Harlan went first to Lewis Gunn’s tabernacle — an ugly brick building with a huge concrete crucifix over its entrance. Its car park was crammed with cars. People, many of whom held lighted candles, were filing inside it. There was a solemn hush over the gathering and, indeed, over the surrounding streets, as if the whole city held its breath in silent prayer.
Harlan parked on the road. He was about to get out of the car when he saw Susan flanked by Neil and the preacher — a vigorous looking middle-aged man with a bushy head of grey-black hair. It hurt Harlan like a knife to see Susan, her face devoid of colour, her eyes devoid of expression, like something dead but alive. Walking slowly, like an old woman crippled with arthritis, she headed into the church. Harlan left the car and made his way around the car park, checking number plates. His heart gave a double thump when he saw the silver VW Golf with tinted windows. His eyes darted down to the number plate. KY09 SGE. An exact match! But why the hell, he wondered, would the kidnapper — if that was who the car belonged to — risk coming here? Several possibilities occurred to him. Maybe the kidnapper was somehow connected to the church, and it would look odd for him not to be here. Or maybe he was someone from the local community who was trying to distance himself from the crime by staying close to it — there were plenty of cases where murderers had gotten involved in the search for their victims. Or maybe he was simply the kind of guy who got a kick out of seeing first-hand the pain he’d inflicted.
Harlan snatched out his phone to call Jim. The dial tone rang and rang. He pressed his forehead to the car’s rear-window, cupping his hand against the glass to cut out the reflection of the streetlamps. He could vaguely make out some kind of shape on the backseat, a rucksack perhaps, or possibly a bin liner stuffed with something. It crossed his mind that maybe this sick fuck was crazy or arrogant enough to bring Ethan — or rather, Ethan’s body — here. Maybe it gave him some kind of twisted thrill. Whatever it was in there, Harlan felt compelled to get a proper look. He ran to fetch the wheel-nut wrench from his car. As he returned to the VW, Jim finally answered. “Jesus, Harlan, what do you want?”
“I found the silver Volkswagen.”
“Holy Christ! Where?”
“The Baptist tabernacle on the Attercliffe Road.”
“Stay where you are. Someone will be there as soon as possible. And for God’s sake, don’t do anything. Do you hear?”
“Uh-huh.”
Harlan hung up and raised the nut wrench overhead to smash a passenger-door window. Before he could do so an angry shout rang out, “Hey you! What the fuck you doing?”
A heavily built man dressed in jeans and a leather jacket was approaching fast. He was about Harlan’s height and age, but his close-cropped hair was ginger, not dark.
His hands were up in a fighting position, and Harlan noticed that the backs of them and his wrists were greenish-black with spidery jailhouse tattoos — tattoos which in a semi-dark room to a terrified twelve-year old’s eyes might conceivably be mistaken for hair. One look at the man’s face told him there was going to be serious trouble if he didn’t act fast. He shoved the wrench in his jacket pocket. “Police. Is this your car?”
The man stopped a few feet away from Harlan, uncertainty puckering his forehead. He took in Harlan’s unkempt hair and creased clothes. “You’re police? Let’s see your ID.”
“Is this your car?” Harlan repeated more forcefully. The key to these situations, he knew from experience, was to take control, and to do so quickly with a calm aggressiveness.
“You’re not police. You look like a fuckin’ scag-head to me.”
“Sir, this vehicle is suspected to have been used in a crime. I need you to accompany me to the station for questioning.”
The lines of doubt on the man’s face deepened at Harlan’s official sounding language. For an instant, he looked as if he was going to accept Harlan’s claim to be a police officer, but then the pinpricks of his pupils flared. “Either you show me some fuckin’ ID, pal, or I’m gonna fuck you up so bad you’ll wish you were dead. You get me?”
The two men stared silently at each other. Adrenaline poured into Harlan’s bloodstream. He knew what he had to do — he had to put this fucker on the ground and kneel on his back until the uniforms showed up — but he couldn’t do it. His body was rooted, paralysed, while his mind looped back to the image of Robert Reed going over like a skittle. Yet again he heard the sickening crunch, yet again he saw the blood diffusing like wine through the snow.
The man swung at Harlan. Automatically, he jerked his arms up to block the punch. The man swung again. Harlan swayed out of his reach. “Motherfucker!” roared the man, throwing a flurry of punches, all of which either deflected off Harlan’s arms or missed their target. The man backed away, breathing heavily, a new wariness in his eyes.
Again, they faced each other silently for a moment. Then the man pulled out a key and unlocked the car. “Stop. I can’t let you leave,” said Harlan, but he made no attempt to prevent the man from ducking into the car. It wasn’t until the engine revved into life that he darted forward and tried to yank open the driver’s side door. He was dragged along, stumbled to his knees, and as the car turned sharply, narrowly avoided getting pulled under its wheels.
As the car accelerated onto the road, Harlan sprinted to his own car. He slammed it into gear and pushed his foot down hard. He’d been trained in pursuit driving, and he knew the area well, so he was confident the VW wouldn’t get away from him. Accelerating smoothly through the gears, he quickly caught up with it. Its driver put on a sudden burst of speed at a junction, narrowly avoiding clipping another car. Harlan was forced to briefly mount the pavement in order to swerve around the same car. Zigzagging through traffic, careening wildly around bends, they roared through the streets at blurring speeds. Horns blared, tyres squealed, and brakes screeched, as the VW’s driver attempted to shake off his pursuer by going the wrong way around a busy roundabout. There was the sound of grinding metal as Harlan’s car scraped along the side of an oncoming bus. For an instant, he thought he was boxed in, then the traffic parted like the Red Sea, and he was charging after the VW again. Its driver was going like a mad thing, overtaking and undertaking, cutting across streams of traffic, forcing Harlan to take crazy risks just to keep him in view. This is going to end badly, thought Harlan, and a second later it did. The silver VW took a corner too fast, skidded out of control, hit a curb and flipped. Once, twice, three times it rolled across a grass verge, tearing up huge chunks of turf, before coming to rest on its roof against a wall.
Harlan sprang out of his car and ran to the VW. He tried to open the driver’s side door, but it was wedged shut by the car’s buckled roof. He kicked in the window, already shattered by the impact. Ducking down, he saw the man lying in an unconscious heap, his face crushed and bloody. Scattered all around him were clothes, which seemed to have come from a holdall that’d burst open during the crash. Harlan felt for a pulse, and to his relief, found one, although it was weak and thready. The man groaned as Harlan hooked his hands under his armpits, and gently as possible, pulled him from the wreckage. His breath gurgled and grated as if something was broken inside his chest. Blood welled from a deep gash on the palm of one of his hands. Harlan took off his jacket and covered him with it, before ducking back into the overturned car to grab an item of clothing to staunch the bleeding. It was then that he saw the gun. It was an Olympic. 380 BBM revolver — a starter pistol favoured by criminals because it could easily be purchased and just as easily be converted to fire live ammo. Careful not to touch the gun with his hands, he wrapped it in a t-shirt and pocketed it. Then he tore another t-shirt in two and bandaged the man’s hand as best he could with the strips. The man’s eyes flickered open, showing white for a second before the pupils rolled down. He tried to sit up.