reappeared on foot, carrying a bulging carrier-bag. Harlan got out of his car. As he tailed Neil through the noisy, fumy rush-hour streets, the dull nagging ache in his head intensified to a severe throbbing. Neil handed out leaflets from the bag to everyone he passed. One man shoved the leaflet straight into a bin. Harlan retrieved it and saw a grainy black-and-white image of Ethan’s smiling face. Occasionally, Neil went into a shop — no doubt, to ask if he could put a missing-person poster in the window. Slowly but surely, Neil worked his way to the Baptist tabernacle. The preacher, Lewis Gunn, met him at its entrance. They shook hands and went inside.
Glad for the chance to rest and let his headache subside, Harlan sat on a bench from where he could watch the church’s door without being in its direct line of sight. His head felt heavy and sluggish, as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep. Time dragged by. His glazed eyes began to drift. His head lolled. An image of Tom came into his mind — not Tom as he’d been, but as he might be now if he’d lived. His hair cut into a trendy style. A few zits and a hint of bumfluff around his mouth. His cheeks starting to lose their puppy-fat. But his smile the same. And his eyes…his eyes…Harlan felt his chin touch his chest. Jerking his head up with a sharp intake of breath, he saw that a double-decker bus had pulled over a hundred yards or so along from the church. People were boarding it, their features obscured by distance and the grime on the bus’s windows. He caught a glimpse of a coat the same colour as Neil’s. Was it him or was it just a coincidence? He jumped to his feet, squinting. But the coat had already disappeared into the stairwell. As the bus pulled away, Harlan made a mental note of its number — 77.
Muttering reproachfully to himself, he resumed watching the tabernacle. With every passing minute that Neil didn’t emerge from it, he felt more certain it was him he’d seen. The daylight started to drop. Lampposts flickered into life. Number 77 buses chugged by at regular fifteen-minute intervals, heading to Grenoside — a solid working- class suburb on the north side of the city. By half-past five, Harlan knew Neil was no longer inside the church, not if he started work at six. “Shit,” he said, standing. As he headed off in the direction of his car, he reflected that he’d been an ex-cop so long he’d forgotten the number one rule: there’s no such thing as coincidence.
Harlan drove back to the tabernacle and waited for a number 77 bus to pass. When one did, he followed it. Crawling through the traffic-clotted streets, the bus made its way to Grenoside, passing offices, shops, terraced houses, Hillsborough football ground, seventies high-rises, modern apartment blocks, a suburban shopping centre, more terraces, semis, a new housing estate. Then, finally, the edge of the city — fields dotted with sheep; scattered farmhouses; purple-flowering moorland; and the vast blue-red expanse of the twilight sky. The bus pulled into a turning-circle. It sat there for ten minutes before setting off back towards the city centre.
Harlan walked the circumference of the terminus, peering into the closely clustered ranks of pine trees that almost completely encircled it. Nothing to see but tree-trunks and pine needles. He took a deep breath of the cool, head-clearing air, then returned to his car and the city.
He drove to the Northern General Hospital and cruised the car-parks until he found Neil’s Volvo. After parking in view of it, he bought coffee and doughnuts from a nearby shop. But even that wasn’t enough to stop his eyelids from drooping. Realising sleep was going to win out anyway, he set the alarm on his phone for midnight, reclined his seat and closed his eyes. It seemed mere seconds later that the alarm woke him. The Volvo was still there. He reset the alarm for five-thirty AM and fell back asleep. When he next awoke, he banished the fuzzy edges of sleep with the cold dregs of his coffee. Shortly after six, Neil appeared in his porter’s uniform, his narrow shoulders scrunched against the chill morning air. He ducked into the Volvo and drove away. Harlan tailed him back to Manor Lane.
At seven o’clock the mousey-faced woman opened the downstairs curtains. She stood smoking a cigarette at the living-room window, the elbow of one arm cupped in the other hand. She turned suddenly and moved from view, as if someone had called for her. The morning dragged by. Some of the residents of Manor Lane headed out to work or school. Others came crawling home. As on the previous day, Neil surfaced at noon. A few minutes later, the other set of upstairs curtains opened too, revealing a man who looked like Neil might look in twenty or so years if he spent the intervening time soaking himself in booze. The mousey-faced woman appeared and proffered him a mug, which he pushed away. Moments later, Neil hurried from the house to his car. He drove to a nearby off-licence, bought some cans of lager and a couple of bottles of whisky, and returned home. He handed the booze to his mum at the front door, then got back into his car. Again as on the previous day, Harlan tailed him to Susan’s. Again, the two of them fetched Kane from school. But today, instead of going home, they went to the tabernacle. Lewis Gunn and a dozen or so other people were waiting for them in the church’s car-park, all of them wearing t-shirts printed with Ethan’s face. The preacher shook Neil’s hand and embraced Susan.
