Blood Guilt (17 page)

Harlan’s attention was
drawn to the radio by the sound of Garrett’s voice. He realised why Jim had to
get off the phone so suddenly as, after the usual preliminaries, Garrett said,
“The abduction of Ethan Reed clearly embodies peoples’ deepest fears about the
safety of their own children. I understand peoples’ frustration and anger about
the perceived lack of progress in this case, but vigilantism will not be
tolerated in this city. Those engaged in such activities will be caught and
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We ask people to trust us to do
our jobs. Over the past few weeks the incident room has been inundated with
calls from members of the public who’ve provided us with information. This
information is being scrutinised by teams of specially trained officers who are
exhausting every avenue we’re provided with. Our officers clearly won’t be able
to do that job as effectively if they also have to deal with citizens taking
the law into their own hands.”

Harlan shifted his
attention back to the house as Garrett continued to bang on about how his
officers were resolutely following up every lead, whilst telling the media
nothing about what those leads were. The obvious assumption was that the
release of such information would compromise the investigation. In truth,
Harlan suspected it was because the leads amounted to the same as what they had
on day one – zip, zilch, fuck all.

Shortly after midday, a
set of upstairs curtains opened and Neil appeared at the window. He stood
looking out at the street a moment, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Then he
turned and moved from view. Half-an-hour or so later, he emerged from the house
and got into the Volvo. Harlan slid down in his seat as the Volvo reversed onto
the road and drove past him. He waited until the car was almost out of view,
before accelerating after it. He followed at an inconspicuous distance as Neil
headed through Attercliffe towards Susan’s house. He pulled over at the end of
her street, out of sight of her house. There was a chance that when Neil left
he wouldn’t come back this way. But it was a chance Harlan would have to take.
Susan’s house was almost certainly under surveillance.

At three o’clock the
Volvo reappeared with Susan in the passenger-seat. Harlan tailed it to a nearby
comprehensive school. Children were streaming out the gates, some getting into
cars and buses, others heading home on foot or bicycle. His stomach squeezed
unexpectedly at the sight. Many were the age Tom would’ve been by now. Some
even looked like he might’ve looked. Many times Harlan had tried to comfort
himself with the thought that Tom’s early death had saved him from the cruelty
and pain of the world. That might’ve been true, but seeing the chatting,
laughing, shouting throng drove home how hollow that comfort was.

As Harlan dragged in a
shaky breath, he spotted Kane. The boy was slouched by the gates, hands thrust
in pockets, eyes down. Susan got out of the Volvo and approached him. He
followed her back to the car, dragging his feet, still staring sulkily at the
pavement. Harlan could easily guess what the problem was – before Ethan’s
abduction Kane would, more often than not, have made his own way home, but now
he was forced to endure the daily humiliation of being collected by his mum.

Neil returned to
Susan’s house. Again, Harlan waited outside her street. Thirty minutes passed.
An hour. Neil reappeared on foot, carrying a bulging carrier-bag. Harlan got
out of his car. As he tailed Neil through the noisy, fumy rush-hour streets,
the dull nagging ache in his head intensified to a severe throbbing. Neil
handed out leaflets from the bag to everyone he passed. One man shoved the
leaflet straight into a bin. Harlan retrieved it and saw a grainy
black-and-white image of Ethan’s smiling face. Occasionally, Neil went into a
shop – no doubt, to ask if he could put a missing-person poster in the window.
Slowly but surely, Neil worked his way to the Baptist tabernacle. The preacher,
Lewis Gunn, met him at its entrance. They shook hands and went inside.

Glad for the chance to
rest and let his headache subside, Harlan sat on a bench from where he could
watch the church’s door without being in its direct line of sight. His head
felt heavy and sluggish, as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep. Time dragged
by. His glazed eyes began to drift. His head lolled. An image of Tom came into
his mind – not Tom as he’d been, but as he might be now if he’d lived. His hair
cut into a trendy style. A few zits and a hint of bumfluff around his mouth.
His cheeks starting to lose their puppy-fat. But his smile the same. And his
eyes…his eyes…Harlan felt his chin touch his chest. Jerking his head up with a
sharp intake of breath, he saw that a double-decker bus had pulled over a
hundred yards or so along from the church. People were boarding it, their
features obscured by distance and the grime on the bus’s windows. He caught a
glimpse of a coat the same colour as Neil’s. Was it him or was it just a
coincidence? He jumped to his feet, squinting. But the coat had already
disappeared into the stairwell. As the bus pulled away, Harlan made a mental
note of its number – 77.

