“He used to drink in The Cricketers sometimes.”
Harlan thanked the man, and they headed for the car. The Cricketers Arms was a few hundred yards further along Bramall Lane. As they drove past the stadium, Neil sat with his arms crossed, hunched forward in his seat. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered. “Susan-”
“Will be fine,” interjected Harlan. He’s getting panicky, he thought. Keep pushing his buttons, see how he responds. If he’s truly involved in Ethan’s abduction, maybe you can nudge him into sticking his neck out. “Don’t worry, I’ll find Yates. That’s what I’m good at. Jim — that’s my ex-partner — he used to say I was like a sniffer dog on a trail. Once I get the scent, I never give up.”
Neil gazed at the approaching pub, seemingly brooding over Harlan’s words. As they pulled over, he turned to Harlan and said, “This isn’t only about the roof, is it?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I just don’t believe you’d go to all this trouble over a few quid. I know you’ve got money. Susan told me you tried to give her thousands.”
Straight as a dart, Harlan looked Neil in the eyes. Offer him just enough rope to hang himself with, said his cop’s brain. “I have reason to believe Martin Yates abducted Ethan.”
Neil’s eyes widened. “What reason?”
“A good reason,” said Harlan, trying to judge whether or not Neil’s surprise was genuine. “That’s all you need to know for now.”
“But I thought Jones and that other guy took Ethan.”
“They did as far as the police are concerned.”
“You mean you’ve told them and they don’t believe you.”
Harlan nodded.
Neil shook his head in indignant amazement. “How can they doubt you after what you’ve done?”
“They have procedures to follow.”
“Bollocks to their procedures.” Neil’s eyes flashed with uncharacteristic fierceness. “If you say Martin Yates took Ethan, that’s good enough for me.” He jerked open the car door. “We’ll find him, if we have to look in every pub in this city.”
Harlan could detect no false note in Neil’s voice, no trace of insincerity in his expression. If he was acting, it was a convincing performance. He recalled what Neil had shouted to Susan the first night he’d come banging at the door. I’d rather die than lose you! If those words were true, surely they marked him out as innocent. Looking at Neil’s nervous but determined boy-man face, part of Harlan couldn’t help but want to believe they were. He wanted to believe love meant more than money, more than life itself even. But if all those years on the force had taught him anything it was to view the world with the eyes of a cynic. He motioned for Neil to enter the pub first. He didn’t want to take his eyes off him. Not for a second. He realised that might prove difficult when he saw how busy the pub was. There was a band playing, and the barroom was wall-to-wall with bodies that reluctantly parted as the two men approached the bar. Someone swayed against Harlan, knocking him off balance. Someone else’s elbow poked into his midriff — not hard, but hard enough to double him over. “Wait,” he called to Neil, but his pain-choked voice couldn’t make itself heard above the grinding music and rowdy crowd. He lowered his head, gritting his teeth, sucking up the pain, then straightened.
Neil was nowhere to be seen.
Angry glances flashed at Harlan as, eyes darting from side to side, he elbowed his way forward. People were standing three deep at the bar. Neil wasn’t amongst them. His heart was pounding now. He stood on his tiptoes, craning his neck, ignoring the stretching agony in his gut. No sign of Neil. “Fuck,” he hissed. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all! “Where are the toilets?” he shouted in someone’s ear. They pointed to a door at the rear of the room, and he headed for it. Sweat was dribbling down his face by the time he reached the door. He yanked it open, half ran, half staggered along a short corridor and through a door with a male stick figure on it. He found himself facing a urinal trough. To its right were a couple of cubicles, one vacant, the other engaged. He kicked the locked door in, and felt something bust inside of him. Neil was stood facing him, goggle-eyed with shock, a phone pressed to his ear. Propelled by an explosion of searing pain, Harlan drove the heel of his hand against Neil’s nose. There was a crunch of cartilage and plastic. Neil reeled back onto the toilet, with instant tears in his eyes, his glasses broken, blood streaming from both nostrils. Harlan snatched the phone off him. A number he didn’t recognise was dialling. He cut it off and pocketed the phone.
“I think you broke my nose,” Neil groaned nasally.
Harlan glared down at him. “I’ll do a lot fucking worse than that if you don’t tell me who you were phoning.”
“I…I was calling my boss to say I won’t be coming into work.”
The lie was as shaky as Neil’s hands that were pressed to either side of his nose. “Bit late for that, isn’t it? It’s after eight. Your shift started at six.”
“Not tonight. I changed my hours so…” Neil trailed off under Harlan’s gaze, which was sad and hard at the same time. Snuffling back blood, he gave a slight nod, as if to say, okay, you got me.
Harlan took out the knife. “Who were you calling?”
Neil made no reply. For once there was no nervousness in his eyes, only blank resignation. The music briefly jumped in volume as someone entered the corridor to the toilet.
“Stand up,” commanded Harlan. Neil did so, and Harlan pulled him roughly out of the cubicle and jabbed the knife into his ribs. “We’re gonna walk out of here. Fuck with me and I’ll stick this in you.”
Harlan put his hand holding the knife in his pocket. With his other hand closed like steel on Neil’s arm, he guided him through the packed bar. His breath caught with every agonising step. Neil made no attempt to get away. When they reached the car, Harlan opened the boot. “Get in.”
Neil compliantly folded himself into the cramped space.
“Who were you phoning?” Harlan asked again.
Still no answer.
“We can do this the hard way or the easy way.” Harlan thumbed the knife. “I could go to work on you until you quite literally spill your guts, or you could just tell me the truth right now.”
Some of the animation came back into Neil’s face. His pale, watery eyes blinked fearfully at Harlan. “I already told you the truth.”
“Have it your own way.”
Harlan slammed the boot. He felt beneath his sweatshirt. A wetness seeped through the bandage, warm and sticky against his fingers. The wound was bleeding, but not badly enough to prevent him from doing what needed to be done — he hoped. He got behind the wheel and accelerated back the way they’d come. There was no time to follow through on his threat. Even unanswered, Neil’s phone call might give warning to Yates that something was wrong — assuming that’s who it was intended for. Speed was everything now. And he could see only one way to prove quickly and irrefutably whether or not Neil was lying. Yet the thought of the trauma doing so would cause almost made him wish there was time to take Neil out to some isolated place and beat the truth from him.
Harlan sped through the city streets, ignoring red lights, overtaking at every opportunity. Neil’s phone rang. He snatched it out. The same number flashed up on its screen. The caller rang off after a few seconds. Harlan returned the phone to his pocket and pressed down harder on the accelerator. Minutes later, he screeched to a stop outside Susan’s house and popped the boot. Dazed and blinking, Neil uncoiled himself from its confines. “I don’t want Susan to see me like this,” he said, resisting as Harlan pulled him towards the house. “It’ll upset her.”
There was no time to talk or reason. Harlan slapped Neil hard. As if it’d been programmed into his nervous system, Neil instantly went into a blank, passive state again. Harlan hammered on the door. Even before he stopped knocking, Susan opened it. Her eyes grew big at the sight of Neil’s bloodied face. “What happened? Who did that to you?”
“I did,” said Harlan, hauling Neil into the living-room and shoving him onto the sofa.