Blood Guilt

by Ben Cheetham

  “What’s the address?”

  “Just drive. I’ll tell you where to go on the way.”

  Following Susan’s directions, Harlan drove to a terraced house several streets away from her own. She got out and rang the doorbell. A moment later, the door opened and Kane stepped out. Anger festered in his sullen, simmering hazel-brown eyes like an open wound. When he saw Harlan, his mouth twisted with bitterness. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Giving us a lift home,” said Susan.

  Kane glared at her incredulously. “No way am I getting in that car!”

  “Please, Kane.”

  “No. No fuckin’ way.”

  Susan’s voice rose. “Don’t you use that language with me.”

  “You said you were going out to talk to Neil. You lied.”

  “No I didn’t. Look, Kane, something’s happened. Something to do with–” Susan broke off, glancing around as if afraid of being overheard. “This isn’t the place to talk about this. Just get in the car, will you?”

  Kane shook his head furiously. “How can you have anything to do with him?”

  “I don’t want to, but I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. Now come on, get in.” Susan caught Kane by the arm, dragged him towards the car and opened the rear door. He kicked it shut, then kicked it again, denting it. “Kane, stop that!”

  Jerking away from Susan and darting Harlan a look of violent hostility, Kane ran across the street. “Get back here,” shouted Susan. He ignored her. She ducked her head into the car. “Sorry about your door.”

  “No need,” said Harlan. He would’ve gladly let Kane work the car over with a baseball bat if it helped him work off some of his rage.

  “I’ll have to go after him.” Susan started to turn away from Harlan, but hesitated. Not looking at him, her voice barely audible, she said, “Thanks.”

  Thanks. The word reverberated in Harlan’s mind as he watched Susan chase after Kane. What did it mean? That she’d forgiven him? He dismissed the thought. She was grateful for what he’d done, but that didn’t mean she’d forgiven him. There was only one way she’d ever do that, and maybe not even then. Still, it briefly buoyed his spirits. But then his thoughts returned to Ethan and Jack, and everything inside him grew heavy again.

  Chapter 14

  Harlan drove to his flat, stopping on the way to pick up some fast-food – his fridge had stood empty for days. He ate mechanically, tasting nothing, lost in a fog of exhaustion. His meal half-finished, he shuffled to bed. All he wanted to do was sleep, but the moment he shut his eyes he saw Jack Holland’s face as if it’d been imprinted on the underside of his eyelids. Something else Susan had said came into his mind: it makes me want to kill. When Tom was alive, he’d said a similar thing to Eve once when investigating a particularly heinous crime. But when Tom died that part of him had been closed off. Now all he had the capacity to feel was a kind of soul-sick sadness. But it was enough to keep sleep away. After a couple of hours, he got up and switched on the television. There was nothing on any of the news channels about Jack Holland’s abduction. It wouldn’t be long before there was, though. Then the media would go into a frenzy, pumping out fear like an overactive adrenal gland, making every man a suspect. And maybe they’d be justified in doing so, reflected Harlan. If, as seemed likely, Ethan and Jack’s kidnapper was the same person, it was clear they wouldn’t stop until they were caught.

  Harlan rubbed at his temples, trying to relieve the pressure lodged behind them, but it just built and built. He took out his phone and stared at Jack Holland’s delicate, chubby face as if internally debating something. Suddenly, his expression tired but set, he grabbed his shoes and coat, and hurried down to his car. Speeding along quiet night roads, he passed through the suburbs to the edge of the city and beyond. Following a sign marked ‘Manchester’, he turned down a slip-road to the M1. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he got there. All he knew was that he had to keep moving, keep searching.

  Harlan was about twenty miles out from Sheffield, when his phone rang. It was Jim. His weariness had been replaced with uncharacteristic excitement. “You’re not gonna believe this, Harlan. The kid, Jack Holland, he got away.”

  Harlan’s eyes popped wide. “Fucking hell. How?”

