“Much more of this and
you’ll never be able to paint again.”
Still nothing.
Harlan replaced the
gag. Jones kicked and writhed amongst the wreckage of his life’s work, trying
desperately but vainly to break his bonds. Holding him steady, Harlan pummelled
his fingers with all the force his muscular arms could exert. Jones’s screams
changed into retches. Harlan tore away the packing tape and Jones vomited up
what looked, and smelt, like a can’s worth of cider muddied with blood.
Suppressing a retch himself, Harlan said, “It won’t stop until you tell me.
Understand?”
His pale, mottled face contorted
almost beyond recognition, Jones sobbed into his vomit. Suddenly, his whole
body trembling from the effort as if palsied, he managed to lift his head and
scream, “Help!”
Harlan snatched up a
handful of shredded canvas and stuffed it into Jones’s mouth. He stuck fresh
packing tape over it. Jones’s eyes bulged as if he couldn’t breathe. Sweat
dribbled into Harlan’s eyes. He blinked to clear his vision. This wasn’t
working. He didn’t have time to gradually beat the truth out of Jones. Any
second now the plainclothes policemen might come knocking, and then the game
would be up. He had to go further, faster. He had to make Jones believe it was
a straight choice between spilling what he knew and death. And there was only
one way he could think of to do that.
Composing his features
into a mask of implacable resolve, Harlan reached up and removed the Halloween
mask. He put down the truncheon and picked up his knife. He pushed his face
close to Jones’s. “I’m letting you see my face so you’ll know I’m serious when
I say this. The only way you’re going to live through this is if you tell me
what I want to know.” With one hand Harlan removed the gag, with the other he
pressed the knife to Jones’s windpipe. “Now talk.”
Spittle stretched like an
elastic band from Jones’s lips as he sobbed, “I already told you the truth. Oh
God, please don’t–” He broke off as Harlan pressed harder. The blade drew blood
as his Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively.
Somewhere in some deep,
dark part of Harlan, the same frenzy that’d overtaken him earlier stirred. He
pictured himself slashing at Jones until he was as unrecognisable as his
paintings. The unbidden thought vibrated through his mind and down his arm.
When it reached the knife, Jones flinched as if from an electric shock. “Okay,
I’ll talk,” he gasped, his voice deflating to a hoarse whisper as fear sucked
the last dregs of resistance out of him. “You’re right. My drawing and that
photo you showed me are of the same place.”
An almost euphoric
sense of relief swept through Harlan, and not just because he may well have got
one step closer to finding Ethan. It’d shocked him nearly as much as it had
Jones to realise that he hadn’t been bluffing. He really would’ve killed Jones
if he had to. “You’ve been there?”
“A long time ago.
Before I went to prison.”
“What year? What
month?”
“2003. I don’t remember
what month. It was hot, so I guess it was summertime.”
“Did you go alone?”
There was a pause. The
blade twitched against Jones’s throat, prompting him to speak. “No. Someone
took me.”
“Who? What’s their
name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t fucking bullshit
me.”
“I’m not. He never told
me his name and I never asked it. Sometimes it’s best that way.”
“Well what does he look
like?”
“I dunno what he looks
like now, but back then he had long dark hair and a beard. I used to call him
the Prophet, y’know, ’cos he looked like something out of the Bible.”
“What about height and
build?”
“About the same as you,
I think. I can’t really remember. It was that long ago.”
“How did you meet?”
“He sold toys on the
street in the city centre. This other guy I knew pointed him out to me because
he’d seen him at an offenders’ hostel.”
“A sex offender’s
hostel?”
“Yeah.”
“What did he do time
for?”
“I dunno. You don’t ask
questions like that, do you? Anyway, I used to buy things from him occasionally
– stuffed toys, cheap plastic jewellery, things like that – and we got to
talking about photography.”
“Why did he take you to
the storm-drain?”
“He said he had some
photographs I might be interested in buying. So we drove out there to take a
look at them.”
