Blood Guilt (28 page)

“Because he needed
her.”

“Maybe it’s the other
way around. Maybe she was the first person in his life who’d really needed him.
And that made him feel good – good in a way nothing else had done before.”
Harlan’s eyes faded away from Jim’s. He suddenly found himself thinking about
Tom. All his life he’d felt lonely. Even after he got together with Eve. But
the first time he’d cradled Tom in his arms, and gazed into his tiny, helpless
eyes, the pangs of loneliness had been replaced by a warm sense of being needed
that’d made him feel capable of doing anything.

Jim’s voice jerked
Harlan back into the room. “When you put it like that, it’s got to be worth a
shot.”

“You reckon Garrett
will agree to it?”

“I don’t see he’s got a
choice. We need to come up with something fast. In fact, I’ll call him right
now.” Pulling out his phone, Jim left the room. He returned after several
minutes, his manner more brisk and animated. “He wasn’t entirely convinced, the
idea of using the old woman makes him nervous, but he’s going to set it up. You
know, Harlan, I’ve got a good feeling about this. If anyone can get through to
Nash, surely it’s her.” He looked at Harlan with a regretful, admiring gleam in
his eyes. “Christ, I wish you could be there when she speaks to him. I’ve never
known anyone who could get inside the heads of bastards like him, like you
can.”

“Any other developments
I should know about?”

“The pathologist’s
report on the body came in. We got a dental ID. His name’s Lee Dale. He was an
eight-year old Stockport boy who went missing on his way home from school in
2003.”

“That’s the year Jones
and Nash met. Don’t tell me that’s coincidence.”

Jim shook his head.
“You know what I think about coincidences.” The furrows on his forehead turned
into ravines. “Problem is we still can’t connect Jones to the crime scenes.”

“For fuck’s sake, Jim,
he took me to the caravan. What more do you need?”

“Hard forensic
evidence. You know as well as I do what’d happen if we prosecuted Jones on the
basis of information you tortured out of him: you’d be the one who ended up in
prison, not him.”

“Don’t go cutting any
deals with that fucker just to keep me out of prison.”

“No one’s cutting those
kinds of deals. If Jones agrees not to press charges, it’ll be because he knows
we’ll make his life a living hell otherwise. If we get any evidence on him,
he’s going down. It’s as simple as that.”

“And if you can’t get
the evidence, what then?”

“We will. Even if there
are no forensics and Nash refuses to crack, I’ll find some way to nail the
bastard. Trust me.”

Harlan did trust Jim.
But he didn’t trust the system. He’d seen scumbags like Jones slip through its
net too many times. And Jim was a dutiful, if somewhat pessimistic, servant of
the system. That was why he’d been partnered with Harlan – to rein in his
maverick tendencies. And it’d worked, for the most part, whilst they were
partners. But they weren’t partners anymore. He thought about Jamie painting a
picture in the air in his car. If bodies were Nash’s trophies, paintings were
Jones’s. Somewhere there was a place where Jones kept his most prized trophies.
Finding that place was the key to nailing him. But how to find it? Harlan
heaved a sigh, hoping Jim would prove right and he’d never be forced to search
for the answer to that question. “So what else did the pathologist’s report
say?”

“Exactly when Lee Dale
died can’t be established for certain, but the advanced state of decay
indicates he’s been dead for around seven years. Which means Nash kept him
alive for a year or so. Cause of death was inconclusive. He’d suffered more
than a dozen fractures, but no single injury that was enough to kill him. Most
probably he died from an accumulation of injuries combined with the effects of
malnutrition.”

The dark thing that
lurked in the far regions of Harlan’s psyche whispered to him as he thought
about Lee Dale being slowly tortured and starved to death. His fingers dug
convulsively into the mattress.

“You okay?” asked Jim.

“Just a little pain in
my side.”

“I’ll go. Let you get
some rest.”

“Any news on how Susan
Reed’s doing?” Harlan asked, as his ex-partner stood to leave.