Muttering reproachfully
to himself, he resumed watching the tabernacle. With every passing minute that
Neil didn’t emerge from it, he felt more certain it was him he’d seen. The
daylight started to drop. Lampposts flickered into life. Number 77 buses
chugged by at regular fifteen-minute intervals, heading to Grenoside – a solid
working-class suburb on the north side of the city. By half-past five, Harlan
knew Neil was no longer inside the church, not if he started work at six.
“Shit,” he said, standing. As he headed off in the direction of his car, he
reflected that he’d been an ex-cop so long he’d forgotten the number one rule:
there’s no such thing as coincidence.

Harlan drove back to
the tabernacle and waited for a number 77 bus to pass. When one did, he
followed it. Crawling through the traffic-clotted streets, the bus made its way
to Grenoside, passing offices, shops, terraced houses, Hillsborough football
ground, seventies high-rises, modern apartment blocks, a suburban shopping
centre, more terraces, semis, a new housing estate. Then, finally, the edge of
the city – fields dotted with sheep; scattered farmhouses; purple-flowering
moorland; and the vast blue-red expanse of the twilight sky. The bus pulled
into a turning-circle. It sat there for ten minutes before setting off back
towards the city centre.

Harlan walked the
circumference of the terminus, peering into the closely clustered ranks of pine
trees that almost completely encircled it. Nothing to see but tree-trunks and
pine needles. He took a deep breath of the cool, head-clearing air, then
returned to his car and the city.

He drove to the
Northern General Hospital and cruised the car-parks until he found Neil’s
Volvo. After parking in view of it, he bought coffee and doughnuts from a
nearby shop. But even that wasn’t enough to stop his eyelids from drooping.
Realising sleep was going to win out anyway, he set the alarm on his phone for
midnight, reclined his seat and closed his eyes. It seemed mere seconds later
that the alarm woke him. The Volvo was still there. He reset the alarm for
five-thirty AM and fell back asleep. When he next awoke, he banished the fuzzy
edges of sleep with the cold dregs of his coffee. Shortly after six, Neil
appeared in his porter’s uniform, his narrow shoulders scrunched against the
chill morning air. He ducked into the Volvo and drove away. Harlan tailed him
back to Manor Lane.

At seven o’clock the
mousey-faced woman opened the downstairs curtains. She stood smoking a
cigarette at the living-room window, the elbow of one arm cupped in the other
hand. She turned suddenly and moved from view, as if someone had called for
her. The morning dragged by. Some of the residents of Manor Lane headed out to
work or school. Others came crawling home. As on the previous day, Neil
surfaced at noon. A few minutes later, the other set of upstairs curtains
opened too, revealing a man who looked like Neil might look in twenty or so
years if he spent the intervening time soaking himself in booze. The
mousey-faced woman appeared and proffered him a mug, which he pushed away.
Moments later, Neil hurried from the house to his car. He drove to a nearby
off-licence, bought some cans of lager and a couple of bottles of whisky, and
returned home. He handed the booze to his mum at the front door, then got back
into his car. Again as on the previous day, Harlan tailed him to Susan’s.
Again, the two of them fetched Kane from school. But today, instead of going
home, they went to the tabernacle. Lewis Gunn and a dozen or so other people
were waiting for them in the church’s car-park, all of them wearing t-shirts
printed with Ethan’s face. The preacher shook Neil’s hand and embraced Susan.

Harlan watched the
group hand out missing-person posters in the city centre. Susan and Lewis Gunn
also spoke to several journalists and the entire group posed for pictures,
holding a banner that read ‘ETHAN STILL NEEDS YOUR HELP’. If nothing else,
Harlan reflected caustically, his ‘vigilantism’ had fanned the media’s interest
back into flame.

