Ben Cheetham - Blood Guilt

“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.”

Careful not to wet his bandage, Harlan showered and shaved. Then, pausing occasionally to steady himself, he dressed and made his way down to his car. According to the doctor, he shouldn’t drive for another twenty-four hours or so. But the thought of doing nothing was even more nauseating than his concussion. The effort of concentrating on driving made his head reel. Several times he was forced to pull over and wait for the world to stop spinning in front of his eyes.

Harlan didn’t need an A-Z to find Manor Lane. He knew it all too well from his days on the force. It dissected the Manor — an estate with a bad rep as a playground for binge-drinking, mugging, joyriding, happy-slapping hoodies. Neil Price’s parents’ house was at the lower end of Manor Lane, with a view overlooking the traffic-clogged Parkway and the industrial sprawl of Attercliffe and Tinsley. Harlan drove slowly past it and pulled over a few doors down on the opposite side of street. The house was a dirty red-brick semi with a small front lawn that managed to be both threadbare and overgrown. A beat-up Volvo was parked outside its front door. The neighbouring house, like numerous other houses dotted around the huge estate, was boarded up with metal sheets. Harlan reflected that there was certainly no shortage of places thereabouts to stash an abducted child. Both sets of upstairs curtains were drawn. Harlan guessed that Neil and his dad were respectively sleeping off a night-shift and a hangover. The downstairs curtains were open and the flicker of a television was visible. As he’d passed the house, he’d seen a late-middle-aged, mousey-faced little woman sat in an armchair.

Harlan tuned the radio to the news, and settled back to watch the house. He wasn’t worried about people wondering what he was doing there. Manor Lane was a busy road. Moreover, its residents were accustomed to turning a blind eye to what went on outside their front doors. Not that most of them weren’t decent, honest people. Only they’d become hardened, worn down or simply desensitised by the relentlessness of their lives. And they were sick of being tarred with the same brush as the criminals. It all added up to a toxic cocktail of distrust, apathy and silence.

Harlan wondered how Neil Price had fared growing up on the estate. For someone as obviously sensitive as him, life must’ve been a bitter pill to swallow. Places like the Manor had a way of finding and homing in on weakness like a predator to prey. A gawky, skinny misfit like Neil would’ve been an easy target for the other kids to tease and bully. Surely somewhere beneath that timid exterior there was a store of pent-up anger and frustration simmering away. Or maybe Jim was right, maybe Neil really didn’t have it in him. If the former was the case, Harlan was determined to find a line of attack to draw it out of him.

Harlan’s attention was drawn to the radio by the sound of Garrett’s voice. He realised why Jim had to get off the phone so suddenly as, after the usual preliminaries, Garrett said, “The abduction of Ethan Reed clearly embodies peoples’ deepest fears about the safety of their own children. I understand peoples’ frustration and anger about the perceived lack of progress in this case, but vigilantism will not be tolerated in this city. Those engaged in such activities will be caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We ask people to trust us to do our jobs. Over the past few weeks the incident room has been inundated with calls from members of the public who’ve provided us with information. This information is being scrutinised by teams of specially trained officers who are exhausting every avenue we’re provided with. Our officers clearly won’t be able to do that job as effectively if they also have to deal with citizens taking the law into their own hands.”

Harlan shifted his attention back to the house as Garrett continued to bang on about how his officers were resolutely following up every lead, whilst telling the media nothing about what those leads were. The obvious assumption was that the release of such information would compromise the investigation. In truth, Harlan suspected it was because the leads amounted to the same as what they had on day one — zip, zilch, fuck all.

Shortly after midday, a set of upstairs curtains opened and Neil appeared at the window. He stood looking out at the street a moment, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Then he turned and moved from view. Half-an-hour or so later, he emerged from the house and got into the Volvo. Harlan slid down in his seat as the Volvo reversed onto the road and drove past him. He waited until the car was almost out of view, before accelerating after it. He followed at an inconspicuous distance as Neil headed through Attercliffe towards Susan’s house. He pulled over at the end of her street, out of sight of her house. There was a chance that when Neil left he wouldn’t come back this way. But it was a chance Harlan would have to take. Susan’s house was almost certainly under surveillance.

At three o’clock the Volvo reappeared with Susan in the passenger-seat. Harlan tailed it to a nearby comprehensive school. Children were streaming out the gates, some getting into cars and buses, others heading home on foot or bicycle. His stomach squeezed unexpectedly at the sight. Many were the age Tom would’ve been by now. Some even looked like he might’ve looked. Many times Harlan had tried to comfort himself with the thought that Tom’s early death had saved him from the cruelty and pain of the world. That might’ve been true, but seeing the chatting, laughing, shouting throng drove home how hollow that comfort was.

As Harlan dragged in a shaky breath, he spotted Kane. The boy was slouched by the gates, hands thrust in pockets, eyes down. Susan got out of the Volvo and approached him. He followed her back to the car, dragging his feet, still staring sulkily at the pavement. Harlan could easily guess what the problem was — before Ethan’s abduction Kane would, more often than not, have made his own way home, but now he was forced to endure the daily humiliation of being collected by his mum.

Neil returned to Susan’s house. Again, Harlan waited outside her street. Thirty minutes passed. An hour. Neil reappeared on foot, carrying a bulging carrier-bag. Harlan got out of his car. As he tailed Neil through the noisy, fumy rush-hour streets, the dull nagging ache in his head intensified to a severe throbbing. Neil handed out leaflets from the bag to everyone he passed. One man shoved the leaflet straight into a bin. Harlan retrieved it and saw a grainy black-and-white image of Ethan’s smiling face. Occasionally, Neil went into a shop — no doubt, to ask if he could put a missing-person poster in the window. Slowly but surely, Neil worked his way to the Baptist tabernacle. The preacher, Lewis Gunn, met him at its entrance. They shook hands and went inside.