Ben Cheetham - Blood Guilt

“And how’s that exactly?”

“A hero.”

“A hero?” Harlan’s mouth twisted on the word. He almost laughed. “The last thing I am is a fucking hero.”

“Maybe, but most of them don’t know you like I do. They don’t know what a suicidal nut job you really are.” The wryness left Jim’s face. “All they know is you risked your life to save that boy’s.”

“And beat a man half to death in the process.”

“A convicted paedophile who’d been questioned and released. Just imagine the fallout if you were jailed for succeeding where we’d failed. Garrett’s future job prospects wouldn’t be worth shit.”

“I might’ve killed Jones. Nash too.”

“But you didn’t.”

Harlan’s eyes dropped away from Jim’s. His voice dropped too. “No, but I wanted to.”

Jim stared down at Harlan a moment, a slight frown over his jaded cop’s eyes. Then he spoke in a husky but gentle tone. “Get some rest. Heal that wound.”

“Anyway, I didn’t succeed,” murmured Harlan. “Ethan’s still missing.”

“Not for much longer. I’m going to crack that bastard Nash wide open. Believe me, by the time I’m finished with him he’ll be spilling like a broken egg. And think on this, Harlan: Nash kept Jamie Sutton alive for over four months. Ethan’s been missing half that time.”

“I have thought on it.” Harlan looked grimly from the plastic cup in his hand to Jim. “Three to ten days.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that even if Ethan’s alive, he won’t be much longer unless he’s found. Don’t you remember your survival training? Three to ten days is how long a person can survive without water.”

For a heartbeat longer, the two men held each other’s gaze. Then Jim turned and hurried away. It suddenly occurred to Harlan that there was a question he hadn’t asked. One he badly wanted the answer to. “Have you told Eve what’s happened?” he called after Jim. But he was already gone.

Weariness throbbed in Harlan’s head, pulling him into sleep. Looking into the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw a parade of people. Everyone who’d ever meant anything to him was there. All of them merging, like droplets of spilled blood. Then he was facing a mirror. But instead of seeing himself, he saw Nash. He clamped his hands around Nash’s throat, squeezing as hard as he could to no effect. “Where is he?” he desperately demanded to know. Suddenly, as if he’d dissolved into the air, Nash was gone. But Harlan was still squeezing, only now his hands were on his own throat. They seemed to be glued there. His head felt like a balloon ready to pop. “Eve,” he choked out. “Eve.”

When Harlan awoke Eve was there, sat at his bedside, like a prayer answered. She looked worried, but calm. Harlan drank in her face, her scent, and felt it ease through him like whisky. Smiling, he stretched out a hand and she took it between hers. But she didn’t smile back. “How long have you been there?” he asked.

“A while. How are you feeling?”

“They’ve got me pumped so full of drugs I can’t feel anything much at all.”

“You called out my name in your sleep.”

The dream suddenly came back to Harlan. A little shudder ran through him. “I was having a nightmare.”

“About me?”

“No. I wanted you to save me.”

“From what?”

“Myself.”

A sad smile played over Eve’s lips. “I wish I could, Harlan, but I can’t. No one can save you but yourself.” She glanced at the bulge of Harlan’s bandage showing through the sheets. “Only you can decide what’s enough.”

What’s enough? Harlan didn’t have to think to know the answer to that question. Finding Ethan. That was the only ‘enough’ there was for him. He didn’t say this to Eve. He didn’t have to. She’d already read it in his eyes. She sighed. “Jim’s right. You do have a death wish.”

“You’ve spoken to him?”

“Who do you think told me you were here?”

“What else did he tell you?”

“Not much, just that you’d been stabbed. He was pretty cagey, even by his standards.”

“Did he mention Ethan Reed?” Harlan knew Jim wouldn’t have, but he had to ask anyway.

“No.”

“What day is this?”

“Thursday.”

Harlan’s brow contracted. He’d been in hospital two days. Which meant that at the most optimistic estimate, Ethan had seven or eight days to live. In all probability, Ethan would already be suffering the symptoms of severe dehydration: he’d have a headache and nausea; a raised body temperature and increased pulse rate; his muscles would be tingling and twitching; his vision growing dim; he might even be starting to hallucinate. Of course, that was assuming he was still alive at all. Which he almost certainly wasn’t.

“What’s going on, Harlan?” asked Eve. “Who did this to you?”

Harlan told Eve what’d happened. He left out any mention of Jones. Not because he didn’t trust her to keep it to herself, but because he was afraid how it would affect the way she looked at him. She knew, of course, that he was capable of the kind of drunken, self-destructive violence that’d led to Robert Reed’s death. But cold, calculated torture? She’d always despised that kind of violence. If she found out he was capable of it, would she ever again be able to look at him with the same purity of love that she was doing now? He doubted it. And with that doubt came the realisation that he needed her love more than anything, more even than he needed to suffer for his guilt. Without it, there could be no light at the end of the tunnel for him. Just darkness.

Bright-eyed and tight-lipped with tension, Eve listened. When Harlan finished, a light of hope flickering in her voice, she said, “So you got him. You got the guy who took Ethan.”

“Looks like it.”

“It’s over then.”

Harlan shook his head. “Ethan’s still missing.”

“But surely there’s nothing else you can do to help find him.”

“Assuming it was Nash who abducted him.”

“Of course it was. Who else could it be?”

Harlan thought about Jones. He thought about the prison segregation ward where he’d been housed alongside other inmates who weren’t fit for general population — serial rapists, paedophiles, child killers. “There are a lot of bad people out there.”

An edge of irritation came into Eve’s tone. “Do you think I don’t know that? I lived with a policeman for over ten years, remember?”

“Sorry, Eve, I didn’t mean to patronise you. You’re right, Nash almost certainly is the kidnapper. But I’m just trying to point out that things aren’t always as they seem.”

“And I’m just trying to find something to hold onto, something to give me the strength to endure.” Tears formed in the corners of Eve’s eyes. She looked away from Harlan. He squeezed her hand. He wished he could tell her what he knew she wanted to hear — that the nightmare would soon be over. But he couldn’t. When she returned her gaze to his, her tears had receded and she managed a faint smile. “Whatever the truth is, whatever happens from now on, I want you to know how proud I am of you. You’ve done something…” she searched for the right word, “wonderful. Surely it’s got to make you feel better about yourself knowing you saved that boy’s life and prevented that man from hurting anyone else.”

Do I feel any better about myself? wondered Harlan. I’ve taken a life and saved a life. Does one cancel out the other? He didn’t know. All he knew was that the guilt was still there, festering like a pus-filled sore. Perhaps it would never be healed, not even if Ethan was found alive. “I did what I had to do. Nothing more.”

Eve shook her head. “There you go again, always down playing the good things you do. In a way, I suppose it’s comforting that some things about you never change.”