Blood Guilt (19 page)

A hint of a crooked
smile crept across Harlan’s lips. The cracks in Neil’s mask of timidity were
rapidly growing. It wouldn’t take much more pulling and prodding to reveal his
true face. “If you knew me, you’d know that wasn’t a threat to me.”

Neil’s eyes dropped
apologetically from Harlan’s. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.”
He breathed a sigh of shame and despair. “I know you’re only doing what you
have to do. But that’s all I’m doing too. You see, the thing is, Susan’s the
first, the only woman who’s ever looked twice at me. She means more to me than
anything. If she leaves me I…I don’t know what I might do. So I’m asking you,
begging you, please don’t tell the police.”

There was no lie Harlan
could detect in Neil’s voice. All he heard was a pleading, almost pathetic
desire to love and be loved. Again, in spite of himself, he felt a stirring of
sympathy. He knew what it was like to lose everything that meant anything. He
knew what it was like to feel that life is too painful to live. The thought of
inflicting that on someone, anyone, else was a torment to him. Again, he
slammed a door in his mind, shutting the emotion out. As much as he wanted to
believe Neil, he couldn’t risk doing as he asked. “I’ve got to.”

Neil’s features
crumpled like a cardboard box left out in the rain. “Okay, tell the police.”
His voice was crushed by hopelessness to a whisper. “But before you do, please
will you let me tell Susan myself?”

Harlan considered this
a moment, then nodded. He took out Neil’s phone and scrolled through its
contact’s list for Susan’s number. “Tell her you want to meet at the hospital.”

“Can’t I just go to her
house?”

“No. I can’t risk going
to her house.”

“You mean you’re going
to be there when I tell her.” When Harlan nodded, Neil continued, “I’m not sure
I can do it with you there.”

“You’ve got no other
choice.”

Harlan pressed the dial
button. When Susan picked up, he put the phone on loud-speaker. Her voice came
down the line with urgency. She sounded different to how he’d ever heard before
– unguarded, less angry, more fragile. “I’ve been trying to ring you. Why
haven’t you been answering your phone?” Before Neil had chance to reply, Susan
continued, “I rang Detective Greenwood and he said he didn’t have time to talk.
He wouldn’t say why. I got the feeling something’s going on.”

“You get that feeling
every time you talk to the police,” said Neil.

“I know, but this time
I’m certain of it. Something’s not right. It’s like I keep saying, the police
know more than they’re telling us. Oh Christ, Neil, what if…what if they’ve…”
Susan’s voice quivered breathlessly as she tried to bring herself to say what
she barely dared think.

“Calm down, Susie.”
Neil’s voice was soft, reassuring. “Remember what the doctor said to do when
you feel like this, take a couple of deep breaths and count to five.” As Susan
sucked in her breath, he counted slowly, “One…two…three…four…five… That’s it.
Now exhale and say after me, if there were any important developments they’d
have told me.”

“If there were any
important developments they’d have told me.” Susan sounded calmer, but unconvinced.
Harlan wasn’t convinced either. Thinking about how Jim hadn’t answered his
phone, he suspected Susan’s instincts were right. Something might well be going
on. But what? Was it possible they’d found Ethan alive? No. If that were the
case, they’d have told Susan. More likely they’d found a body and were waiting
for positive identification. Or perhaps they had a new lead on Ethan’s
kidnapper. Whatever it was, it obviously didn’t involve Neil, unless…It
occurred to Harlan with a jolt that maybe
he
was the development. Maybe
the police were surveilling them right now. His eyes scoured the street for
potential unmarked police vehicles. There were none. He cut off his line of
thinking, reminding himself that in all his days of tailing Neil he’d seen
nothing to make him suspect the police were doing likewise.
Stop speculating
on what you don’t know
, he told himself sharply.
Focus on what you do
know
.
The facts, only the facts
.

“There. Now don’t you
feel better?” said Neil.

“I suppose so. Thanks,
babe. You know, I don’t know what I’d have done without you these past few
weeks.”

“You’d have got through
it. You’re stronger than you think.”

