Blood Guilt

by Ben Cheetham

  “You’re right, it probably won’t make any difference. But why take the chance?”

  “No, I think I’ve told you all I want to for now. I’ve got to get back to it. Remember what I said, Harlan. Keep your head down.”

  “Just tell me one more thing. What does your gut say? Dead or alive?”

  Jim considered this a brief moment. Then he said, “Dead,” and hung up.

  Chapter 4

  Dead. The word kept ringing in Harlan’s mind. Dead or soon-to-be-dead. That’s what his gut told him too. Everything he’d heard pointed to a sexual motive. And no sexual predator willing to go to such extremes to get their hands on Ethan was going to leave him alive to tell the tale. Harlan figured the police had a window of maybe two days to find Ethan. After that, forget it.

  The television was showing Ethan’s photo again, alongside a grainy photo of his mother’s grief-stricken face. With a jolt, Harlan realised he recognised the photo – it’d been used in a newspaper article about Susan’s husband’s death. If the media hadn’t done so already, Harlan knew it was only a matter of time before they made a connection between his release and Ethan’s abduction. Then his face would be splashed all over the news too. He’d be named as a person of interest, held up for public scrutiny. Regardless of his innocence, the stigma of association would make his life a hell on earth. He wouldn’t be able to leave the flat without attracting hostile looks and verbal abuse. His face drew into deep lines of distress. Not that he was bothered what the general public thought of him – fuck them. What bothered him was the thought of the pain that the media picking at the scars of past wounds would cause Eve – especially as it occurred to him that they might well try to draw some kind of spurious link between Thomas’s death and Ethan’s disappearance.

  Once again, Harlan thrust his emotions aside and focused on what needed to be done. Nothing mattered now, except finding Ethan. He hurried into the hallway, grabbing his jacket and scooping up most of the remaining banknotes on his way out of the flat.

  In the lift, Harlan phoned the warehouse foreman and told him he wouldn’t be able to make it in to work. “Good,” said the foreman. “And don’t bother coming in tomorrow either. You’re fired.”

  The foreman hung up. Harlan sighed, thinking, so it’s already started.

  Harlan made his way to a nearby public library, logged onto a computer and searched the local business directory for milkmen. ‘Darren Arnold & Sons’ served Susan Reed’s neighbourhood. He phoned them, and when a man picked up, he said, “This is DI Greenwood, Mr Arnold. I’m just going over your statement and I need you to confirm the registration number of the VW Golf you saw.”

  “KY09 SGE.”

  “Thank you.”

  Harlan hung up, navigated to a car registration checker website and typed in the reg. ‘Renault Clio 1.2 16V’ came up on the monitor, which meant the milkman had either got at least part of the reg wrong or the plates were stolen. He phoned the local DVLA and asked for Pete Devlin – a guy he used to know back when he regularly needed to trace vehicles.

  “Harlan, how the Christ are you?” said Pete. “When did you get out?”

  “A few weeks ago. Listen, Pete, I need a favour. I’m trying to trace a car that pranged me and didn’t stop.”

  “What’s the reg?”

  Harlan gave Pete the number.

  “Renault Clio,” said Pete.

  “That’s the one.”

  “I shouldn’t be doing this, but seeing as you’re an old friend. It’s registered to a James Barnshaw. 34 Chatfield Crescent.”

  “What about the car’s history?”

  “It’s clean.”

  “Cheers, Pete. I owe you.”

  Harlan Googled ‘James Barnshaw’ and the address. Nothing came up. He navigated to the phone book website, found Barnshaw’s number and called it. A woman answered. She sounded middle-aged and middle-class. “Can I speak to James Barnshaw, please?” said Harlan. “My name’s Detective Inspector Greenwood.”

  “Is this about James’s number plates being stolen?”

  “Yes, I just need to confirm exactly what happened?”

  The woman sighed as if she was tired of repeating the story. “When James left the house last Wednesday morning, his number plates were missing. We didn’t hear or see anything.”

  “What about your neighbours? Did any of them see anything?”

  “No.”

