Harte

by Robert Innes

  “What do you mean he isn’t my son?” Frost murmered. “Of course he’s my son. I had a relationship with your landlord, you idiot. How do you think I’ve known your movements all this time? I’ve been getting them off my son.”

  “That’s the thing though, Thomas,” Blake replied seriously. “Jacqueline had a brief fling with your father. You didn’t know about that, did you? For the past twenty-five years, you’ve actually had a brother you didn’t know about.”

  “No,” Frost muttered. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m afraid not. I mean, it’s sort of sweet that you want to try and be a father to this one after the mess you made of your last son. Simon, wasn’t it? Ran away to Australia to get away from the realisation that his father was a murderer. Still, we all deserve a second chance, don’t we?”

  For the first time since Blake had ever laid eyes on the monster before him, Frost’s icy persona began to drop. He lowered the lighter, the tightness on Sally’s neck slackening further, allowing her to breathe a little easier.

  “Why?” Frost murmered. “Why would he do that to me?”

  “Look, Dad,” Tom said imploringly from Blake’s phone. “It doesn’t matter to me. You don’t have to do any of this anymore. I thought all this was about getting you free, I thought you wanted to make amends!”

  “Amends?” Blake said, with a harsh laugh. “Your brother doesn’t do amends, Tom. Far from it. Your brother’s whole plan was to get me and Sally together like he has now, so he could brutally murder her in front of me so that he could deliver his own twisted form of justice. You were just a pawn, wasn’t he, Frost? Just a foot soldier in his big old battle plan.”

  “I refuse to accept this,” Frost suddenly shouted, again grabbing Sally’s throat. “This is all lies. My father would not…He did everything for me!”

  “Yeah,” Blake murmered. “Absolutely everything. Unconditional love. Right down to protecting you when you claimed your first ever victim, your own grandmother. His mum, Frost! You killed his mother and he still tried to protect you. And you’re going to get angry with him because he lied about his relationship with some woman you met when you were a teenager? Where’s the fairness in that?” Again, Blake took a bold step forward. “It’s all been a lie, Frost. All of it. You don’t have any family, not any more. Every single one of them has had to run away to get away from you, to protect themselves from you. You’ve wrecked enough lives. It’s over. Now, let Sally go.”

  For the briefest of moments, Frost seemed like he was about to weaken. His grip on Sally lessened and he flicked the lid down on the lighter.

  Then, the doors to the living room burst open and suddenly around ten police officers poured into the room, some carrying pistols, all pointing in Frost’s direction. There was chaos, all of them yelling instructions and Blake suddenly found himself being pushed aside.

  “Wait!” he shouted. “Get Sally out of here!”

  He rushed forwards and pulled the gag out of Sally’s mouth.

  “Blake…” she murmered.

  “It’s okay,” he told her, before kissing her on the head. “It’s over. You’re safe.”

  “He’s…he’s…”

  Blake looked up and cursed loudly. In the brief moment of complete confusion, Frost had disappeared.

  “Where did he go?” Blake asked her.

  “Through there,” Sally said, her voice raspy. “Upstairs.”

  The door to the hallway was now open and Blake could just make out the figure of Frost running towards the stairs.

  “Get her out of here,” he ordered to the nearest officer.

  “Where’s the target?” the officer snapped.

  “Just get her out,” Blake repeated.

  Without waiting for an answer, Blake hurried out of the room and ran upstairs. He had never gone into the house any further than the living room and the darkness around him from the boarded up windows on the front of the house blocking out any light made it difficult to see very far in front of him.

  He ran up the stairs two at a time and soon the noise from downstairs had begun to fade away and as he stopped to look around, he could hear liquid being poured from the room at the other end of the corridor.

  Slowly, Blake walked towards the door and pushed it open.

  There was Frost, emptying the remains of what looked like a plastic petrol cannister all around the room, the smell of the petrol now so strong that it caused Blake’s eyes to tear up.