Harlan watched the group hand out missing-person posters in the city centre. Susan and Lewis Gunn also spoke to several journalists and the entire group posed for pictures, holding a banner that read ‘ETHAN STILL NEEDS YOUR HELP’. If nothing else, Harlan reflected caustically, his ‘vigilantism’ had fanned the media’s interest back into flame.
At half-five Neil left the group and headed off to work. He parked in the same spot. So did Harlan. He bought more coffee and doughnuts, and a newspaper. The eye-catching front-page headline ran: ‘Police’s Failure To Catch Kidnapper Prompts Vigilante Attack’. Beneath it there was a picture of Garrett at a press-conference. It gave Harlan a small measure of satisfaction to note that there was a sheen of sweat on Garrett’s forehead. He skimmed over the article. What little information the reporter had about the so-called ‘attack’ on Jones they’d got from a neighbour who’d heard him shouting for help. Jones himself had refused to speak to reporters, except to shout, “Leave me alone!” through his letter-box. The remainder of the article was made up by Garrett’s platitudes, wild speculation about Jones, and the opinions of locals, which ranged from the relatively mild ‘He had it coming to him’ to ‘I just wish that whoever it was had done the job properly and killed him’.
Frowning, Harlan tossed the newspaper aside. Part of him was irritated by the publics all too predictable indifference about what’d happened to Jones. But another part of him understood it completely. After all, people raising kids on Jones’s street could hardly be blamed for wishing him dead.
The night passed the same as the former. With small variations in routine, so did the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and so on. For a week, except for a brief visit to his parole officer, Harlan stuck to Neil like shit to a shoe. Neil spent his days doing things for other people — fetching booze for his dad, ferrying Susan and Kane around, handing out leaflets, meeting with Lewis Gunn. The only time he took for himself was a Sunday night visit to The Three Tuns — a little backstreet pub near the Cathedral — where he played darts with two men, whom Harlan assumed to be Brian and Dave. Both men were a good few years older than Neil. Neither of them seemed to fit the kidnapper’s description. One was blond. The other, although dark-haired, was short and squat. They had beer-guts and receding hairlines. They downed pints while Neil stuck to cokes. They made a slightly odd trio — the beer-guzzling lads and the gawky oddball — but they seemed to get on well enough. No doubt, reflected Harlan, this had something to do with fact that Neil was the best player amongst them.
During this time, Harlan didn’t hear from Garrett. Not that he’d expected to after the precautions he’d taken to make sure he didn’t leave any physical evidence behind. Of course, there was always the chance someone had seen him hanging around Jones’s house, but if they had it was doubtful they’d be able to identify him. And even if they could identify him, it was unlikely they would, not considering how hated Jones was. The general consensus on the street was that the vigilante was the hero, not the villain.
Susan, it seemed, had been right when she’d said Neil could be trusted. Harlan was beginning to wonder if he was wasting his time following him. More than that, he was starting to feel bad about it. Jim’s words kept returning to him. He’s just some poor kid who got caught in this mess through no fault of his own. Harlan was on the point of accepting that this was precisely what Neil was, and no more, when the number 77 bus chugged into view again. As previously, Harlan had tailed Neil to Susan’s, then to the Baptist church. But unlike previously, this time Harlan saw him board the bus in his car’s rear-view mirror. A little spurt of adrenaline racing through his bloodstream, he tailed the bus, pulling over at an inconspicuous distance every time it did.
Harlan kept thinking about the woods at the end of the line — how easy it would be to hide a freshly dug grave under the thick layer of pine needles beneath the trees. But after only a couple of miles Neil disembarked. Harlan parked up and followed him on foot along a busy road flanked by exhaust stained terraced-houses, pubs, small shops, restaurants and takeaways. Neil entered a rundown bookies. ‘ACE RACING’ read the faded sign over its door. A heavily-built, bulldog-faced skinhead stood behind a plexi-glass screen at the rear of the bookies. Neil handed him some cash, which he counted out onto the counter, before pocketing. Harlan estimated there to be one or two hundred quid. He dodged out of sight into a shop as Neil exited the bookies. What was the cash for? This question was uppermost in his mind as he watched Neil cross to a bus-stop on the opposite side of the road. The most obvious answers were that Neil had either laid a bet or made a repayment on a line of gambling credit. But Harlan doubted for several reasons whether this was the case. For starters, the skinhead hadn’t given Neil a
