“Fuckin’ watch it!” yelled a shaven-headed man about Harlan’s age, wearing a t-shirt that showed off bulging tattooed biceps. The kind of tough guy type Harlan used to deal with every day of the week when he was walking the beat.
“Shit, I’m soaked through!” said a woman at the man’s side, springing up. She was a little younger, thirty or so, bottle-blond, a pretty face hidden behind too much makeup. White wine streamed down her figure-hugging dress. “Look at my dress, it’s ruined.”
“Sorry,” said Harlan, taking out a handkerchief and proffering it her.
Standing, the man slapped his hand away. “You trying to touch her up or something?”
The man fixed Harlan with a practised hard stare. He was a couple inches taller than Harlan and more heavily built. But his muscles were running to fat, whereas Harlan’s were whipcord tight beneath his clothes — the result of a youth spent in sweaty boxing gyms. Harlan held his gaze, not aggressive, but letting him know he wasn’t about to be intimidated. The man blinked, obviously not used to someone standing up to him.
“Look, let me buy you both a drink to apologise,” offered Harlan.
“Fuck drinks. That dress cost a hundred quid. What you gonna do about that?”
“Well I’m not going to give you a hundred quid.”
The two men faced each other silently. Some part of Harlan wanted the man to go for him, wanted to feel the good, clean pain of punching and being punched. That kind of pain he could handle. “Leave it, Rob,” said the woman. “It’ll come out in the wash.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Rob’s face relaxed into a mean little smile. “I’ll have a lager, she’ll have a large white wine,” he told Harlan.
Faintly disappointed, Harlan approached the bar and ordered the drinks, plus a double Scotch for himself. He took the couple their drinks, not bothering even to look at their thankless faces. Then he returned to the bar and went to work on the whisky. At first he was half aware of Rob shooting an occasional dark glance his way. But after a while he noticed nothing, except whether his glass was full or empty. At closing time, he reluctantly made his way outside, taking small, jerky steps like a toddler learning to walk.
It’d stopped snowing, and the pale luminance of a full moon made the streets seem paved with shattered glass. A group of people were throwing snowballs at each other in the road. Harlan barely gave them a glance. He was thinking about the house. A shudder passed through him at the thought of spending the night there with only the ghosts of unwanted memories for company. He took out his mobile phone, and speed-dialled Jim. After four or five rings, his partner picked up. “What is it, Harlan?”
“Eve’s left me.”
“Shit, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Can I come over?”
Jim sighed. “Sure.”
“Thanks, Jimmy.”
As Harlan hung up, a voice rang out behind him. “Hey fuckhead!” He glanced over his shoulder, and a snowball hit him hard in the face. He wiped it away, and through a blur of tears, saw Rob approaching him with that same smile on his face. The woman was dragging at Rob’s arm, slowing his progress. He jerked free of her and pointed at Harlan. “You owe me a hundred quid.”
The woman grabbed his arm again. “Please, Rob,” she said, her eyes pleading with Harlan to walk away. But Harlan wasn’t about to walk away, not until he was sure Rob wouldn’t rabbit-punch him. Rob stopped about fifteen feet away from him, and Harlan thought, this guy’s all bark and no bite. He turned and started walking to jeers of, “Wanker!” from Rob’s mates. Another snowball hit the back of his head. Just keep walking, he told himself, gritting his teeth. A third snowball burst on his back. He stopped and turned to face Rob. Even as he did so, his mind said, what are you doing? Don’t be stupid. But his heart was almost grateful to Rob. Here was a chance to take out his anger and frustration on someone who needed teaching a lesson.
As Harlan advanced towards him, Rob spread his arms and shouted, “Come on then!”
Harlan swung wildly, something between a straight punch and a wide-sweeping haymaker. Somehow, by some quirk of luck, his fist connected flush on Rob’s chin. Both feet shot out from under the bigger man and he catapulted backward. As his head hit the pavement, there was a sound like breaking eggs. A sickening, stomach-churning sound. He didn’t cry out, his arms twitched a little spasmodically, then he lay still, eyes closed.
“Rob!” cried the woman, dropping to her knees, putting her ear close to his mouth, frantically checking for a pulse. “Oh God, he’s not breathing. I can’t feel his pulse. Shit, shit-” Her shrill voice choked off into gasping panic breaths.
“Call an ambulance!” yelled someone.
Harlan just stood in mute, uncomprehending stupefaction, watching blood spread like a halo through the snow under the prostrate man’s head. The blood looked oily black in the moonlight.
“Help him! Help him!” shrieked the woman.
Harlan flinched like someone jerked suddenly out of a trance. He stooped towards Rob. The woman screamed, her eyes swollen with fear, anger and hatred. “Get away! Get away from him you murdering bastard!”
No, not murder, said the policeman in Harlan. Manslaughter. “I know CPR.” His voice sounded eerily distorted in his own ears, like an echo. A strange feeling of disconnection came over him, reinforced by the dreamlike hush of the snow muffled city. The feeling was dispelled by the sting of the woman’s nails raking at his face. Two of her friends grabbed her.
“No!” she wailed, as they dragged her away. “Rob! Rob!”
Harlan felt for a pulse. Nothing. He listened for breath. There was none. He gently tilted Rob’s head back, opened his mouth and checked nothing was obstructing his windpipe. He pinched Rob’s nose shut and breathed twice into his mouth. Then placing his hands, one on top of the other, on Rob’s breastbone, he compressed his chest. He checked for breathing and a pulse again. Still nothing. He thumped Rob’s chest.
“Stop him!” The woman’s shrill, sobbing voice cut through the air. “Call the police!”
I am the police, thought Harlan. His next thought was, no you’re not. You’re not a policeman, you’re not a husband, and you’re not a father. The man you were is as dead as this poor bastard. Everything he was is gone. It’s over. Finished. Nothing can bring him back.
Harlan stopped CPR. Slowly, as if he was being dragged down by some irresistible weight, he bowed his head until it rested in the snow.
Chapter 1
With a smooth, effortless motion, Harlan did push-ups on his cell floor. On reaching the required number, he picked a diary off his narrow bunk and totted up the final tally. Four hundred and ninety-two thousand mind numbing push-ups in four years. Making a mental note that he was never going to do another one, he glanced at his watch. Nine AM. Not long now.
His gaze travelled blankly around the cramped segregation cell where he’d been kept for his own protection since word somehow got out that he used to be a copper. Four, three, even two years ago, his sharply chiselled features would’ve assumed an expression of disgust verging on hatred, as he took in the drearily oppressive walls, the barred window with its plastic curtains, the stark fluorescent light, the small television, and the stainless steel integrated toilet and sink unit. But at some point — he couldn’t remember exactly when — a kind of resigned acceptance had kicked in. Just do the time and let everything else go, he’d told himself. Only he hadn’t been able to let everything else go. Each night at lights out, he’d focused on the continuous din of his fellow inmates calling to one another, vainly trying to stay in the here-and-now. But his mind was stuck in a loop, constantly being drawn back to the moment of drunken rage when he’d deprived a wife of her husband, and two young boys of their father — he’d found out at the trial that the man he killed had two sons, aged four and eight. At the time, he’d become so filled with self-hatred that he contemplated suicide. Even now, thinking about it made him unconsciously clench his hand and pummel it into his thigh.