Blood Guilt

by Ben Cheetham

  At first glance, the place looked abandoned – the floor was strewn with soggy newspaper, apparently put down to soak up the multiple leaks in the roof; the walls were studded with mould; several of the cupboards stood open and bare; pile of pots and pans festered in a pool of grease-filmed water in the sink. A closer look, however, revealed signs that someone had been there recently – a rolled up sleeping-bag and pillow wrapped in clear plastic to keep the damp out were stowed on a built-in sofa; a plate still glistening with baked-bean juice and a glass half-full of milk stood on a fold-up table.

  Harlan hauled himself through the window, wincing as he sent several plates crashing to the floor. He closed the window and drew the curtain back across it, before continuing his exploration. He tried a light switch. Nothing happened. He sniffed the milk. It was sour but not curdled. Perhaps a week old, he reckoned, maybe less. He opened the cupboards. In one there were several litres of bottled water, a jar of instant coffee and a box of matches. In another there were tins of baked beans and soup and half a pack of stale biscuits. In a third there was a coil of rope that could’ve been used for tying people up or hanging clothes out to dry. There was no sign of the photos and videos Jones had spoken about. A partially dismantled television sat on a shelf in an alcove, but there was no video-player. There were two doors other than the entrance. Harlan opened one and reflexively clapped his hand over his nose. The door led to tiny toilet cubicle. The toilet was full almost to the brim with rust-coloured, stinking water. He thought about the spade, reflecting that whoever had been staying here had probably used it to dig a toilet in the woods. The second door opened into a cupboard that contained a dustpan and brush, a couple of toilet rolls and some empty clothes-hangers.

  Harlan frowned as a thought crossed his mind. Had Jones been feeding him a line of bullshit about coming here with the Prophet? Did the Prophet even exist? Maybe Jones had made him up to buy himself some time? Maybe this was just some place where Jones had stayed before. Harlan shook his head. The fear in Jones’s face and voice hadn’t lied. Still, he was relieved he hadn’t had the chance to phone Jim. At least, if it came to it, he could question Jones further. A shudder passed through him as a voice piped up in his mind, what if you lose control? What if this time you can’t stop yourself from killing him? He shoved the voice away. The ‘what ifs’ were irrelevant. What had to be done, had to be done. It was as simple as that. His pulse jumped at a sound from outside – the whine of an engine grinding its way along in low gear.

  Snapping off his torch, Harlan peered between the curtains. The approaching vehicle’s headlights danced crazily as it negotiated the rutted track. He was about to climb out the window and dash into the woods, but there was no time. The vehicle was already swaying into view. As its twin beams fell on the caravan he squinted, struggling to make out what kind of vehicle it was. It wasn’t a transit van, that much was obvious. But it was much bigger than a normal car. Some kind of four-wheel drive, maybe. The vehicle pulled up outside the caravan. Its engine fell silent and the driver’s side door opened. A figure got out and walked in front of the still blazing headlights. Before he scurried into the toilet, Harlan caught a glimpse of a masculine physique – stocky, but close enough in build to the man Kane had described to plausibly be him – beneath a thick head of long black hair. He covered his nose with one hand as the stench hit him again, the other felt for the knife in his pocket. As a key clicked in a lock and the front door squeaked open, he raised the knife, ready, if necessary, to slash whoever was coming.

  The floor trembled slightly as footsteps advanced into the kitchen area. There was a pause. A sniff, as if the footsteps’ owner had caught a whiff of an unfamiliar scent. Followed by a sound of clinking crockery, which Harlan guessed was the plates being picked up from the floor and returned to the sink. His muscles tensed for action. A few seconds passed. The footsteps moved towards the far end of the caravan. There was a tearing sound of Velcro being peeled apart. A low grunt as something heavy was lifted. Then the footsteps came back to the front door and went out. The door was left open. A moment later the footsteps returned. Another grunt as something else was carried outside. A minute crawled by and still the door remained open. A faint whiff of smoke – not wood smoke, but an acrid smell of burning petrol and plastic – cut through the toilet’s fumes. Harlan’s ears caught the crackle of flames. The photos and videos, he thought. They were here and the fucker’s burning them. He’s burning the evidence.

