“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 it 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. Look, 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.”
“Not enough to hurt him, just enough to keep him subdued. I know what dose to give from working at the hospital.”
“They don’t give Diazepam to kids.”
Neil blinked away from Harlan’s hard, condemning eyes. With the tip of his knife, Harlan prodded Neil towards the second door. When he saw the drawn bolts that’d been crudely fitted to the top and bottom of the door, his heart began to pound. He quickly unlocked them. The first thing he saw as he opened the door was the drawings. The lower portion of the room’s walls was covered in colourful childish pictures of houses, vehicles, trees, people, animals and cartoon characters. ‘Mummy’ ‘Kane’ and ‘Ethan’ was written above the heads of three figures holding hands. Against the opposite wall, underneath a window that’d been boarded up from the inside as well as the outside, stood a bucket containing a stinking stew of piss and shit. The sight yanked Harlan’s mind back to the dungeon where Jamie Sutton had been held, and he felt a dark tide of rage and revulsion rising. It surged up his throat like choking flames when he saw the mass of crumpled blankets on a mattress. Comics, colouring pens, crisp packets, chocolate bar wrappers and Coke cans littered the bed and threadbare carpet.
For several barely drawn breaths, Harlan stared at the bed as though turned to stone. Then, from deep within the blankets, came a flicker of movement. Forgetting his pain, he dashed forward and pulled the sheets away to reveal Ethan’s face, very pale, but alive. Alive! Oh God, the relief. It hit him like a punch to the gut, forcing his breath out in a rush. The boy was wearing filthy Spiderman pyjamas. He’d lost weight, making him look as if he might break at the merest touch, but there was no sign of any injuries. His eyes were closed, the eyeballs moving rapidly beneath their lids. A frown rippled across the smooth surface of his forehead. His dry, cracked lips twitched in a silent scream, but he was unable to pull himself from the depths of whatever nightmare he was trapped in.
“Ethan,” said Harlan. No response. He repeated the boy’s name louder, tapping his cheek. Ethan’s eyelids flickered and a soft moan escaped his lips, but he still didn’t wake. Harlan put the torch down, its beam facing the doorway. Gently sliding one arm under Ethan’s neck and the other behind his knees, he attempted to lift him. The boy was light as a pillow, but he felt heavy as lead to Harlan. His whole body shook with the strain. His head swam in a flood of dizzy agony.
“Here, let me help,” offered Neil, stepping forward.
“Don’t fucking touch him!” hissed Harlan, flashing him a look of violent wrath. It was then that he saw the figure wearing a balaclava stood behind Neil. The figure was about Harlan’s height and build. In one hand — the backs of which were covered with curls of dark hair — he held some kind of old-fashioned revolver with a long barrel, which was aimed at Harlan.
“Put him down.”
Harlan recognised the voice immediately. It was the same voice he’d heard over Neil’s phone. He lowered Ethan back onto the mattress and stood with his body shielding him, hands spread.
The eyes staring tensely out of the balaclava flicked towards Neil. “What the fuck’s going on?” their owner demanded to know. “Who’s he?”
“He’s the one I told you about,” said Neil.
“The ex-copper?”
Neil nodded. “Put the gun down, Martin.”
“Don’t use my fuckin’ name.”
“He already knows your name. He knows everything.”
“What? How the fuck-”
“I told him.”
Martin’s eyes popped wide. “Why?”
A sigh heaved from Neil. “Does it matter?”
“Course it fuckin’ does. Now tell me or I’ll blast a hole in your face.”
“Do that and you’ll go down for murder as well as kidnapping,” said Harlan.
“They’ll have to catch me first.”
“You’re already caught. The police are on their way.”
Martin cocked his head, listening. “Then why don’t I hear no sirens, eh?”
“Sirens would warn you they were coming. I know how they work, and believe me, right now this building’s being surrounded by armed units. If you want to get out of here in one piece, I suggest you do as Neil says and put the gun down.”
Martin barked out a harsh laugh. “You must think I’m stupid. There’s no way in hell I’m putting this-” He broke off with a sharp exclamation as Neil lunged for the gun. The muzzle flashed, there was a concussive bang. Harlan felt the bullet go by his head. He staggered sideways, the smell of gun powder stinging his nostrils, ears ringing, momentarily dazzled. When his vision cleared after a few seconds, he saw that Neil and Martin were locked together. Martin’s free hand was pummelling Neil’s face with short, powerful punches. Neil had Martin pressed against a wall. Both his hands were on the gun, yanking at it, prising Martin’s fingers off the grip. As suddenly as they’d come together, the two men staggered apart. Only now, Neil was holding the gun. Gasping for breath, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, he pointed it at Martin.
“Don’t,” cried Martin, flinging up his hands.
