“Police, Mr Jones. Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“There’s a fire at the end of the street. I need you to open the door, please.”
“Why?”
“So that I can visually verify you’re okay. Orders from Detective Chief Inspector Garrett.”
There was the sound of several locks being undone. The door opened a crack. Harlan whirled around and slammed his foot into it with all the force of his desperate fear for Ethan, breaking a chain lock and sending Jones reeling onto his back. Pulling on the Halloween mask, he sprang inside the hallway and shut the door. Winded, gasping for breath, Jones grasped at a radiator, trying to haul himself upright with his good arm. He cried out as Harlan kicked his hand away from the radiator. Harlan grabbed Jones’s foot and twisted, flipping him onto his belly. Driving his knee into the small of Jones’s back, he snatched out the Stanley knife and pressed it to his throat. “Do exactly as I say or I’ll cut your throat,” he hissed through his teeth.
“Oh Christ, oh fuck, not you again,” whimpered Jones, recognising Harlan’s voice. “I’ve already told you-”
“Shut the fuck up. You know how this works. You don’t speak unless I ask you a direct question.”
Harlan bound Jones’s mouth with packing tape. Jones let out a muffled scream as Harlan yanked his injured arm out of its sling and twisted it behind his back. He rapidly rolled the tape around and around Jones’s arms and legs, then he locked the front door. His ears caught the faint but unmistakable wail of fire-engine sirens as he dragged Jones into the living-room. The place was in an even worse state than the last time he’d been there — cans and bottles strewn everywhere, as well as mouldering fragments of food that looked as though they’d been gnawed on by mice. The smell brought bitter saliva to Harlan’s mouth. Swallowing it, he hurried upstairs, removing all the paintings from the walls. He dumped them in a pile on the living-room floor, before tearing the tape away from Jones’s mouth. He stabbed a finger at the drawing of the figures holding hands outside the tunnel. “Where is that?”
“I already told you, it’s nowhere.”
“Wrong answer.” Harlan slashed one of the paintings with his knife.
Jones’s eyes bulged as though he’d been kicked. “Don’t! Please, don’t!”
Harlan reached for another painting. “The truth.”
“It is the truth.”
The Stanley knife sliced through more layers of paint and canvas. Harlan flung aside the ruined artwork and started in on another.
“Stop,” cried Jones.
Harlan looked at him with steel-cold eyes. “No more bullshit. Either you tell me what I want to know or I’m going to shred all of them.”
Jones’s tongue flicked at his lips, which quivered as though they were about to speak, but no sound came from them. Harlan re-gagged him. Then he started slashing at the paintings. And the more he slashed, the more his movements took on a frenzied intensity, as though some barrier inside him had broken, unleashing a barrage of pent up rage and frustration. Once he was finished with the paintings on the floor, he started shredding those on the walls. Oblivious to the pain in his injured elbow, Jones writhed and twisted like a crazed animal, desperately trying to free his arms. Finally, Harlan attacked the painting on the easel, obliterating the scene of the children on the swings with almost gleeful savagery. Breathless and sweating behind his mask, he squatted down, peeled back Jones’s gag and pointed at the only piece of artwork still intact — the little charcoal drawing.
“Where is that place?”
Jones stared at Harlan through a sheen of tears, his eyes burning with acid hate. “You fucker, you bastard,” he hissed hoarsely.
Harlan moved the knife towards the drawing. He had no intention of damaging such a potentially important piece of evidence, but he figured the bluff was worth a shot.
“Why? Why do you want to know where it is?” Jones asked as the blade touched the canvas, a note of pleading replacing the anger in his voice.
“So it is somewhere real and not just something from your imagination.”
“I…I didn’t say that.”
Harlan took out his phone. Watching intently for Jones’s reaction, he showed him the photo of the storm-drain. “Does that place look familiar to you?”
Jones didn’t show the faintest hint of recognition. He looked at the photo blankly — perhaps just a shade too blankly. “No.”
“I think it does. I think you’ve been there.”
“Why the hell would I have been there?”
“To abuse and maybe even murder children.”
Jones’s puffy alcoholic’s face scrunched into a horrified red ball. “You’re off your fucking head.”
Harlan opened his mouth to ask another question, but closed it again as a siren blared past the house. Soon the street would be swarming with firemen and police, making it almost impossible for him to get away unnoticed. He needed answers fast, and as he’d feared, it was clearly going to take more than questioning to get them. He gagged Jones, then looked around for something hard and heavy. His gaze fixed on the old truncheon, which was leant, handle up, against the foot of the armchair. Jones moaned through his gag as Harlan rolled him onto his side and twisted his arms so that his fingers were splayed out flat on the floorboards. Harlan snatched up the truncheon, raising it overhead, his knuckles showing bone-white where they gripped it. One second passed, two, three and still the truncheon didn’t descend. Harlan’s breath came rapidly through the mask’s mouth-hole. Ethan’s life depends on you, he shouted silently at himself. Do it! Fucking do it!
Harlan brought the truncheon down on Jones’s fingers with bone-crunching force. Jones let out a scream that was loud even through the gag. Harlan hit his fingers again. He waited for Jones’s screams to subside, before removing his gag. “Now will you tell me?” He managed to keep his voice cold and level, even though his insides were reeling and churning.
Jones stared up at him, eyes swollen with fear and hate, breath rasping with agony. He said nothing.
“Much more of this and you’ll never be able to paint again.”
Still nothing.
Harlan replaced the gag. Jones kicked and writhed amongst the wreckage of his life’s work, trying desperately but vainly to break his bonds. Holding him steady, Harlan pummelled his fingers with all the force his muscular arms could exert. Jones’s screams changed into retches. Harlan tore away the packing tape and Jones vomited up what looked, and smelt, like a can’s worth of cider muddied with blood. Suppressing a retch himself, Harlan said, “It won’t stop until you tell me. Understand?”
His pale, mottled face contorted almost beyond recognition, Jones sobbed into his vomit. Suddenly, his whole body trembling from the effort as if palsied, he managed to lift his head and scream, “Help!”
Harlan snatched up a handful of shredded canvas and stuffed it into Jones’s mouth. He stuck fresh packing tape over it. Jones’s eyes bulged as if he couldn’t breathe. Sweat dribbled into Harlan’s eyes. He blinked to clear his vision. This wasn’t working. He didn’t have time to gradually beat the truth out of Jones. Any second now the plainclothes policemen might come knocking, and then the game would be up. He had to go further, faster. He had to make Jones believe it was a straight choice between spilling what he knew and death. And there was only one way he could think of to do that.
Composing his features into a mask of implacable resolve, Harlan reached up and removed the Halloween mask. He put down the truncheon and picked up his knife. He pushed his face close to Jones’s. “I’m letting you see my face so you’ll know I’m serious when I say this. The only way you’re going to live through this is if you tell me what I want to know.” With one hand Harlan removed the gag, with the other he pressed the knife to Jones’s windpipe. “Now talk.”