Blood Guilt

by Ben Cheetham

Harlan caught Susan’s wrists as she swung at Neil again. “There’s no time for this, Susan!” His mind reeled with pain as she strained against his hold, trying to twist her arms free.

  “Where’s my boy? Where’s Ethan?”

  “He’s not far away,” said Neil.

  “Is he alive?”

  Neil screwed up his face in horror at the suggestion that Ethan might not be. “Of course he is. I told you, I’d never hurt the kids.”

  Susan stopped struggling. A shudder passed through her. Tears swelled in her eyes. Her lips twitched, unable to express the pain and joy she felt. Harlan knew there was no time for the luxury of emotion. There was no time for anything except getting to Ethan. Right this moment, Yates would be wondering what was going on. He might be starting to panic. Maybe he’d even be thinking about disposing of the evidence. Harlan gestured at Kane. The boy blinked as if emerging from a trance, before quickly moving to take hold of his mother’s wrist and draw her away from Harlan.

  Harlan hauled Neil to his feet. “You’re gonna take me to Ethan right now.” His voice was as deadly sharp as the blade at Neil’s throat. He pushed him towards the door.

  Neil twisted to look at Susan, heedless of the way his Adam’s apple dragged over the knife. “I did it for us,” he said again, with a tremor of pitifully desperate love in his voice. “Because I wanted us to have a life together.”

  Susan looked at Neil with a hate in her eyes even more toxic than his love.

  Crushed by what he saw, Neil’s body sagged and his head drooped. As Harlan thrust him into the street, Susan broke away from Kane and ran after them. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No way,” said Harlan. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I don’t give a fuck! I’m coming!”

  Kane grabbed Susan’s wrist again. “Please, Mum, I don’t want you to go.”

  “Let go, Kane.” She tried to shake him off, but he clung on like a limpet.

  Turning quickly away from them, Harlan put his hand on Neil’s head and none too gently guided him to the driver’s seat. “Don’t you fucking go without me,” shrieked Susan, as he rushed around to the other side of the car. He just had time to reach across Neil and press the central-locking button, before Susan yanked at the passenger door. She hammered on the window. “Open this bastard door!”

  Harlan thrust the ignition key into Neil’s hand. “Go! Go!”

  With trembling fingers, Neil fumbled the key into the ignition. As they accelerated away, Harlan hissed in his ear, “Remember what I said, if you fuck with me…” He trailed off, letting the threat hang between them.

  “I won’t.” Neil’s voice matched his ghastly grey face, as he watched Susan recede in the rearview mirror.

  Chapter 22

  “Where are we going?” asked Harlan.

  “Spital Street.”

  Harlan had been called out to Spital Street numerous times during his years on the force. It traversed the lowermost edge of a rundown estate of maisonettes and flats perched on a hillside just north-east of the city centre. “What address?”

  “I know where it is, but I dunno the exact address. It’s a second floor flat.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “No one. It’s empty. That’s why Martin took Ethan there.”

  “Is he the only other person involved in this?”

  A slight hesitation, then, “No. His girlfriend’s in on it too. Her name’s Paula. I dunno her surname. She lives in the flat below the one where we’re keeping Ethan.”

  Harlan took out his phone and dialled Jim. “Have you got a name for me then?” his ex-partner asked, on answering the phone.

  “I’ve got a lot more than that. Nash didn’t abduct Ethan. Neil Price did.”

  Jim released an exhausted breath. “Make up your mind, Harlan. First you tell me this nameless roofer did it, now you–”

  “Shut up and listen, Jim,” Harlan interrupted. “They both did it. The roofer – his name’s Martin Yates – him and Price are in it together, along with Yate’s girlfriend.”

  An instant’s stunned silence followed, then Jim said, “How do you know this?”

  “Price told me himself. I’m in the car with him now, on my way to where they’re holding Ethan.”

  “You mean the boy’s alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?” There was no relief in Jim’s voice. Within seconds, icy professionalism had overcome his initial surprise. Like Harlan, he knew they hadn’t won the game yet, and the clock was running down fast.

  “Spital Street. It’s an empty second floor flat.”

  “But we searched all the unoccupied flats around there,” said Jim. “How did we miss him?”

