Blood Guilt (5 page)

Harlan’s phone rang. He
snatched it up. “Are you watching it on the telly?” asked Jim.

“Yes.”

“Insane, isn’t it? I
mean, what kind of fucker snatches a kid from his bed like that?”

“So how did it go
down?”

“Like Garrett said,
sometime between twelve and four someone forced the kitchen window and took the
boy.”

“Come on, Jim, you’ve
got a lot more than that.”

Jim was silent a
moment, then he said, “First you’ve got to promise me you’ll stay away from
this case.”

“How am I supposed to
do that when I’m a goddamn suspect?”

“Don’t be coy with me,
Harlan. You know what I mean. I can hear that cop’s brain of yours cranking
into motion. You want to play armchair detective, fine. Just make sure it goes
no further. Besides, no one here seriously considers you a suspect, not even
Garrett.”

“Then why am I being
watched?”

“Procedure. We can’t
take any chances in a case like this. You know that.”

“Look, I’m not about to
start tearing this city apart searching for Ethan Reed. All I want is to hear
the details of the case, see if anything jogs in my memory. After all, I was sat
outside the vic’s house for several hours two days before all this happened. I
might’ve seen something without realising it.”

“Okay, Harlan, but I’m
trusting you as a friend not to get any more involved than you already are.”
Jim took a breath, and as if reading from a sheet of paper, continued in an
atonal voice, “Ethan shares a bunk-bed with his brother, Kane. Both were in bed
asleep by ten. Susan went to bed at midnight. Sometime after that, Kane woke when
he heard his brother say, who are you? He saw Ethan stood in his pyjamas facing
a figure dressed in a black sweatshirt, camouflage trousers, gloves and a
balaclava. The figure whispered to Ethan, be quiet or I’ll kill you and your
brother. Kane pretended to be asleep, but kept his eyes open just enough to see
that the figure’s wrists were white with dark hairs on them. He also saw that
the figure was holding a handgun. The figure led Ethan from the room. Kane
remained in bed, terrified that if he moved or made a sound the figure would return
and carry out his threat. At approximately four o’clock he went to his mother’s
bedroom. It took him a while to wake her up because, like most nights since her
husband’s death, she was out of it on sleeping-pills and alcohol.”

Guilt loomed like a
tainted shadow at Harlan’s back again. He shook it aside. This was no time to
give in to emotion. If he was going to be of any help, he had to keep his head
clear. “Maybe the kidnapper knew Susan was on sleeping-tablets.”

“Maybe. Maybe our guy
knows her. Or maybe the brothers confided in their friends and teachers about
her problems. Or maybe one of Susan’s friends or someone in her family or
extended family talked with their spouses or friends about her. Or maybe our
guy doesn’t know Susan and was crazy or stupid or desperate enough to do what
he did anyway. Or maybe–”

“Alright, I get the
point. What about leads? Any concrete leads?”

“Just one. At
approximately three AM a milkman saw a silver VW golf with tinted windows
cruising up and down the street. He thought the driver might be aiming to rob
him, so he took down the number plate.”

“What’s the reg?”

“I don’t think you need
to know that?”

“You’re right, it
probably won’t make any difference. But why take the chance?”

“No, I think I’ve told
you all I want to for now. I’ve got to get back to it. Remember what I said,
Harlan. Keep your head down.”

“Just tell me one more
thing. What does your gut say? Dead or alive?”

Jim considered this a
brief moment. Then he said, “Dead,” and hung up.

Chapter
4

Dead
.
The word kept ringing in Harlan’s mind. Dead or soon-to-be-dead. That’s what
his gut told him too. Everything he’d heard pointed to a sexual motive. And no
sexual predator willing to go to such extremes to get their hands on Ethan was
going to leave him alive to tell the tale. Harlan figured the police had a
window of maybe two days to find Ethan. After that, forget it.

