Harlan stared at Susan with a kind of pleading in his eyes, but her resolve didn’t waver. His body leaden with anxiety, he nodded. She frowned at him a few seconds, as if trying to work out whether or not she believed him. Then she turned and hurried from the cafe into Neil’s arms. Her self-control crumbling like a sandcastle in front of a wave, she pressed her face against his shoulder and sobbed. Neil shot Harlan a glance that almost dared to be angry. This time it was Harlan who dropped his gaze to the tabletop. When he looked up a minute or so later, Susan and Neil were gone.
Noticing how dry his mouth was, Harlan swilled back the dregs of his coffee. He approached the counter and held up fifty-quid. “If anyone asks…” He trailed off meaningfully.
“I never heard nothin’,” grunted the man behind the counter.
Harlan handed him the money and left. Head lowered in thought, he made his way slowly along the quiet street. He imagined himself beating Jones with the truncheon until his flesh was a pulpy mass and blood oozed from his face. He began to feel light-headed, dizzy. Susan’s bitter words echoed in his ears. You’re a coward. A sick, twisted coward.
Maybe she’s right, thought Harlan. Maybe that’s what I am. A sick, twisted coward without the courage to do what needs to be done, without the courage to live, without the courage even to end my own misery.
Harlan didn’t hear the fast-approaching footsteps until they were right behind him. Before he could turn to see who they belonged to, something hit the back of his head hard enough to stagger him. White sparks exploding silently in front of his eyes, he flung up his arms to shield his head. A second blow deflected off his forearm, sending an electric current of pain up to his shoulder. A third found its way through to his skull, connecting with an ugly, hollow sound, buckling his knees. As he went down, he managed to drop his shoulder and roll away from his attacker. Through a haze of tears, he saw a baseball-bat wielding figure loom over him. Even dazed as he was, he made a mental note of his attacker’s physical characteristics — five foot five or six, medium build, wearing baggy blue jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt with the hood up. A scarf was wrapped around the lower half of the figure’s face, so that all Harlan could see was a pair of eyes — young-looking, hazel-brown eyes so swollen with hate they seemed ready to pop out.
As the figure raised the bat for another strike, Harlan kicked upwards. His foot slammed home. With a loud “Oof”, the figure doubled over. For a second or two, Harlan and his attacker writhed separately, each lost in their own pain. Then Harlan grabbed his attacker’s arm. Jerking free, the figure straightened and began to stagger away. Harlan attempted to follow, but as he pushed himself up onto his knees his vision blurred in and out. He reached up and felt a wetness on his scalp. He looked at his hand. Blood. He could feel it now, trickling warmly down the back of his neck. Groaning with the effort, he clutched a lamppost and dragged himself upright. The figure was almost out of sight at the far end of the street. As he stepped away from the lamppost, the pavement seemed to dip, then drop away vertiginously from beneath his feet. He felt himself tumbling through the air, then he slammed into the ground with enough force to wind him. He lay facedown, his eyeballs rolling, struggling vainly to rise onto his elbows. Then he was falling again, going down, down into impenetrable blackness like a well.
Chapter 11
After what might’ve been minutes or hours, a voice called Harlan back to the conscious world. “Mister,” it said, urgent and concerned. “I saw what happened.” His eyes flickered open. He was on his back now. Whether he’d rolled over by himself or someone had turned him over, he didn’t know. A young woman gazed down at him, her face blurry in patches. “Just lie still,” she continued, as he tried to sit up. “I’ve phoned for an ambulance.”
Her words lent Harlan the strength to clamber to his feet. The police wouldn’t be far behind the ambulance, and that would mean serious trouble. “I’m fine,” he said groggily, brushing away the woman’s helping hands. Using the buildings for support, he slowly worked his way along the street. Dimly aware of sirens away in the distance, he went into a public toilet, washed the blood from his hands and applied a wad of tissue to the back of his head. Then he staggered to a nearby taxi-rank and ducked into a black-cab.
“You okay, mate?” asked the cabbie.
