She came back into the
house, looking tentatively at Harlan. “What do you think I should do?”
“I think it’s none of
my business to say what I think,” he replied, returning to the sofa.
“Christ, I hope he
doesn’t do anything silly.” Susan sat down, but couldn’t keep still. “I want a
drink. Do you want one?”
“I probably shouldn’t,
not with all the pills I’m on,” said Harlan, but it wasn’t the thought of the
pills that made him hesitant, it was the memory of what’d happened the last
time he’d drunk around Susan.
“One won’t do you any
harm. Come on, don’t make me drink alone.”
Harlan sighed.
“Alright, just one.”
“Is white wine okay
with you?” Before Harlan could reply, she added, “It’ll have to be because
that’s all there is.”
Harlan shuddered involuntarily
as, in a flash of remembrance, Robert Reeds words came back to him,
I’ll
have a lager, she’ll have a large white wine
. Susan fetched two glasses of
wine. The smell alone nauseated him, but he forced himself to swallow a
mouthful. Susan drank quietly, her brow creased, seemingly grappling with some
internal debate. Suddenly, as if she’d come to some decision, she gulped her
glass empty, stood and returned the kitchen. There was the sound of glass
clinking against glass as she poured herself a refill. Followed by the sound of
tears bursting from her. Each low, racking sob jerked at Harlan’s heart. He
considered going to her, but quickly decided against it. What would he do if he
did? Hold her to him? Murmur reassurances into her ear? No. Those were things
he couldn’t do. After several minutes, she stopped crying with a hitching
breath. She returned to the living-room, her eyes dry, but red-rimmed and
puffy. “Sorry,” she said.
Harlan shook his head
to indicate there was no need to be. They sat in silence, cradling their
drinks. “Jesus,” Susan sighed, after a while. “How did my life get here?”
How did my life get
here
?
Harlan asked himself that same question almost every day. He’d had so many plans,
so many things he was going to do with Eve and Tom. And now what did he have?
Sweet-fuck-all, that’s what. For years he’d railed at the unfairness of life.
And where had it got him? Here, that’s where. Here in this room, stuck up to
his neck in a quicksand of guilt, where the more he struggled, the deeper he
sank. So what was the answer? To just accept whatever life threw his way? The
idea appalled him. Maybe there was no answer. Perhaps suffering was all there
was left to life. Perhaps that was all there’d ever really been, even when he
thought he was happy.
Susan finished her
drink and stood up. “I’ll fetch your bed.” She headed upstairs, returning a few
minutes later with the mattress and an armful of bedding. She cleared a space
on the floor and began to make up the bed.
“Where’s your toilet?”
“Upstairs. First door
on your left.”
Harlan slowly climbed
the stairs, his stitches pulling with each step. As he reached the landing, a
door to his right opened and Kane stepped out. He glared at Harlan a moment,
his eyes like storm-clouds ready to burst. Then he jerked around and headed
back into his room, slamming the door. Sighing, Harlan went into the bathroom.
After emptying his bladder, he swilled the taste of the wine from his mouth at
the sink. He opened the bathroom cabinet – deodorant, perfume, tooth-floss,
Savlon, Valium. His gaze lingered briefly on the sleeping-pills, before he
returned to the living-room. The bed was ready and waiting. Susan was sat at
the kitchen table, refilling her glass. “Did you see Kane?” she asked.
Harlan nodded.
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. Just went
back to his room.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?
I mean, at least he didn’t take a swing at you or anything.”
Harlan made a dubious
little noise in his throat. He still had some faint bruises on his arms from
the baseball bat attack. From the look in Kane’s eyes, Harlan suspected it was
only a matter of time before he attempted a repeat performance. He yawned. The
bed called to his tired body, but he hesitated to go to it, wondering if it was
safe to leave Susan alone with her thoughts, the wine and the Valium. A thin
smile curled the edges of her mouth. “Got to bed, and don’t worry, I’m not
gonna do anything crazy,” she said, reading his mind.
“Goodnight.”
“Night. Call me if you
need anything.”
