Blood Guilt

by Ben Cheetham

  His pale, mottled face contorted almost beyond recognition, Jones sobbed into his vomit. Suddenly, his whole body trembling from the effort as if palsied, he managed to lift his head and scream, “Help!”

  Harlan snatched up a handful of shredded canvas and stuffed it into Jones’s mouth. He stuck fresh packing tape over it. Jones’s eyes bulged as if he couldn’t breathe. Sweat dribbled into Harlan’s eyes. He blinked to clear his vision. This wasn’t working. He didn’t have time to gradually beat the truth out of Jones. Any second now the plainclothes policemen might come knocking, and then the game would be up. He had to go further, faster. He had to make Jones believe it was a straight choice between spilling what he knew and death. And there was only one way he could think of to do that.

  Composing his features into a mask of implacable resolve, Harlan reached up and removed the Halloween mask. He put down the truncheon and picked up his knife. He pushed his face close to Jones’s. “I’m letting you see my face so you’ll know I’m serious when I say this. The only way you’re going to live through this is if you tell me what I want to know.” With one hand Harlan removed the gag, with the other he pressed the knife to Jones’s windpipe. “Now talk.”

  Spittle stretched like an elastic band from Jones’s lips as he sobbed, “I already told you the truth. Oh God, please don’t–” He broke off as Harlan pressed harder. The blade drew blood as his Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively.

  Somewhere in some deep, dark part of Harlan, the same frenzy that’d overtaken him earlier stirred. He pictured himself slashing at Jones until he was as unrecognisable as his paintings. The unbidden thought vibrated through his mind and down his arm. When it reached the knife, Jones flinched as if from an electric shock. “Okay, I’ll talk,” he gasped, his voice deflating to a hoarse whisper as fear sucked the last dregs of resistance out of him. “You’re right. My drawing and that photo you showed me are of the same place.”

  An almost euphoric sense of relief swept through Harlan, and not just because he may well have got one step closer to finding Ethan. It’d shocked him nearly as much as it had Jones to realise that he hadn’t been bluffing. He really would’ve killed Jones if he had to. “You’ve been there?”

  “A long time ago. Before I went to prison.”

  “What year? What month?”

  “2003. I don’t remember what month. It was hot, so I guess it was summertime.”

  “Did you go alone?”

  There was a pause. The blade twitched against Jones’s throat, prompting him to speak. “No. Someone took me.”

  “Who? What’s their name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t fucking bullshit me.”

  “I’m not. He never told me his name and I never asked it. Sometimes it’s best that way.”

  “Well what does he look like?”

  “I dunno what he looks like now, but back then he had long dark hair and a beard. I used to call him the Prophet, y’know, ’cos he looked like something out of the Bible.”

  “What about height and build?”

  “About the same as you, I think. I can’t really remember. It was that long ago.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “He sold toys on the street in the city centre. This other guy I knew pointed him out to me because he’d seen him at an offenders’ hostel.”

  “A sex offender’s hostel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he do time for?”

  “I dunno. You don’t ask questions like that, do you? Anyway, I used to buy things from him occasionally – stuffed toys, cheap plastic jewellery, things like that – and we got to talking about photography.”

  “Why did he take you to the storm-drain?”

  “He said he had some photographs I might be interested in buying. So we drove out there to take a look at them.”

  Thinking about what Jim had told him, Harlan shuddered as he felt that primal urge of frenzy nibble at the edges of his mind again. As if sensing this, Jones continued quickly, “I only went there the once.”

  “Just to buy photos?”

  “Yes.”

  Harlan tapped the charcoal drawing. “That seems to suggest you went there for a lot more than photos.”

  “I didn’t do that drawing, the Prophet did. He started doing art when he was inside, same as me. I saw it on his wall and, well, I liked it, so I asked if I could buy it. He gave it me for nothing.”

  Squinting at the drawing, Harlan saw that the lower half of the adult figure’s face was indeed slightly misshapen, as if they had a beard. His brow puckered as something occurred to him. “Are you saying that was hanging on the wall of the storm-drain?”