Jim shook his head, but
something about his eyes, some flicker of awkwardness, told Harlan that he was
keeping something from him. “Don’t bullshit me, Jim. I know you too well.”

Jim dredged up another
sigh. “Okay, here’s the thing. Her other boy, Kane, found her collapsed
unconscious yesterday.” As Harlan started to sit up in alarm, Jim added
quickly, “Don’t worry, she’s fine. He called for an ambulance and the
paramedics pumped her stomach.”

“What’d she taken?”

“A shit load of booze
and some sleeping-pills.”

“She tried to kill
herself.”

“She says it was an
accident. Claims she just wanted to get some sleep.”

Harlan shook his head
doubtfully. “Where is she now?”

“At home. She refused
to go to hospital.”

“Who’s with her?”

“Just her son, as far
as I know.”

Harlan’s brow creased.
“Why the hell isn’t there a uniform with her?”

“She wouldn’t let
anyone else in the house.” Jim’s phone beeped as a text message came in. He
flipped it open. “The meeting’s set up for half-ten. Shit, I’d better get a
move on. I’ll call you, let you know how it goes.” He hurried from the room.

Even before Jim’s
footfalls had died away, Harlan was punching the call button to summon a nurse.
His fingers drummed against the mattress as he waited. When a nurse finally
poked her head into the room, he said, “I need to see the doctor.”

“Doctor Hill’s doing
her rounds right now. She’ll be looking in on you in a bit.”

Irritation surged up in
Harlan. But before he could retort that he wanted to see Doctor fucking Hill
right this fucking minute, Eve’s smiling face appeared at the nurse’s shoulder.
Her smile faded at the sight of Harlan. As the nurse moved away, Eve approached
him, carrying a brown paper bag of fruit. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I’ve got to get out of
this fucking place.”

“Why?”

Harlan told her about
Susan. “I need to see her, otherwise…” He couldn’t bring himself to say what he
feared might happen otherwise.

“But surely you’re not
ready to be discharged yet. Your wound could–”

“Fuck my wound,” cut in
Harlan. Seeing Eve blink at the harshness of his retort, he gave her an
apologetic look. “Look, when the doctor gets here, just back up whatever I say
to her, will you?”

Harlan was sat on the
edge of his bed when Dr Hill arrived. “You should be lying down,” said the
doctor.

“I want to be
discharged,” said Harlan.

“I’d strongly advise
against that. We need to keep you under observation for at least another
forty-eight hours.”

“I feel fine.”

“You need total bed
rest. If you walk, you could tear your stitches.”

“I promise I won’t walk
a step. Eve will make sure of that, won’t you?”

Eve’s lips pursed into
a tight line, but she nodded.

“Before you can go
anywhere, I’ll need to examine you.” Dr Hill took Harlan’s temperature and
checked his blood-pressure. Then she carefully peeled back the bandage and
sterile gauze pad. The stitches looked like an ugly, puckered mouth. The skin
around them was storm-cloud black, fading to purplish yellow. The colour
leached from Eve’s face at the sight. “All your vitals are normal and there’s
no sign of infection.”

“So I can leave.”

“Are you dead set on
this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then, I can’t
stop you from doing it, but before you go there are a few things we need to
sort out.”

Dr Hill explained to
Eve that the wound needed redressing every day for the first week and
demonstrated how to apply a fresh bandage. Then she spoke about what tablets
Harlan had to take and when to take them. Finally, she headed off to sort out
the discharge arrangements and find a nurse to help Harlan get dressed. “Get
dressed in what?” asked Harlan. He had a hazy memory of his trousers and
sweatshirt being cut off him when he arrived at A&E. His wallet, phone,
shoes and socks were in a plastic bag in the bedside cabinet, caked in dried
blood.

“There are some shops
downstairs. I’ll see if I can find you something,” said Eve. She weighed Harlan
up. “You’ve lost a little weight since I last bought clothes for you.”