The television was
showing Ethan’s photo again, alongside a grainy photo of his mother’s
grief-stricken face. With a jolt, Harlan realised he recognised the photo –
it’d been used in a newspaper article about Susan’s husband’s death. If the
media hadn’t done so already, Harlan knew it was only a matter of time before
they made a connection between his release and Ethan’s abduction. Then his face
would be splashed all over the news too. He’d be named as a person of interest,
held up for public scrutiny. Regardless of his innocence, the stigma of
association would make his life a hell on earth. He wouldn’t be able to leave
the flat without attracting hostile looks and verbal abuse. His face drew into
deep lines of distress. Not that he was bothered what the general public
thought of him – fuck them. What bothered him was the thought of the pain that
the media picking at the scars of past wounds would cause Eve – especially as
it occurred to him that they might well try to draw some kind of spurious link
between Thomas’s death and Ethan’s disappearance.

Once again, Harlan
thrust his emotions aside and focused on what needed to be done. Nothing
mattered now, except finding Ethan. He hurried into the hallway, grabbing his
jacket and scooping up most of the remaining banknotes on his way out of the
flat.

In the lift, Harlan
phoned the warehouse foreman and told him he wouldn’t be able to make it in to
work. “Good,” said the foreman. “And don’t bother coming in tomorrow either.
You’re fired.”

The foreman hung up.
Harlan sighed, thinking,
so it’s already started
.

Harlan made his way to
a nearby public library, logged onto a computer and searched the local business
directory for milkmen. ‘Darren Arnold & Sons’ served Susan Reed’s
neighbourhood. He phoned them, and when a man picked up, he said, “This is DI
Greenwood, Mr Arnold. I’m just going over your statement and I need you to
confirm the registration number of the VW Golf you saw.”

“KY09 SGE.”

“Thank you.”

Harlan hung up,
navigated to a car registration checker website and typed in the reg. ‘Renault
Clio 1.2 16V’ came up on the monitor, which meant the milkman had either got at
least part of the reg wrong or the plates were stolen. He phoned the local DVLA
and asked for Pete Devlin – a guy he used to know back when he regularly needed
to trace vehicles.

“Harlan, how the Christ
are you?” said Pete. “When did you get out?”

“A few weeks ago.
Listen, Pete, I need a favour. I’m trying to trace a car that pranged me and
didn’t stop.”

“What’s the reg?”

Harlan gave Pete the
number.

“Renault Clio,” said
Pete.

“That’s the one.”

“I shouldn’t be doing
this, but seeing as you’re an old friend. It’s registered to a James Barnshaw.
34 Chatfield Crescent.”

“What about the car’s
history?”

“It’s clean.”

“Cheers, Pete. I owe
you.”

Harlan Googled ‘James
Barnshaw’ and the address. Nothing came up. He navigated to the phone book
website, found Barnshaw’s number and called it. A woman answered. She sounded
middle-aged and middle-class. “Can I speak to James Barnshaw, please?” said
Harlan. “My name’s Detective Inspector Greenwood.”

“Is this about James’s
number plates being stolen?”

“Yes, I just need to
confirm exactly what happened?”

The woman sighed as if
she was tired of repeating the story. “When James left the house last Wednesday
morning, his number plates were missing. We didn’t hear or see anything.”

“What about your
neighbours? Did any of them see anything?”

“No.”

Harlan thanked the
woman and hung up. The fact that the plates were stolen gave credence to the
idea that the Golf had been cruising Susan Reed’s street on some criminal
expedition. But it also meant the lead was a dead end, unless the car had been
caught on camera speeding, or driving away from a petrol station without
paying, or some such thing – and even if it had, he didn’t have the means of
finding out. The best use of his time at present, as far as he could see, was
simply to get out there and search the streets for the Golf. He glanced out the
window at the plainclothes sheltering from a sudden downpour in a shop porch.
He deleted his browsing history, left the library and made his way hurriedly to
the nearest second-hand car dealership. There was a black VW Golf on the
forecourt. He went into the dealer’s office and slapped down the cash to buy
it.