  “Where did you get the petrol?” It was the only thing he could think to ask.

  Frost looked up at him but did not answer.

  “Oh, of course,” Blake murmered. “That house further down the road, the one with the old car in the drive. There were petrol cannisters in their garage. My mum hates that car. Says it lets the area down.”

  Frost was breathing heavily, staring at Blake intently. Again, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the lighter.

  “Oh, come on,” Blake said, stepping forwards. “It’s over, Frost! There’s no point to this anymore!”

  “Isn’t it funny?” Frost replied coldly, lighting the flame and illuminating the dark room. “You spend years working on a plan. Years! Dreaming up that prison van scheme with Theresa, it required such lateral thinking. A way to fool you, make sure that you wouldn’t be able to resist getting yourself involved. All that time spent on a plan that ultimately went wrong, but do you know what? I’ve just come up with another, just in these last few seconds. And it’s better than the one that took us so long to perfect.”

  “What do you mean?” Blake asked calmly.

  “This is how it should have been all along,” Frost told him, his voice heavy with what Blake could almost mistake for emotion. “Me and you. Never mind all the women, they’re unimportant. I was foolish to try and include them in it, I see that now. This is how the world should be. Two men, facing off. The last stand. This is how it’s been done all throughout history.”

  Blake could not help but chuckle. “Beneath it all, you’re just a sad, pathetic, bigoted, child, aren’t you, Thomas? Throwing the most dangerous of tantrums because you could never get the power you so desperately craved. Your grandmother started it all, didn’t she? Of all the things you took from her, it was her violent streak and her hatred of women in power.”

  “You misunderstand what happened with her,” Frost whispered. “I didn’t mean to kill her. Not at first. I just stabbed her in the back to stop her from hitting me, but then I stabbed her again, and again and it just felt…” His voice faded away. “Anyway. Where were we? Oh yes. End of the story.”

  Blake realised what he was going to do a fraction of a second too late. The lighter seemed to fall to the floor in slow motion as he tried to run forwards and grab it. The last thing he saw was Frost’s triumphant smile before the room was suddenly ablaze. Frost had his mouth wide open in a scream, but it was soon covered by the sound of roaring flames as Blake, terrified, looked around. He was trapped. The petrol had been thrown all around the room, including by the door, the blaze too wide for him to get through.

  Then, Frost charged at him, an insane look in his eyes, his teeth bared. They both fell to the floor, rolling around, one trying to gain control over the other.

  As the heat of the flames seared Blake’s skin, Frost finally managed to pin him to the ground, his hands tightly around Blake’s throat.

  “You’re going to die today, Harte!” Frost shouted over the roar of the fire around them. “This one is going to be the best one of all!”

  And he began to tighten his grip. Blake’s vision blurred, he could not breathe, the heat was incredible. This was it. His last moments on Earth and he not even been able to say goodbye to Harrison. At least, he thought, as Frost gritted his teeth in effort, he was able to save Sally.

  Then, there was a huge crashing noise of splintering wood and suddenly, they were falling, the ceiling that Blake had been previously looking at vanishing before him as the floor beneath them gave way, the old
, rotting floorboards surrendering to the intense heat and damage from the flames.

  They both landed on the ground of the floor below with a loud thud as the fiery detritus clattered down around them. Frost was now away from Blake, trapped underneath a heavy wooden beam, engulfed in flames and screaming in agony. Blake was just about to try and move when more debris fell, this time landing on top of him. The heavy wooden rubble landed on Blake’s legs, rendering him incapable of movement, the fire now starting to spread into the room that they had fallen into.

  As Blake tried to pull himself free, he felt his body begin to succumb to the acrid smoke billowing around them. Frost’s screams suddenly stopped as more rubble began to fall around them.

  Blake closed his eyes and thought of his parents standing outside the house, no doubt terrified of what they were witnessing, knowing that he was inside. It was too much for them to lose more than one child. His sister was enough. It was too cruel for such heartache to befall one family. His thoughts became muddled. He hoped that they would contact Harrison and that Sally would be able to tell him how much he loved him.