  Harlan resisted an urge to rush outside and restrain the Prophet. Assuming that was really who it was, there was a lot more at stake than the loss of physical evidence. The questions uppermost in his mind were: where did that trail in the grass lead? What did the woods conceal? He could perhaps find out by questioning the Prophet like he’d questioned Jones. But he was reluctant to do so whilst there was a chance that the Prophet might unwittingly lead him to the answers he sought. At the same time, whether or not the front door was open, he couldn’t risk remaining in the toilet. If the Prophet suddenly jumped in his car and drove off, Harlan would lose him. Similarly, if the Prophet headed off into the woods, Harlan had to be ready to follow him the instant he made a move.

  Harlan opened the door a crack and peered out. The headlights of the vehicle, which he could see now was a mud-spattered green Landrover, had been switched off. The glow of a fire away to its right was reflected in its windscreen. Harlan closed the toilet door behind himself, and hunkering low, moved to the opposite end of the caravan. The sofa’s cushions had been removed, exposing a hollow, now empty interior. Harlan parted the curtains a finger’s breadth. The Prophet, with his sleeves pushed up, was prodding at the fire with the spade, his eyes as black as the hair on his forearms in its flickering light. He was wearing loose-fitting jeans and a green bomber jacket that fitted tightly around his bull-neck. He had no beard, but there was a heavy stubble on his jaw. His shoulder-length hair framed an angular face pitted with what looked like acne scars. Harlan estimated him to be mid-thirties. Forty at the most. As the Prophet watched the fire eat away at two cardboard boxes, his jaw twitched like Harlan’s pulse, and his face twisted in a grimace of rage. He flung the spade away suddenly, shouting, “Fuck!” He lowered his head, rubbing roughly at his eyes. Then, his shoulders rising and falling with a deep breath, he retrieved the spade and continued his prodding. When the boxes and their contents, which Harlan couldn’t make out from where he was, had burnt down to glowing embers, the Prophet approached the caravan again.

  Harlan crouched down, flattening himself against the wall between the end of the kitchen unit and the sofa. Dry mouthed but calm enough to hold himself as still as a beast of prey, he listened to the Prophet climb the little flight of metal steps outside the caravan. The door slammed shut, shaking the flimsy structure. The lock clicked back into place. Harlan lifted his head above the window sill in time to see the Prophet striding towards the woods, torch in hand, the spade resting on his shoulder. He waited until the Prophet was under the trees, before opening the window and clambering out. He couldn’t see the Prophet anymore, but the beam of his torch was visible. As quickly and quietly as possible, he pursued it. It was dark as the bottom of a well under the dense canopy of oak and beech. Branches snagged his clothes and scratched his face, his feet stubbed against roots, but he didn’t slow his pace until he was as close as he dared get to the Prophet.

  Down they went, deeper and deeper into the valley, as if they were descending into an abyss. The silence of the woods hammered against Harlan’s ears. He winced at every twig that snapped or dry leaf that crunched beneath his feet. The Prophet stopped. Harlan hid behind a tree, heart loud as a drum in his chest, certain he’d been made. The Prophet swung his torch from side to side as if searching for something, then started walking again. Down, down, deeper, deeper and still deeper he unknowingly led Harlan. Harlan lost all track of time and distance in the cloying darkness. Despite his fear of being heard, he drew ever closer to the Prophet. If he lost him here, he kne
w chances were he’d never find him again or his way out of the woods. Suddenly, the light disappeared. Harlan felt a rush of something like vertigo as the world seemed to dissolve around him. Hands outstretched, groping blindly, he took several steps and stumbled to his knees. He crawled through the undergrowth, and after maybe a minute, found himself at the edge of a grassy, bowl-like depression. The Prophet was stood at the bottom of the depression, digging up sods of turf and pilling them neatly to one side.

  He’s digging a grave for Ethan, was Harlan’s first thought. But he quickly questioned it. The depression was open to the night sky. Why dig a grave somewhere visible from above when you could just as easily do it under cover of the trees? There was little chance of a helicopter passing overhead. Still, it was an unnecessary risk. Another possibility occurred to him as the Prophet’s spade clanged against something metallic – maybe he’s digging something up. But what? More photos? A corpse? For the same reason, neither possibility struck him as likely.

