Reluctantly, without much conviction, Harlan repeated Eve’s words. “Say it again and really mean it,” she said, placing her hands on either side of his face and holding his gaze with her own. He took breath and said it, and this time he felt the words in his heart and head, reassuring him, calming him.
They held each other for a while, then they set about preparing a meal. “You know what we should do,” said Eve. “We should get out of the city for a few days. Go to the east coast. You remember that little B amp;B we used to stay at?”
Harlan remembered, but he made no reply. The mere thought of leaving the city was almost enough to tip him back over into the seething storm of guilt.
“I know you’re not comfortable with the idea,” continued Eve, “but I really think it would do you the world of-” She broke off at a knock on the front door.
Harlan stiffened as though the sound frightened him. He looked towards the door, eyes standing out of their sockets.
“You want me to see who it is?” Eve tried to sound casual, but a note of unease crept into her voice, as though, despite her best efforts, she was starting to be infected by Harlan’s mood.
Harlan shook his head. He knew who it was. He knew it in his bones. His movements tense, he approached the door and opened it. And there she was, Susan Reed. She looked even thinner than she had done on the television, almost anorexically so. Her hair was greasy and uncombed. There were bluish smudges like bruises under her eyes. Her arms were hugged across her stomach as though she was in pain. For what seemed a long moment, she stared silently at Harlan, then she said, almost murmuring, “Can I come in?”
Catching a faint tang of alcohol on Susan’s breath, Harlan stepped aside. Warily, as if entering enemy territory, she moved past him. He bit back an urge to apologise as she paused at the kitchen door, looking at Eve, who’d turned noticeably paler under her makeup. Their faces set into hard masks, the two women faced each other a few seconds. A bitter little smile of understanding tugging at the corners of her mouth, Susan continued into the living-room. “Nice place you’ve got here,” she said without a hint of sarcasm.
This time Harlan couldn’t hold his apology in. “Sorry.” The word came out in a tortured whisper.
Susan made a contemptuous hissing noise, as if to say, yeah sure you are.
“What do you want?” Eve asked, her voice polite but cold.
Susan shot her a savage glance, as if she considered her presence to be some kind of betrayal. “I want to speak to your boyfriend or husband or whatever he is alone.”
Eve folded her arms. “Well you’re going to have to say what you’ve got to say in front of me, because I’m not going anywhere.” She turned to Harlan. “Am I?”
Harlan struggled to return Eve’s gaze. “I’m sorry, Eve, but I think you should leave. I’ll call you later.”
Eve stared at Harlan a moment, the hurt plain on her face. She leaned in close to him and her voice came in an aggrieved but concerned murmur. “Just remember what I said. You owe yourself. You owe us.” Then she snatched up her coat and handbag and left.
An uneasy silence descended between Harlan and Susan. He motioned for her to sit on the sofa, but she shook her head. “Do you want a cup of tea or something?” he asked. Again, she shook her head. She fidgeted with her hands, her eyes darting around the room as if searching for something.
At last, Susan began, “I need-” But she broke off, struggling to bring herself to say what was on her mind. Swallowing a breath, she forced herself to look Harlan in the eyes. “I need your help.”
“I’m willing to do anything I can to help you.”
“Do you mean that? You’ll really do anything.”
Susan’s voice carried an edge that made Harlan hesitate a second before nodding. “I just don’t see what I can do that the police aren’t already doing.”
“You can talk to William Jones.”
“What would be the point of that? The police obviously don’t think he’s involved.”
“Yeah, well they’re wrong,” Susan returned with a sneering scowl that mingled contempt with barely suppressed rage. “That fucker’s hiding something.”
“What makes you think that?”
“’Cos I saw him. I saw that sick pervert watching my Ethan and the other kids come out of school. And I saw him in the park with his paints and things, painting pictures of the kids in the playground.”
“That’s certainly incriminating, but as I understand it Jones goes for girls, not boys.”
“He goes for little kids. Girls and boys. Ask anyone around where I live and they’ll tell you what that filth, that fuckin’ vermin goes for.”
As Susan spoke, her voice grew loud and splotches of angry red stood out on her pale cheeks. Harlan held up his hands in a calming gesture. “Okay let’s assume you’re right. If the police can’t get him to talk, what makes you think I can?”
“Because you can do things the police can’t.” Susan’s eyes glittered with the same brutal intent that suffused her voice. “You can make Jones talk.”
The deep lines that marked Harlan’s face grew deeper. The idea of trying to beat a confession out of a suspect went against both his natural instincts and everything he’d been taught. As far as he was concerned, police who used violent tactics were little, if any better, than criminals themselves. But even if he’d been willing to do as Susan asked, he wasn’t sure that he could do it. Merely thinking about it brought on a twinge of the same paralysis that’d gripped his limbs like a vice when Carl Gallagher attacked him. He dragged his feet across the room to the window and stared at the leaden grey sky.
“You said you’d do anything,” Susan reminded Harlan, her voice insistent and pleading at the same time.
“I know, but-”
“But what?”
Harlan turned to Susan. “I can follow Jones night and day. He won’t be able to make a move without me knowing it. I can even break into his house and search it while he’s out.”
She shook her head. “The police have already done all that and it got them nowhere. Why do you think I’m here?” For a second, tears trembled on her eyelashes. She swiped them away as if she hated them, and when she next spoke her voice was edged with steel. “You want a chance, don’t you? A chance to wipe your conscience clean. Well this is it, and you better fucking believe me, it’s the only one I’m ever gonna give you. You do this one thing and then you can forget about me and my kids forever.”
Not forget about you, thought Harlan. Never that. Never completely. But maybe, just maybe, move on from the memory enough to start rebuilding my life properly. He heaved a sigh. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Susan matched his sigh with a sharp breath of relief. “What will you do to him?” There was something almost ghoulish in the trembling eagerness of her question.
“I don’t know,” admitted Harlan, his voice tight with strain. “Before I do anything, I need to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Go ahead.”
“Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way. Have you made any public threats against Jones?”
“I’ve only said the same as everyone else in my area’s been saying for years, that he needs his balls cut off and put in his mouth.”
Harlan frowned thoughtfully. “With Jones being so widely hated, there won’t be any shortage of suspects for an attack on him.”
“Yeah and you don’t have to worry about anyone saying anything to the coppers. They’d all be too busy celebrating if the bastard got killed.”
Harlan looked hard at Susan. “No one’s going to get killed.”
Her bitter blue eyes returned his gaze with a sudden flash of hatred so intense he involuntarily winced. “Not deliberately, but as we both know sometimes things happen that we don’t intend to happen.”
A sense of immobility spread through Harlan’s body like an injection of cement. Lumps stood out at the corners of his jaw where his teeth locked together. When he spoke his voice had a hoarse, hollow sound. “After I do this, the police are going to come straight to your door. So you’ve got to make sure you and your boyfriend have got solid alibis.”