Harlan cruised the
streets, searching for silver VW Golfs, scanning licence-plate numbers. There was
little hope in it, but – for the moment, at least – he could see no other
course open to him. He switched the radio on and tuned into the news, which was
playing an edited version of Garrett’s statement. There was no mention of the
VW Golf. It was always a tricky question – whether and when to make such
information public. On the one hand, someone who’d seen the car or knew its
owner or the owner themselves might well contact the police. On the other, if
the car’s owner and Ethan’s kidnapper were one and the same, they might try to
hide or destroy the car, or even worse, they might be panicked into killing the
boy. Harlan guessed that if the information was released at all, it wouldn’t be
until the four day mark passed. After that, in their minds Ethan was dead, so
they’d have a shit lot less to lose by going public.

All day long Harlan
vainly searched for the VW, circling outwards from the city centre, paying
special attention to the uninhabited houses, cadaverous factories and pockets
of woodland and wasteland in the lonelier parts of the urban sprawl. He wasn’t
the only one searching. Almost everywhere he went there were uniforms doing
their thing. Police helicopters hovered and circled over the city. He didn’t
stop to eat, he only stopped to fill up on petrol. As the hours flashed past
like silent lightening, a sense of frustration swelled in his gut. Outside the
official information loop, he felt blind and helpless. He tried several times
to ring Jim, but got no reply. He supposed his ex-partner was either too busy
or too pissed with him to answer – Jim would certainly have heard by now what
he was up to.

Harlan’s stomach gave a
lurch when he heard his name on the radio. “Detectives are speaking to persons
of interest in the case,” said the news reader, “including ex-police officer,
Harlan Miller, who was recently released from prison after serving a four-year
sentence for the–

Harlan reflexively
snapped the radio off. After the space of a breath, he turned it back on,
wondering who the other persons of interest were. But no more names were
mentioned.

Before the news report
was even finished, Harlan’s phone rang. A number he didn’t recognise flashed up
on its screen. He answered the phone and waited for whoever it was to speak.
His stomach gave another lurch when Eve’s voice came over the line. “Harlan?”

Harlan hadn’t spoken to
Eve since starting his prison sentence. She’d written him, asking if she could
visit. He’d written back, saying it would be for the best if she stayed away.
He’d also told her he was sorry. It’d been wrong of him to blame her for Tom’s
death – in some perverse way, killing Robert Reed had made him see that.
Finally, he’d told her that the one thing she could do to help him through his
sentence was to get on with her life. It’d hurt him deep and long to write
that, but it was necessary.

Eve’s voice sounded
different – no, not different, just changed. There was a softness to it that
reminded him why he’d first fallen in love with her. A thickness rose in his
throat. He swallowed it in a lump and shoved it far down. “I assume Jim gave
you my number.”

“He’s worried about
you.” There was a slight hesitation, then Eve added, “We both are.”

“Well don’t be. I’m not
worth your worry.”

“That’s not true.
You’re a good man.”

“Good men don’t kill.”

“You lashed out in a
moment of madness and despair. Yes, a man died, but you’ve paid for–”

“You’re wasting your
time,” broke in Harlan. “This is something I’ve got to do.”

“They’ll send you back
to prison.”

“If they do, they do. Susan
Reed’s already lost her husband. I can’t let her lose her son as well. You of
all people should understand that.”

Eve was silent a
moment. When she next spoke, Harlan could tell she was struggling to keep her
voice from shaking, and it hurt him to hear. “But what can you do on your own?”

“I don’t know. Probably
nothing. But I’ve got to try.”

Eve sighed. “Okay,
Harlan, if I can’t change your mind then all I can say is good luck. Find that
boy. Find him and return him where he belongs.”

Another silence passed
between them. Harlan waited for Eve to say goodbye – he’d never been any good
at goodbyes – but instead she said hesitatingly, “Maybe we could meet up
sometime.”