Harte

by Robert Innes

  “Yes, peasant,” Blake replied. He slammed the boot of the car shut and pulled Harrison in for a final tight hug.

  “You’re only going for two weeks,” Harrison said, his voice muffled in Blake’s chest. “I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  “You better be,” Blake replied. “I’ll ring you when I get there.”

  Harrison leaned forward and kissed him again.

  “You better. Give Sally my love. Get her a round of tequila shots on me. Hope she likes the lamp.”

  “I will. Love you,” Blake said, as he opened the car door.

  “Love you too,” Harrison replied. “Have a safe journey.”

  Blake climbed into the car and started the engine, watching Harrison in the rear-view mirror. As he turned the corner, he stuck his arm out the window and waved until Harrison was out of sight.

  “DS Harte, I thought I told you that this case was not to be your concern?”

  Blake gave Angel a tight smile. They were standing in the inspector’s office, with Angel looking up at Blake from his chair. Blake had made sure that the door was firmly closed behind them, in case Gardiner decided to conveniently overhear.

  “I know, Sir,” Blake replied. “And I am just about to drive to the train station. I thought I’d just pop in to see how things were going though.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a martyr to my job, my friend’s son is the one who has been attacked and because not twenty-four hours ago, I was apparently a suspect. You can hardly blame me for being vaguely interested.”

  Angel narrowed his eyes and considered Blake. “I take it you’re aware that there is still no change in Mr Pattison’s condition?”

  “I haven’t seen him, but Harrison went to the hospital last night,” Blake replied. “He’s still in a critical condition. Have you had anything back from the phone?”

  Angel’s lips thinned.

  “Come on, Sir,” Blake said imploringly. “There must be something. Put my mind at rest, otherwise I’m not going to even enjoy my holiday. A young man is attacked right outside my house, probably in an attempt at murder, and I’m supposed to just remain ignorant?”

  “Sergeant Gardiner is doing a fine job,” Angel replied curtly. “Though, I will say that I had strong words with him over his behaviour yesterday. I hope I don’t need to say that it would not have happened if I had been aware.”

  “Of course, Sir,” Blake replied, politely. “So? The phone?”

  There was a pause. Blake could not help but think that Angel looked like he was going through some sort of internal conflict.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” Angel barked immediately.

  The door opened and Constable Lisa Fox stepped into the office holding a folder.

  “I’ve got it, Sir,” she said to Angel, apparently not noticing Blake. “We’ll need to be absolutely sure, but it’s looking very likely that he was in regular…”

  “Constable Fox,” Angel snapped, nodding his head towards Blake. “I have company.”

  Fox frowned then realised that Blake was standing there, appearing to jump almost a foot in the air.

  “Sir!” she exclaimed, hiding the folder behind her back.

  “Lisa,” Blake said, staring at her confused. “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, absolutely fine.”

  She looked like a rabbit caught in the headlight of an articulated lorry as she placed the folder down on Angel’s desk, who quickly took it and placed it out of sight.

  “What’s in the folder?”

  “None of your concern, DS Harte,” Angel replied firmly. “Now, I suggest you go and catch your train.”

  He stood up and opened the door, something which, in Blake’s opinion, was becoming a far too frequent habit.

  Instead of leaving however, Blake remained where he stood. “What are you hiding from me, Inspector Angel?”

  For a moment, Angel looked at the floor. It was the first time Blake had ever seen him look anything other than authoritarian. “As I have said, DS Harte, you are on leave. I trust I don’t need to extend the matter?”

  Blake glanced at Fox, who seemed just as keen to avoid eye contact. She was busying herself with intently studying the end of her hair that she was twirling between her fingers.

  With a final glare at Angel, Blake stormed out of the office. No sooner was he out of the room, the door was slammed shut behind him and as Blake turned, for the first time he could ever remember, the large blind over the office window was quickly pulled down.

  Four

  Manchester Piccadilly Station was as busy as Blake remembered it. Although it had been only two years since he had last been here, he felt like it had been a lifetime. The sound of the tannoy announcing train departure times, the constant buzz of all the passengers bustling around him, and the unmistakable smell of exhaust fumes made Blake feel like he was stepping back in time. As he stepped off the train and pulled his suitcase along the platform to the front entrance where he had arranged to meet Sally, Blake felt a strange sense of familiarity as the noise and hubbub around him made him realise that it was busier than anywhere he had seen in or around Harmschapel. There was no doubt about it – Blake had missed Manchester.

  As he made his way through the station, pushing past all the other passengers standing in his way or running in random directions to catch their trains, Blake was reminded of the numerous times he had had to pursue suspects as they ran to the nearest train they could in order to evade the police, ranging from petty thieves to people who had just committed assault. The size of the station meant that, to the untrained eye, it was easy to hide in the throng of the crowd and it was one aspect of the job that Blake did not miss, though there were several colleagues he used to work with that he would pay money to see tackle the winding, twisting, countryside roads of Harmschapel.

