Harlan guessed Susan
wouldn’t be in any kind of mood to answer his questions even once he’d told her
what she was so desperate to know. But he saw that he’d pushed her as far as he
could. She sat glaring at him, eyes wide and intense, little tremors of
pent-up, barely contained pressure running through her body. He took a breath
and came out with it. “I don’t think Jones is involved in Ethan’s abduction.”
“Not involved,” Susan
said slowly, as if she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. “How
do you know he’s not involved?”
“Well for one thing, he
doesn’t fit the profile. He’s too old, too cautious. For another, he doesn’t
fit the physical description.”
“Yeah, but like you said,
there might be an accomplice.” As Harlan shook his head, Susan continued
insistently, “It’s possible though, isn’t it?”
“It’s possible, but I
don’t think it’s the case.”
“Why? If you’re willing
to suspect someone like Neil, then why not a pervert like Jones?”
Harlan sighed. “I’m
sorry, but I…well, I just don’t believe Jones is our man.”
Susan frowned, picking
up on Harlan’s hesitation. “You still haven’t told me what happened last night.
Not really.”
“You know what
happened. I went to Jones’s house and questioned him.”
“Yeah, but did you do
it like I asked you to? Did you
make
him tell you the truth?” When
Harlan gave no reply, the lines on Susan’s forehead intensified. “You didn’t,
did you?”
“I questioned him
thoroughly.”
Susan dismissed
Harlan’s words with a contemptuous hiss. “The coppers questioned him
thoroughly. They questioned the shit out of him for two days and got nothing. I
wanted you to do more than just ask questions. That was the whole reason I came
to you for help.”
“I know.”
“So why didn’t you do
it?”
Harlan blinked as the
image of Robert Reed lying on the snowy, blood-stained ground flashed through
his mind. “I did what was necessary.”
“No you fucking didn’t.
Not unless you beat that bastard until he was nearly dead.”
“I…I…” Harlan stumbled
over his words, as if he were struggling to make a shameful admission. At last
he spoke in a sudden rush. “I couldn’t do it.”
Susan rose from her
seat, white with rage. “Oh, so you could kill my Robby, but you can’t hurt that
filthy paedo!”
This time Susan’s
savage words were enough to draw glances, even in that place. Harlan raised his
hands as if to say,
calm down
, but his gesture only angered her more.
“You know what you are?” she hissed. “You’re a coward. A sick, twisted coward!”
“Sit back down.”
“Fuck you.”
“Please, let’s talk
some more.”
“I’ve got nothing left
to say to you.” Susan’s voice dropped a tone, but remained taut with emotion.
“Not unless you’ll go back there, back to that fucker’s house and do what I
asked.”
The suggestion was
enough to make Harlan’s pulse beat in his throat. “Even if I agreed to do that,
I wouldn’t be able to get near him. The police will be watching his house.
Garrett can’t afford for anything else to happen to him. His reputation’s on
the line.”
“So don’t go to his house.
Get him when he goes shopping or whatever. I don’t give a toss how you do it,
just do it.”
“This isn’t the way to
go. There are other avenues, other lines of investigation I–”
“No. This is the way,
and this is the only way for you. Do you fucking–” Susan’s voice caught in her
throat. Tears swelled into her eyes. Her lower lip trembled briefly. Then she
got hold of herself and continued, “Do you understand?”
Harlan stared at Susan
with a kind of pleading in his eyes, but her resolve didn’t waver. His body
leaden with anxiety, he nodded. She frowned at him a few seconds, as if trying
to work out whether or not she believed him. Then she turned and hurried from
the café into Neil’s arms. Her self-control crumbling like a sandcastle in
front of a wave, she pressed her face against his shoulder and sobbed. Neil
shot Harlan a glance that almost dared to be angry. This time it was Harlan who
dropped his gaze to the tabletop. When he looked up a minute or so later, Susan
and Neil were gone.