“No I’m not.”

Neil looked
meaningfully at Harlan, who was astonished to find himself questioning whether he
was doing the right thing. Neil was Susan’s main support. If he was pulled away
from under her, there was no telling how far she might fall.
Do you really
have to do that to her, after everything else you’ve done
? agonised Harlan.
Almost the instant he asked the question, some other part of his brain shot
back the answer:
yes
.

“Tell her you need to
see her,” Harlan mouthed silently at Neil.

Neil’s Adam’s apple
bobbed. His words came hesitatingly. “Listen, Susie, I…we need to talk.”

“I thought that’s what
we were doing.”

“No, well, yes we are,
but I need to see you.”

“What? Now?”

Wringing his hands, his
voice nearly disappearing within the folds of its reluctance, Neil said, “Yes.
I’ve…err…got something to say to you.”

“So say it.”

“I can’t. Not over the phone.
It’s too important.”

“What’s so important
you can’t say it over the phone?” Harlan heard the frown in Susan’s voice. He
winced inwardly as, a note of panic creeping back in, she continued, “Is it
about Ethan?”

“No,” Neil said
quickly. “It’s about me. Look, just meet me outside A&E as soon as you can,
will you.”

“Can’t you come
here?” 

“I can’t be off the
wards for that long.”

“What about Kane? I
can’t just leave him here on his own.”

“So drop him off at one
of his friends’ houses.”

“I don’t know. It’s
getting a bit late for that and I...Look, can’t you just tell me what you’ve
got to tell me?”

Neil sighed. “Will you
come or not?”

Susan was silent a
moment, then, sighing too, she said, “Okay, but you’d better have something big
to tell me.”

Harlan hung up and
returned Neil’s phone to him. He turned the car and accelerated back the way
they’d come. Neil sat slumped down in his seat, his expression swaying between
misery and resignation. When the hospital came into view, he turned to Harlan
suddenly. “There must be something I can say to convince you this is
unnecessary.”

“Maybe there is,” said
Harlan, although there wasn’t.

“I’m taking every extra
shift I can to pay off Dawson. I’ve upped my repayments to two hundred a week.
He says if I keep it up my debt will be cleared in a year-and-a-half. Then I’ll
be able to apply for a mortgage, and me, Susan, Kane and–” Neil caught himself
on the verge of saying ‘Ethan’. “We can live together in our own place. And
maybe me and Susan can get married and have kids. We can have a real life
together. Don’t take that away from us.”

A real life
.
At these words, an image came into Harlan’s mind of Tom playing with his toys
on the hearth-rug while he and Susan chatted and read the Sunday newspapers.
A
real life
. A life that’d been taken from him through no fault or action of
his own. Anger suddenly surged up in him. “I’m not taking anything away from
you,” he snapped. “You’ve done that to yourself.”

“I only did it to save
Susan from–”

Harlan shot Neil a
glance that silenced him. As they parked, Neil sagged back down into his seat,
his eyes wet and glistening in the bright yellow light of A&E’s ambulance
bay.

They sat in silence for
twenty or so minutes, until a taxi pulled up and Susan got out. “Call her
over,” said Harlan. When Neil didn’t make a move to do so, he added, “Call her
over, or I will.”

Neil opened his window
and shouted to Susan. When she saw Harlan’s car, the lines etched into her
features by the weeks of worry deepened. “What’s he doing here?” she demanded to
know, the openness that Harlan had heard on the phone replaced by her familiar
guardedness.

“Get in and I’ll tell
you.”

Susan hesitated to do
so, uneasy suspicion rippling over her face, her eyes flicking back and forth between
Neil and Harlan, as though she was trying to work out if they were in some way
in league together. With a slight shake of her head, she seemed to dismiss
whatever she was thinking. She ducked into the backseat, but didn’t shut the
door. Arms crossed, she waited to hear what Neil had to say. He stared at his
lap, pale as a condemned man. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came
out. “Tell her or I–” Harlan started to say.