  Jones winced as if he’d let something slip unintentionally. He winced again as a slight movement of the blade brought a fresh trickle of blood from his throat. “No. It was on the wall of his caravan. He took me there as well as the drain.”

  “Where is this caravan?”

  “In some woods ten or fifteen miles away from the drain.”

  “On a site?”

  “No. It’s on its own. There’s nothing else for miles around but trees.”

  “Did he live there?”

  “I dunno. I don’t think so. I think he just used it for storing photos and other stuff.”

  “What other stuff?”

  “Homemade videos, stuff like that.”

  “So where does he live?”

  “How the hell would I know? I haven’t seen him since the day he gave me that drawing.” A tremor passed through Jones’s bloated frame. He swallowed a groan. “Look, I’ve told you everything I know. What else do you want from me?”

  Harlan’s eyes flicked between Jones and the drawing as he considered the question. This guy, the Prophet, obviously had a record. He’d spent time in prison and in a sex offenders’ hostel. He was, or used to be, very distinctive looking. His fingerprints might even be on the drawing. Given time, that was probably more than enough for the police to track down his identity. But there was no time. “I want you to show me where the caravan is.”

  “I don’t know if I can. It was years–” Jones fell silent at the warning in Harlan’s eyes. He heaved a wheezy breath of resignation. “Okay, I’ll try.”

  “You’ll do more than try. Where’s the backdoor key?”

  “In my left trouser pocket.”

  Harlan pulled out a thick bundle of keys. “Is the gate key on here?”

  “Yes.”

  As Harlan flicked through the bundle, Jones nodded to indicate the required keys. Harlan gagged Jones once more and hurried to the backdoor. As fast as his trembling hands would allow, he twisted open the half-a-dozen deadbolts and other locks securing the door and gate. He sprinted towards his car, pulling up sharply at the end of the alley. Peering around the corner, he saw a couple of fire-engines shrouded in the smoke billowing from the garage. Several firemen were aiming a jet of water at the flames stretching through a hole in the roof. Others had formed a loose cordon in front of a crowd of onlookers. No one seemed to notice Harlan as he ducked into his car and drove into the alleyway. If they had, he reflected, they’d most likely assume he was removing his car from harm’s way. He braked in front of the gate, popped the boot and darted back into the house. His heart gave a lurch when he saw that Jones’s eyes were closed. He anxiously searched for a pulse and found one as thin as a spider’s thread. He slapped Jones’s face, and the bound man’s eyelids flickered open. He cut the tape wrapped around Jones’s legs, then thrust his hands under his sweat-drenched armpits and hauled him upright. As Harlan guided him to the car, Jones swayed and reeled like a ship in heavy seas, almost capsizing both of them several times.

  Jones shook his head and tried weakly to pull away from Harlan when he saw the open boot. He squealed as if he’d been stabbed as Harlan shoved him into it, flipped his legs in after him and slammed it shut. Breathless, Harlan jumped behind the steering-wheel and accelerated away hard. He braked equally hard as a couple o
f police cars passed the end of the alley, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Jones hammered at the boot. “Don’t waste your time. There’s no one around to hear you,” said Harlan, but Jones kept at it until they were beyond the sound of the sirens. At an inconspicuous speed, Harlan drove on through the night-time sounds of the city, which seemed strangely muffled and distant, as if they came from deep inside a tunnel.

  Chapter 15

  As Harlan passed into the sheltering dark of a street of unlit warehouses, his mask of implacable resolve slipped and his breath came in a sharp exhalation. He pulled over, tremors of revulsion running through him as he thought about how close he’d come to killing Jones. He’d been forced to go down into a place inside himself that he’d seen but never visited before, and the call of the darkness that lurked there had proved almost irresistible. He could still feel its voice at the back of his brain, like an itch demanding to be scratched. He flung open the door and sucked in lungfuls of the night. “Focus, focus,” he murmured over and over. Gradually the tremors subsided.