Harlan managed a smile.
“I guess that’s one good thing prison did for me, got rid of my love handles.”

Soon enough Eve
returned with a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a hooded sweatshirt she’d found
in a charity shop. “Not exactly the height of fashion, but I figured tracksuit
bottoms would be the most comfortable thing.”

Harlan pulled on the
sweatshirt. A nurse helped him into the tracksuit bottoms while Eve cleaned the
blood off his shoes as best she could at the sink. Clapping her hand to her
mouth suddenly, she rushed retching from the room. Harlan looked at her with
concern when, after several minutes, she returned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. The blood
turned my stomach, that’s all.”

A flicker of surprise
crossed Harlan’s face. Gripping the bed’s support frame, he lowered himself
into a wheelchair from which hung plastic bags full of bandages and pill boxes.
After he’d scribbled his signature on a few forms, Eve wheeled him to her car.
He shook his head as she moved to help him into the passenger seat and gestured
at the wheelchair. “Get rid of this thing.”

“But the doctor said–”

“I don’t give a shit
what she said. Get rid of it.”

Sighing, Eve returned
the wheelchair to the hospital building.

For some time they
drove in silence, Harlan staring out the window, casting occasional thoughtful
glances at Eve. “How you feeling?” he asked.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“It’s just you’re not
usually the type to get queasy at the sight of blood.”

“Instead of worrying
about me, Harlan, you should worry about looking after yourself. I’m assuming
you don’t want me hanging around once we get to Susan Reed’s house.”

“I’ll be okay. I’m not
planning on doing anything more strenuous than talking. I just want to be there
for her, make sure she doesn’t try anything stupid.”

“What makes you think
she wants you to be there for her?”

“Because I’m all she’s
got right now.”

Eve flicked Harlan a
glance and he could see her thoughts. She was thinking:
what about me? Who
the fuck have I got
? She didn’t say it, though. However much she was
hurting, she knew it was nothing compared to Susan Reed’s pain. When they
arrived at Susan’s house, all the curtains were closed. Eve looked at Harlan
like a mother would look at a child she was reluctant to let out of her sight.
“I’ll wait in case she doesn’t let you in.”

Harlan shook his head.
“If she sees you it’ll make her angry.”

Eve frowned. “Why?
Because she can’t stand to think you might have any happiness in life?”

Harlan held in a sigh.
He didn’t have the energy for this now. “Thanks for the lift, Eve. I’ll call
you.”

“When? In the next fucking
life?”

The sigh escaped.
Harlan reached for the door-handle.

“Wait.” Eve put her
hand on his arm. Her voice came more softly. “If you need me to change your
bandage, cook you a meal, whatever, you know where I am.”

Mustering up a small
smile, Harlan nodded and squeezed Eve’s hand. Their eyes mirrored each other’s
sadness – not the sadness of lovers parting, but a deeper, more profound
sadness of shared loss. She took the key out of the ignition and proffered it
to him. “Take it,” she insisted as he shook his head. “Please, Harlan, for me.
I won’t be able to rest otherwise.”

Harlan accepted the
key. “Thanks.”

Eve leaned in towards
him hesitantly, as if unsure whether to kiss him. She didn’t kiss him. She just
murmured, “I love you.” Then she got out of the car. Harlan watched her until
she reached the end of the street, before slowly approaching and knocking on
Susan’s front door. No answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. Not even a
twitch of the curtains.

“Susan,” Harlan called
through the letterbox, voice tight with the pain of bending. “It’s Harlan
Miller.” To his relief, after a few seconds, his straining ears caught the
sound of feet descending the stairs. His relief evaporated when the door opened
and he saw Susan. He expected her to look bad, but her face, ashen and
cadaverous with deep bruised circles under the eyes, was even ghastlier than
he’d imagined. He’d seen corpses that looked more alive than she did. Gaze
darting over his shoulder, she motioned for him to come inside. She closed the
door quickly behind him and shot the lock.