“I’m already on it. How far away are you?”
“Not far. Five or ten minutes.”
“You’ll be there before us then. Don’t go trying to be a hero, Harlan. Wait in your car and let us do our job.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to get Ethan back safe.” Harlan hung up. A woozy feeling hit him, causing the road to momentarily double before his watering eyes. Shaking the dizziness from his head, he felt his bandage again. As he drew his hand away, rivulets of blood coursed between his fingers. Grappling with Susan, it seemed, had opened his wound fully. He wondered whether he’d have the strength to ‘do whatever it takes’.
“So what was the plan?” Harlan asked, more to try and fend off the tugging fingers of unconsciousness than because he needed to know right that moment.
Neil shrugged as if he wasn’t sure, but then said in a strangled sort of voice, “Paula was gonna phone the police and say she’d heard suspicious sounds in the flat above hers. When they came and found Ethan, she’d claim the reward and we’d split it three ways.”
“And who came up with this plan?”
Again, Neil shrugged. “Me and Martin went out drinking a few months back. I don’t usually drink, but Gary Dawson,” his upper lip curled with hate around the name, “was threatening to send his thugs to my parents’ house. I was going out of my head with worry. Martin’s in even deeper with Dawson than me. We were talking about ways of making some quick cash, and I jokingly said we should try to find that missing boy, Jamie Sutton, and claim the reward. And Martin said it would be easier to just snatch a kid ourselves for the reward. So we started talking about how we might do it. We weren’t being serious at first — at least, I wasn’t…” Neil trailed off as if he wasn’t entirely convinced of the truth of his words. “Oh God, it sounds so insane now.”
“No it doesn’t.” There was a simple, ruthless logic to everything Neil had said. Harlan wasn’t about to let him use madness to exonerate himself from responsibility. A couple of things didn’t make sense to him, though. “But why risk abducting Ethan from his bed? Why not just snatch him off the street?”
“That was our original plan. We wanted to make it look like the same bloke who took Jamie Sutton took Ethan.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Ethan, that’s why. Outside school, he never leaves Susan’s side. He’s been like that since his dad died. I remember even when me and Susan first got together, he used to ask her all the time, why did Dad leave us? She tried to explain, but he just couldn’t get it into his head what death means. I guess he’s afraid she’ll leave him too.” The familiar guilt twisted inside Harlan, as Neil continued, “We kept waiting for a chance to grab him off the street, but there was no chance. Martin got impatient. Dawson’s thugs were hounding him. We talked about taking Ethan from the house. Martin was all for it, but I didn’t like the idea. The problem wasn’t Susan — after she takes her Valium she’s out of it for the night. The problem was Kane. If we were gonna do it that way, it would have to be on a night Kane was sleeping over at a friend’s or something. But then Martin, the crazy fucker, just went ahead and did it. First I heard about it was when the coppers came to see me. I swear, I nearly had a heart-attack.” Neil heaved a breath, shaking his head. “I thought Martin was alright, but he’s got serious problems up here.” He tapped his temple. “If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t think I’d ever have gone through with this.”
“Bollocks,” retorted Harlan, sickened to his core by the nauseatingly familiar sound of someone trying to talk their way out of their guilt.
“It’s true. Martin wasn’t even going to give me my full share of the reward, ’cos he reckons I haven’t done enough to earn it.”
“Whose idea was it to take Ethan?”
Neil was silent a moment, then he admitted, “Mine.”
“Then you’ve done plenty to deserve everything you’ve got coming to you.”
“But all I did was come up with the idea, Martin and Paula did-” Neil broke off at a glance from Harlan that warned him there would be dire consequences if he continued to insist on his relative innocence.
They were nearing Spital Street. Three and four-storey blocks of flats loomed over them, rising up one behind another like piles of boxes. Another wave of wooziness washed over Harlan, prompting him to ask, “That’s the other thing I don’t get, why Ethan? Why not abduct some random kid?”
“Martin wanted to, but I told him it had to be Ethan or I wouldn’t go through with it.”
“Why?”
“I know Ethan. I knew he wouldn’t try to fight or escape. Plus, that way I could, y’know, stay close to the investigation and give Martin the heads up if the coppers began sniffing in his direction.”
Harlan narrowed his eyes in scrutiny, wondering whether Neil was really as stupid as his words suggested. If they’d done as Martin wanted, maybe, just maybe, their plan would’ve worked. But this way they had little or no chance of getting away with it. After Paula had contacted the police, it wouldn’t have taken them long to connect her to Martin, and from Martin it was only three or four short steps to Neil. “So you did all this for seventy-odd thousand quid.”
“We expected it would be a lot more. Jamie Sutton’s reward was two hundred thousand.” Neil’s voice took on a sneering tone. “But it turns out most people in this piss-hole of a city won’t put their hands in their pockets to save anyone except themselves. If they had done, this thing would’ve been over weeks ago.”
“Seventy thousand, two hundred thousand, a million. What’s the difference? No amount of money’s worth this.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You haven’t been fucked over by people your whole life.” Neil flashed Harlan a look sodden with resentment. “Susan told me about you. You had it all, and you threw it away.”
Neil’s words pierced Harlan deeper than Nash’s knife had done. Talking about himself was the last thing he wanted to do. And Neil was the last person he owed an explanation of his past to. But still, he felt compelled to respond. “I didn’t throw it away, it was taken from me.”
“Bullshit. Your son died, but you still had a career, a house, a wife who loved you. You still had a million times more than me.”
I had nothing after Tom died! Nothing! Harlan wanted to yell, but he knew that wasn’t true. The truth was he’d been so torn apart by pain, fear and rage that he’d wanted to nullify his identify, make his life nothing. And he’d almost managed it. Almost.
A bitter smile spread across Neil’s face. “I know your type. I’ve known you all my shitty life. You were one of the popular kids, I can tell. Things have always come easy to you. Easy come easy go. But I’ve had to fight for everything I’ve got. I found happiness for the first time when I met Susan, and I wasn’t about to let it go. No fucking way! When she told me she thought maybe we should stop-” He broke off suddenly, as if he’d said more than he intended to.
Looking at Neil’s face, its plain, mousey features quivering with emotion, his parting words to Susan came back to Harlan. I did it for us. Because I wanted us to have a life together. And with them came the realisation of exactly what they meant. A strange kind of relief passed over him, as he said, “This was never about money. Susan was going to leave you. You took Ethan to stop her, to make her need you as much as you need her. Didn’t you?” Silence was all the answer Harlan received, and all the answer he needed. “You never intended to follow your plan through — at least, not the plan you and Yates cooked up. That’s why this thing has dragged on so long. Because you knew that if Susan ever got Ethan back, you and her would be finished. But why involve Yates and his girlfriend? It would’ve been a lot simpler to abduct Ethan yourself, do him in and get rid of the body?”