  Harlan got out of the car and opened the boot. Jones goggled up at him, his face slick with sweat. As Harlan peeled away his gag, he gasped for breath like a drowning man pulled out of the water. “I’m claustrophobic,” he wheezed. “Please don’t keep me in here any longer.”

  “I won’t, but try anything funny and it’s straight back in here. Understand?”

  Jones nodded. Harlan helped him out of the boot and into the front passenger seat. Jones cried out as his weight came down on his pulverised hands. Giving him a warning look, Harlan cut the tape binding his wrists. He rebound his hands in front of him.

  “Which way?” asked Harlan.

  “Just get onto the motorway and I’ll tell you when to leave it.”

  As fast as he dared, Harlan drove to the motorway. He kept one eye on the road and one on Jones. Jones watched him right back as if trying to work out what he was thinking. “I know who you are,” he said suddenly, eyes widening with realisation. “You’re that guy who killed Susan Reed’s husband. I’ve seen your face on the news. Your name’s H…Ha…”

  “Harlan Miller.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. You used to be a copper, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you know you’ll never get away with this.”

  “Who said anything about getting away with this?”

  “You want to go back to prison?”

  “I want to find Ethan Reed.”

  “I understand. I get it. You want to save the boy to make up for what you did to his old man. But you and I both know he’s long beyond saving. Whoever took him did his thing and killed him weeks–”

  “Shut up,” broke in Harlan, a twitch pulling at the corner of his mouth.

  “Look, what I’m saying is there’s no need for this. You tell your copper mates about the caravan and they’ll find it in no time. Just let me go. Let me go now and I promise I won’t give your name to–”

  “One more fucking word and it’s back in the boot for you.”

  Jones grimaced at the threat. He fell to studying his hands. A great shudder racked him. “Maybe it’s best if you kill me,” he murmured. “Because if I can’t paint, I…I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  I don’t know what I’ll do. The threat implicit in those words made Harlan go cold. He didn’t doubt for a second that Jones had been, at least to some degree, telling the truth when he’d said that painting kept him straight. Without it, surely it was just a matter of time before he answered the call of his own darkness. And then more people – children, their parents, relatives and friends – would suffer. The cycle of devastated lives would continue, expanding and intersecting like ripples in a pond. And, Harlan reflected with a mounting sense of guilt, it would be his fault. Unless, unless...The itch in his mind became a burning, and spread. No, he said silently but vehemently to himself, no! He wound down his window. Tears sprung into his eyes as the air hit him like ice-water. The heat receded again. But for how long? he wondered darkly. For how long?

  They stayed on the M1 and then the M62 for nearly an hour and a half, passing fields of crops and livestock, lonely industrial estates, and the sleeping outskirts of Wakefield, Leeds and Huddersfield, before crossing the black peaty spine of the Pennines. “Come off here and head towards Saddleworth,” said Jones, gesturing at a junction, beyond which hills loomed like solid shadows in the moonlight.

  Twenty minutes or so after leaving the motorway, having been directed into a snarl of narrow lanes, Harlan asked with a note of doubt and warning in his voice, “How much further?”

  “Shh,” hissed Jones, looking intently at the passing landscape. “Let me concentrate.” He pointed at a humpbacked stone bridge that crossed a stream. “I remember that. It’s not far now.”

  The moon was hidden from sight as they passed into a mixed wood of towering deciduous trees and pine plantations. “There!” said Jones, pointing at a wooden gate with a sign on it that read ‘PRIVATE NO PUBIC RIGHT OF WAY’.

  “Are you sure this is it?” asked Harlan.

  “Yes. I remember laughing because some joker had scratched out the L in public.” Jones didn’t smile at the joke now.

  As Harlan turned off the road, the car’s headlights illuminated a narrow wheel-rutted track cutting between uniform ranks of pine trees. He got out of the car and approached the gate. It was secured with a chain and padlock, but the frame was so soft with rot that he was able to loosen a nail and unhook the chain. He drove through the gate, then closed it, returned the chain to its place and pushed the nail back in with his thumb – if anyone else came to the gate that night, he didn’t want to give them a hint someone had been through it.