Harlan nodded and wished he hadn’t when a blinding pain pulsed from his skull. He gave the cabbie an address not far from the Northern General Hospital. As the cab negotiated the congested city roads, he closed his eyes and summoned up an image of his hooded assailant. Who could it be? Not Ethan’s abductor — when Harlan had grabbed his attacker’s hand he’d noticed it was as hairless as a child’s. The attack hadn’t been random, though. That much was obvious from the hate in those hazel-brown eyes. It was equally obvious that the attacker must’ve followed Susan and Neil to the cafe, since he was certain no one had followed him. Which meant either that one of them had told someone else about the meeting, or the attacker had overheard them discussing it. If what Susan had said about Neil was true — which he had no reason to suspect it wasn’t — the second possibility was the most probable. And there was only one person he could think of who could easily get into close enough proximity to overhear them — Kane. What’s more, the boy was the same height and build as his attacker, and he certainly had more than enough motive to want to hurt him.
Harlan paid the driver, and swaying like a drunk, made his way to A amp;E. He gave the receptionist a false name and address and told her he’d tripped and hit his head. Under local anaesthetic, a doctor stitched and bandaged the lesions on his scalp. Then he was given a head x-ray. “There are no fractures and no signs of serious brain injury,” said the doctor, examining his x-rays. “Luckily for you, you’ve got a remarkably thick skull. I’ve seen people end up in a coma from less severe injuries.”
I’ve seen them die, thought Harlan. “So I’m okay to go.”
“You have a concussion. As a precautionary measure, we’d like to admit you overnight for observation.”
“I’d rather go home.” By the morning, Harlan knew, there was every chance the police called to the scene of the attack would trace him to the hospital.
“Well that’s your choice, although I’d strongly advise against it. Where do you live?”
Harlan’s head throbbed with the effort of remembering the false address he’d given the receptionist.
“You mustn’t drive for forty-eight hours. Is there someone you can call to pick you up?”
“Yes,” lied Harlan.
“Good. Also, you need to rest, but you should try to stay awake for the next twelve hours. If you do fall asleep, you need to be woken every two hours at the most to make sure you don’t fall into a coma. And don’t rely on an alarm clock to wake you.”
Harlan thanked the doctor, and trying to appear less groggy than he felt, made his way out of A amp;E. He caught a taxi to his flat. After swallowing some painkillers, he got into bed. He lay glaring at the ceiling, his fingers convulsively clenching and unclenching as he thought about those hazel-brown eyes. His anger wasn’t directed at Kane — he felt nothing towards him except guilt, sadness and sympathy — but at himself. It made him want to tear his own guts out to think that he was the cause of such fury, such hate.
After a while, without even realising it, Harlan began to drift into a dream. He was at the entrance to the tunnel again. Only this time he was stood in Jones’s place, holding Kane and Ethan’s hands. He looked down at each boy and saw that their faces were masked with blood. And the boys looked up at him and spoke. “Dad,” they said in unison.
With a gasp, Harlan dragged himself back to wakefulness. Fighting an urge to vomit, he rose and tottered through to the kitchen to make a strong black coffee. He lay cradling it on the sofa, watching the television. There was nothing on the news about what’d happened to Jones — no doubt, Garrett was doing everything in his power to hush it up. As he listened to the droning voice of the news-reader, an immense weariness came over him, as if lead weights were attached to his eyelids. This time the sound of his mug clattering to the floor jerked him back from the edge of sleep.
Harlan fetched a tea-towel to mop up the coffee. The effort of doing so was enough to make his skull feel as if it was splitting apart. Not knowing what else to do with himself, he sat at the table, head on his hands. Alternating waves of nausea and drowsiness broke over him. Realising he’d be swept away by them unless he did something, he took out his mobile phone. He thumbed through the contacts list to Eve’s name. He stared at it for a long moment. Heaving a sigh, he pressed the dial button.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Eve asked on picking up the phone, her voice swaying between hope and anxiety.
