Blood Guilt (35 page)

Sheffield United’s
stadium loomed up from the city skyline as Harlan turned onto Bramall Lane.
Across the road from the south-west corner of the stadium stood The Railway
Hotel. They pulled over and got out of the car. Neil hurried towards the pub’s
entrance. As with his hesitant reaction to Susan’s questions, there was no way
of telling whether his feet were quickened by nerves or impatience to return to
her. “Slow down,” Harlan said through gritted teeth, struggling to keep up.

“Sorry, I forgot about
your injury. It’s just I don’t like leaving Susan alone.”

It wasn’t a match-day,
and the pub was empty, except for a scattering of early evening drinkers
hunched over their drinks – mostly glazed-eyed men with nowhere better to be,
or hiding from their families and themselves. Harlan recognised them well from
the years between Tom and Robert Reed’s deaths. He watched Neil scan the bar,
wondering whether he’d told the truth about meeting Yates here. A dartboard in
one corner at least partially suggested he had done.

“He’s not here,” said
Neil, his voice flat, expressing neither disappointment nor relief.

They approached the
barman and Harlan asked if he knew Yates. “Sorry, mate, never heard of him,”
came the reply. They made their way around the bar’s patrons and got the same
response from all of them. Harlan saw no flicker of recognition in any of their
eyes to suggest they were lying.

“He’s obviously not a
regular here,” he said, frowning in thought. “We could check out some of the
other pubs around here.”

Neil expelled a breath
of irritation. “What’s the big deal about finding this guy? He didn’t even do a
good job. Surely it’s better to spend a few quid extra and get the job done
properly.”

As Neil spoke, a man
came out of the toilets. “Excuse me, mate,” said Harlan. “I’m looking for
Martin Yates. Do you know him?”

“Yeah, I know Martin,
but I’ve not seen him in months.”

“Any idea how I can get
hold of him?”

“He used to drink in
The Cricketers sometimes.”

Harlan thanked the man,
and they headed for the car. The Cricketers Arms was a few hundred yards further
along Bramall Lane. As they drove past the stadium, Neil sat with his arms
crossed, hunched forward in his seat. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered.
“Susan–”

“Will be fine,”
interjected Harlan.
He’s getting panicky
, he thought.
Keep pushing
his buttons
,
see how he responds
.
If he’s truly involved in
Ethan’s abduction
,
maybe you can nudge him into sticking his neck out
.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find Yates. That’s what I’m good at. Jim – that’s my ex-partner
– he used to say I was like a sniffer dog on a trail. Once I get the scent, I
never give up.”

Neil gazed at the
approaching pub, seemingly brooding over Harlan’s words. As they pulled over,
he turned to Harlan and said, “This isn’t only about the roof, is it?”

“What makes you say
that?”

“I just don’t believe
you’d go to all this trouble over a few quid. I know you’ve got money. Susan
told me you tried to give her thousands.”

Straight as a dart,
Harlan looked Neil in the eyes.
Offer him just enough rope to hang himself
with
, said his cop’s brain. “I have reason to believe Martin Yates abducted
Ethan.”

Neil’s eyes widened.
“What reason?”

“A good reason,” said
Harlan, trying to judge whether or not Neil’s surprise was genuine. “That’s all
you need to know for now.”

“But I thought Jones
and that other guy took Ethan.”

“They did as far as the
police are concerned.”

“You mean you’ve told
them and they don’t believe you.”

Harlan nodded.

Neil shook his head in
indignant amazement. “How can they doubt you after what you’ve done?”

“They have procedures
to follow.”

“Bollocks to their
procedures.” Neil’s eyes flashed with uncharacteristic fierceness. “If you say
Martin Yates took Ethan, that’s good enough for me.” He jerked open the car
door. “We’ll find him, if we have to look in every pub in this city.”