Harlan undressed
stiffly and got under the duvet. He thought about the violence he’d seen
lurking just under the surface of the Kane’s eyes. It worried him. But not
enough to keep him awake. Not the way he felt. His eyelids came together like heavy
curtains, snuffing out his consciousness.
Something pried its way
into Harlan’s mind – not a sound, but a feeling, a presence in the room. For a
moment, he struggled against the glue of drug-aided sleep. His eyes rolled, his
hands twitched across the duvet towards his face. The outline of a figure,
faintly luminescent in the glow of the streetlamp, swam into focus. “Susan,” he
said, slurring the word. But something – some crawling feeling of danger – told
him it wasn’t her. He rubbed the blur from his eyes, revealing Kane. The deep,
black pools of the boy’s eyes stared back at Harlan from the end of the bed.
Tears glistened on his cheeks, but he made no sound of crying. His arms hung
rigidly at his sides. Something he held in one hand caught the light. A blade!
Harlan’s heart began to throb. He pushed up onto his elbows, grimacing as his
stomach flexed. Kane moved the knife threateningly. Harlan dropped back onto
the pillows. The knife returned to Kane’s side.
For maybe thirty
seconds, they faced each other silently. Harlan’s heart slowed to a steady
thud. His voice was calm and clear, as he said, “Kill me. I won’t stop you. Go
ahead, if that’s what you want. If you want to become like me.” He closed his
eyes. He could hear the boy’s breathing, shallow and rapid. His own breath came
slow and easy. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Kane had it in him to kill – he
knew he did. Nor was it that he wanted to die. His desire to live, he realised
suddenly, was stronger than it had been in years, maybe since Tom’s death. He
merely felt that he owed Kane a chance to avenge his father’s death. And if he
didn’t take it, if his anger and hatred didn’t consume him, then maybe their
flame would begin to burn less fiercely.
Another thirty seconds
passed. A minute. Two minutes. Harlan became aware that he couldn’t hear Kane’s
breathing anymore. He opened his eyes. The boy was gone, like a ghost in a
dream. A queasy, unreal feeling struck at him, as if maybe he was dreaming. But
then he heard the creak of floorboards upstairs, and the feeling receded.
Releasing a long breath, he let the curtains of sleep close over his eyes
again.
Chapter
19
Harlan peeled back his
bandage. The wound had seeped a little, probably from all the moving around
he’d done the previous day. Susan’s lips formed a tight O. “Ow, that hurts just
to look at.”
He dabbed the track of
stitches with wet cotton wool, followed by an antiseptic wipe. Then he applied
fresh gauze and a bandage. After dropping the old dressings into the kitchen
bin, he looked at his phone. He knew what he’d see – in the short time he’d
been awake, he’d already checked it a dozen times – but felt compelled to do so
anyway. No new calls or messages. “Come on, Jim,” he muttered. “Fucking call.”
He felt better than the previous day. Stronger. More clear headed. Even after
the incident with Kane, perhaps because of it, he’d slept the sleep of the
dead. A sleep undisturbed by dreams or thoughts. As Susan turned strips of
bacon in the pan, he lined up his pills on the table and began swallowing them
one by one.
“Kane,” Susan called
upstairs. “Breakfast’s nearly ready. Are you coming down?”
There was no reply.
Susan gave Harlan a glance that said the silence was what she expected, but at
that moment there came the sound of a door opening and footsteps descending the
stairs. Her eyebrows lifted as Kane entered the kitchen, and without looking at
her or Harlan, seated himself. She stared at him as if unsure whether to be
puzzled or pleased by his presence. Eyes down, he sipped his tea and remained
silent. She looked inquiringly at Harlan, as if he might know something about
this development. He gave a slight shrug. Her expression unconvinced, she
turned to scoop the bacon out of the pan. “There you go,” she said, placing a
plate in front of Kane. “Nice and crispy. Just how you like it.”
