After what might’ve been minutes or hours, a voice called Harlan back to the conscious world. “Mister,” it said, urgent and concerned. “I saw what happened.” His eyes flickered open. He was on his back now. Whether he’d rolled over by himself or someone had turned him over, he didn’t know. A young woman gazed down at him, her face blurry in patches. “Just lie still,” she continued, as he tried to sit up. “I’ve phoned for an ambulance.”
Her words lent Harlan the strength to clamber to his feet. The police wouldn’t be far behind the ambulance, and that would mean serious trouble. “I’m fine,” he said groggily, brushing away the woman’s helping hands. Using the buildings for support, he slowly worked his way along the street. Dimly aware of sirens away in the distance, he went into a public toilet, washed the blood from his hands and applied a wad of tissue to the back of his head. Then he staggered to a nearby taxi-rank and ducked into a black-cab.
“You okay, mate?” asked the cabbie.
Harlan nodded and wished he hadn’t when a blinding pain pulsed from his skull. He gave the cabbie an address not far from the Northern General Hospital. As the cab negotiated the congested city roads, he closed his eyes and summoned up an image of his hooded assailant. Who could it be? Not Ethan’s abductor — when Harlan had grabbed his attacker’s hand he’d noticed it was as hairless as a child’s. The attack hadn’t been random, though. That much was obvious from the hate in those hazel-brown eyes. It was equally obvious that the attacker must’ve followed Susan and Neil to the cafe, since he was certain no one had followed him. Which meant either that one of them had told someone else about the meeting, or the attacker had overheard them discussing it. If what Susan had said about Neil was true — which he had no reason to suspect it wasn’t — the second possibility was the most probable. And there was only one person he could think of who could easily get into close enough proximity to overhear them — Kane. What’s more, the boy was the same height and build as his attacker, and he certainly had more than enough motive to want to hurt him.
Harlan paid the driver, and swaying like a drunk, made his way to A amp;E. He gave the receptionist a false name and address and told her he’d tripped and hit his head. Under local anaesthetic, a doctor stitched and bandaged the lesions on his scalp. Then he was given a head x-ray. “There are no fractures and no signs of serious brain injury,” said the doctor, examining his x-rays. “Luckily for you, you’ve got a remarkably thick skull. I’ve seen people end up in a coma from less severe injuries.”
I’ve seen them die, thought Harlan. “So I’m okay to go.”
“You have a concussion. As a precautionary measure, we’d like to admit you overnight for observation.”
“I’d rather go home.” By the morning, Harlan knew, there was every chance the police called to the scene of the attack would trace him to the hospital.
“Well that’s your choice, although I’d strongly advise against it. Where do you live?”
Harlan’s head throbbed with the effort of remembering the false address he’d given the receptionist.
“You mustn’t drive for forty-eight hours. Is there someone you can call to pick you up?”
“Yes,” lied Harlan.
“Good. Also, you need to rest, but you should try to stay awake for the next twelve hours. If you do fall asleep, you need to be woken every two hours at the most to make sure you don’t fall into a coma. And don’t rely on an alarm clock to wake you.”
Harlan thanked the doctor, and trying to appear less groggy than he felt, made his way out of A amp;E. He caught a taxi to his flat. After swallowing some painkillers, he got into bed. He lay glaring at the ceiling, his fingers convulsively clenching and unclenching as he thought about those hazel-brown eyes. His anger wasn’t directed at Kane — he felt nothing towards him except guilt, sadness and sympathy — but at himself. It made him want to tear his own guts out to think that he was the cause of such fury, such hate.
After a while, without even realising it, Harlan began to drift into a dream. He was at the entrance to the tunnel again. Only this time he was stood in Jones’s place, holding Kane and Ethan’s hands. He looked down at each boy and saw that their faces were masked with blood. And the boys looked up at him and spoke. “Dad,” they said in unison.
With a gasp, Harlan dragged himself back to wakefulness. Fighting an urge to vomit, he rose and tottered through to the kitchen to make a strong black coffee. He lay cradling it on the sofa, watching the television. There was nothing on the news about what’d happened to Jones — no doubt, Garrett was doing everything in his power to hush it up. As he listened to the droning voice of the news-reader, an immense weariness came over him, as if lead weights were attached to his eyelids. This time the sound of his mug clattering to the floor jerked him back from the edge of sleep.
