Chapter 18
The small living-room was gloomy and stale smelling. Like a tomb. The thought popped unbidden into Harlan’s head. It made him feel a little suffocated, and he resisted an urge to fling open the window. Leaflets with Ethan’s face on them were piled on every available surface — the carpet, the sofa, the hearth, the television. “Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked, one hand pressed over his bandage. Susan shook her head. Picking his way through the leaflets, he limped to the sofa, cleared a space and carefully lowered himself onto it.
From somewhere Susan dredged up a smile that only made her face seem more deathlike. “You look worse than I feel.” No I don’t, thought Harlan, as she continued, “Shouldn’t you be in hospital?”
“I wanted to see you. Are you alone?”
“Kane’s asleep upstairs. Poor thing, he’s tired out after what-” Susan broke off with a sheepish glance at Harlan.
He finished her sentence for her. “After what happened last night. I heard about that.”
“It was an accident. I didn’t try to-” Susan started to say, but broke off again, her eyes dropping guiltily away from Harlan’s. She shook her head. “I can’t lie to you. Not after what you’ve done.”
“So you did try to kill yourself.”
Susan glanced at the ceiling. Her voice dropped low. “Maybe I did. I don’t know. All I know is I wanted to sleep. Just sleep and sleep and not have to think about anything anymore.” Her razor-thin shoulders shuddered as she heaved a breath.
“And what about now? Do you still feel the same way?”
“Yes and no. One minute I’m okay. Well, as okay as I can be. The next I’m having all these thoughts.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
“Ugly thoughts. But I’m not going to listen to them. I can’t. Kane needs me.”
“Ethan needs you too.”
Susan’s eyes filled with a bright sheen of pain. She gave a vehement shake of her head. “Ethan’s dead.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But I am saying it.” Her voice had a shrill note in it, fast edging towards hysteria. “Ethan’s my son, and I’m saying to you that I feel in my bones and my heart that he’s dead.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Yes, yes. He’s dead, dead, fucking dead!” Tears choked her voice. Her head drooped like a flower beaten down by a storm.
“Look at me, Susan. Look at me and believe me. There’s a chance Ethan’s still alive. It’s only a small chance. But there’s hope.”
Susan lifted her eyes uncertainly. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” Before Harlan could reply, she answered her question. “No you wouldn’t. You’re the only one who’ll always tell me the absolute truth. I see that now.”
Susan was right, Harlan realised. No one had more reason to hate him than her, yet she was the only person he could bare his soul to without fear. In some twisted way, he was closer to her than he was to anyone, even Eve. “What have the police told you?”
“Only what it suits them to. Just that you were injured rescuing Jamie Sutton from that man-” Susan shook her head, a curl of hatred distorting her lips. “No, he’s not a man. Richard Nash is a sick animal.”
“Have they shown you a photo of him?”
“Yes, but I didn’t recognise him. I keep asking them questions — questions like, what makes you so sure he was the one who took Ethan? And I never get a straight answer. Christ, it makes me feel like I’m a fucking suspect.”
“You are a suspect.”
Susan’s eyes swelled with indignation. “I’d stab myself in the heart before I hurt my own children.”
“I know it’s hard to take, but the fact is everyone’s a suspect until a case is solved. That’s just the way it has to be.”
“I understand that, I suppose,” Susan muttered begrudgingly. She clutched two handfuls of her hair. “But it still makes me so frustrated I feel like tearing my fucking hair out.”
“Just sit down and listen to me, Susan, and I’ll tell you why there’s hope Ethan might be alive.”
Susan perched on the edge of an armchair, hardly breathing as she waited for Harlan to speak. He told her everything that’d happened since he last saw her. Unlike with Eve, he gave her the whole story, leaving out no detail. When he got to the part about Jones, her eyes widened with surprise then narrowed in fury. “I knew that animal was in on this,” she hissed. “I fuckin’ knew it.”
Harlan described torturing Jones. He spoke quickly, feeling lighter as the words poured out of him and into Susan. She took them from him gladly, her tongue flicking over her lips as if tasting something to be relished. “I don’t know how you resisted killing the bastard,” she said.
“Neither do I,” admitted Harlan.
Susan sat silent and rigid as Harlan told her about the caravan, the woods and the caves. She trembled with the effort of holding back her tears, but an agonised sob escaped her lips when he vividly recounted finding Jamie Sutton. “Oh Christ, it’s too much! I can’t bear it!” she groaned, rocking back and forth, her thin arms hugged around herself.
“I know it’s horrifying to think of Ethan possibly being kept like that, but that’s where our hope comes from,” Harlan said gently. “Do you understand?”
Susan nodded. “I don’t want to, but I do.”
Harlan’s wound twinged as he described the fight with Nash. Susan looked at him with what might’ve been concern, maybe even compassion. “They never told me your injury was so serious.”
“It’s nothing compared to what you’ve suffered.”
“No, it’s not nothing. It’s something.” There was gratitude in Susan’s voice.
Harlan suddenly found himself unable to look at her. Her hatred he knew how to handle, but not her gratitude. Lowering his eyes, he continued his story right up to leaving hospital. He didn’t mention Eve — that would’ve somehow felt like an admission of betrayal. A hiss of breath came from Susan as she mulled over what she’d heard. “So let me get this straight, Jones hasn’t been charged with anything yet.”
Harlan shook his head. “They need hard evidence.”
“Evidence.” The word grated through Susan’s teeth. “Give me five minutes alone with him and I’d give them all the fuckin’ evidence they need.”
Susan looked as if a breath of wind could blow her over, but there was such cold fury in her eyes that Harlan didn’t for a second doubt her ability to carry the threat through. “They’ll find a way to get at him and Nash. The old woman, Mary Webster, might be the key to-” Harlan fell silent as a feeling of faintness welled up inside him. His head and eyes rolled slowly back.
Susan rushed to his side and caught hold of his arm, stopping him from falling sideways. “This is crazy. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’ll be fine,” Harlan mumbled, his voice blurring. “I just need a moment.”
Susan propped him up between the sofa’s arm and a couple of cushions. “Can I get you anything?”
“Some water to take my tablets.”
Susan hurried through to the kitchen. Harlan focused on the room, fighting to keep unconsciousness at bay. The mantelpiece was cluttered with cheap ornaments, a silver carriage clock and photos. There were recent photos of Kane and Ethan in their school uniforms. Kane with his usual sullen, angry at the world face. Ethan smiling timidly, his shy eyes slightly averted from the camera. In the middle of the mantelpiece stood a photo that made Harlan’s heart squeeze. It showed Robert Reed and his sons on a beach with the sea shimmering in the background. Ethan was wearing a sunhat and t-shirt that came down almost to the knees of his chubby baby legs. Kane was wearing wet, sand-caked swimming trunks and a smile so broad his eyes were barely visible. Robert was squatted down behind them, one arm around each of their shoulders. He was smiling too. The scene exuded happiness — a happiness soon to be fractured into bloody pieces.