The boy gave a low
grunt of thanks. After slicing some bread for Harlan’s bacon, Susan leant
against the work-surface, smoking and watching her son eat. When he was
finished, Kane took his plate to the sink. As he headed back upstairs, he
flashed Harlan the briefest of glances. His face wore its usual scowl, but his
eyes were shadowed with uncertainty, as though something inside him – something
fundamental to his character – had been shaken.
“Well, well,” said Susan.
“What was that all about?”
Harlan gave another
shrug.
“Has something happened
between you two?” persisted Susan.
“No.” Harlan hated to
lie to her, but neither did he want to risk upsetting the delicate balance of Kane’s
mood. If he spilled about what’d happened, Susan would be upset and angry. Most
probably, she would confront Kane. Maybe she would even change her mind about
getting him psychological help. And perhaps she would be right to do so. But
Harlan wanted to give the boy one more chance – a chance to deal with his hate
internally, without having to go through the pain of therapy. He felt certain
that last night had been some kind of turning point. Kane had faced the
ultimate decision, and surely it’d made him realise what he was and what he
wasn’t: he was a screwed up kid, but he wasn’t a killer. Of course, Harlan
realised that if he was wrong it could cost him his life.
“Well something’s
happened,” said Susan, her forehead crinkling as she cast around her mind for
what that ‘something’ might be. “Otherwise there’s no way in hell he’d have sat
at that table with you.” She sighed. “I suppose I should be pleased. Perhaps
he’s finally coming to realise, like I have, that hate always hurts the hater
more than it does the hated.”
Not always
,
thought Harlan. “Can I use your bathroom?”
Susan waved her hand
slightly, a preoccupied gesture that said,
you don’t need to ask
. Harlan
headed upstairs. As he reached the landing, Kane opened his bedroom door. They
faced each other silently, Harlan keeping his expression neutral, Kane still
teetering on the edge of uncertainty. Finally, his voice reluctant and thick
with guilt, as if he was betraying something or someone, the boy whispered, “So
you haven’t told her?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“She’s got enough on
her plate right now. And besides, I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”
Kane’s mouth twitched,
but no words came. He licked his lips agitatedly, then grunted – the same sound
he’d made downstairs – and turned to go back into his room. This time, though,
he didn’t close the door. He sat cross-legged on the threadbare carpet and
began playing on a games console hooked up to a small television. Harlan’s gaze
travelled the cramped bedroom, lingering on a mottled black damp patch above
the window, before continuing to the bunk beds. The top one was a mess of
crumpled sheets and magazines. The bottom one was made up with a faded duvet
depicting some cartoon character or other. A few stuffed toys perched on its
pillows, awaiting their owner’s return. Harlan felt a stab of sadness at the
sight. It reminded him of the way he’d turned Tom’s bedroom into a shrine to a
ghost. He wondered how long Susan would keep the bed like that if Ethan wasn’t
found. The answer was as obvious as it was painful. The rest of her life. No
body, no closure.
Harlan’s gaze returned
to Kane. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions about the night Ethan was
taken?”
“No,” said Kane,
without taking his eyes from the screen. “But I dunno what I can tell you that
I haven’t already told the cops.”
“Did the man who took
Ethan sound like he was from around here?”
Kane shrugged. “He just
sounded like a man.”
“Did you notice
anything about him other than his voice?”
“Yeah, his wrists. They
were really hairy.”
“Anything else? Did he
smell of anything? Did his clothes or breath smell?”
“Yeah, he had this
weird smell.”
“How do you mean,
weird?”
Kane gave another
shrug.
“Was it like cigarettes
or alcohol?”
“I dunno what it was
like, but it made my throat tickle. The cops got me to smell loads of different
things. Paints and other stuff, but none of them had the smell I smelt.”
Harlan was about to
inquire further about the smell, but his phone rang. He snatched it out, and a
flush of adrenaline went through his veins when he saw Jim’s name. He pressed
the phone to his ear. “Please tell me he’s talked.”
“He’s talked,” said
Jim.
A hiss of relief
escaped Harlan’s lips, drawing a curious look from Kane. “Thank fuck.”