Blood Guilt (18 page)

As Neil waited for a
number 77 to take him back into town, Harlan phoned Jim. “I need some
information,” he told his ex-partner. “Ace Racing on the Penistone Road. Who
owns it? What’s their story?”

“Never heard of it.
I’ll make a few calls. Then I’ll get back to you. I assume this has got
something to do with Ethan Reed.”

“Uh-huh.” Harlan hung
up. He wanted to get a clearer picture before saying anything more. He was in
his car, tailing the 77 when his phone rang. He put it on loud-speaker.

“Ace Racing’s owned by
a guy called Gary Dawson,” said Jim. “Nasty piece of work, by all accounts. Got
his fingers in a lot of pies – dog fighting, fencing stolen goods, loan
sharking.”

“Has he got a record?”

“GBH, demanding money
with menaces, handling stolen property – all the typical crap you’d expect from
a character like him. So are you going to tell me what this is about? Dawson’s
a scumbag, but he’s not exactly the type to be involved in something like
this.”

Harlan hesitated. He
wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Jim. He was pretty certain that the first thing
Garrett would do once the information filtered back to him would be to haul
Neil in and sweat him for a day or two. Harlan suspected this wouldn’t achieve
anything besides putting Neil’s guard up. Under immense scrutiny, Neil had
managed to lie successfully to Susan and the police. Whether that lie concerned
gambling or illegal loans or both was beside the point. The point was that
beneath his timid exterior there lurked a steely resolve that few, if any, others
had detected. Harlan wondered what else was concealed in the shadows around and
inside Neil. What hopes? What desires? What other secrets? And he figured that
the best chance he had to find out was to keep tailing him.

“I tell you something,
you tell me something. That was the deal,” said Jim.

“Trust me, Jim, I will
tell you. I just need more time to work out what I’m on to here.”

Jim released a nasal
sigh. “You’ve got two days, then I want to hear everything you’ve got.”

Harlan knew there wasn’t
much chance of finding out the truth behind Neil’s lie in two day. Not unless
he got lucky. “I need at least a week.”

“Four days. If I don’t
hear from you after that, I’m going to do some digging myself. See if I can’t
find out who owes Dawson what.”

Harlan smiled thinly.
Jim might be getting a bit past it, but he was still a shrewd operator. From
his tone, it was obvious he suspected Harlan’s interest in Dawson had something
to do with Neil Price. And, adding two and two, it didn’t require a huge
intuitive leap to guess what that something entailed. “Okay. Four days.”

Chapter
13

Time suddenly seemed to
be on fast forward. With the speed of a thought that was gone before it was
barely formed, one, two, then three days flashed by. Neil’s routine, by now so
familiar to Harlan, never once varied – work, sleep, off-licence, Susan’s
house, pick up Kane, hand out leaflets, work, sleep…The relentless tediousness
of it numbed Harlan’s brain, blotting away all thoughts except those that
flowed from the question: why had Neil lied? The question whirled round and
round in his head, even though he knew he wouldn’t find the answer there.

On the fourth night,
Harlan parked at the hospital, and as had become his habit, after watching Neil
head into A&E, went for coffee and doughnuts. As he queued, he thought with
mixed feelings about phoning Jim. On the one hand, he would’ve liked more time
to follow Neil. But on the other, he was acutely aware that Susan deserved to
know about Neil’s lying, regardless of what lurked behind it – be it shame,
fear or something more sinister. Harlan paid, turned to leave and found himself
staring into Neil’s eyes. Both men blinked in surprise. Neil’s watery blue
pupils darted about as if looking for an escape. “What are you doing here?” he
asked with a swallow in his voice.