  The Prophet cleared away a square of turf about three feet by three feet, exposing a rusty sheet of metal secured with a chain and padlock. A length of plastic pipe slightly longer than the depth of the turf protruded from the centre of the sheet. What the hell’s that for? wondered Harlan. His heat began to thump wildly against his ribs as the answer came to him – it’s an air-pipe. The metal sheet’s a trapdoor. This is where he keeps them. This is where the fucker keeps his victims. The Prophet unlocked the padlock, and bracing his legs, lifted the inch-thick sheet. It fell back on its hinges with a dull thud. He retrieved his torch and shone it down into a round hole about as wide as his shoulders. Gripping the torch between his teeth, he lowered himself into the hole.

  Harlan waited a few seconds, before squirming down the bank to the edge of the hole, which radiated a faint yellowish light. The hole went straight down for about six feet, then turned at a right angle. A string of fairy lights hooked up to a battery illuminated a sandy-floored narrow tunnel whose regular angled rock walls bore the marks of pickaxes. This was obviously an entrance to some kind of disused mine or cave system that’d caused the ground to subside. The hole smelt of musty earth with a faint, underlying coppery scent that impelled Harlan to climb into it. The tunnel descended gently, curving to the left. Taking out his knife, stooping to avoid hitting his head, Harlan hurried forward. He was less concerned about being heard now than he was by what the object of his pursuit might be doing. The Prophet had already gotten rid of anything incriminating at the caravan. More than likely he was going to do the same down here too.

  As Harlan advanced, the underlying smell grew heavier, thicker. It was a smell he knew only too well, one that always made his throat tight. The tunnel flared suddenly into a cave whose outermost fringes were shrouded in darkness. He stood motionless, ears straining. Not a sound.

  The cave was natural. It had jagged walls. Gnarled roots poked through its ceiling. The fragments of rock they’d dislodged were scattered over the uneven floor. Oh Christ, please don’t let it be Ethan, thought Harlan, as the smell drew him towards the far side of the cave, where the darkness was as impenetrable as the walls. Stomach like a clenched fist, he switched on his torch. Its beam illuminated a dirty tarp wrapped like a chrysalis around something. Kneeling, he peeled away the tarp and saw what he’d known he would – a corpse. A tiny breath of relief escaped him. It wasn’t Ethan. The corpse was months, perhaps even years old. It was rotted down almost to a skeleton. Parchment-like shreds of skin encased its bones. Its stomach and eye sockets were hollow. Its mouth hung open in a grotesque parody of a smile. Wisps of boyishly short blonde hair still clung to its skull. From its size, Harlan estimated the body to be that of a child of between seven and ten years old. He wondered why it hadn’t been buried. He could think of only one reason: the Prophet kept it here as a kind of trophy. He’d read case-studies of killers who kept parts or even the whole of their victims’ bodies, using them to re-live their crimes over and over again. But he’d never encountered it himself.

  Harlan’s face creased up so that his features seemed to turn in on themselves, leaving only his blazing eyes staring out. Even in death, the child hadn’t been allowed to rest. The same feeling that’d rushed over him as he tortured Jones swelled inside him again. The same only much, much stronger. He didn’t resist it. He allowed it to pick him up and carry him back to the fairy lights, which ended at a tunnel opening braced with timbers. Ducking into it, he hurried onward. As the tunnel wound deeper into the earth, its ceiling lowered until he was stooped almost double. He came to a split in the tunnel. One branch angled rightwards and down. The other turned to the left, climbing gently. He paused, trying to decide which way to go. After a moment, he moved to the right, urged on by an inner voice that said, keep going deeper, deeper!

  The air got thicker and harder to breathe. Sweat stung Harlan’s eyes. After several minutes, he heard something that caused him to pause. The sound came again. It was a faint clink, like a chain rattling. He switched off his torch and felt his way forward. His nostrils flared at a foul smell. Not a smell of death, but a smell of life festering in its own filth. The walls closed in to a gap just wide enough for him to turn sideways and squeeze through. After a short distance, they widened again and the pale electric glow of more fairy lights shimmered up ahead. Barely daring to breathe, he advanced to the edge of a roughly circular cave about fifteen feet in diameter.