  “We’re still getting the full story, but from what we know it went down something like this. Jack was grabbed from behind and thrown in the back of a white transit van. He was gagged and blindfolded and his hands and feet were tied. After what felt like hours to him, the van stopped and he was carried from it and put down on something soft. He heard his kidnapper moving away. He managed to work his hands free and remove his blindfold. He found that he was alone, lying on a mattress in a tunnel–”

  “A tunnel,” broke in Harlan, frowning. “What kind of tunnel?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute. So anyway, the kid’s in this tunnel and it’s almost pitch black, but he can see daylight in the distance. He unties his legs and tries to make a run for it, but he can’t because his feet are numb from having the circulation cut off. So, get this, he crawls on his hands and knees until the feeling comes back. At the end of the tunnel there’s an overgrown drainage ditch. As Jack’s climbing out of the ditch, he hears a man’s voice shouting something. He doesn’t look to see who the voice belongs to. He runs into some nearby woods and hides. He hears somebody moving through the undergrowth, but he doesn’t dare lift his head to look at them. When he can’t hear anyone anymore, he starts running again. Beyond the woods, there’s a road. He flags down a passing car. The driver calls us. Turns out, Jack was taken to a disused storm-drain twenty or so miles to the east of where he was snatched.”

  As Harlan listened to Jim, his frown deepened until a furrow like a knife wound was cut into his forehead. “Are you at the storm-drain now?”

  “Yeah. It’s a scary fucking place, right out in the middle of nowhere. You could scream your head off and nobody would ever hear.”

  “Can you send me a photo of it?”

  “Sure. But why? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. I just need to see it.”

  “Okay. Hold on a second. I’m sending it.”

  Harlan’s phone beeped. He opened the photo and stared at it in silence, his heart pounding in his throat. As Jim had described, the drainage ditch was choked with nettles and brambles. A path had been beaten through them to a circular brick drain roughly six feet in diameter, protruding from the base of a steep grassy bank. The drain’s entrance was covered with a rusty metal grille that’d been bent outwards. Beyond the grille was a darkness so thick it seemed as solid as the brick encircling it. A shudder ran through him as his mind superimposed an image onto the photo of two figures drawn in silhouette – an adult and a child holding hands.

  “So come on, Harlan, out with it,” said Jim. “I can hear that brain of yours ticking over.”

  Harlan opened his mouth to tell him about Jones’s drawing, but shut it again without saying anything. There was no way Jones was directly involved with Jack Holland’s abduction, not with all the heat that was on him. And a drawing hardly proved that Jones knew anything about what went on at the storm-drain. But Harlan felt certain down to the marrow of his bones that he did. He felt equally certain that the police wouldn’t be able to get anything out of Jones, not unless they could find some physical evidence – DNA from a semen stain on the mattress, maybe – to link him to the drain. But even if they could, which seemed highly unlikely, that kind of forensic work took time – time Ethan, assuming beyond all optimistic hope that he was still alive, didn’t have. If Ethan and Jack’s kidnapper was one and the same, whoever it was would most likely be attempting to destroy any incriminating evidence, burning it, throwing it away, burying it. You’re the only chance Ethan’s got, thought Harlan with rising nausea, you have to act, and act now. Tyres screeching, he swerved sharply onto a slip-road.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s on y
our mind or do I have to guess?” asked Jim.

  “I can’t talk anymore right now.”

  Jim’s breath rasped down the line as if he’d expected that answer. “One more thing before you hang up. We found some photos in the drain. Photos of boys, some of them little more than–” Even more uncharacteristically, rage clogged his throat. It was a few seconds before he could continue. “Whatever you need to do to get this fucker, Harlan, you do it.”

  “I will.”

  Harlan hung up and concentrated on the road. He drove as if he saw Ethan in front of him, tied up, waiting to be slaughtered. He stopped to rush into an all-night supermarket. The checkout girl gave him an uneasy look when he dumped the contents of his basket – parcel-tape, a screwdriver set, a torch, matches, a can of lighter fluid, a Stanley knife, gloves, a hooded sweatshirt and a Halloween mask – in front of her. He paid with cash and sprinted to his car. Twenty minutes later he was at the end of William Jones’s street, scanning the vehicles parked along the kerb. His gaze fixed on a van with tinted windows opposite Jones’s house. Was it an unmarked police vehicle? If, as seemed likely, it was, he was going to need some kind of diversion.