“Don’t,” echoed Harlan. “You pull that trigger and your life’s over.”
Neil looked at Harlan. And when Harlan saw his eyes he knew what he was going to do.
“It already is. Tell Susan I’m sorry,” said Neil. Then he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His head snapped back. Fragments of skull, brain matter and clotted hair splattered across the wall, oozing down over Ethan’s drawings, making it look as if some kind of massacre had taken place. Neil briefly rocked on his heels, smoke trickling from the shattered remains of his mouth, before dropping the gun and pitching backward.
Harlan’s eyes darted between the gun and Martin. Martin’s eyes did the same. Harlan gave a slight shake of his head. For a moment, time seemed to hold its breath. Then both men went for the gun. Martin was faster. He snatched it up and brought its butt down on Harlan’s head. A corona of white light flashing over his vision, Harlan collapsed onto his face. He felt Martin press the gun against the back of his head. So this is it, he thought, this is how I die. “Don’t hurt the boy,” he said in a pained, ragged whisper. Hoping to buy some time, he added, “You can still go through with your plan.”
“How the fuck’s that possible?”
“I was lying about the police.”
“You mean they’re not outside.”
“They don’t know about any of this. No one else does.”
Martin mulled these words over for a few precious seconds. “So let me get this straight, all I have to do is kill you and I’m in the clear.”
“Or I could take Neil’s place as your partner. Think about it, I could tell the police I followed him here and found Ethan.” Harlan knew there was no logic in what he was saying, but every word kept him and, more importantly, Ethan alive another breath. “That way, I’d be able to claim the reward, then we could split it.”
“And what’s to stop you telling the coppers the truth once I don’t have my gun pointed at your head?”
“You have my word of honour.”
“Your word of honour.” Martin snorted with laughter. “Your word of fuckin’ honour! That’s classic, that is. Nice try, mate, but I’m afraid I’ll have to turn down your-” He was interrupted by a shrill female voice calling to him from the landing.
“Martin! Martin!”
Scowling, he bellowed back, “What the fuck do you want?”
“I saw some people creeping about outside. I think it’s the coppers.”
The scowl turned into taut-lipped grimace. Martin pressed the gun barrel even harder into Harlan’s head. “You fuckin’ lying bastard,” he hissed. “I ought to blow your fuckin’ brains out just for the hell of it.”
Harlan closed his eyes and pictured Tom — the dark eyes peering out from beneath a tousle of equally dark hair, the cute snub-nose and full, smiling lips. He saw him more clearly than he had done in years. So clearly he could almost reach out and touch him. A sense of calm stole over him. If this really was it, he was ready.
“Ach! You’re not fuckin’ worth it,” spat Martin.
Harlan felt him take the gun away. He heard him sprint out the room, slam the door and shoot the bolts. Before he had time to feel relief or anything else, he heard a low whimper from beside him. Twisting his head, he saw that Ethan was awake — awake and staring at Neil, eyes like huge marbles as they took in the destroyed face, the widening slick of blood. He could almost hear the hiss of the image branding itself on the boy’s brain. From somewhere he found the strength to rise, enfold Ethan in his arms and turn him away from the corpse. The boy whimpered again and struggled weakly, but he subsided into trembling stillness as Harlan stroked his hair, shushing him and soothing, “It’s okay, Ethan. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Like a mantra, he repeated the words, until he heard booted feet in the hallway. “In here,” he shouted.
The bolts clicked. The door jerked inwards. Two officers wearing bullet-proof vests and armed with pistols entered the room. “Show us your hands!” bellowed one of them.
Overcome by a sudden reluctance to let Ethan go, Harlan hesitated to do so. He knew it was illogical, but he had the feeling that he was the only one who could protect Ethan, the only one who could truly keep him safe.
“Do it now!”
Harlan held onto the boy.
A female detective appeared. “It’s okay, he’s with us,” she told the armed officers, ushering them out of the room. She turned to Harlan and said softly, “I need you to let go of Ethan. We have to get him…we have to get both of you to hospital.”
“Have you got Yates?” asked Harlan.
The detective nodded. “And his girlfriend. They gave themselves up without a fight.”
Harlan turned his head and murmured in Ethan’s ear, “Close your eyes.” He waited for Ethan to do so, before adding, “Promise me you’ll keep them closed until you’re a long way away from here.”
In a heartbreakingly small voice, Ethan said, “I promise.”
“Good boy.”
Harlan nodded at the detective. At a gesture from her, a uniform came to scoop up Ethan and carry him away. Harlan struggled to stand, but the detective held up a hand to stay him. “There are paramedics on their way up.”
Harlan slumped back onto the mattress. The detective looked dispassionately at Neil’s nearly faceless corpse. “Who’s he?”
“He’s nobody,” said Harlan. “Nobody at all.”