Harlan could detect no
false note in Neil’s voice, no trace of insincerity in his expression. If he
was acting, it was a convincing performance. He recalled what Neil had shouted
to Susan the first night he’d come banging at the door.
I’d rather die than
lose you
! If those words were true, surely they marked him out as innocent.
Looking at Neil’s nervous but determined boy-man face, part of Harlan couldn’t
help but want to believe they were. He wanted to believe love meant more than
money, more than life itself even. But if all those years on the force had
taught him anything it was to view the world with the eyes of a cynic. He
motioned for Neil to enter the pub first. He didn’t want to take his eyes off
him. Not for a second. He realised that might prove difficult when he saw how
busy the pub was. There was a band playing, and the barroom was wall-to-wall
with bodies that reluctantly parted as the two men approached the bar. Someone
swayed against Harlan, knocking him off balance. Someone else’s elbow poked
into his midriff – not hard, but hard enough to double him over. “Wait,” he
called to Neil, but his pain-choked voice couldn’t make itself heard above the
grinding music and rowdy crowd. He lowered his head, gritting his teeth,
sucking up the pain, then straightened.

Neil was nowhere to be
seen.

Angry glances flashed
at Harlan as, eyes darting from side to side, he elbowed his way forward.
People were standing three deep at the bar. Neil wasn’t amongst them. His heart
was pounding now. He stood on his tiptoes, craning his neck, ignoring the
stretching agony in his gut. No sign of Neil. “Fuck,” he hissed. This wasn’t
good. This wasn’t good at all! “Where are the toilets?” he shouted in someone’s
ear. They pointed to a door at the rear of the room, and he headed for it.
Sweat was dribbling down his face by the time he reached the door. He yanked it
open, half ran, half staggered along a short corridor and through a door with a
male stick figure on it. He found himself facing a urinal trough. To its right
were a couple of cubicles, one vacant, the other engaged. He kicked the locked
door in, and felt something bust inside of him. Neil was stood facing him,
goggle-eyed with shock, a phone pressed to his ear. Propelled by an explosion
of searing pain, Harlan drove the heel of his hand against Neil’s nose. There
was a crunch of cartilage and plastic. Neil reeled back onto the toilet, with
instant tears in his eyes, his glasses broken, blood streaming from both nostrils.
Harlan snatched the phone off him. A number he didn’t recognise was dialling.
He cut it off and pocketed the phone.

“I think you broke my
nose,” Neil groaned nasally.

Harlan glared down at
him. “I’ll do a lot fucking worse than that if you don’t tell me who you were
phoning.”

“I…I was calling my
boss to say I won’t be coming into work.”

The lie was as shaky as
Neil’s hands that were pressed to either side of his nose. “Bit late for that,
isn’t it? It’s after eight. Your shift started at six.”

“Not tonight. I changed
my hours so…” Neil trailed off under Harlan’s gaze, which was sad and hard at
the same time. Snuffling back blood, he gave a slight nod, as if to say,
okay,
you got me
.

Harlan took out the
knife. “Who were you calling?”

Neil made no reply. For
once there was no nervousness in his eyes, only blank resignation. The music
briefly jumped in volume as someone entered the corridor to the toilet.

“Stand up,” commanded
Harlan. Neil did so, and Harlan pulled him roughly out of the cubicle and
jabbed the knife into his ribs. “We’re gonna walk out of here. Fuck with me and
I’ll stick this in you.”

Harlan put his hand
holding the knife in his pocket. With his other hand closed like steel on
Neil’s arm, he guided him through the packed bar. His breath caught with every
agonising step. Neil made no attempt to get away. When they reached the car,
Harlan opened the boot. “Get in.”

Neil compliantly folded
himself into the cramped space.

“Who were you phoning?”
Harlan asked again.

Still no answer.

“We can do this the
hard way or the easy way.” Harlan thumbed the knife. “I could go to work on you
until you quite literally spill your guts, or you could just tell me the truth
right now.”

Some of the animation
came back into Neil’s face. His pale, watery eyes blinked fearfully at Harlan.
“I already told you the truth.”

“Have it your own way.”