  Harlan pulled out of sight of the van, put on the sweatshirt and got out of his car. He approached a row of lock-up garages at the end of Jones’s street, jammed a screwdriver into the lock of the first one he came to and twisted. The lock wouldn’t budge. He tried the next garage along. This time the lock gave and he lifted the door just enough to duck under it. The garage was empty, except for some dusty old furniture. He quickly piled up several chairs, sprayed lighter fluid over them and put a lighted match to them. As flames whooshed up, he sprinted back to his car. He hunched down in his seat, burning with anticipation. It was like he’d set a fire in his head as well as the garage. He concentrated on his breathing, focusing his mind. By the time the two men appeared from the end of the street, he’d restored an icy clarity to his thoughts. The way they moved, the way the carried themselves, told him they were plainclothes coppers. One of them spoke into a mobile phone – no doubt, phoning for a fire engine – while the other approached the garage, from which thick black smoke was billowing.

  Harlan slunk out of his car, darting into the shadows of the alleyway behind Jones’s house. When he saw the gate to Jones’s backyard, he knew there was no way he could break through it. The gate and surrounding frame had been reinforced with steel bars. A glance at the top of the gate told him there was no way he was climbing over it either, not without tearing himself to shreds. Coils of razor wire had been strung along it and the wall. The house was as secure as a fortress, or a prison, depending on how you looked at it. There was only one way he was getting in – the front way.

  Harlan ran to the opposite end of the street from the burning garage. Slowing to walking pace, he approached Jones’s front door. The plainclothes policemen still stood watching the fast growing fire. He raised his fist to knock, but hesitated. Again, flames licked at his brain, illuminating Robert Reed’s blood-streaked, dead face. Focus, he told himself sharply, focus. You have to forget Rob Reed. Forget you’re human. You’re a machine that won’t stop until its job is done. He rapped his knuckles against the door – a policeman’s knock, heavy and commanding – and turned his back to it. A moment later, a familiar voice piped up nervously from behind the door. “Who is it? What do you want?”

  “Police, Mr Jones. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “There’s a fire at the end of the street. I need you to open the door, please.”

  “Why?”

  “So that I can visually verify you’re okay. Orders from Detective Chief Inspector Garrett.”

  There was the sound of several locks being undone. The door opened a crack. Harlan whirled around and slammed his foot into it with all the force of his desperate fear for Ethan, breaking a chain lock and sending Jones reeling onto his back. Pulling on the Halloween mask, he sprang inside the hallway and shut the door. Winded, gasping for breath, Jones grasped at a radiator, trying to haul himself upright with his good arm. He cried out as Harlan kicked his hand away from the radiator. Harlan grabbed Jones’s foot and twisted, flipping him onto his belly. Driving his knee into the small of Jones’s back, he snatched out the Stanley knife and pressed it to his throat. “Do exactly as I say or I’ll cut your throat,” he hissed through his teeth.

  “Oh Christ, oh fuck, not you again,” whimpered Jones, recognising Harlan’s voice. “I’ve already told you–”

  “Shut the fuck up. You know how this works. You don’t speak unless I ask you a direct question.”

  Harlan bound Jones’s mouth with packing tape. Jones let out a muffled scream as Harlan yanked his injured arm out of its sling and twisted it behind his back. He rapidly rolled the tape around and around Jones’s arms and legs, then he locked the front door. His ears caught the faint but unmistakable wail of fire-engine sirens as he dragged Jones into the living-room. The place was in an even worse state than the last time he’d been there – cans and bottles strewn everywhere, as well as mouldering fragments of food that looked as though they’d been gnawed on by mice. The smell brought bitter saliva to Harlan’s mouth. Swallowing it, he hurried upstairs, removing all the paintings from the walls. He dumped them in a pile on the living-room floor, before tearing the tape away from Jones’s mouth. He stabbed a finger at the drawing of the figures holding hands outside the tunnel. “Where is that?”