Harlan fetched a tea-towel to mop up the coffee. The effort of doing so was enough to make his skull feel as if it was splitting apart. Not knowing what else to do with himself, he sat at the table, head on his hands. Alternating waves of nausea and drowsiness broke over him. Realising he’d be swept away by them unless he did something, he took out his mobile phone. He thumbed through the contacts list to Eve’s name. He stared at it for a long moment. Heaving a sigh, he pressed the dial button.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Eve asked on picking up the phone, her voice swaying between hope and anxiety.
“Can you come over?”
“Have you found Ethan?”
“No.”
“Oh.” The word came out in a breath of disappointment. “Then what’s changed?”
“I’m too tired to speak over the phone, Eve.” Harlan spoke slowly, but even so his words blurred into each other.
“Are you okay, Harlan? You sound strange.”
“I’m fine. I just need to see you.”
The line was silent for the space of a few breaths. Then, with a sharp little sigh in her voice, as if she was irritated with Harlan or herself, or both, Eve said, “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Harlan moved his chair to the window and sat in the gathering dusk, watching for Eve. His forehead was nodding against the glass when her car pulled into view. He dragged his feet to the front door, reaching it as she knocked. The look that came over her face when she saw him added one more thin layer to his guilt. She put her hand to her mouth, shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” Harlan said. “I wouldn’t have called you, only I need someone to help me stay awake. I’ve got a concussion. It’ll be okay, but the doctor says I shouldn’t sleep for longer than two hours at-” He broke off, swaying on his feet.
Eve darted forward to support Harlan. She helped him into bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, gazing at his pale, drawn face. “Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?” he said.
“I’d say it’s fairly obvious what happened. Susan Reed thinks that man they released, William Jones, may know something. And she asked you to question him. And when you did, he attacked you.”
Harlan smiled faintly through the pain in his head and heart. “Not bad. That’s almost exactly right. Have you ever considered a change of career? You’d make a pretty good copper.”
“No I wouldn’t. I don’t enjoy sticking my nose into other peoples’ business. And I don’t like the police much, anyway.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Besides, you said almost right. So what did I get wrong?”
“Jones didn’t do this to me.”
“So who did?”
Harlan took a long breath and told her everything. She deserved that much at least. Besides, it felt good to get it all out. When he got to the part about how he hadn’t been able to bring himself to hurt Jones, his eyes dropped away from Eve’s. “Susan Reed thinks I’m a coward.”
“A coward is the last thing you are, Harlan. You’ve just seen too much hurt.”
“Maybe not a physical coward, but a moral coward. I mean, for Christ’s sake, I killed an innocent man, but I couldn’t hurt a child-abuser who might hold the key to finding Ethan.”
Eve shook her head. “You’ve got it the wrong way around. You’d be a moral coward if you hurt Jones.”
Harlan made no reply, but his expression was unconvinced.
“Do you really think Jones knows where Ethan is?” asked Eve.
Harlan was momentarily silent in thought, then he said, “No. But he knows something about something.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Just a hunch. I’ve questioned enough people to know when someone’s hiding something.”
A ripple of unease passed over Eve’s features. “You don’t think Jones is…” she paused and gave a little shudder, before continuing, “doing something to some other child, do you?”
Harlan thought about the paintings. “I don’t know. I think he’s fighting what he is, but maybe it’s a battle he’s losing.”
Eve’s frown deepened. “It horrifies me to think that there are people like that out there.”
“Then don’t think about it. You’ve no need to.” The instant Harlan said the words he wished he hadn’t.
“Why haven’t I?” Eve demanded to know, the hurt plain in her eyes. “You don’t need to be a mother to feel that way. You just need to be alive and human.”
Alive and human. The words seemed to throb in Harlan’s mind. It’d been a long time since he’d truly felt either of those things. “I’m sorry.”
Eve’s features softened. “Forget it,” she sighed. “So what happened after you left Jones?”
Harlan told the rest of the story. When he finished, Eve asked, “Do you have any idea who attacked you?”
“Kane.”
Eve’s eyebrows lifted. “Ethan’s brother. How can you be sure it was him? You said your attacker wore a scarf over their face.”
“Yes, but not their eyes. You should’ve seen his eyes, Eve. The hate in them…” Harlan’s voice trailed off with a tremor, as a pain that was nothing to do with the lesions on his scalp poured out from his brain.
A moment of silence passed between him and Eve. He could see she wanted to say something to comfort him. But he knew as well as she did that there was nothing she could say. He cleared the knot from his throat. “Susan wants me to question Jones again, properly this time.”
“And are you going to?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“I’m not sure. All I know is I’ve got to do something. If nothing else, I must make Kane see how sorry I am.”