  Harlan thanked the woman and hung up. The fact that the plates were stolen gave credence to the idea that the Golf had been cruising Susan Reed’s street on some criminal expedition. But it also meant the lead was a dead end, unless the car had been caught on camera speeding, or driving away from a petrol station without paying, or some such thing – and even if it had, he didn’t have the means of finding out. The best use of his time at present, as far as he could see, was simply to get out there and search the streets for the Golf. He glanced out the window at the plainclothes sheltering from a sudden downpour in a shop porch. He deleted his browsing history, left the library and made his way hurriedly to the nearest second-hand car dealership. There was a black VW Golf on the forecourt. He went into the dealer’s office and slapped down the cash to buy it.

  Harlan cruised the streets, searching for silver VW Golfs, scanning licence-plate numbers. There was little hope in it, but – for the moment, at least – he could see no other course open to him. He switched the radio on and tuned into the news, which was playing an edited version of Garrett’s statement. There was no mention of the VW Golf. It was always a tricky question – whether and when to make such information public. On the one hand, someone who’d seen the car or knew its owner or the owner themselves might well contact the police. On the other, if the car’s owner and Ethan’s kidnapper were one and the same, they might try to hide or destroy the car, or even worse, they might be panicked into killing the boy. Harlan guessed that if the information was released at all, it wouldn’t be until the four day mark passed. After that, in their minds Ethan was dead, so they’d have a shit lot less to lose by going public.

  All day long Harlan vainly searched for the VW, circling outwards from the city centre, paying special attention to the uninhabited houses, cadaverous factories and pockets of woodland and wasteland in the lonelier parts of the urban sprawl. He wasn’t the only one searching. Almost everywhere he went there were uniforms doing their thing. Police helicopters hovered and circled over the city. He didn’t stop to eat, he only stopped to fill up on petrol. As the hours flashed past like silent lightening, a sense of frustration swelled in his gut. Outside the official information loop, he felt blind and helpless. He tried several times to ring Jim, but got no reply. He supposed his ex-partner was either too busy or too pissed with him to answer – Jim would certainly have heard by now what he was up to.

  Harlan’s stomach gave a lurch when he heard his name on the radio. “Detectives are speaking to persons of interest in the case,” said the news reader, “including ex-police officer, Harlan Miller, who was recently released from prison after serving a four-year sentence for the–

  Harlan reflexively snapped the radio off. After the space of a breath, he turned it back on, wondering who the other persons of interest were. But no more names were mentioned.

  Before the news report was even finished, Harlan’s phone rang. A number he didn’t recognise flashed up on its screen. He answered the phone and waited for whoever it was to speak. His stomach gave another lurch when Eve’s voice came over the line. “Harlan?”

  Harlan hadn’t spoken to Eve since starting his prison sentence. She’d written him, asking if she could visit. He’d written back, saying it would be for the best if she stayed away. He’d also told her he was sorry. It’d been wrong of him to blame her for Tom’s death – in some perverse way, killing Robert Reed had made him see that. Finally, he’d told her that the one thing she could do to help him through his sentence was to get on with her life. It’d hurt him deep and long to write that, but it was neces
sary.

  Eve’s voice sounded different – no, not different, just changed. There was a softness to it that reminded him why he’d first fallen in love with her. A thickness rose in his throat. He swallowed it in a lump and shoved it far down. “I assume Jim gave you my number.”

  “He’s worried about you.” There was a slight hesitation, then Eve added, “We both are.”

  “Well don’t be. I’m not worth your worry.”

  “That’s not true. You’re a good man.”

  “Good men don’t kill.”

  “You lashed out in a moment of madness and despair. Yes, a man died, but you’ve paid for–”

  “You’re wasting your time,” broke in Harlan. “This is something I’ve got to do.”

  “They’ll send you back to prison.”

  “If they do, they do. Susan Reed’s already lost her husband. I can’t let her lose her son as well. You of all people should understand that.”

  Eve was silent a moment. When she next spoke, Harlan could tell she was struggling to keep her voice from shaking, and it hurt him to hear. “But what can you do on your own?”