  The cave’s floor was littered with empty soup and soft-drink cans, water bottles, crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers. In one corner stood a metal bucket brimful with human waste. In the opposite corner was a mouldering mattress with a young boy sat on it, knees drawn up against his chin, arms wrapped around the blades of his shins. The boy’s legs and feet were bare. A chain led from a medieval-looking shackle on one of his ankles to a hoop bolted to the wall. A ragged blanket was wrapped around his narrow shoulders. His grimy, pinch-cheeked face, lank hair and the fear flowing from his trapped eyes gave him the look of some small, helpless animal. Harlan recognised him instantly, even though he no longer looked much like his picture in the newspaper. The boy was Jamie Sutton. The Prophet was sat on a deckchair in the centre of the cave, facing Jamie, his back to Harlan. His hands were clasped at his chin as if in prayer.

  Harlan padded towards the Prophet. He raised a finger to his lips as Jamie’s eyes flicked at him. Ten feet. His heart hammered so loudly he was certain the Prophet must hear it. Five feet. A bead of sweat dripped from his chin and exploded on the floor. Gasping, the Prophet started to stand and turn. With the speed of a striking snake, Harlan sprang at him, wrapping an arm around his throat. With his other arm, he locked in the choke-hold. The Prophet rammed his head back against Harlan’s face, bringing a stream of blood from his nose. Tucking his head down, Harlan cranked his arm tighter against the Prophet’s Adam’s apple. His breath grating like sandpaper in his lungs, the Prophet staggered around, flinging ineffective elbows at Harlan. Finally, his arms dropped to his sides and his legs began to buckle. In a last-ditch attempt to dislodge Harlan, he flung himself backward. As Harlan slammed into the sandy floor, pain crackled up his spine and all his breath was driven from him. But still he clung on grimly, wrapping his legs around the Prophet’s midriff to prevent him from twisting free. The Prophet rolled onto his front, and exerting what strength remained in his powerful, thickset body, managed to rise to his hands and knees. Arms burning, Harlan squeezed and squeezed. Suddenly unconsciousness stole the Prophet’s resistance away. He collapsed. But Harlan continued to squeeze, driven on by the force of what was inside. It was only Ethan’s face flashing through his mind that stopped him from crushing the Prophet’s windpipe.

  Breathing heavily, Harlan released his grip. The Prophet’s face was colourless, except for a bluish tinge to his lips. Harlan felt for a pulse and found one. He quickly turned his attention to the boy. As he reached for the shackle, Jamie flinched away from him. “It’s okay, Jamie,” Harlan reassured him. “I’m here to help you.” Jami
e stiffened, trembling slightly, but remained motionless as Harlan examined the clasp. There were brownish-red, infected-looking sores where it had rubbed the skin off the boy’s ankle. It was secured with a padlock. “Where’s the key?”

  Jamie pointed to the Prophet. Harlan stooped over him to search his pockets and found a bundle of keys in the first one he put his hand into. He tried them on the padlock until he found one that fitted. Jamie grimaced as Harlan removed the clasp. The instant he was free, he scuttled naked to a pile of dusty clothes in a corner and began pulling them on. His body was mottled with bruises, streaked with scratches, and crusted with excrement. His ribs and backbone were prominent from starvation, like a concentration camp victim.

  Rage pushed up inside Harlan, almost choking him. He grabbed the Prophet’s wrists and dragged him to the mattress. The shackle didn’t fit around the Prophet’s meaty ankle, but Harlan squeezed until the metal clasp bit deep enough into his flesh that he could click the padlock shut. The Prophet stirred and groaned, but didn’t open his eyes.

  Harlan turned to Jamie, who was crouched now by the cave’s entrance, tense as a rabbit near a wolf. Gently taking hold of the boy’s wrist, he guided him into the tunnel out of sight of the Prophet. “Listen, Jamie, before we can leave this place I need to ask you something. Have you seen anyone else down here other than that man in there and me?”

  Jamie shook his head.

  “Are you sure? This is very important. There may be another boy like you here somewhere.”

  Jamie nodded. He pulled at Harlan’s arm, urging him onward. Harlan shook his head, prising Jamie’s hands away. He jerked his chin at the cave. “I need you to wait here while I talk to him.”

  Eyes like full moons, Jamie shook his head again more vehemently. His lips quivered, but no words came. He seemed to have been struck mute by the trauma of his experiences.