“How? By spending your life searching in the shadows for a boy you’ll probably never find?”
Harlan looked at Eve with a desperation close to tears. “What else can I do to make him stop hating me?”
“Oh Harlan,” murmured Eve, sympathy shining in her eyes as she reached to touch his face.
“Don’t.” Harlan moved his cheek away from her. “I don’t want sympathy. I just want to stay alive until this thing’s done.” He stared out the window. All he could see was blackness and stars. A strange sensation came over him, as if he was falling into the night sky. His eyelids drooped. “Wake me in two hours,” he managed to mumble before sleep overpowered him.
Seemingly only seconds later, Harlan felt himself being shaken awake. “It’s been two hours,” said Eve.
As Harlan rolled over to look at her, pain crackled through his skull. “Painkillers, please,” he groaned.
Eve fetched him a couple of tablets and a glass of water. “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
Eve watched with an air of resigned sadness as Harlan shakily swilled back the painkillers. She said nothing. There was nothing left for her to say. After a while, he closed his eyes and fell back asleep.
Eve woke Harlan up three more times during the night. The final time, it was getting light and she held a tray with toast and tea on it. After a silent breakfast, Harlan went through to the bathroom. He still felt headachy and dizzy, but when he looked in the mirror he saw that his pupils were no longer dilated with concussion. When he left the bathroom, Eve was waiting for him in the hallway. She had her coat on.
Harlan managed a thin smile, although a heavy, hollow ache wrung his chest at the thought of her leaving. “Thanks.”
Eve nodded, turned and left.
From the living-room window, Harlan watched Eve get into her car and drive away. Swallowing a sigh, he dropped onto the sofa and watched the morning news. Still no mention of Jones. Garrett was doing a good job of keeping a lid on the whole affair. It was only a matter of time, though. Not that there was much chance of Jones going to the media — characters like him thrived in the shadows. But every police department had its leaks.
What are you going to do now? Eve’s question came back to Harlan. The answer was simple. He was at a dead end, and there was only one thing he could do — turn around and go back over old ground, see if he’d missed anything. He retrieved his phone from the table and called Jim. “Tell me about Neil Price.”
“I’ve already told you everything you need to know. He’s clean as a baby. Never even had a speeding-ticket.”
“Everybody’s got some dirt somewhere.”
“The guy doesn’t do drugs, he doesn’t gamble, his computer’s clean. The only thing we dug up on him even vaguely interesting is that he got into some credit-card debt in his early twenties.”
“How much?”
“I can’t remember exactly. Nine or ten thousand, I think. But he finished paying it off a couple of years ago.”
“No outstanding loans?”
“No. His credit-record’s clean now.”
“What about to loan sharks?”
“Not that we know of.”
“Yeah, but we know he has the potential to get himself into debt.”
“Don’t we all? I’ll bet if I added up how much I owe on credit-cards, car loans and all the other crap, it’d be a good few thousand quid.” Jim let out a sigh. “Look, I’m telling you, Harlan, he’s just some poor kid who got caught in this mess through no fault of his own. And besides, I don’t think he’s got it in him to pull something like this.”
“How do you mean?”
“If you’d met Price you’d know what I mean. He’s the kind of guy who lets people walk all over him. He lives with his parents on the Manor. His mum’s this little mouse of a woman. But his dad’s a real tyrant. An unemployable drunk. The impression I get is that Neil and his mum spend most of their lives running around after him.”
“Maybe that’s the angle, maybe Neil’s sick of being a doormat. We’ve come across dozens of people like that — people who live passively with anger and resentment for years until suddenly one day, pop!”
“He’s not got the anger in him. I questioned him myself, pushed him real hard and he just took it. It was pathetic really. I almost felt sorry for him.”
A hint of a surprised smile tugged at Harlan’s mouth. He’d never known Jim feel sorry for himself or anyone else before. “You must be getting soft, mate.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just getting too old for this kind of work. I tell you, Harlan, some days I’m so tired — tired of dealing with scum like William Jones and putting in fifty or sixty hours a week for sod-all — that all I can think of is getting out of this job. But what else would I do, eh? This is all I know.”
“How is Jones?”
Jim gave a low whistle of contempt. “Oh he’s fine. Garrett wanted to put him up in a safe-house, but he refused. So now a couple of uniforms are sat on him day and night. If you ask me, there’s something warped about us baby-sitting that-” He broke off at a voice in the background. After a moment, he came back on the line and said, “I’ve got to go. Something’s going on. I’ll talk to you later. And Harlan, remember our deal, if you find anything out…”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll call you.”