  The large glass windows of the entrance came into view at last and soon Blake could see the familiar sight of cigarette smoke as he spotted his best friend leaning against a bollard, a Benson and Hedges clutched tightly in her fingers.

  As he approached, she looked up and broke into a wide grin, throwing the cigarette aside and running towards him.

  “Blake!” she exclaimed, grabbing him and jumping up into his arms with her legs wrapped tightly around him.

  Blake laughed as he staggered backwards. “It’s so good to see you,” he said, placing her on the ground. “How are you?”

  Sally grabbed his suitcase and linked arms with him.

  “I’m amazing. Thirty can bring it on.”

  “Really?” Blake said in surprise. “This is a change of tune from the mental breakdown you were at the last time we spoke.”

  “That was before I got some news,” Sally said as they hurried across the road towards her car.

  “What news?”

  Sally grinned broadly.

  “I’m getting a promotion!”

  “No way!” Blake exclaimed, delighted. “To what?”

  “Well, a promotion of sorts. Me and you are going to be exactly the same rank. I’m going to be a DS!”

  Blake could not have been happier for her. There was no other officer he knew that had worked harder to be where she currently was than Sally-Ann Matthews.

  “That is amazing news,” Blake said, gripping her arm tightly. “I’m thrilled for you. Don’t tell me it was Gresham though.”

  Sally snorted with laughter as they arrived at her car.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said as she opened the boot to haul Blake’s suitcase into. “Gresham? Promote me? He’d rather have the guy I charged with murder last month be his DS than me.”

  Blake laughed as he imagined his old boss’s reaction. He could just picture the veins popping up at the side of his head just as they always used to whenever Gresham was faced with something he disapproved of. Thinking about it, the similarities between Gardiner and Gresham were many, apart from Gresham’s propensity to intensify any emoti
on he was feeling, whereas Gardiner was decidedly more deadpan.

  The two friends drove through the busy city, talking sparingly so Sally could concentrate before they were able to relax more as they drove towards Sally’s flat in Sale.

  “So, what about you? Tell me everything?” Sally said as they picked up speed on the quieter duel carriageway. “How’s Harrison?”

  “He’s good, he sends his love.”

  “And what about that little git in the cottage opposite?”

  “Tom? He’s currently laid up in hospital, I think in a critical condition, after somebody attacked him last night.”

  Sally nearly drove them off the road in surprise. “You what?”

  Blake sighed and told her all about what had been happening in Harmschapel over the past twenty-four hours. As he told the story, he found himself getting annoyed all over again by Angel clearly hiding something from him, a feeling he had managed to escape from while on the train.

  “So, you reckon it all boils down to whoever this bloke is on his phone?” Sally asked.

  “Must be. Presuming it is a bloke.”

  “How weird. But look, your boss is right about one thing. While you’re here, you’re not thinking about it. Even if I have to force feed you sambuca to keep your mind off it, you are here as my friend to celebrate my birthday. We will get drunk, laugh, have a lovely time and all will be fabulous. Do you understand me?”

  Blake nodded and checked his phone as he had done multiple times throughout his train journey for progress on Frost’s transferal.

  Sally glanced at him and shook her head. “Don’t think I don’t know what else is troubling you as well.”

  Blake sighed. “Is it that obvious?”

  “You think it hasn’t been bothering me all day too?” Sally asked as she sharply turned a corner. “Remember that creep had me pinned on the ground in that interview room. You think I’m happy that he’s outside of prison right now?”

  “How long does it take to get from Manchester to London?”

  “About four hours. Longer if the public are playing silly buggers on the roads. All being well he should be there in a couple of hours. Just think of it like this; at the very least he’s travelling in the opposite direction to us right now.”

  “Half makes me wish that the prison service had a railway,” Blake mused. “At least he’d be there quicker.”

  “Tell you what you need,” Sally said, suddenly slamming on the indicator. “Actually, what we both need. One of your mother’s cups of tea.”

  Blake raised an eyebrow. His parents had been told he was coming back to Manchester but he had not planned on seeing them just yet. He had rather hoped he would be able to turn up at the house just in time for one of his mother’s famous Sunday roasts to help sooth his inevitable hangover.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Sally replied as she turned the car in the direction of Stephanie and Colin Harte’s house. “You need distraction. Anyway, your Mum says she has a birthday present for me to pick up.”

  Despite Blake’s grumpy protests, they were soon driving down Hope Crescent, the street Blake had grown up in.

  It had been several years since Blake had been here. All the houses and their gardens still looked the same. Number forty-two still had a broken garden gate, number forty-eight still had the old wreck of a car that Stephanie despised and always used to complain about in its garden and as they pulled up outside the house of the Hartes, Blake was surprised to realise that he felt almost emotional. In the grand scheme of things, it had hardly been that long since he had last been here, but it felt like decades.

  “Come on then,” Sally said enthusiastically as she pulled the key out of the ignition. “Let’s go surprise them. I bet they’ll be thrilled to see you.”