Harlan slammed the
boot. He felt beneath his sweatshirt. A wetness seeped through the bandage,
warm and sticky against his fingers. The wound was bleeding, but not badly
enough to prevent him from doing what needed to be done – he hoped. He got
behind the wheel and accelerated back the way they’d come. There was no time to
follow through on his threat. Even unanswered, Neil’s phone call might give
warning to Yates that something was wrong – assuming that’s who it was intended
for. Speed was everything now. And he could see only one way to prove quickly
and irrefutably whether or not Neil was lying. Yet the thought of the trauma
doing so would cause almost made him wish there was time to take Neil out to
some isolated place and beat the truth from him.

Harlan sped through the
city streets, ignoring red lights, overtaking at every opportunity. Neil’s
phone rang. He snatched it out. The same number flashed up on its screen. The
caller rang off after a few seconds. Harlan returned the phone to his pocket
and pressed down harder on the accelerator. Minutes later, he screeched to a
stop outside Susan’s house and popped the boot. Dazed and blinking, Neil
uncoiled himself from its confines. “I don’t want Susan to see me like this,”
he said, resisting as Harlan pulled him towards the house. “It’ll upset her.”

There was no time to
talk or reason. Harlan slapped Neil hard. As if it’d been programmed into his
nervous system, Neil instantly went into a blank, passive state again. Harlan
hammered on the door. Even before he stopped knocking, Susan opened it. Her
eyes grew big at the sight of Neil’s bloodied face. “What happened? Who did
that to you?”

“I did,” said Harlan,
hauling Neil into the living-room and shoving him onto the sofa.

“What? Why?”

“’Cos he’s crazy,
that’s why,” said Neil, snapping himself out of his stupor with a shake of his
head. “He’s got it into his messed up head that I had something to do with
Ethan’s abduction.”

Susan face twisted into
an expression caught between suspicion and fear. “Why would he think that?”

“Because I tried to
phone my shift manager.”

A look of confusion
took over Susan’s features. “I don’t understand.” 

“That makes two of us
then.”

“Kane!” shouted Harlan.

“Harlan, will you tell
me just what the hell’s going on here,” Susan demanded to know as the boy came
thundering downstairs.

In answer, Harlan took
out Neil’s phone. Kane pulled up abruptly, sucking his breath in at the sight
of Neil. Harlan scrolled through the phone to the missed call list and found
the number. Then he pulled out the knife and held it to Neil’s throat. “Jesus,”
gasped Susan. “What are you doing?”

“I told you he’s
crazy,” said Neil, his tone curiously flat for someone with a blade at their
jugular.

He knows he’s caught
,
thought Harlan.
Pressing the blade’s edge into Neil’s flesh, Harlan
breathed in his ear, “Say one more fucking word and I swear to God I’ll cut
your throat. In fact…” His gaze scanned the room, coming to rest on the coat
hooks by the door. He pointed to a scarf. “Pass me that, will you?”

Susan hesitated,
uncertainty clouding her haggard face.

“Do it,” snapped
Harlan. “There’s no time for explanations now.”

Susan passed the scarf
to Harlan. He snatched up a handful of missing-person flyers and stuffed them
into Neil’s mouth, before gagging him with the scarf. Neil struggled for
breath, expelling black plugs of congealed blood from his nostrils. Harlan’s
features softened as he looked at Kane. “Come closer. You need to hear this.”

Kane remained
motionless, eyes shining like those of a wild animal ready to fight or flee.

“Don’t worry. No one’s
going to hurt you or your mum.”

Kane’s gaze flicked to
Susan. When she gave him a nod, he warily approached the sofa. Harlan raised a
finger to his lips, then pressed the dial button. He put the phone on speaker
mode. With each of the phone’s rings, Neil flinched slightly, causing a thin
line of blood to trickle down his throat. He closed his eyes as a gravelly male
voice answered the phone. “What you calling me on your moby for? I thought we
agreed to use landlines only.”

Harlan watched for
Kane’s reaction, mouthing silently, “Is it him?” The boy didn’t shake his head
or nod, but he didn’t need to. His ashen face with its expression of paralysed
fear told Harlan everything he needed to know.