The hours crawled by like they were as weighed down with anxiety as Harlan. At one AM, he packed the gear into the rucksack, shouldered it and left the car again. Keeping to the shadows, he made his way back along the alley to Jones’s house. There was no light in the upstairs window now. He took out the crowbar, and after a quick glance to check no one was around, set to work. He jammed the crowbar between the gate and its frame and threw his weight against it, heaving it back and forth until the muscles of his arms burned. The wood cracked and splintered and finally, with a groan, the lock gave way. He found himself in small concrete yard strewn with the debris of material Jones had used to repair and reinforce his house — rotten wooden boards, bags of mouldy cement, rusty screws and nails. He crouched in the darkness, barely breathing, listening. There were no sounds of movement from inside the house.
Harlan pulled on the balaclava, then picked his way across the yard to the backdoor. He briefly aimed the torch beam at it. The door was reinforced with steel panels and deadbolts. It would take a battering-ram to break it down. He turned his attention to the downstairs window, which was protected by wire-mesh screwed into the brickwork. The window had no visible lock. He took out his screwdriver and set to work removing the screws, many of which were almost ready to drop out of the crumbling mortar. He piled up some bags of cement and stood on them to reach the uppermost screws. When they were all out, he peeled away the mesh, jimmied the blade of the screwdriver under the rattling, rotten window frame and dislodged the latch. Seconds later he was wriggling in through the open window, pulling aside the curtains and lowering himself to the floor. There was a hollow clink of glass bottles as his feet came into to contact with a plastic bag. He froze, ears straining. Again, there was no sound of movement.
Nose wrinkling at a pungent smell that was part fried food and alcohol, part stale cigarette smoke and even staler sweat, part mildew and something else he couldn’t quite place, Harlan reached for his torch. Its pale yellow beam revealed what the something else was — an easel was set up in the centre of the room, holding a canvas thickly encrusted with gaudy, glistening acrylic paint. The painting depicted a group of children at a playground, kicking their legs high on some swings, their heads thrown back, their mouths wide with laughter. It would’ve been a perfectly innocent scene in any other context, but seeing it here gave Harlan a cold feeling in his stomach. The feeling intensified as he shone the torch around the walls, which were covered with dozens of paintings and drawings. Some hung in cheap frames, others were simply tacked to the yellowed woodchip wallpaper. Some portrayed scenes similar to the canvas on the easel, others showed children at play in school-yards, children riding bicycles, children eating, children reading, children sleeping. All the paintings’ subjects were rendered in too-bright colours, so that they seemed to possess a heightened reality. There was nothing overtly sinister about any of the individual artworks, yet collectively it was one of the most sinister things he’d ever seen. He realised now why Jones stubbornly refused to leave his house. This collection was clearly his pride and joy — his life’s work.
The cold feeling came up stronger and stronger. Harlan let it rise into his gullet, hard and big as a fist, knowing he’d need it when he came face to face with Jones. A cursory examination of the remainder of the room revealed a threadbare sofa and two armchairs piled with boxes of paint, brushes and blank canvases; no carpet, only bare paint-spattered floorboards; bin-liners bulging with empty cans of super-strength cider and bottles of cheap sherry; the greasy remnants of a meal; the ashes of a long dead fire. There were three doors. One stood open, leading to a small, pot-cluttered kitchen. Very quietly, very slowly he opened one of the other doors. It led to a hallway that terminated at the front door. The third door opened onto a flight of stairs. Wincing at every creak, he padded up them. Like the living-room, the stairwell was papered with artworks. Halfway up, Harlan paused as one in particular caught his eye. It depicted two figures drawn in silhouette — an adult and a child holding hands at the entrance to a yawning black tunnel. Harlan wondered whether the drawing represented reality, or whether it was some kind of symbolic representation of Jones’s relationship with children. Whatever the case, the grim little drawing was somehow truer and less distorted than its more garish neighbours.
Harlan stiffened at a sound from upstairs — a sort of asthmatic snuffle followed by a phlegmy cough. He waited until silence resumed, before climbing to the landing. To his right a short hallway led to a bathroom, from which emanated a tang of stale urine. To his left was a closed door. Pressing his ear to its chipped paintwork, he heard a low snore. He switched off his torch, and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, before easing the door open. In the faint ambient glow of the city that filtered through the bedroom curtains, his eyes traced the outline of Jones’s sleeping figure on a single bed. He was laid on his back beneath a tangle of blankets, his round-bowl of a belly gently rising with each snore. His right hand gripped what looked like an old-fashioned police truncheon. Harlan couldn’t clearly make out Jones’s face, but he knew from the newspapers that he was a late middle-aged man with the vein-streaked skin and puffy eyes of a heavy drinker. The vinegary smell of cider hung in the air like an invisible smog.
Keeping his breathing low and shallow, Harlan approached Jones. He paused at the bedside, staring down at the sleeping man. A tremor ran through him as the image of Robert Reed wormed its way into his mind. With a shake of his head, he shoved it back down through the layers of his consciousness. In its place he pictured Ethan — Ethan stood hand-in-hand with Jones at the entrance to a tunnel. The image seared through him like cold flames. It took hold of him and made him reach to snatch away the truncheon.
Jones’s eyelids flickered. “Wha…?” he slurred.
With a fluid, practised movement, Harlan flipped Jones onto his belly and twisted his arm up behind him. Jones struggled furiously to break free, bucking like a maddened bull as Harlan straddled his squat, powerfully built body. Harlan twisted harder. Something popped. Jones gave out a muffled scream and his struggles subsided. For a moment both men were still and silent, except for the sound of their accelerated breathing. Then, his voice ragged with pain and fear, Jones said, “What do you want?”
Harlan pressed the point of his screwdriver against Jones’s neck. “Move and you’re dead,” he hissed, trying to disguise his voice by talking through his teeth.
“Please, you don’t need to hurt me anymore, I’ll-”
“Shut the fuck up. Don’t speak unless I ask you a direct question.”
Harlan took out the duct tape. Jones whimpered as Harlan wrapped it tightly around his wrists and ankles. When he was done, he rolled Jones onto his back again. The beam of his torch explored the bedroom — more paintings; some cheap-looking furniture; a bedside table cluttered with brown-plastic pill bottles; a stack of newspapers, the uppermost carrying a photo of Ethan. The light lingered on some pale rectangles on the tobacco-stained walls where pictures used to hang, before landing on Jones’s face. Jones’s bloodshot eyes blinked in their folds of bruised-looking flesh. Quivers ran through his sallow, stubbly cheeks. His chest rattled as he sucked in deep panic breaths. Harlan picked up the truncheon and balanced its skull-cracking weight on his palm. “I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to tell me what I want to know,” he began in a quiet, tightly controlled voice. “What do you know about Ethan Reed’s abduction?”