  The answer was obvious to Harlan: Ethan had been kept elsewhere – and that elsewhere was almost certainly Yates’s girlfriend’s place – until after the police were done searching. But there was no time for explanations. “We’re in Eve’s Toyota. I’ll make sure we park directly outside the flat. You need to get some units over there fast. Yates might be onto me.”

  “I’m already on it. How far away are you?”

  “Not far. Five or ten minutes.”

  “You’ll be there before us then. Don’t go trying to be a hero, Harlan. Wait in your car and let us do our job.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to get Ethan back safe.” Harlan hung up. A woozy feeling hit him, causing the road to momentarily double before his watering eyes. Shaking the dizziness from his head, he felt his bandage again. As he drew his hand away, rivulets of blood coursed between his fingers. Grappling with Susan, it seemed, had opened his wound fully. He wondered whether he’d have the strength to ‘do whatever it takes’.

  “So what was the plan?” Harlan asked, more to try and fend off the tugging fingers of unconsciousness than because he needed to know right that moment.

  Neil shrugged as if he wasn’t sure, but then said in a strangled sort of voice, “Paula was gonna phone the police and say she’d heard suspicious sounds in the flat above hers. When they came and found Ethan, she’d claim the reward and we’d split it three ways.”

  “And who came up with this plan?”

  Again, Neil shrugged. “Me and Martin went out drinking a few months back. I don’t usually drink, but Gary Dawson,” his upper lip curled with hate around the name, “was threatening to send his thugs to my parents’ house. I was going out of my head with worry. Martin’s in even deeper with Dawson than me. We were talking about ways of making some quick cash, and I jokingly said we should try to find that missing boy, Jamie Sutton, and claim the reward. And Martin said it would be easier to just snatch a kid ourselves for the reward. So we started talking about how we might do it. We weren’t being serious at first – at least, I wasn’t…” Neil trailed off as if he wasn’t entirely convinced of the truth of his words. “Oh God, it sounds so insane now.”

  “No it doesn’t.” There was a simple, ruthless logic to everything Neil had said. Harlan wasn’t about to let him use madness to exonerate himself from responsibility. A couple of things didn’t make sense to him, though. “But why risk abducting Ethan from his bed? Why not just snatch him off the street?”

  “That was our original plan. We wanted to make it look like the same bloke who took Jamie Sutton took Ethan.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Ethan, that’s why. Outside school, he never leaves Susan’s side. He’s been like that since his dad died. I remember even when me and Susan first got together, he used to ask her all the time, why did Dad leave us? She tried to explain, but he just couldn’t get it into his head what death means. I guess he’s afraid she’ll leave him too.” The familiar guilt twisted inside Harlan, as Neil continued, “We kept waiting for a chance to grab him off the street, but there was no chance. Martin got impatient. Dawson’s thugs were hounding him. We talked about taking Ethan from the house. Martin was all for it, but I didn’t like the idea. The problem wasn’t Susan – after she takes her Valium she’s out of i
t for the night. The problem was Kane. If we were gonna do it that way, it would have to be on a night Kane was sleeping over at a friend’s or something. But then Martin, the crazy fucker, just went ahead and did it. First I heard about it was when the coppers came to see me. I swear, I nearly had a heart-attack.” Neil heaved a breath, shaking his head. “I thought Martin was alright, but he’s got serious problems up here.” He tapped his temple. “If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t think I’d ever have gone through with this.”

  “Bollocks,” retorted Harlan, sickened to his core by the nauseatingly familiar sound of someone trying to talk their way out of their guilt.

  “It’s true. Martin wasn’t even going to give me my full share of the reward, ’cos he reckons I haven’t done enough to earn it.”

  “Whose idea was it to take Ethan?”

  Neil was silent a moment, then he admitted, “Mine.”

  “Then you’ve done plenty to deserve everything you’ve got coming to you.”

  “But all I did was come up with the idea, Martin and Paula did–” Neil broke off at a glance from Harlan that warned him there would be dire consequences if he continued to insist on his relative innocence.

  They were nearing Spital Street. Three and four-storey blocks of flats loomed over them, rising up one behind another like piles of boxes. Another wave of wooziness washed over Harlan, prompting him to ask, “That’s the other thing I don’t get, why Ethan? Why not abduct some random kid?”