Thinking about what Jim
had told him, Harlan shuddered as he felt that primal urge of frenzy nibble at
the edges of his mind again. As if sensing this, Jones continued quickly, “I
only went there the once.”
“Just to buy photos?”
“Yes.”
Harlan tapped the
charcoal drawing. “That seems to suggest you went there for a lot more than
photos.”
“I didn’t do that
drawing, the Prophet did. He started doing art when he was inside, same as me.
I saw it on his wall and, well, I liked it, so I asked if I could buy it. He
gave it me for nothing.”
Squinting at the
drawing, Harlan saw that the lower half of the adult figure’s face was indeed
slightly misshapen, as if they had a beard. His brow puckered as something
occurred to him. “Are you saying that was hanging on the wall of the
storm-drain?”
Jones winced as if he’d
let something slip unintentionally. He winced again as a slight movement of the
blade brought a fresh trickle of blood from his throat. “No. It was on the wall
of his caravan. He took me there as well as the drain.”
“Where is this
caravan?”
“In some woods ten or
fifteen miles away from the drain.”
“On a site?”
“No. It’s on its own.
There’s nothing else for miles around but trees.”
“Did he live there?”
“I dunno. I don’t think
so. I think he just used it for storing photos and other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“Homemade videos, stuff
like that.”
“So where does he
live?”
“How the hell would I
know? I haven’t seen him since the day he gave me that drawing.” A tremor
passed through Jones’s bloated frame. He swallowed a groan. “Look, I’ve told
you everything I know. What else do you want from me?”
Harlan’s eyes flicked
between Jones and the drawing as he considered the question. This guy, the
Prophet, obviously had a record. He’d spent time in prison and in a sex
offenders’ hostel. He was, or used to be, very distinctive looking. His
fingerprints might even be on the drawing. Given time, that was probably more
than enough for the police to track down his identity. But there was no time.
“I want you to show me where the caravan is.”
“I don’t know if I can.
It was years–” Jones fell silent at the warning in Harlan’s eyes. He heaved a
wheezy breath of resignation. “Okay, I’ll try.”
“You’ll do more than try.
Where’s the backdoor key?”
“In my left trouser
pocket.”
Harlan pulled out a
thick bundle of keys. “Is the gate key on here?”
“Yes.”
As Harlan flicked
through the bundle, Jones nodded to indicate the required keys. Harlan gagged
Jones once more and hurried to the backdoor. As fast as his trembling hands
would allow, he twisted open the half-a-dozen deadbolts and other locks
securing the door and gate. He sprinted towards his car, pulling up sharply at
the end of the alley. Peering around the corner, he saw a couple of
fire-engines shrouded in the smoke billowing from the garage. Several firemen
were aiming a jet of water at the flames stretching through a hole in the roof.
Others had formed a loose cordon in front of a crowd of onlookers. No one
seemed to notice Harlan as he ducked into his car and drove into the alleyway.
If they had, he reflected, they’d most likely assume he was removing his car
from harm’s way. He braked in front of the gate, popped the boot and darted
back into the house. His heart gave a lurch when he saw that Jones’s eyes were
closed. He anxiously searched for a pulse and found one as thin as a spider’s
thread. He slapped Jones’s face, and the bound man’s eyelids flickered open. He
cut the tape wrapped around Jones’s legs, then thrust his hands under his
sweat-drenched armpits and hauled him upright. As Harlan guided him to the car,
Jones swayed and reeled like a ship in heavy seas, almost capsizing both of
them several times.
Jones shook his head
and tried weakly to pull away from Harlan when he saw the open boot. He
squealed as if he’d been stabbed as Harlan shoved him into it, flipped his legs
in after him and slammed it shut. Breathless, Harlan jumped behind the
steering-wheel and accelerated away hard. He braked equally hard as a couple of
police cars passed the end of the alley, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Jones
hammered at the boot. “Don’t waste your time. There’s no one around to hear
you,” said Harlan, but Jones kept at it until they were beyond the sound of the
sirens. At an inconspicuous speed, Harlan drove on through the night-time
sounds of the city, which seemed strangely muffled and distant, as if they came
from deep inside a tunnel.