  “Blake!”

  The voice seemed distant, too far away to distinguish who it belonged to. It sounded familiar but now Blake was sure that he was experiencing his last moments. It almost felt like he was moving, the weight on his legs becoming lighter. His last thought was cursing that of all the places he could die, it would be here, in the old house that had haunted him for so long.

  Then, he felt himself being pulled and dragged along the ground. Various voices were suddenly all around him. Were they angels? Blake had never really been a believer of such things, though he would be content enough to be proved wrong at this moment.

  The heat was disappearing.

  “Blake! We’ve got you, I promise!”

  “Blake!”

  “Blake, can you hear me?”

  It all sounded so real.

  Suddenly, he was coughing, harder than he had ever coughed in his life, coughing so hard that it hurt, but beneath him he was sure that he could feel something other than the hard wooden floor of the house.

  Then, he slowly opened his eyes. His vision was so blurred that he was unable to make out anything for a few moments.

  A scared, tear stained face loomed over him. It was a good-looking face, with blonde hair.

  “H-H…Harrison?” Blake gasped.

  Harrison exhaled with relief. “Blake, thank God. Oh my God, Blake!”

  Again, Blake was coughing but now he was able to slowly sit up.

  “Don’t try to move, Blake,” Harrison told him, his voice cracking with emotion. “You’re going to be fine, the ambulance is here. They’re going to look after you.”

  Blake rested his head down on the grass again, the smell of the fire still pungent around them. Slowly, he raised his arm to place it on Harrison’s face.

  “Marry me,” he managed, before he closed his eyes again and everything went black.

  Seventeen

  Harrison could not help but think that he had spent far too much time in hospitals lately. As he waited for his drink to drop down from the vending machine, secretly furious of the price, he leant against the wall and shook his head at the madness of the past few days.

  When Sally had called him and asked him if he fancied coming up to Manchester for the remainder of Blake’s time here, he had originally been reluctant. He could imagine himself spending most of the time on his own, worrying about Blake, where he was, whether he was safe, and then ultimately realised that he would be doing exactly the same thing in Harmschapel.

  So, after his boss at the shop he worked at had agreed that he probably deserved some time off, he had jumped on the first train he could get after his shift and then spent the entire journey glued to his phone, eating up every penny of mobile data he possessed watching all the news reports and announcements and then watching in awe at the sight of Blake humiliating and then having Theresa Bowen arrested.

  Having got the address of Blake’s parents house from Stephanie before he had left, he had climbed in a taxi and told the driver to drive as fast as he could to the address where he had arrived to see flames billowing from a house in the distance.

  As he bent down to pick up his drink from the vending machine, Harrison chuckled to himself as he remembered the expression on Gresham’s face as he had been pushed aside by Harrison as he had battled his way through the crowd towards Stephanie and Colin who were both beside themselves with fear, screaming at him that Blake was inside the house that was currently on fire. Sally had been on the side of the road being seen to by a group of other officers and nobody had seemed to be doing anything. Then, he had seen Fox and before he could be stopped, had leapt over the barriers guarding the house and ran around the back where he had kicked the door in and discovered Blake on the floor, surrounded by rubble. Despite numerous officers trying to pull him away from the blaze, Harrison had battled through them and the flames to get to Blake and began pulling him to safety.

  And then, he had apparently become engaged.

  Since Blake had regained consciousness, arrived at the hospital and been treated for his burns and smoke inhalation, they had not spoken about his inadvertent proposal. Harrison had initially put it down to him being slightly delirious from the smoke and the trauma he had gone through and doubted whether he even remembered what he had said.

  He took a long sip of his drink and stared out of the window of the nineteenth-floor corridor he was standing in. He could not deny that it had been playing on his mind ever since.

