fifty-two year old unmarried, unemployed steel worker with convictions for child sex offences, had apparently been seen on several occasions recently hanging around outside Ethan’s school and at a nearby play-park that the boy frequented. Jones was well-known in the community as a sex-offender, and his home and car had been vandalised many times in the past. In a brief statement to the press, Detective Chief Inspector Garrett said that Jones was on the Sex Offenders’ Register and was considered a medium risk.
Harlan pulled over at a cafe with internet access, navigated to the website of a local newspaper, typed ‘William Jones’ into the search-term box, and scanned down the list of related articles until he came to the headline, ‘Man Jailed For Child Sex Offences’. He clicked the link and skim-read the article it led to. Jones had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in 2005 for ten counts of making indecent images of a girl under fourteen-years old and one count of indecent assault. There was a photo of him — overweight, vein-streaked alcoholic’s cheeks, receding grey-brown hair. Although, at a stretch, Jones might fit the kidnapper’s description, Harlan dismissed him as a suspect. The guy was a relatively low-grade offender with a taste for young girls. A nasty piece of work, but not the type to snatch eight-year old boys from their bedrooms. That didn’t mean it wasn’t worth bringing him in and grilling him for a while. After all, birds of a feather flocked together — especially when no one else wanted anything to do with them — which meant that characters like Jones were often the best source of information about offenders operating under the police radar in an area.
Harlan returned to his car and the search. Afternoon wore away like a corpse in a hot country. Five o’clock, six, seven…Every time he glanced at the clock, another hour seemed to have passed. He swallowed Pro-Plus tablets with black coffee, but even so his vision began to grow blurry as if he was looking through a haze of tears. It’d been nearly forty-eight hours since he last slept. Reluctantly accepting that if he continued searching he’d be likely to miss more than he saw, he headed back to his flat.
Remembering about the march, Harlan flicked the television on and found himself confronted by Susan Reed’s haggard, almost cadaverous face. She looked like she’d aged two years for every day that’d passed since he last saw her. Her eyes, which peered out from under tear-swollen lids, had a glazed look about them. More than likely, she’d been given a mild sedative. A man had one arm cupped around her narrow shoulders as if to hold her up. He was maybe five or ten years younger than her, tall and skinny, with a pale, lumpy face, and a fine fuzz of blond hair on his skull and above his upper lip. Watery blue eyes — it was difficult to tell if they were watery with tears or just watery — peered at the cameras through cheap-looking spectacles. Harlan wondered who the man was. A friend? A relative? No, his body language spoke of a different kind of intimacy. A boyfriend, maybe. A person of interest, definitely.
A gang of reporters pushed microphones closer to Susan’s trembling lips as she opened her mouth to speak. “Ethan…” Her voice cracked and she seemed to lose her breath. She was silent a moment, wrestling with her emotions, on the edge of being overcome with grief. “Ethan, if you’re out there and you can hear me, we’re doing everything we possibly can to find you.” She looked away from the cameras, steadying herself, then she addressed the kidnapper. “Please let my beautiful little boy go. Please! Please!” She couldn’t hold it together any longer. Tears spilled down her face. She dropped her head, shoulders quaking, and the man at her side gently guided her away from the microphones.
The camera panned around to focus on a crowd about four or five hundred strong, many of them carrying flowers and lighted candles. At the front of the crowd a line of children held a large banner with two pictures of Ethan flanking the words ‘HELP FIND ETHAN’ and a telephone number. The crowd applauded as Susan and the man joined them. They set off along the streets, chanting Ethan’s name. Their voices were full of a kind of sad enthusiasm, but suddenly a discordant, angry note came to the fore. The crowd bunched into tight knot outside a dilapidated two-up two-down terraced house. The house’s downstairs window was boarded with warped, rain- stained chipboard on which was graffitied in red paint ‘Pedo Scum’. As the camera homed in on the graffiti, a voiceover explained that the house belonged to William Jones.
Jones was lucky the police were holding him, Harlan reflected. He knew from experience how quickly a peaceful gathering could transform into a lynch mob. He’d once been part of a task force set up to investigate the death of a convicted paedophile whose house was ransacked by an angry mob, some of whom were only a couple of years older than Ethan.
Harlan phoned Jim. This time his ex-partner answered. “Who’s the guy with Susan Reed?” asked Harlan.
“Forget it, Harlan. You’re not getting anything else out of me, not after the way you’ve behaved. I thought we had a deal that you were going to keep away from this thing.”
“You thought wrong. Look, Jim, all I’m doing is searching the streets. I owe Susan Reed that much at least. Besides, the guy went on the national news with her. His name’s going to come out soon enough anyway.”
“I’ll tell you this much. He’s clean, no warrants, no record, and he’s got an airtight alibi.”
“He could have an accomplice.”
Jim sighed and tried to change the subject. “Have you spoken to Eve?”
“Yes. She asked if I wanted to meet up.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said no.”
“You want a piece of advice, Harlan. Call her back, tell her you’ve changed your mind.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why? She still loves you, you know.”
“I know. That’s why I can’t see her.”
Jim huffed his breath into the receiver. “Christ, I’ve never heard such a load of bollocks. If you think you’re doing Eve a favour by staying away from her, you’re wrong. All you’re doing is making both of you miserable. But then again, maybe that’s what you want. Maybe prison’s turned you into the kind of guy who enjoys misery, wallows in it like a pig in muck.”
“Maybe so.” Harlan’s eyes were drawn to the television by the sound of smashing glass. Someone had hurled a bottle at Jones’s house. The police quickly moved in to usher the crowd onwards. The camera homed in on Susan Reed, milking every ounce of agony and despair. Her boyfriend, or whatever he was, looked pale and uncomfortable, like he wanted to be somewhere else. “So what’s the guy’s alibi?”
“Jesus, Harlan,” snapped Jim, and he hung up.
Harlan switched off the television and headed for bed. He set the alarm clock for two hours hence and shut his eyes. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought about what Jim had said. Jim was wrong, prison hadn’t changed him — at least, not in the way he meant. He’d always needed a bit of misery in his life. As a detective, he’d needed it the way an oyster needs sand to form pearls. It’d provided him with the edge and insight required to do the job. The difference was that back then he’d used his misery, controlled it. Now it was the other way around.
Chapter 5
All that night and the following day and night, Harlan relentlessly scoured the streets. He saw dozens of silver VW Golfs, but none of their number plates came close to being a match. As the hands of time ticked mercilessly towards the four day mark, his searching became ever more frantic. One time, after glimpsing a silver car in his rearview mirror, he did a high-speed U-turn and gave chase. A mile or so later, leaving a trail of blaring horns in his wake, he caught up with the car only to find it wasn’t even a VW.
There was little new to be heard on the news. For some undisclosed reason, a pond was dragged, but turned up nothing. William Jones was released without charge. The police issued warnings that vigilantism wouldn’t be tolerated. They also put up a ten thousand pound reward for information that would lead them to Ethan. Their search was building to a fever-pitch too — over a third of the regional force’s manpower was now involved. An army of volunteers wallpapered the city with Ethan’s face and handed out reams of leaflets. Susan Reed spoke to dozens of journalists, making a series of increasingly desperate appeals. But answers seemed non-existent and fear swelled like waves of fire, ready to consume the city. Parents kept their children indoors. Home security companies couldn’t keep up with demand. Police were inundated with reports of suspected prowlers.
On the evening of the third day, Garrett gave another press conference at which he admitted that the police had few clues to go on and called on people not to lose hope. Don’t lose hope! In the past, Harlan had spoken those same words to the families of missing and kidnapped persons, and they’d rung as hollow on his lips as they did on