Chapter
15
As Harlan passed into the
sheltering dark of a street of unlit warehouses, his mask of implacable resolve
slipped and his breath came in a sharp exhalation. He pulled over, tremors of
revulsion running through him as he thought about how close he’d come to
killing Jones. He’d been forced to go down into a place inside himself that
he’d seen but never visited before, and the call of the darkness that lurked
there had proved almost irresistible. He could still feel its voice at the back
of his brain, like an itch demanding to be scratched. He flung open the door
and sucked in lungfuls of the night. “Focus, focus,” he murmured over and over.
Gradually the tremors subsided.
Harlan got out of the
car and opened the boot. Jones goggled up at him, his face slick with sweat. As
Harlan peeled away his gag, he gasped for breath like a drowning man pulled out
of the water. “I’m claustrophobic,” he wheezed. “Please don’t keep me in here
any longer.”
“I won’t, but try
anything funny and it’s straight back in here. Understand?”
Jones nodded. Harlan
helped him out of the boot and into the front passenger seat. Jones cried out
as his weight came down on his pulverised hands. Giving him a warning look,
Harlan cut the tape binding his wrists. He rebound his hands in front of him.
“Which way?” asked
Harlan.
“Just get onto the
motorway and I’ll tell you when to leave it.”
As fast as he dared,
Harlan drove to the motorway. He kept one eye on the road and one on Jones.
Jones watched him right back as if trying to work out what he was thinking. “I
know who you are,” he said suddenly, eyes widening with realisation. “You’re
that guy who killed Susan Reed’s husband. I’ve seen your face on the news. Your
name’s H…Ha…”
“Harlan Miller.”
“Yeah, that’s it. You
used to be a copper, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So you know you’ll
never get away with this.”
“Who said anything
about getting away with this?”
“You want to go back to
prison?”
“I want to find Ethan
Reed.”
“I understand. I get
it. You want to save the boy to make up for what you did to his old man. But
you and I both know he’s long beyond saving. Whoever took him did his thing and
killed him weeks–”
“Shut up,” broke in
Harlan, a twitch pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“Look, what I’m saying
is there’s no need for this. You tell your copper mates about the caravan and
they’ll find it in no time. Just let me go. Let me go now and I promise I won’t
give your name to–”
“One more fucking word
and it’s back in the boot for you.”
Jones grimaced at the
threat. He fell to studying his hands. A great shudder racked him. “Maybe it’s
best if you kill me,” he murmured. “Because if I can’t paint, I…I don’t know
what I’ll do.”
I don’t know what I’ll
do
.
The threat implicit in those words made Harlan go cold. He didn’t doubt for a
second that Jones had been, at least to some degree, telling the truth when
he’d said that painting kept him straight. Without it, surely it was just a
matter of time before he answered the call of his own darkness. And then more
people – children, their parents, relatives and friends – would suffer. The
cycle of devastated lives would continue, expanding and intersecting like
ripples in a pond. And, Harlan reflected with a mounting sense of guilt, it
would be his fault. Unless, unless...The itch in his mind became a burning, and
spread.
No
, he said silently but vehemently to himself,
no
! He
wound down his window. Tears sprung into his eyes as the air hit him like
ice-water. The heat receded again.
But for how long
? he wondered darkly.
For how long
?
They stayed on the M1
and then the M62 for nearly an hour and a half, passing fields of crops and
livestock, lonely industrial estates, and the sleeping outskirts of Wakefield,
Leeds and Huddersfield, before crossing the black peaty spine of the Pennines.
“Come off here and head towards Saddleworth,” said Jones, gesturing at a
junction, beyond which hills loomed like solid shadows in the moonlight.