  “I don’t know. Probably nothing. But I’ve got to try.”

  Eve sighed. “Okay, Harlan, if I can’t change your mind then all I can say is good luck. Find that boy. Find him and return him where he belongs.”

  Another silence passed between them. Harlan waited for Eve to say goodbye – he’d never been any good at goodbyes – but instead she said hesitatingly, “Maybe we could meet up sometime.”

  Christyes, his heart said. How he would love to meet up with Eve, listen to her soft voice, smell her, touch her. He suddenly found himself remembering how it felt to kiss her, the way she used to murmur his name as he nuzzled her neck, her ear. And the memory of it made his blood quicken. But he knew he couldn’t allow himself to follow his heart. After all, what did he have to offer her? Nothing but memories and misery. “I don’t think that’d be good idea.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t know why I even suggested it. Take care, Harlan.”

  “You too.”

  Harlan hung up, releasing a heavy breath. “Focus,” he said sharply. He focused on the street shining wetly beneath the orange glow of the lampposts. That life is gone, he told himself. This right here, this is all the life you’ve got left, so make it count.

  All night Harlan searched in vain. When darkness began to give way to the blue of dawn, he grabbed a bite to eat at a café. The breakfast news blared out of a television on the wall. The waitress served him in silence, then quickly retreated behind the counter, where she fell into a whispered conversation with another woman. Both women shot him uneasy, frowning glances. He ignored them, concentrating on eating and the news. The police were having no more luck than him, it seemed. There had been no reported sightings of Ethan, and the police had expanded the focus of their search beyond Sheffield into the surrounding regions, particularly the Northwest where there’d recently been a suspected child abduction – Jamie Sutton, an eleven-year old boy, had disappeared while out riding his bike in Prestwich, a northern suburb of Manchester, nearly two months ago. A massive search had been conducted, thousands of missing-person posters had been distributed, private donors had put together a reward of two-hundred thousand pounds for anyone who came forward with solid information that led to the boy’s rescue. All to no avail. Jamie Sutton, it seemed, had literally vanished into thin air.

  Harlan considered expanding the focus of his search too, but quickly decided against it. The connection between the cases was too tenuous. For starters, it was impossible to say with certainty that Jamie Sutton had been abducted. He might’ve been the victim of a hit-and-run, met with some kind of accident, or maybe even be a runaway. Secondly, if Jamie had been abducted, then the kidnapper’s MO was significantly different, more suggestive of an opportunistic mindset. Thirdly, Jamie was a very different boy from Ethan – whereas Ethan looked shy and timid, Jamie had a broad face and bold, self-confident eyes. Finally, and most importantly as far as Harlan was concerned, he saw little hope in himself succeeding where the best efforts of the police had failed. Better to continue the search here, where the trail was still fresh.

  It was midday when the posters started appearing on lampposts and in shop windows. They featured close-ups of Ethan taken from different angles and with different expressions. Above his face in big letters was the word ‘KIDNAPPED’. Below his face were the numbers of a couple of freephone tip hotlines. There were also groups of people on the streets – not police, but volunteers – handing out leaflets to passersby and motorists. Harlan rolled his window down to take one from a woman. “There’s going to be a march through the streets around Ethan’s home tonight,” she said. “Everybody’s welcome.”

  “Everybody doesn’t include me,” said Harlan, and he drove on, working his way methodically through the city.

  New information trickled through the radio. Police dogs had picked up Ethan’s scent, but the trail they’d found ended several feet from the backyard gate. Detectives were holding a local man for questioning. William Jones, a fifty-two year old unmarried, unemployed steel worker with convictions for child sex offences, had apparently been seen on several occasions recently hanging around outside Ethan’s school and at a nearby play-park that the boy frequented. Jones was well-known in the community as a sex-offender, and his home and car had been vandalised many times in the past. In a brief statement to the press, Detective Chief Inspector Garrett said that Jones was on the Sex Offenders’ Register and was considered a medium risk.

