Ben Cheetham - Blood Guilt

A gang of reporters pushed microphones closer to Susan’s trembling lips as she opened her mouth to speak. “Ethan…” Her voice cracked and she seemed to lose her breath. She was silent a moment, wrestling with her emotions, on the edge of being overcome with grief. “Ethan, if you’re out there and you can hear me, we’re doing everything we possibly can to find you.” She looked away from the cameras, steadying herself, then she addressed the kidnapper. “Please let my beautiful little boy go. Please! Please!” She couldn’t hold it together any longer. Tears spilled down her face. She dropped her head, shoulders quaking, and the man at her side gently guided her away from the microphones.

The camera panned around to focus on a crowd about four or five hundred strong, many of them carrying flowers and lighted candles. At the front of the crowd a line of children held a large banner with two pictures of Ethan flanking the words ‘HELP FIND ETHAN’ and a telephone number. The crowd applauded as Susan and the man joined them. They set off along the streets, chanting Ethan’s name. Their voices were full of a kind of sad enthusiasm, but suddenly a discordant, angry note came to the fore. The crowd bunched into tight knot outside a dilapidated two-up two-down terraced house. The house’s downstairs window was boarded with warped, rain-stained chipboard on which was graffitied in red paint ‘Pedo Scum’. As the camera homed in on the graffiti, a voiceover explained that the house belonged to William Jones.

Jones was lucky the police were holding him, Harlan reflected. He knew from experience how quickly a peaceful gathering could transform into a lynch mob. He’d once been part of a task force set up to investigate the death of a convicted paedophile whose house was ransacked by an angry mob, some of whom were only a couple of years older than Ethan.

Harlan phoned Jim. This time his ex-partner answered. “Who’s the guy with Susan Reed?” asked Harlan.

“Forget it, Harlan. You’re not getting anything else out of me, not after the way you’ve behaved. I thought we had a deal that you were going to keep away from this thing.”

“You thought wrong. Look, Jim, all I’m doing is searching the streets. I owe Susan Reed that much at least. Besides, the guy went on the national news with her. His name’s going to come out soon enough anyway.”

“I’ll tell you this much. He’s clean, no warrants, no record, and he’s got an airtight alibi.”

“He could have an accomplice.”

Jim sighed and tried to change the subject. “Have you spoken to Eve?”

“Yes. She asked if I wanted to meet up.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said no.”

“You want a piece of advice, Harlan. Call her back, tell her you’ve changed your mind.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why? She still loves you, you know.”

“I know. That’s why I can’t see her.”

Jim huffed his breath into the receiver. “Christ, I’ve never heard such a load of bollocks. If you think you’re doing Eve a favour by staying away from her, you’re wrong. All you’re doing is making both of you miserable. But then again, maybe that’s what you want. Maybe prison’s turned you into the kind of guy who enjoys misery, wallows in it like a pig in muck.”

“Maybe so.” Harlan’s eyes were drawn to the television by the sound of smashing glass. Someone had hurled a bottle at Jones’s house. The police quickly moved in to usher the crowd onwards. The camera homed in on Susan Reed, milking every ounce of agony and despair. Her boyfriend, or whatever he was, looked pale and uncomfortable, like he wanted to be somewhere else. “So what’s the guy’s alibi?”

“Jesus, Harlan,” snapped Jim, and he hung up.

Harlan switched off the television and headed for bed. He set the alarm clock for two hours hence and shut his eyes. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought about what Jim had said. Jim was wrong, prison hadn’t changed him — at least, not in the way he meant. He’d always needed a bit of misery in his life. As a detective, he’d needed it the way an oyster needs sand to form pearls. It’d provided him with the edge and insight required to do the job. The difference was that back then he’d used his misery, controlled it. Now it was the other way around.

All that night and the following day and night, Harlan relentlessly scoured the streets. He saw dozens of silver VW Golfs, but none of their number plates came close to being a match. As the hands of time ticked mercilessly towards the four day mark, his searching became ever more frantic. One time, after glimpsing a silver car in his rearview mirror, he did a high-speed U-turn and gave chase. A mile or so later, leaving a trail of blaring horns in his wake, he caught up with the car only to find it wasn’t even a VW.

There was little new to be heard on the news. For some undisclosed reason, a pond was dragged, but turned up nothing. William Jones was released without charge. The police issued warnings that vigilantism wouldn’t be tolerated. They also put up a ten thousand pound reward for information that would lead them to Ethan. Their search was building to a fever-pitch too — over a third of the regional force’s manpower was now involved. An army of volunteers wallpapered the city with Ethan’s face and handed out reams of leaflets. Susan Reed spoke to dozens of journalists, making a series of increasingly desperate appeals. But answers seemed non-existent and fear swelled like waves of fire, ready to consume the city. Parents kept their children indoors. Home security companies couldn’t keep up with demand. Police were inundated with reports of suspected prowlers.

On the evening of the third day, Garrett gave another press conference at which he admitted that the police had few clues to go on and called on people not to lose hope. Don’t lose hope! In the past, Harlan had spoken those same words to the families of missing and kidnapped persons, and they’d rung as hollow on his lips as they did on Garrett’s. He glanced at the clock. Half-past seven. There were approximately eight or nine hours of hope left. After that, anyone who knew anything about child abductions knew that Ethan would almost certainly be dead.

Time wore on. Ten PM, eleven…one AM, two… Harlan didn’t stop for food, didn’t stop for red lights, barely stopped to breathe, until the clock hit four AM. Then he pulled over and sat for a long moment with his head pressed against the steering-wheel, eyes closed. “It’s over,” he murmured to himself, and he turned the car to head back to his flat.

Harlan dropped like a stone onto his bed, but despite his exhaustion it took him hours to get to sleep. And when he did eventually manage to drop off, his sleep was one long sweaty nightmare in which he was chasing a silver VW Golf through the city. A child’s terrified face was pressed against the car’s rear windscreen, but that child wasn’t Ethan it was Thomas. On and on the chase went, but Harlan never got any closer to the car. He awoke choking on tears of frustration and rage. “It’s not fucking over!” he gasped, shaking his head. With or without hope, he had to continue searching.

Harlan yanked on his clothes and checked the news to see if there’d been any developments — there was one, the identity of Susan Reed’s companion had finally come out. His name was Neil Price. He was thirty-one years old and worked as a night-porter at the Northern General Hospital — which explained his airtight alibi. He was referred to as ‘Mrs Reed’s media-shy boyfriend’. The way the news reader said it, as if there was something intrinsically dubious in being media-shy, made Harlan’s toast stick in his craw. There was no suggestion that Price was under any kind of official suspicion, but a criminologist in the studio insidiously invited viewers to regard him with narrowed eyes by describing the classic profile of a potential abductor — white male, early thirties, unskilled worker. Harlan found himself wanting to speak up in Price’s defence — not because he thought there was no possibility the guy was involved, but because he despised the media’s tactics. He’d seen too many lives indelibly marked by shit-flinging journalists.