  Behind him, the doors to the ward opened and Sally appeared. She had made a quick recovery after her ordeal and, like Harrison, had spent the majority of her time in the hospital waiting for updates on Blake’s progress.

  “That nurse is going to get a slap if she carries on,” she grumbled, glaring down the corridor. “She just tried to tell me that me talking to the station on my phone was disturbing Mrs Allen. Mrs Allen is that mad old bat a few beds down from Blake who has been singing the national anthem for the past two hours. She’s off her head on whatever they’ve given her for her kidney stones. She couldn’t be disturbed by my phone call if I was acting it out through interpretive dance.” She stopped mid-rant as she spotted Harrison staring wistfully out of the window. “Are you alright?”

  “Hm? Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Don’t you start pretending to me, young Baxter. I get enough of that from your boyfriend.”

  “You mean my fiancé?”

  Sally’s mouth nearly hit the floor. “I beg your bloody pardon?”

  Harrison snorted with laughter. “Yeah. You know when I’d pulled him out of the house?”

  “Yes, Fireman Sam, I do. What about it?”

  “He asked me to marry him. Just before he passed out, he actually asked me. I mean, maybe he was as out of it as Mrs Allen because of the smoke, I don’t know.”

  Sally groaned. “I swear, if he wasn’t already in hospital, he would be by the time I was done with him.” She sighed and placed a hand around Harrison’s shoulder. “I don’t know if it’s really my place to tell you this.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “He’s been working up to asking you for a while. He even asked my advice about it. Y’know, because I am the expert when it comes to love and marriage.”

  Harrison nearly dropped his drink in surprise. “Are you serious?”

  “Yep. I mean, trust Blake to propose when he thinks he’s just about to die. He’s such an idiot. But he’s an idiot whose life you saved. Something tells me that you were planning on staying with him for a little while longer at the very least.”

  Before Harrison could reply, the nurse that Sally had been ranting about stepped out of the ward.

  “Ah, there you both are. He’s ready for you now. Take him home, make sure he applies his cream every day and remind him how lucky he’s been. I’ve had patients who haven’t had a house fall on them that have been in a worse condition than h
e has.”

  Sally glared at the nurse as she strode off down the corridor. “I wonder when she lost her passion for her work.”

  “Come on,” Harrison chuckled. “Let’s get him out of here. Knowing how Blake is as a patient, I bet they’ll be just as glad to see the back of him.”

  As they walked towards the ward, Sally checked her phone. “They still haven’t decided what to do with Frost’s body. He hasn’t got that much of a family to release it to. I can’t imagine anybody other than his father will be all that interested.”

  “Who knows?” Harrison mused. “Tom might, although now he’s seen what Frost was capable of, maybe not. Time will tell, I guess. Anyway, enough about that. What about your birthday plans? You can’t tell me that you’re happy with you spending your thirtieth being kidnapped.”

  Sally shook her head. “No. I’ve not made up my mind yet. I might wait till next year before I start celebrating birthdays again. Give me time to get over the image of Frost suddenly appearing in the back seat of my car when I was driving out of Blake’s street. I should have listened to Blake when he said that he’d seen him. He crept underneath the car and then climbed into the back seat when we weren’t looking. It was like something out of a horror film.”

  Harrison squeezed her arm. “He can’t get to you again. Or anybody.”

  “I don’t know what the second verse is, Mrs Allen!” Blake’s annoyed voice echoed along the corridor.

  Harrison and Sally exchanged amused glances as they turned the corner into Blake’s ward.

  Blake was standing at the foot of his bed, his belongings all in his bag talking to an old woman in the opposite bed. His arm was in a sling and he had some stiches on his face. He already looked so much better than he had when he had arrived in the hospital. When he saw them, he broke into a relieved smile. “Thank God,” he muttered. “Get me out of here, please. And if we can get any of what she’s on, grab some of that too.”

  Ignoring the warbling of Mrs Allen, Harrison picked up Blake’s bag and followed him and Sally down the corridor towards the lift.