  Harlan pulled over at a café with internet access, navigated to the website of a local newspaper, typed ‘William Jones’ into the search-term box, and scanned down the list of related articles until he came to the headline, ‘Man Jailed For Child Sex Offences’. He clicked the link and skim-read the article it led to. Jones had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in 2005 for ten counts of making indecent images of a girl under fourteen-years old and one count of indecent assault. There was a photo of him – overweight, vein-streaked alcoholic’s cheeks, receding grey-brown hair. Although, at a stretch, Jones might fit the kidnapper’s description, Harlan dismissed him as a suspect. The guy was a relatively low-grade offender with a taste for young girls. A nasty piece of work, but not the type to snatch eight-year old boys from their bedrooms. That didn’t mean it wasn’t worth bringing him in and grilling him for a while. After all, birds of a feather flocked together – especially when no one else wanted anything to do with them – which meant that characters like Jones were often the best source of information about offenders operating under the police radar in an area.

  Harlan returned to his car and the search. Afternoon wore away like a corpse in a hot country. Five o’clock, six, seven…Every time he glanced at the clock, another hour seemed to have passed. He swallowed Pro-Plus tablets with black coffee, but even so his vision began to grow blurry as if he was looking through a haze of tears. It’d been nearly forty-eight hours since he last slept. Reluctantly accepting that if he continued searching he’d be likely to miss more than he saw, he headed back to his flat.

  Remembering about the march, Harlan flicked the television on and found himself confronted by Susan Reed’s haggard, almost cadaverous face. She looked like she’d aged two years for every day that’d passed since he last saw her. Her eyes, which peered out from under tear-swollen lids, had a glazed look about them. More than likely, she’d been given a mild sedative. A man had one arm cupped around her narrow shoulders as if to hold her up. He was maybe five or ten years younger than her, tall and skinny, with a pale, lumpy face, and a fine fuzz of blond hair on his skull and above his upper lip. Watery blue eyes – it was difficult to tell if they were watery with tears or just watery – peered at the cameras through cheap-looking spectacles. Harlan wondered who the man was. A friend? A relative? No, his body language spoke of a different kind of intimacy. A boyfriend, maybe. A person of interest, definitely.


  A gang of reporters pushed microphones closer to Susan’s trembling lips as she opened her mouth to speak. “Ethan…” Her voice cracked and she seemed to lose her breath. She was silent a moment, wrestling with her emotions, on the edge of being overcome with grief. “Ethan, if you’re out there and you can hear me, we’re doing everything we possibly can to find you.” She looked away from the cameras, steadying herself, then she addressed the kidnapper. “Please let my beautiful little boy go. Please! Please!” She couldn’t hold it together any longer. Tears spilled down her face. She dropped her head, shoulders quaking, and the man at her side gently guided her away from the microphones.

  The camera panned around to focus on a crowd about four or five hundred strong, many of them carrying flowers and lighted candles. At the front of the crowd a line of children held a large banner with two pictures of Ethan flanking the words ‘HELP FIND ETHAN’ and a telephone number. The crowd applauded as Susan and the man joined them. They set off along the streets, chanting Ethan’s name. Their voices were full of a kind of sad enthusiasm, but suddenly a discordant, angry note came to the fore. The crowd bunched into tight knot outside a dilapidated two-up two-down terraced house. The house’s downstairs window was boarded with warped, rain-stained chipboard on which was graffitied in red paint ‘Pedo Scum’. As the camera homed in on the graffiti, a voiceover explained that the house belonged to William Jones.

  Jones was lucky the police were holding him, Harlan reflected. He knew from experience how quickly a peaceful gathering could transform into a lynch mob. He’d once been part of a task force set up to investigate the death of a convicted paedophile whose house was ransacked by an angry mob, some of whom were only a couple of years older than Ethan.

  Harlan phoned Jim. This time his ex-partner answered. “Who’s the guy with Susan Reed?” asked Harlan.

  “Forget it, Harlan. You’re not getting anything else out of me, not after the way you’ve behaved. I thought we had a deal that you were going to keep away from this thing.”