Ben Cheetham - Blood Guilt

Harlan rubbed at his temples, trying to relieve the pressure lodged behind them, but it just built and built. He took out his phone and stared at Jack Holland’s delicate, chubby face as if internally debating something. Suddenly, his expression tired but set, he grabbed his shoes and coat, and hurried down to his car. Speeding along quiet night roads, he passed through the suburbs to the edge of the city and beyond. Following a sign marked ‘Manchester’, he turned down a slip-road to the M1. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he got there. All he knew was that he had to keep moving, keep searching.

Harlan was about twenty miles out from Sheffield, when his phone rang. It was Jim. His weariness had been replaced with uncharacteristic excitement. “You’re not gonna believe this, Harlan. The kid, Jack Holland, he got away.”

Harlan’s eyes popped wide. “Fucking hell. How?”

“We’re still getting the full story, but from what we know it went down something like this. Jack was grabbed from behind and thrown in the back of a white transit van. He was gagged and blindfolded and his hands and feet were tied. After what felt like hours to him, the van stopped and he was carried from it and put down on something soft. He heard his kidnapper moving away. He managed to work his hands free and remove his blindfold. He found that he was alone, lying on a mattress in a tunnel-”

“A tunnel,” broke in Harlan, frowning. “What kind of tunnel?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute. So anyway, the kid’s in this tunnel and it’s almost pitch black, but he can see daylight in the distance. He unties his legs and tries to make a run for it, but he can’t because his feet are numb from having the circulation cut off. So, get this, he crawls on his hands and knees until the feeling comes back. At the end of the tunnel there’s an overgrown drainage ditch. As Jack’s climbing out of the ditch, he hears a man’s voice shouting something. He doesn’t look to see who the voice belongs to. He runs into some nearby woods and hides. He hears somebody moving through the undergrowth, but he doesn’t dare lift his head to look at them. When he can’t hear anyone anymore, he starts running again. Beyond the woods, there’s a road. He flags down a passing car. The driver calls us. Turns out, Jack was taken to a disused storm-drain twenty or so miles to the east of where he was snatched.”

As Harlan listened to Jim, his frown deepened until a furrow like a knife wound was cut into his forehead. “Are you at the storm-drain now?”

“Yeah. It’s a scary fucking place, right out in the middle of nowhere. You could scream your head off and nobody would ever hear.”

“Can you send me a photo of it?”

“Sure. But why? What are you thinking?”

“I’m not exactly sure. I just need to see it.”

“Okay. Hold on a second. I’m sending it.”

Harlan’s phone beeped. He opened the photo and stared at it in silence, his heart pounding in his throat. As Jim had described, the drainage ditch was choked with nettles and brambles. A path had been beaten through them to a circular brick drain roughly six feet in diameter, protruding from the base of a steep grassy bank. The drain’s entrance was covered with a rusty metal grille that’d been bent outwards. Beyond the grille was a darkness so thick it seemed as solid as the brick encircling it. A shudder ran through him as his mind superimposed an image onto the photo of two figures drawn in silhouette — an adult and a child holding hands.

“So come on, Harlan, out with it,” said Jim. “I can hear that brain of yours ticking over.”

Harlan opened his mouth to tell him about Jones’s drawing, but shut it again without saying anything. There was no way Jones was directly involved with Jack Holland’s abduction, not with all the heat that was on him. And a drawing hardly proved that Jones knew anything about what went on at the storm-drain. But Harlan felt certain down to the marrow of his bones that he did. He felt equally certain that the police wouldn’t be able to get anything out of Jones, not unless they could find some physical evidence — DNA from a semen stain on the mattress, maybe — to link him to the drain. But even if they could, which seemed highly unlikely, that kind of forensic work took time — time Ethan, assuming beyond all optimistic hope that he was still alive, didn’t have. If Ethan and Jack’s kidnapper was one and the same, whoever it was would most likely be attempting to destroy any incriminating evidence, burning it, throwing it away, burying it. You’re the only chance Ethan’s got, thought Harlan with rising nausea, you have to act, and act now. Tyres screeching, he swerved sharply onto a slip-road.

“Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind or do I have to guess?” asked Jim.

“I can’t talk anymore right now.”

Jim’s breath rasped down the line as if he’d expected that answer. “One more thing before you hang up. We found some photos in the drain. Photos of boys, some of them little more than-” Even more uncharacteristically, rage clogged his throat. It was a few seconds before he could continue. “Whatever you need to do to get this fucker, Harlan, you do it.”

“I will.”

Harlan hung up and concentrated on the road. He drove as if he saw Ethan in front of him, tied up, waiting to be slaughtered. He stopped to rush into an all-night supermarket. The checkout girl gave him an uneasy look when he dumped the contents of his basket — parcel-tape, a screwdriver set, a torch, matches, a can of lighter fluid, a Stanley knife, gloves, a hooded sweatshirt and a Halloween mask — in front of her. He paid with cash and sprinted to his car. Twenty minutes later he was at the end of William Jones’s street, scanning the vehicles parked along the kerb. His gaze fixed on a van with tinted windows opposite Jones’s house. Was it an unmarked police vehicle? If, as seemed likely, it was, he was going to need some kind of diversion.

Harlan pulled out of sight of the van, put on the sweatshirt and got out of his car. He approached a row of lock-up garages at the end of Jones’s street, jammed a screwdriver into the lock of the first one he came to and twisted. The lock wouldn’t budge. He tried the next garage along. This time the lock gave and he lifted the door just enough to duck under it. The garage was empty, except for some dusty old furniture. He quickly piled up several chairs, sprayed lighter fluid over them and put a lighted match to them. As flames whooshed up, he sprinted back to his car. He hunched down in his seat, burning with anticipation. It was like he’d set a fire in his head as well as the garage. He concentrated on his breathing, focusing his mind. By the time the two men appeared from the end of the street, he’d restored an icy clarity to his thoughts. The way they moved, the way the carried themselves, told him they were plainclothes coppers. One of them spoke into a mobile phone — no doubt, phoning for a fire engine — while the other approached the garage, from which thick black smoke was billowing.

Harlan slunk out of his car, darting into the shadows of the alleyway behind Jones’s house. When he saw the gate to Jones’s backyard, he knew there was no way he could break through it. The gate and surrounding frame had been reinforced with steel bars. A glance at the top of the gate told him there was no way he was climbing over it either, not without tearing himself to shreds. Coils of razor wire had been strung along it and the wall. The house was as secure as a fortress, or a prison, depending on how you looked at it. There was only one way he was getting in — the front way.

Harlan ran to the opposite end of the street from the burning garage. Slowing to walking pace, he approached Jones’s front door. The plainclothes policemen still stood watching the fast growing fire. He raised his fist to knock, but hesitated. Again, flames licked at his brain, illuminating Robert Reed’s blood-streaked, dead face. Focus, he told himself sharply, focus. You have to forget Rob Reed. Forget you’re human. You’re a machine that won’t stop until its job is done. He rapped his knuckles against the door — a policeman’s knock, heavy and commanding — and turned his back to it. A moment later, a familiar voice piped up nervously from behind the door. “Who is it? What do you want?”