the tiger, not travel back to Barcelona.
A truck rumbled to a stop before him, and he ran toward the cab.
The driver opened the passenger door, and David swung himself and his pack up into the cab—into a heady cloud of cognac fumes.
“Where you headed?”
“Barcelona.”
“I can take you as far as Reus.”
David nodded and settled back against the door, his pack between his legs.
Ramon had not asked him to stay, so David would ask him why, and tell him everything else.
Then, watching the lights of the freeway flick by, while the cars, beetle-like, jockeyed for position in the lanes below them, for the first time in months, Owen came to mind.
He had some responsibility in all of this. It all had to come out in the end.
“What’s in Barcelona for you?”
The driver was older, heavyset, bald and unshaven.
His Catalan sounded strange to David’s ears.
Was it that he was from somewhere outside Barcelona, or the effect of whatever he was regularly slugging from the battered thermos between his legs?
The truck barreled along the freeway, regularly veering across the lane divider into the next lane.
“I’m going back home. I was on holidays.”
“You live there? How long?”
David nodded. “Three months.”
“Your Catalan’s good. Only three months?”
“I studied it for a year before I came.”
The driver nodded and accelerated out of his lane to overtake another truck. David heard a car horn from behind, but the truck driver seemed not to notice.
“Hate Barcelona,” the driver said, as he swerved back into the slow lane. “Too big a city. I prefer Reus.”
“That’s your city?”
The driver nodded. “Born and bred. You know Gaudí?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“His home town.”
The driver took another swig from his flask. After that, he seemed to run out of conversation. David hoped they would reach Reus soon—and safely. Despite his fears, he dozed off.
“It’s failsafe. I’ve thought it all through, I promise you.”
Another of Owen’s assurances which, from long experience, Davey knew weren’t worth the paper they were written on. Not even as toilet paper.
“Failsafe? Doesn’t sound it. Owen, he’s our old man. You can’t be thinking of doing this.”
“He won’t know. He’s always asleep by ten. Don’t you want to go to university?”
“Not this bad.”
“You’ve got no mettle, Davey, no grit.”
“I don’t want grit. I want to work with the horses, and study for my diploma, so I can go to Barcelona one day and be understood. And then… yeah, maybe university.”
Owen just rolled his eyes. There was silence between them for a while. Finally David picked up the two empty glasses and the bottle Owen had uncorked, and went to wash them.
“Fine, I’ll ask Ned,” Owen said. “He’ll be on board.”
“You’ll get that asswipe to come and rob your own family?”
“That’s why you have to help me. Come on, it’s our money too. Our Mam left this place to us as much to him. And he’s just drinking it away.”
“It doesn’t matter, Owen. It’s not right and I want no part of it.”
“If we have to wait until you turn thirty, Ravenscragg’ll be in the hands of the bank. You can kiss goodbye to your dream of training horses.”
“I’ll find a way… legally.”
“Good luck with that.”
David wiped down the bench and tossed the empty bottle in the recycling.
“I’m going to bed. The answer’s no, Owen.”
Owen said nothing, but he got up and, taking one of the glasses David had just washed, grabbed another bottle of their dad’s booze and settled back at the kitchen table, corkscrew in hand.
David left him like that. As he walked along the hallway, the sound of their dad’s snoring reached him from the master bedroom.
Instead of turning in immediately, he stepped outside and across to the home paddock.
It was black as pitch, cloud cover overhead with just a few stars poking through, but he knew the way without needing to see.
At the fence, he waited and, as he expected, a couple of shadows soon appeared out of the darkness, one with a splotch of white that was soon blocked out by the other.
Smart Alec, pushing ahead of Blaze, as always.
His two babies. He gave them treats, and spent some time scratching their necks and foreheads.
Owen’s plan was ridiculous, and they’d end up getting done for theft.
He was right that their dad was running Ravenscragg into the ground.
But their mam’s will had been clear: Owen and David wouldn’t come into their controlling share until David turned thirty.
That was what incensed Owen the most, that he wouldn’t have a say before David did.
But their mom was no fool, ensuring they had a thirty-three percent stake each, with their dad as caretaker until that moment arrived.
She just hadn’t been able to foresee their dad’s drinking, because when she was alive he hadn’t drunk.
Thirty years teetotal, and then he’d started again at the funeral.
Apparently he’d been a total hell-raiser as a young man, but he’d stopped when he met her.
Then the moment she was gone, he’d started again.
What a life. Now Owen was following in his footsteps.
But Owen was right: they wouldn’t have Ravenscragg anymore if they had to wait until he was thirty.
All they needed was cash to keep on paying the bills.
Smart Alec nuzzled him, pushing her nose into his chest, wanting more treats. He gave her one more.
“Come on, yous, time for me to be in bed, and you girls should be sleeping too.”
Blaze pushed her nose in, demanding her treat too. He gave her one and and then put the packet away.
“That’s enough. Bedtime.”
He turned back and looked up at Ravenscragg’s dark outline, the hill appearing like a sleeping dragon behind the farmhouse. What to do?
Owen’s goal was simple: a single memory stick, locked in their dad’s safe.
It contained just three strings of alphanumeric characters, the keys.
Whoever possessed those held the keys to three bitcoins, bought by their mam for a pound each fifteen years ago.
When bitcoin first appeared, she was curious, and bought them more as a joke than anything.
But their mam had been canny, in a way neither of the boys nor their dad were.
Together, those strings of data were now worth over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
“She said they were for us, one each,” Owen insisted, “and if we just take them, we won’t have to touch anything else. We’ll have enough to keep going, plus some. The bank won’t take the farm off us.”
Owen was a meathead, David thought, stealing from his own.
But on the other hand, what else were they going to do?
He wasn’t going to try and figure it out now, not while his head was muddled from the half-bottle of wine he’d consumed.
But in the morning, he’d think about it, and try and figure out what to do. Time for bed.