Keeping his expression
carefully deadpan, Harlan raised his box of doughnuts in answer. He stepped
around Neil and headed for the exit. “Fuck, shit,” he muttered under his
breath, feeling Neil’s eyes follow him until he was out of sight. The last
thing he wanted was for Neil to realise he’d been tailing him. Not only because
it would put him on his guard, but because if there was something sinister
behind his lie it might panic him into doing something rash. He tried to phone
Jim. No answer. “I need to talk to you,” he told the answering service. “Call
me as soon as you can.” He waited five minutes, fretfully sipping coffee, then
tried again. Still no answer.
For fuck’s sake
, he thought. Jim was never
without his mobile phone, so why the hell wasn’t he answering? “Price made me.
We have to get him off the streets as quickly as possible,” he said, then hung
up.

Ten more minutes
passed. Harlan stared at his phone as if willing it to ring, but it remained
infuriatingly silent. Thrusting it into his pocket, he made his way back to his
car. He approached it warily, scanning the car-park for Neil. He was nowhere to
be seen. He got into the car and started it up. As much as he was reluctant to
leave Neil unwatched, he couldn’t risk spending the night there. He pulled out
of the parking-space, jamming his foot on the break as Neil appeared from
behind a van. Neil’s eyes weren’t dancing now. They were fixed on Harlan.
Pushing his glasses up on his nose, he approached the driver’s side window.
“Are you following me?” He still sounded nervous, but there was a kind of
forced courage behind his voice.

Harlan motioned with
his chin at the front passenger door. “Get in.”

Hesitantly, Neil made
his way to the door and ducked inside. Harlan accelerated towards the
car-park’s exit. “Hey, what you doing?” said Neil. “I’m working. I only nipped
out for a sandwich. I’ll get in trouble if I’m not back on the wards soon.”

Harlan made no reply.
As he pulled into the last remnants of the rush-hour traffic, he watched Neil
out of the sides of his eyes, studying every movement of his features.

“Where are we going?”
persisted Neil. More stony silence. “Hey, I asked you–” he started to say, but
his nerves got the better of him, and the words stuck in his throat. He sat
stiffly with his thin hands clasped in his lap. His tongue flicked at his lips.
His eyes flicked at Harlan. That dancing look came into them again as the car
turned onto the Penistone Road. One of his hands moved towards his coat pocket.

“Don’t,” said Harlan,
his voice hard with warning.

“I just need to phone
my manager, let him know I’m okay.”

Harlan shook his head,
holding out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

“What for?”

“Just fucking do it.”

Neil reluctantly handed
over his phone. It started to ring. ‘Susie’ flashed up on the screen. “Who is
it?” asked Neil. His eyes widened when Harlan told him. “Let me talk to her.
Please, it must be something important. She never usually rings me at work.”

Harlan put the phone in
his pocket, watching closely for Neil’s reaction. A slight flush rose into
Neil’s cheeks. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again without doing
so.

“Go on, say what you
were going to say,” said Harlan, wanting to see if he could draw some kind of
angry response from Neil.

Blinking, Neil dropped
his gaze to his lap. They drove on in silence, passing a number 77 bus. Neither
of them exchanged a word until they pulled over outside ‘Ace Racing’. Then
Harlan turned to Neil and gave him the hard stare he’d perfected as a cop, the
one which said,
I know everything so you might as well spill it
. Neil’s
eyes flickered crazily all over the pace, but he held his silence. “How much do
you owe?” Harlan’s voice was even and low, but there was a weight behind it
that was calculated to knock Neil off balance.

“I…I…” stammered Neil,
then he sucked his lip into his mouth and pinched it between his teeth, staring
at his clasped hands.

Like a father
disappointed in a child, Harlan sighed and shook his head. “Listen up, Neil, at
the moment I’m the only one who knows about this. If you want to have any
chance of keeping it that way, you’d better tell me what I want to know right
now.” No matter what Neil told him, he had no intention of keeping it between
them. Using a lie to uncover the truth always left a sour taste in his mouth,
but he’d long ago come to accept that the ability to do so was one of the most
important tools in any detective’s toolbox.

Neil released his lip
suddenly and touched a finger to it. Blood. He stared at the crimson droplet as
if trying to work out what it was. “Nearly ten thousand.” His voice was tiny as
the squeak of a mouse.

“Is it a gambling
debt?”

“I’ve never gambled in
my life. It was a loan.”