Noticing how dry his mouth
was, Harlan swilled back the dregs of his coffee. He approached the counter and
held up fifty-quid. “If anyone asks…” He trailed off meaningfully.
“I never heard
nothin’,” grunted the man behind the counter.
Harlan handed him the
money and left. Head lowered in thought, he made his way slowly along the quiet
street. He imagined himself beating Jones with the truncheon until his flesh
was a pulpy mass and blood oozed from his face. He began to feel light-headed,
dizzy. Susan’s bitter words echoed in his ears.
You’re a coward
.
A
sick, twisted coward
.
Maybe she’s right
,
thought Harlan.
Maybe that’s what I am
.
A sick, twisted coward
without the courage to do what needs to be done, without the courage to live,
without the courage even to end my own misery
.
Harlan didn’t hear the
fast-approaching footsteps until they were right behind him. Before he could
turn to see who they belonged to, something hit the back of his head hard
enough to stagger him. White sparks exploding silently in front of his eyes, he
flung up his arms to shield his head. A second blow deflected off his forearm,
sending an electric current of pain up to his shoulder. A third found its way
through to his skull, connecting with an ugly, hollow sound, buckling his
knees. As he went down, he managed to drop his shoulder and roll away from his
attacker. Through a haze of tears, he saw a baseball-bat wielding figure loom
over him. Even dazed as he was, he made a mental note of his attacker’s
physical characteristics – five foot five or six, medium build, wearing baggy
blue jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt with the hood up. A scarf was wrapped
around the lower half of the figure’s face, so that all Harlan could see was a
pair of eyes – young-looking, hazel-brown eyes so swollen with hate they seemed
ready to pop out.
As the figure raised
the bat for another strike, Harlan kicked upwards. His foot slammed home. With
a loud “Oof”, the figure doubled over. For a second or two, Harlan and his
attacker writhed separately, each lost in their own pain. Then Harlan grabbed
his attacker’s arm. Jerking free, the figure straightened and began to stagger
away. Harlan attempted to follow, but as he pushed himself up onto his knees
his vision blurred in and out. He reached up and felt a wetness on his scalp.
He looked at his hand. Blood. He could feel it now, trickling warmly down the
back of his neck. Groaning with the effort, he clutched a lamppost and dragged
himself upright. The figure was almost out of sight at the far end of the
street. As he stepped away from the lamppost, the pavement seemed to dip, then
drop away vertiginously from beneath his feet. He felt himself tumbling through
the air, then he slammed into the ground with enough force to wind him. He lay
facedown, his eyeballs rolling, struggling vainly to rise onto his elbows. Then
he was falling again, going down, down into impenetrable blackness like a well.
Chapter
11
After what might’ve
been minutes or hours, a voice called Harlan back to the conscious world. “Mister,”
it said, urgent and concerned. “I saw what happened.” His eyes flickered open.
He was on his back now. Whether he’d rolled over by himself or someone had
turned him over, he didn’t know. A young woman gazed down at him, her face
blurry in patches. “Just lie still,” she continued, as he tried to sit up.
“I’ve phoned for an ambulance.”
Her words lent Harlan
the strength to clamber to his feet. The police wouldn’t be far behind the
ambulance, and that would mean serious trouble. “I’m fine,” he said groggily,
brushing away the woman’s helping hands. Using the buildings for support, he
slowly worked his way along the street. Dimly aware of sirens away in the
distance, he went into a public toilet, washed the blood from his hands and
applied a wad of tissue to the back of his head. Then he staggered to a nearby
taxi-rank and ducked into a black-cab.
“You okay, mate?” asked
the cabbie.