  “I already told you, it’s nowhere.”

  “Wrong answer.” Harlan slashed one of the paintings with his knife.

  Jones’s eyes bulged as though he’d been kicked. “Don’t! Please, don’t!”

  Harlan reached for another painting. “The truth.”

  “It is the truth.”

  The Stanley knife sliced through more layers of paint and canvas. Harlan flung aside the ruined artwork and started in on another.

  “Stop,” cried Jones.

  Harlan looked at him with steel-cold eyes. “No more bullshit. Either you tell me what I want to know or I’m going to shred all of them.”

  Jones’s tongue flicked at his lips, which quivered as though they were about to speak, but no sound came from them. Harlan re-gagged him. Then he started slashing at the paintings. And the more he slashed, the more his movements took on a frenzied intensity, as though some barrier inside him had broken, unleashing a barrage of pent up rage and frustration. Once he was finished with the paintings on the floor, he started shredding those on the walls. Oblivious to the pain in his injured elbow, Jones writhed and twisted like a crazed animal, desperately trying to free his arms. Finally, Harlan attacked the painting on the easel, obliterating the scene of the children on the swings with almost gleeful savagery. Breathless and sweating behind his mask, he squatted down, peeled back Jones’s gag and pointed at the only piece of artwork still intact – the little charcoal drawing.

  “Where is that place?”

  Jones stared at Harlan through a sheen of tears, his eyes burning with acid hate. “You fucker, you bastard,” he hissed hoarsely.

  Harlan moved the knife towards the drawing. He had no intention of damaging such a potentially important piece of evidence, but he figured the bluff was worth a shot.

  “Why? Why do you want to know where it is?” Jones asked as the blade touched the canvas, a note of pleading replacing the anger in his voice.

  “So it is somewhere real and not just something from your imagination.”

  “I…I didn’t say that.”

  Harlan took out his phone. Watching intently for Jones’s reaction, he showed him the photo of the storm-drain. “Does that place look familiar to you?”

  Jones didn’t show the faintest hint of recognition. He looked at the photo blankly – perhaps just a shade too blankly. “No.”

  “I think it does. I think you’ve been there.”

  “Why the hell would I have been there?”

  “To abuse and maybe even murder children.”


  Jones’s puffy alcoholic’s face scrunched into a horrified red ball. “You’re off your fucking head.”

  Harlan opened his mouth to ask another question, but closed it again as a siren blared past the house. Soon the street would be swarming with firemen and police, making it almost impossible for him to get away unnoticed. He needed answers fast, and as he’d feared, it was clearly going to take more than questioning to get them. He gagged Jones, then looked around for something hard and heavy. His gaze fixed on the old truncheon, which was leant, handle up, against the foot of the armchair. Jones moaned through his gag as Harlan rolled him onto his side and twisted his arms so that his fingers were splayed out flat on the floorboards. Harlan snatched up the truncheon, raising it overhead, his knuckles showing bone-white where they gripped it. One second passed, two, three and still the truncheon didn’t descend. Harlan’s breath came rapidly through the mask’s mouth-hole. Ethan’s life depends on you, he shouted silently at himself. Do it! Fucking do it!

  Harlan brought the truncheon down on Jones’s fingers with bone-crunching force. Jones let out a scream that was loud even through the gag. Harlan hit his fingers again. He waited for Jones’s screams to subside, before removing his gag. “Now will you tell me?” He managed to keep his voice cold and level, even though his insides were reeling and churning.

  Jones stared up at him, eyes swollen with fear and hate, breath rasping with agony. He said nothing.

  “Much more of this and you’ll never be able to paint again.”

  Still nothing.

  Harlan replaced the gag. Jones kicked and writhed amongst the wreckage of his life’s work, trying desperately but vainly to break his bonds. Holding him steady, Harlan pummelled his fingers with all the force his muscular arms could exert. Jones’s screams changed into retches. Harlan tore away the packing tape and Jones vomited up what looked, and smelt, like a can’s worth of cider muddied with blood. Suppressing a retch himself, Harlan said, “It won’t stop until you tell me. Understand?”