“What for?”

Neil gave a slight
shrug. “A car, clothes, furniture, rent for my flat.”

“But you live with your
parents.”

“I do now, but a few
years ago I moved out and lived in a flat in Ranmoor.”

Harlan’s eyebrows lifted.
Ranmoor was an upscale suburb on the south side. Neil obviously had ambitions
to escape Manor Lane. “That’s a long way from the Manor.”

Neil’s nose wrinkled as
if the word ‘Manor’ smelled bad, but he said nothing.

“What’s the flat’s
address?”

“340 Manchester Road.
Flat 1b.”

“Nice place was it?”

Again a shrug. “It was
just a one bed-roomed basement flat, but I liked it.”

“How long did you live
there?”

“A couple of years.”

“So you lived above
your means and ended up having to run home to mum and dad. That must’ve hurt.”

Neil remained silent,
but his expression answered all.

“Who put you in contact
with Dawson?”

“A friend.”

“Name?”

“Dave Brierly. A guy I
play darts with.” Neil’s eyes blinked as though he had a pain behind them. “He
told me not to go to Dawson, but I didn’t listen. I must’ve been mad. I never
seem to be able to pay off what I owe. The debt just keeps getting bigger.”

“That’s how scumbags
like Dawson operate.” Looking at Neil’s tired boy-man face, Harlan felt a
needle of sympathy. Alcoholic father, Manor Lane, no prospects – the kid hadn’t
exactly been dealt much of a hand. He pushed the emotion aside. He couldn’t
afford sympathy, not considering what was at stake. “Why didn’t you tell the
police about your debt?”

“I’ve never told anyone
about it. Not even my parents.”

“Why?”

Neil was silent a
moment, then he said quietly, “I was ashamed. When I had to give up my flat and
return home, I felt such a…a…” He trailed off as if he couldn’t bear to say the
word.

Harlan said it for him.
“Failure.”

Neil nodded, his head
hanging low as if a heavy weight was pressing on the back of it.

“And is that why you
haven’t told Susan either?”

“That and because,
well, she’s already got so much to deal with. I don’t just mean with Ethan, I
mean with her being a single mum and barely having enough money to get by. I
was afraid that if she found out she’d leave me. You can understand that, can’t
you?”

“Sure I can, but I
don’t think that’s all there is to it. Is there, Neil?”

Eyes wide and
glistening, Neil jerked his head up. “What do you mean?”

“A young boy’s been
abducted and you’re hiding things from the police. You must see how that
looks.”

“I know it looks bad,
but you’ve got to believe me it’s got nothing to do with Ethan’s abduction.” Neil
pressed his hand over his heart in avowal. “I love that boy. Since he was taken
I’ve done everything I can to try and help get him back. I’ve handed out
thousands of missing-person posters, I’ve helped organise fundraisers, I’ve–”

“Maybe you’re just trying
hard not to look suspicious,” cut in Harlan. “I’ve been involved in plenty of
murder investigations where someone’s come forward to offer their help only to
turn out to be the killer.”

“Why would I take
Ethan?”

“Plenty of reasons.
Maybe you sold him to a paedophile ring. Maybe you’re a paedophile yourself. Or
maybe you’ve cooked up some plan to get your hands on the reward money.”

Neil shook his head
vehemently, eyes bulging at Harlan. “You’re crazy.” His voice rose as
indignation overcame his submissiveness. “I love Ethan.”

Ah, so you can get
angry
, thought Harlan, returning Neil’s stare
impassively. “So you said.” He took out his phone and pushed its buttons as
slowly and deliberately as he was pushing Neil’s.

“Who are you phoning?”

“The police.”

A sick look came over
Neil’s face. “But you said if I told you what you wanted to know you’d keep
this between just you and me.”

“I said there was a
chance of it. But you haven’t told me anything that’s convinced me not to phone
them.”

“I…I–” Desperation made
Neil’s voice break. He cleared his throat, before blurting out, “If you tell
the police about me, I’ll tell them about you and Jones.”