At half-five Neil left
the group and headed off to work. He parked in the same spot. So did Harlan. He
bought more coffee and doughnuts, and a newspaper. The eye-catching front-page
headline ran: ‘Police’s Failure To Catch Kidnapper Prompts Vigilante Attack’.
Beneath it there was a picture of Garrett at a press-conference. It gave Harlan
a small measure of satisfaction to note that there was a sheen of sweat on
Garrett’s forehead. He skimmed over the article. What little information the
reporter had about the so-called ‘attack’ on Jones they’d got from a neighbour
who’d heard him shouting for help. Jones himself had refused to speak to
reporters, except to shout, “Leave me alone!” through his letter-box. The
remainder of the article was made up by Garrett’s platitudes, wild speculation
about Jones, and the opinions of locals, which ranged from the relatively mild
‘He had it coming to him’ to ‘I just wish that whoever it was had done the job
properly and killed him’.

Frowning, Harlan tossed
the newspaper aside. Part of him was irritated by the publics all too
predictable indifference about what’d happened to Jones. But another part of
him understood it completely. After all, people raising kids on Jones’s street
could hardly be blamed for wishing him dead.

The night passed the
same as the former. With small variations in routine, so did the following day,
and the day after that, and the day after that, and so on. For a week, except
for a brief visit to his parole officer, Harlan stuck to Neil like shit to a
shoe. Neil spent his days doing things for other people – fetching booze for
his dad, ferrying Susan and Kane around, handing out leaflets, meeting with
Lewis Gunn. The only time he took for himself was a Sunday night visit to The
Three Tuns – a little backstreet pub near the Cathedral – where he played darts
with two men, whom Harlan assumed to be Brian and Dave. Both men were a good
few years older than Neil. Neither of them seemed to fit the kidnapper’s
description. One was blond. The other, although dark-haired, was short and
squat. They had beer-guts and receding hairlines. They downed pints while Neil
stuck to cokes. They made a slightly odd trio – the beer-guzzling lads and the
gawky oddball – but they seemed to get on well enough. No doubt, reflected
Harlan, this had something to do with fact that Neil was the best player
amongst them.

During this time,
Harlan didn’t hear from Garrett. Not that he’d expected to after the
precautions he’d taken to make sure he didn’t leave any physical evidence
behind. Of course, there was always the chance someone had seen him hanging
around Jones’s house, but if they had it was doubtful they’d be able to
identify him. And even if they could identify him, it was unlikely they would,
not considering how hated Jones was. The general consensus on the street was
that the vigilante was the hero, not the villain.

Susan, it seemed, had
been right when she’d said Neil could be trusted. Harlan was beginning to
wonder if he was wasting his time following him. More than that, he was
starting to feel bad about it. Jim’s words kept returning to him.
He’s just
some poor kid who got caught in this mess through no fault of his own
.
Harlan was on the point of accepting that this was precisely what Neil was, and
no more, when the number 77 bus chugged into view again. As previously, Harlan
had tailed Neil to Susan’s, then to the Baptist church. But unlike previously,
this time Harlan saw him board the bus in his car’s rear-view mirror. A little
spurt of adrenaline racing through his bloodstream, he tailed the bus, pulling
over at an inconspicuous distance every time it did.

Harlan kept thinking
about the woods at the end of the line – how easy it would be to hide a freshly
dug grave under the thick layer of pine needles beneath the trees. But after
only a couple of miles Neil disembarked. Harlan parked up and followed him on
foot along a busy road flanked by exhaust stained terraced-houses, pubs, small
shops, restaurants and takeaways. Neil entered a rundown bookies. ‘ACE RACING’
read the faded sign over its door. A heavily-built, bulldog-faced skinhead
stood behind a plexi-glass screen at the rear of the bookies. Neil handed him
some cash, which he counted out onto the counter, before pocketing. Harlan
estimated there to be one or two hundred quid. He dodged out of sight into a
shop as Neil exited the bookies. What was the cash for? This question was
uppermost in his mind as he watched Neil cross to a bus-stop on the opposite
side of the road. The most obvious answers were that Neil had either laid a bet
or made a repayment on a line of gambling credit. But Harlan doubted for
several reasons whether this was the case. For starters, the skinhead hadn’t
given Neil a betting-slip or put the cash in the till, which meant the money
wasn’t going through any official books. More significantly, if Neil was a
serious gambler, there was no way the police wouldn’t have found traces of it
on his financial history. There was another possibility, namely that Neil had
paid off an instalment of a loan. Harlan knew from past experience that many
bookies also ran a profitable sideline in illegal loan sharking.