Harlan nodded and
wished he hadn’t when a blinding pain pulsed from his skull. He gave the cabbie
an address not far from the Northern General Hospital. As the cab negotiated
the congested city roads, he closed his eyes and summoned up an image of his
hooded assailant. Who could it be? Not Ethan’s abductor – when Harlan had
grabbed his attacker’s hand he’d noticed it was as hairless as a child’s. The
attack hadn’t been random, though. That much was obvious from the hate in those
hazel-brown eyes. It was equally obvious that the attacker must’ve followed
Susan and Neil to the café, since he was certain no one had followed him. Which
meant either that one of them had told someone else about the meeting, or the
attacker had overheard them discussing it. If what Susan had said about Neil
was true – which he had no reason to suspect it wasn’t – the second possibility
was the most probable. And there was only one person he could think of who
could easily get into close enough proximity to overhear them – Kane. What’s
more, the boy was the same height and build as his attacker, and he certainly
had more than enough motive to want to hurt him.
Harlan paid the driver,
and swaying like a drunk, made his way to A&E. He gave the receptionist a
false name and address and told her he’d tripped and hit his head. Under local
anaesthetic, a doctor stitched and bandaged the lesions on his scalp. Then he
was given a head x-ray. “There are no fractures and no signs of serious brain
injury,” said the doctor, examining his x-rays. “Luckily for you, you’ve got a
remarkably thick skull. I’ve seen people end up in a coma from less severe
injuries.”
I’ve seen them die
,
thought Harlan. “So I’m okay to go.”
“You have a concussion.
As a precautionary measure, we’d like to admit you overnight for observation.”
“I’d rather go home.”
By the morning, Harlan knew, there was every chance the police called to the scene
of the attack would trace him to the hospital.
“Well that’s your
choice, although I’d strongly advise against it. Where do you live?”
Harlan’s head throbbed
with the effort of remembering the false address he’d given the receptionist.
“You mustn’t drive for
forty-eight hours. Is there someone you can call to pick you up?”
“Yes,” lied Harlan.
“Good. Also, you need
to rest, but you should try to stay awake for the next twelve hours. If you do
fall asleep, you need to be woken every two hours at the most to make sure you
don’t fall into a coma. And don’t rely on an alarm clock to wake you.”
Harlan thanked the
doctor, and trying to appear less groggy than he felt, made his way out of
A&E. He caught a taxi to his flat. After swallowing some painkillers, he
got into bed. He lay glaring at the ceiling, his fingers convulsively clenching
and unclenching as he thought about those hazel-brown eyes. His anger wasn’t
directed at Kane – he felt nothing towards him except guilt, sadness and
sympathy – but at himself. It made him want to tear his own guts out to think
that he was the cause of such fury, such hate.
After a while, without
even realising it, Harlan began to drift into a dream. He was at the entrance
to the tunnel again. Only this time he was stood in Jones’s place, holding Kane
and Ethan’s hands. He looked down at each boy and saw that their faces were
masked with blood. And the boys looked up at him and spoke. “Dad,” they said in
unison.
With a gasp, Harlan
dragged himself back to wakefulness. Fighting an urge to vomit, he rose and
tottered through to the kitchen to make a strong black coffee. He lay cradling
it on the sofa, watching the television. There was nothing on the news about
what’d happened to Jones – no doubt, Garrett was doing everything in his power
to hush it up. As he listened to the droning voice of the news-reader, an
immense weariness came over him, as if lead weights were attached to his
eyelids. This time the sound of his mug clattering to the floor jerked him back
from the edge of sleep.
Harlan fetched a
tea-towel to mop up the coffee. The effort of doing so was enough to make his
skull feel as if it was splitting apart. Not knowing what else to do with
himself, he sat at the table, head on his hands. Alternating waves of nausea
and drowsiness broke over him. Realising he’d be swept away by them unless he
did something, he took out his mobile phone. He thumbed through the contacts
list to Eve’s name. He stared at it for a long moment. Heaving a sigh, he
pressed the dial button.
“What is it? What’s
happened?” Eve asked on picking up the phone, her voice swaying between hope
and anxiety.
“Can you come over?”
“Have you found Ethan?”
“No.”
“Oh.” The word came out
in a breath of disappointment. “Then what’s changed?”
“I’m too tired to speak
over the phone, Eve.” Harlan spoke slowly, but even so his words blurred into
each other.