  “Martin wanted to, but I told him it had to be Ethan or I wouldn’t go through with it.”

  “Why?”

  “I know Ethan. I knew he wouldn’t try to fight or escape. Plus, that way I could, y’know, stay close to the investigation and give Martin the heads up if the coppers began sniffing in his direction.”

  Harlan narrowed his eyes in scrutiny, wondering whether Neil was really as stupid as his words suggested. If they’d done as Martin wanted, maybe, just maybe, their plan would’ve worked. But this way they had little or no chance of getting away with it. After Paula had contacted the police, it wouldn’t have taken them long to connect her to Martin, and from Martin it was only three or four short steps to Neil. “So you did all this for seventy-odd thousand quid.”

  “We expected it would be a lot more. Jamie Sutton’s reward was two hundred thousand.” Neil’s voice took on a sneering tone. “But it turns out most people in this piss-hole of a city won’t put their hands in their pockets to save anyone except themselves. If they had done, this thing would’ve been over weeks ago.”

  “Seventy thousand, two hundred thousand, a million. What’s the difference? No amount of money’s worth this.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You haven’t been fucked over by people your whole life.” Neil flashed Harlan a look sodden with resentment. “Susan told me about you. You had it all, and you threw it away.”

  Neil’s words pierced Harlan deeper than Nash’s knife had done. Talking about himself was the last thing he wanted to do. And Neil was the last person he owed an explanation of his past to. But still, he felt compelled to respond. “I didn’t throw it away, it was taken from me.”

  “Bullshit. Your son died, but you still had a career, a house, a wife who loved you. You still had a million times more than me.”

  I had nothing after Tom died! Nothing! Harlan wanted to yell, but he knew that wasn’t true. The truth was he’d been so torn apart by pain, fear and rage that he’d wanted to nullify his identify, make his life nothing. And he’d almost managed it. Almost.

  A bitter smile spread across Neil’s face. “I know your type. I’ve known you all my shitty life. You were one of the popular kids, I can tell. Things have always come easy to you. Easy come easy go. But I’ve had to fight for everything I’ve got. I found happiness for the first time when I met Susan, and I wasn’t about to let it go. No fucking way! When she told me she thought maybe we should stop–” He broke off suddenly, as if he’d said more than he intended to.

  Looking at Neil’s face, its plain, mousey features quivering with emotion, his parting words to Susan came back to Harlan. I did it for us. Because I wanted us to have a life together. And with them came the realisation of exactly what they meant. A strange kind of relief passed over him, as he said, “This was never about money. Susan was going to leave you. You took Ethan to stop her, to make her need you as much as you need her. Didn’t you?” Silence was all the answer Harlan received, and all the answer he needed. “You never intended to follow your plan through – at least, not the plan you and Yates cooked up. That’s why this thing has dragged on so long. Because you knew that if Susan ever got Ethan back, you and her would be finished. But why involve Yates and his girlfriend? It would’ve been a lot simpler to abduct Ethan yourself, do him in and get rid of the body?”

  “I could never hurt Ethan,” Neil retorted fervently.

  “No, what I think you mean is, you haven’t got the balls to hurt Ethan yourself. That’s why you needed Yates. You needed him to kill Ethan.” Violent twitches pulled at Neil’s face, twisting one side of it like a stroke victim, as Harlan continued, “What were you planning to do? Feed Yates some bullshit about the police being onto him and panic him into killing the boy? But you didn’t even have the nerve to make that call, did you? At least, not until I backed you into a corner.”

  Neil slammed his foot on the break, throwing Harlan against the dashboard. Both him and the tyres screamed in protest. Gasping in the stink of burning rubber, he clutched his wound. Something was bulging out of it, hard and bulbous. Too winded to speak, he twisted towards Neil, expecting him to make a run for it. But Neil was crumpled against the steering-wheel, tears coursing down his cheeks. “I love her,” he sobbed through clenched teeth. “I love her more than my own life. I told her that, and she chucked it back in my face, said she didn’t feel the same way. Said she was sorry. Sorry!” He spat the word out like vomit. “She didn’t love me. She pitied me. Do you know how that feels? To be pitied by someone you’ve offered everything you have? Of course you fucking don’t.” He ground his head against the wheel, groaning, “What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to do?”