  Blake snorted with laughter. Neither Stephanie or Colin Harte were very good at showing their emotions. Stephanie was far too prim and proper to allow such silly things as sentimentality to crack her façade and Colin was, in Blake’s mind, just of too different a generation. It was not that the Hartes were not a close family, they had experienced too much heartache in the past not to be after the death of Blake’s sister when they were both young children. They had just never been a family that were overly tactile.

  Even so, Blake found himself walking down the pristine garden path quicker than he realised and as he rang the doorbell – still playing the same tune it always had – he realised that Sally had brought him exactly where he needed to be.

  They waited for a few moments for the door to open.

  “Press it again,” Sally said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Blake replied. “You want my Mum to tell you off for harassing her via the doorbell? Trust me, she’ll have heard it. She hates people ringing twice. I remember the gas man pressing it more than once when he came to read the meter and she basically chewed his head off.”

  “Well, it doesn’t sound like she’s heard you, or your Dad,” Sally said, peering through the windows.

  Blake frowned and then groaned as he realised what day it was. Checking the time on his phone, he sighed.

  “They’re not in,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “It’s Saturday. They always do their shopping on a Saturday, they always have. God knows what time they’ll be back, especially if Mum’s dragging Dad around a shop with sales on.”

  Sally sighed in disappointment. “Oh, sod it. Alright, we’ll come back later. Go back to mine, start planning my birthday, which I hope you have plenty of ideas for, and then give them a ring.”

  Blake nodded as he followed her back towards the car.

  “I’m disappointed,” he said a little sadly. “I dunno why. Five minutes of Mum rabbiting at me and I’ll be clawing the walls…”

  But then he stopped as he went to close the gate behind him, his eyes catching sight of something further down the street.

  The old house.

  Somehow, it was still standing and looking as creaky and out of place to the rest of the street as it always had. It certainly looked older. The beams, by some feat, still holding the building up, were rotting and any semblance of paint they once had upon them had long since faded away.

  Blake slowly walked across the road and down the street towards it, memories flashing through his mind like a broken recording showing random excerpts from an old film. Suddenly he was ten years old again and the house was a towering structure hiding secrets that were only speculated about by idle gossip.

  “Oh, God, Blake,” Sally murmered from behind him. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think.”

  Blake barely heard her. His eyes panned across the front yard, still looking as dishevelled as ever. Weeds were poking out from the broken path, the metal fence around the front of the property was rusty and squeaking loudly as the wind blew the gate and the house itself seemed to be creaking along in response, although Blake did wonder if that was his imagination getting the better of him.

  “This house is the reason I’ve barely slept these past few months, for years even,” he murmered, staring up at it. “All because of one woman and her story that nobody ever managed to finish. All I ever see at night is the same scenario playing through my head, just the same nightmare about me going inside and discovering that body.”

  “Come on,” Sally said, gently taking his arm. “Let’s go back to mine.”

  Blake stood firm. “Not a chance,” he said quietly, glaring at the imposing building before him. “All my senses right now are telling me to run away, to try and delete this bloody house from my mind and yet I know full well that I’ll never be able to do it. I’m sick and tired of this house scaring me so much. So as far as I can see, there’s only one thing for me to do.”

  “What?”

  Blake turned to her. “We’re going inside.”

  Five

  The decrepit metal gate creaked loudly, almost as if it were in pain, as Blake slowly pushed it open. His heart hammered in his chest as, for the first time in almost twenty-five years,
his feet made contact with the broken paving leading up to the house. As he cautiously approached, the wind picked up again and this time Blake was positive that the building let out an ominous creak as if it was warning him not to come any closer.

  Sally took hold of his shoulder. “Are you sure about this?”

  “No. And yet, surer than I’ve ever been of anything in my life. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

  “It does actually, but is it even safe?”

  Blake shrugged. “If it ends up crashing down around our ears then so be it. At least then it’ll be gone.”

  Sally sighed and shook her head. “Come on then,” she said quietly.

  The front door and windows were all boarded up with large pieces of plywood, so together they made their way up towards the back-garden gate and pushed it open.

  If the garden had appeared unkempt when Blake was a child, it was nothing compared to how it now looked. Huge thorn bushes were festooned around the large wooden fence surrounding the knee-high grass and weeds in what was presumably once the lawn. A large bush in the corner had barely a single leaf on its thin needle-like branches, as if it had just given up on flowering after an especially harsh winter. As they made their way towards the back of the house, through the jungle of nettles that seemed to now take up the majority of the path, Blake looked up and stopped, causing Sally to nearly bump into him.

  “Blake, for God’s sake, do you want me to die from nettle venom?” she grumbled. “What’s the matter?”

  “Look up there,” Blake told her, pointing to a small rectangular window on the side of the house.

  “What about it?” Sally asked, finally managing to get her leg over an especially thorny branch of brambles that seemed to be trying to trip her up.

  “When I came ‘round here that night, everything was boarded up, all the doors, all the windows, it was like the place had been condemned.”

  “Suitable course of action if you ask me,” Sally remarked, glancing around at the feral garden.

  “The only way in I could find was through that window,” Blake continued. “That’s how I got in.”