Ben Cheetham - Blood Guilt

“Of course it bloody matters.” Eve’s voice was sharp with irritation. But it softened as she added, “It matters because I love you and I want to be with you.”

I feel the same way, thought Harlan. He didn’t say the words, though. It wouldn’t have been fair.

“So when can I see you?” asked Eve.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? How long are we talking about here? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?”

“However long it takes.”

“However long it takes.” Eve repeated the words as though struggling to understand them. “So I’m supposed to spend my life in limbo, waiting for you.”

“I’m not asking you to wait for me. I’m just trying to be as straight as I can with you.”

“Oh, thanks.” Eve’s voice was loaded with sarcasm and hurt.

“I’m sorry, Eve.”

She sighed, not angry anymore, just sad and full of yearning. “Don’t be sorry, Harlan, just promise me one thing. Promise me that after all this is over you’ll come back to me.”

“I promise.” Harlan’s voice was thick with suppressed emotion. He knew he couldn’t allow himself to feel too much, not while faced with the task before him. He had to be hard in thought and feeling, or else the paralysis would seize him, and he’d be powerless even to leave his flat. “I’ve got to go now, Eve. Take care.”

Before Eve could reply, Harlan hung up. As he turned away from the window, the clouds burst and dirty black rain pelted the glass, ushering in an even dirtier, blacker night.

On his way to Jones’s house, Harlan bought a hooded sweatshirt, a rucksack, a torch, a screwdriver, a crowbar, leather gloves, a balaclava and a roll of duct tape. He spread his purchases around several stores, paying with cash. He parked in an unlit side-street half-a-mile or so from his destination, pulled on the sweatshirt, and head bowed against the rain, continued on foot.

By the time Harlan reached Jones’s street, the lampposts were blinking into life. Jones’s house was in the middle of the terrace, its front door soot blackened from what appeared to be a recent arson attack, its boarded up windows daubed with fresh graffiti. ‘DEAD MAN WALKING’ proclaimed blood-red letters a foot high. No light seeped out from around the edges of the rain-bowed chipboard. The house wore an air of desertion.

Harlan slowed his pace, scanning the vehicles parked along the kerb. None of them were occupied. His gaze lingered on a black van across the street. Yanking his hood as far down over his face as it would go, he walked past Jones’s house. Near the far end of the street, he darted into a ginnel between two unlit houses. His gaze flicked back and forth from the van to Jones’s house. Neither showed any sign of being inhabited. Considering the amount of time that’d elapsed since Ethan’s abduction, he doubted Garrett would be keeping Jones under surveillance — unless it was for his own protection. Looking at the dilapidated, battered house, he also doubted whether Jones continued to live there. More likely, he reflected, he’d been put up in an ex-offender’s hostel until the anger against him died down. Guilt-tinged relief seeped through him at the thought.

When a car pulled over outside the ginnel, Harlan moved off. Behind the row of terraces there ran a cobbled alley flanked by high brick walls and sturdy wooden gates with their house numbers painted on them. As he neared Jones’s gate, Harlan saw that he’d been wrong — a faint glimmer of light was visible through an intact upstairs window. His heart began to palpitate. A glance at the wall told him there was no way he was going over it — at least, not without tearing his hands to shreds. It was topped with a layer of cement in which was embedded nails and shards of glass. He turned his attention to the gate, which had a heavy-duty lock. After studying it a moment, he headed back to his car. He stopped at a phone box and called Susan Reed. The instant she picked up, he said, “You should stay in tonight.” Before she could make a reply, he hung up.

Harlan sat hunched down in his car, watching the rain, trying to focus only on what he needed to do. But his mind kept turning to Eve — her face, her voice, the way her body felt when he held her in his arms. He turned on the radio to drown out his thoughts. There was no mention of Ethan’s abduction on the news. The media were losing interest. They’d wrung every last drop of drama out of the story as it stood. Now they were eagerly awaiting new developments.

The hours crawled by like they were as weighed down with anxiety as Harlan. At one AM, he packed the gear into the rucksack, shouldered it and left the car again. Keeping to the shadows, he made his way back along the alley to Jones’s house. There was no light in the upstairs window now. He took out the crowbar, and after a quick glance to check no one was around, set to work. He jammed the crowbar between the gate and its frame and threw his weight against it, heaving it back and forth until the muscles of his arms burned. The wood cracked and splintered and finally, with a groan, the lock gave way. He found himself in small concrete yard strewn with the debris of material Jones had used to repair and reinforce his house — rotten wooden boards, bags of mouldy cement, rusty screws and nails. He crouched in the darkness, barely breathing, listening. There were no sounds of movement from inside the house.

Harlan pulled on the balaclava, then picked his way across the yard to the backdoor. He briefly aimed the torch beam at it. The door was reinforced with steel panels and deadbolts. It would take a battering-ram to break it down. He turned his attention to the downstairs window, which was protected by wire-mesh screwed into the brickwork. The window had no visible lock. He took out his screwdriver and set to work removing the screws, many of which were almost ready to drop out of the crumbling mortar. He piled up some bags of cement and stood on them to reach the uppermost screws. When they were all out, he peeled away the mesh, jimmied the blade of the screwdriver under the rattling, rotten window frame and dislodged the latch. Seconds later he was wriggling in through the open window, pulling aside the curtains and lowering himself to the floor. There was a hollow clink of glass bottles as his feet came into to contact with a plastic bag. He froze, ears straining. Again, there was no sound of movement.

Nose wrinkling at a pungent smell that was part fried food and alcohol, part stale cigarette smoke and even staler sweat, part mildew and something else he couldn’t quite place, Harlan reached for his torch. Its pale yellow beam revealed what the something else was — an easel was set up in the centre of the room, holding a canvas thickly encrusted with gaudy, glistening acrylic paint. The painting depicted a group of children at a playground, kicking their legs high on some swings, their heads thrown back, their mouths wide with laughter. It would’ve been a perfectly innocent scene in any other context, but seeing it here gave Harlan a cold feeling in his stomach. The feeling intensified as he shone the torch around the walls, which were covered with dozens of paintings and drawings. Some hung in cheap frames, others were simply tacked to the yellowed woodchip wallpaper. Some portrayed scenes similar to the canvas on the easel, others showed children at play in school-yards, children riding bicycles, children eating, children reading, children sleeping. All the paintings’ subjects were rendered in too-bright colours, so that they seemed to possess a heightened reality. There was nothing overtly sinister about any of the individual artworks, yet collectively it was one of the most sinister things he’d ever seen. He realised now why Jones stubbornly refused to leave his house. This collection was clearly his pride and joy — his life’s work.