  You were supposed to try and convince her she was making a mistake. And if that didn’t work, you were supposed to cry, shout and beg, maybe even threaten to kill yourself. But you weren’t supposed to do this, you pathetic little fuck. That was what Harlan wanted to say, but there was no time, and besides he didn’t have enough breath in his lungs for it. “Take me to Ethan.” Neil was too deep in self-pity to hear Harlan’s hoarse voice. Trembling with the effort, he grabbed Neil’s ear and yanked him upright. “I said take me to Ethan.”

  Neil winced, but made no attempt to remove Harlan’s hand. “He’s in there.” He pointed at a boarded up window on the second floor of a scaffolding-encased block of flats that appeared to be largely uninhabited. All the neighbouring windows were also as dark as the night sky, except for the flickering bluish glow of a TV coming from the flat below. “Looks like Paula’s in.”

  “What about Yates?”

  “I can’t see his car. It could be parked around back.”

  “Get out.”

  “Aren’t you going to wait for the police? Martin used to box. He’s a bit slow on the uptake, but he’s fast with his fists. You’re in no fit state to–”

  “Shut up and do as I say.”

  Neil got out of the car. Grimacing, Harlan did likewise. His body felt heavy as a sack of coal. Neil was right, he was in no fit state, but he couldn’t take the risk that harm might come to Ethan while he waited out here. Leaning on the car, he limped around to the boot and opened it. “Now get in there.”

  Neil shook his head.

  Harlan put the knife to Neil’s throat. “Fucking do it.”

  Neil’s tongue flicked nervously across his lips, but he held his ground. “You need my help to get into the flat. I know where the key’s hidden.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ll show you. Lo
ok, we’re wasting time. Martin might be up there right now, wondering what’s going on and what to do with Ethan.”

  For a tense moment, the two men looked at each other. Knowing he didn’t have the strength to force Neil to do as he demanded, Harlan gestured at the flats with his knife. “Move.” As they approached them, he held onto Neil’s arm, more for support than to prevent Neil from making a break for it. He caught a glimpse through a crack in some curtains of a woman he assumed to be Paula. She was slumped low in an armchair, sipping from a can of lager, eyes vacantly staring from under a fringe of peroxide blond hair, black at the roots. She looked thirtyish, but it was difficult to tell with all the makeup pasted on her face. Her heavy-set body was squeezed into pink leggings and a matching vest-top. A Celtic band tattoo encircled one fleshy bicep. There was no anxiety in her face, no sign that Martin had told her about Neil’s silent phone call. Drawing hope from this, Harlan hurried past the window into a gloomy, piss-stinking stairwell.

  When they reached the second floor landing, which was lighted only by the glow of the streetlights, Harlan leant heavily against a wall, struggling to find his breath. Neil approached a door, felt above its frame and found a key. Harlan held out his hand and Neil handed over the key. Harlan raised a finger to his lips. As quietly as possible, he unlocked and opened the door. A faint damp smell wafted out. The hallway was almost pitch-black. He stood listening for a few seconds. Not a sound. He tried a light-switch, and wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. Neil nudged him and pointed to a torch on the floor. That decided him – Yates wasn’t there. He picked up the torch and switched it on. Its pale beam illuminated a dingy blue carpet and matching wallpaper, which was peeling away in places. There were two closed doors in the right wall. A third door stood a few inches ajar at the far end of the hallway.

  “Which room?” whispered Harlan.

  Neil shrugged. “This is the first time I’ve been here.”

  Pushing Neil ahead of him, Harlan approached the first door. It opened onto a tiny room with bare floorboards and mould-studded white walls. Several bulging black bin liners were piled in one corner. What looked like bed sheets stained with excrement and vomit had spilled out of one of them. Just inside the door was a chest of drawers with no drawers. Brown medicine bottles and silver blister packs cluttered its surface. Harlan read their labels. Blackcurrant flavoured Codeine Linctus, Diazepam and Traveleeze travel sickness tablets. He glanced darkly at Neil. “You’ve been drugging him.”