“Okay, okay,” broke in
Neil. With a tight breath, he lifted his gaze to meet Susan’s. Her thin lips
grew thinner still, as he said, “There’s something about me I’ve been hiding
from you. The thing is, Susie, I…erm…You know I said I was saving to buy a
place of my own. Well I’m not. Not yet anyway. I am going to, but first I’ve got
to pay off a debt. You see, I took out a loan from this guy, Gary Dawson.”

“How much?” Susan’s
voice was calm, but an undercurrent of growing anger was perceptible.

“Only four thousand,
but now I owe him nearly ten.”

“And do the police know
about this?”

“No.”

“So you’ve lied to me
and the police.”

“Yes, but only because
there’s no need for them to know. This has got nothing to do with–”

Susan’s hand lashed out
and Neil felt the same sting of her nails that Harlan had on more than one occasion.
“Don’t say it,” she hissed. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare say my boy’s name.”

Tears spilled over
Neil’s eyes. “But it’s the truth. Please, Susie, you’ve got to believe me.”

“How can I? If you’d
told me about this right away after this all started, I might’ve been able to.
But now…” Shaking her head, Susan repeated, “How can I?” 

“Because I love you and
I love Ethan and Kane.”

“If you really loved
us, you’d have told the truth.”

“I was trying to
protect you.”

“No!” Susan stabbed an
accusatory finger at Neil. “You lied to protect your own pathetic hide.
Remember what Detective Greenwood said – he said,
somebody out there’s
holding that vital piece of information that’s needed to solve the case, and
they might not even realise it. So we need to know everything you know, no
matter how insignificant you think it is
. Do you remember that, Neil?”

Neil nodded desolately.

“How do you know it
wasn’t this guy, this Gary Dawson, who took Ethan?”

“He wouldn’t do
something like that.”

“Wouldn’t he? Maybe
he’s using Ethan to force you to pay up.”

Neil shook his head.
“He’s a loan-shark, not a child abductor. And anyway, he doesn’t need to force
me to pay. I’m already handing over half my wage-packet to him.”

“Neil’s right,” put in
Harlan. “I don’t know much about Dawson, but I do know it wouldn’t make any
sense for him to kidnap Ethan – at least, not on account of a ten thousand
pound debt.”

“So you don’t think
this…this fucking nightmare has got anything to do with Neil’s debt.” Susan
looked at Harlan with a conflicted gleam in her eyes that suggested she was
caught between the desperate desire to find out what’d happened to Ethan, and
an almost equally desperate hope that it had nothing to do with Neil.

“I didn’t say that.”

“It hasn’t,” said Neil,
shrill with the need to be believed. “I swear on my life. I love you, Susie.
I’d never do anything to hurt you. I know I’ve messed up big-time. I know I
should’ve told the police, but I panicked at the thought that I might lose
you.”

“You were right, you
might have lost me,” said Susan. “But now you definitely have.”

More tears bubbled up
and ran down Neil’s face. He clutched at Susan’s hand like a drowning man.
“Please don’t do this. I’m so, so sorry. I’ll make this up to you.”

Susan shoved Neil’s
hand away. “You can’t. Not unless you can bring back my little boy.” She leaned
forward suddenly, her eyes like needles. “Can you do that?”

Neil’s voice matched
the intensity of Susan’s gaze, as he said, “No, but I can try. I’ll do
everything I can to prove how much I love you. Just give me a chance. I swear
to God, I’ll either make this right or die trying.”

Seemingly stunned by
the force of Neil’s words, her inner turmoil and uncertainty written in the
shifting lines of her face, Susan hesitated to reply. She flinched at the shrill
ring of Harlan’s phone. He snatched it out, and seeing Jim’s name on its
screen, he said, “I’ve got to take this.” Giving Neil a warning look, as if to
say,
don’t even think about moving
, he got out of the car. “I’ve been
trying to call you,” he said into his phone. “Why aren’t you answering your
phone?”

“I’ll tell you in a
moment,” said Jim, sounding utterly worn out. “First you tell me why it’s so
important that we get Price off the streets.”