  “How far to the caravan?” asked Harlan.

  Jones shrugged. “About a mile, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I think, I think. What do you expect? Like I told you, I haven’t been here for donkey’s years.”

  Harlan leaned in close to Jones, eyes glinting like steel beads. “Well you need to do better than just think. You need to be certain. If this friend of yours, the Prophet is–”

  “He’s not my friend,” Jones was quick to point out. “He’s just someone I bought some stuff off.”

  “Whatever. If he’s already at the caravan, I don’t exactly want to announce our arrival.”

  “Okay, okay. Just give me a moment.” Jones closed his eyes, forehead wrinkling as he dredged through his memories. “These pine trees go on for a couple of hundred yards, then…then the road goes down into a dip where it crosses a stream. That’s where the pines stop and the oaks and beeches start. From there it’s about two or three hundred yards to a clearing set off to the right of the road. That’s where the caravan is.”

  Harlan drove slowly along the track. Like Jones had said, after a short distance it descended into a valley with a shallow, boggy stream at its bottom. The car rocked from side to side as it wallowed through the mud and climbed the stream’s far bank. The trees closed in thickly on either side, their branches brushing the car, almost blotting out the sky. Harlan had a sense that he was entering somewhere cut off from the rest of the world. He’d used to love such isolated places before becoming a copper. But the longer he’d been in the job, the more their silence and secrecy made him uneasy. Where another person saw a romantic spot to spend a night or two, he saw somewhere where someone could commit murder and hide a body without fear of being seen or heard. He switched off the headlights and crawled along for another hundred yards or so, watching for a gap in the trees where he could pull off the track. There wasn’t one. He stopped the car. He didn’t like leaving it in full view, but he couldn’t risk continuing any further until he’d checked the caravan out. He popped the boot and turned to Jones.

  “No, please, please don’t make me go back in there,” begged Jones. “I’m not gonna try to get away. I mean, come on, where would I go out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Harlan got out of the c
ar and made his way around to Jones, who recoiled from him, shaking his head frantically. He took out his knife and brought the blade close to Jones’s face. Jones stopped struggling. Dragging in a quivering breath, he stood out of the car and shuffled to the boot. He lay limp and resigned as Harlan wrapped more tape around his ankles and mouth. Harlan retrieved the torch from the backseat, before heading along the track. He covered the lens with his fingers, letting out just enough light to illuminate his way. Again, Jones’s memory proved reliable – after maybe two hundred yards, the wall of trees gave way on the right to an overgrown grassy clearing. The caravan, a tiny oval tourer, its roof livid with mould, was set to the back of the clearing. No lights showed in its windows. There was no car outside it, but the grass was flattened in places as though one had been there recently. To its right was a roughly built shelter, a beard of vines dangling from its tarpaulin roof.

  Resisting the urge to investigate further, Harlan made his way back to the car. He drove past the clearing, stopping out of sight of it around a bend. Thinking about ringing Jim, he checked his phone. It had no signal. There’d be no calling for backup out here.

  Harlan returned for a closer look at the caravan and shelter. Rusty petrol drums and gas canisters were stacked beneath the sagging tarp. There was also an old petrol powered generator from which wires ran to a battery beneath the caravan. A spade and pickaxe leant against the generator. Harlan’s eyebrows drew together as he stooped to inspect the spade. Its flat blade was caked with damp earth, as though it’d recently been used. Behind the shelter a faint trail was visible in the long grass. Harlan followed it to the tree-line. Beyond that the trail disappeared into a mulchy mass of fallen leaves. He approached the caravan and tried its door. Locked. He turned his attention to the nearest window. The rubber seal was rotted and cracked. With a punch of his palm, he jammed the blade of his screwdriver through it. A quick jerk dislodged the latch. He opened the window, pulled aside a mildewy curtain and shone his torch into the caravan.