The Border Part Six Read Online Free

know the truth. There’ll be nowhere left for Ben to hide, and then Alex’ll have to do something. He and Jane, they move way too slowly. They’ve known it was Ben for years, but they never quite had enough evidence. This time, public opinion should be enough to push them in the right direction.” He paused. “That’s really why I’m doing it, you know. Not to upset anyone. I consider it my civic duty to push the police investigation in the right direction. I’ve always been a strong believer in campaigning journalism.”
    “He was bad from birth, you know,” Harry replied, staring at his beer bottle. “Ben, I mean. He was always a bad seed.”
    “You’ve said that before.”
    “But I really mean it. It wasn’t anything your mother and I did to him, he just…” Pausing for a moment, he seemed lost in his own thoughts. “I remember when I first set eyes on him, just a few minutes after he’d popped out. He wasn’t crying. That’s odd with a kid, isn’t it? You and Beth, you both cried, but Ben… He just looked up at me, he was only three or four minutes out of the womb, but I swear to God I could already sense that something was up with him, like he was already calculating, already thinking about stuff. As he got older, that feeling just got worse and worse.” He sighed. “I was so relieved when you and Beth turned out to be normal.”
    “So you think there’s just something wrong in Ben’s head?”
    Harry nodded. “Something in the way he’s made. I don’t know, maybe your mother smoked too much while she was carrying him.”
    “He should’ve got help a long time ago,” Jack continued. “There’s something wrong with the system when someone who’s obviously sick is just allowed to walk around like that.”
    “Amen to that.”
    Jack nodded.
    “It’s hard,” Harry added. “You don’t want to believe that your own kid, your own flesh and blood, is capable of that sorta thing, but… I don’t know, maybe I should’ve done something about it a long time ago, when he was little.”
    “You tried. You took him to the station that time.”
    “It wasn’t enough. I should’ve tried something else.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like…” He paused again. “I’m his father. If there’s something wrong with him, if he’s a danger to the community, maybe I should’ve…” He fell silent for a moment, staring into space, clearly imagining what it would have been like if he’d ended Ben’s life all those years ago. “I thought the law would deal with him,” he continued finally. “By the time I realized that wasn’t going to happen, it was too late.”
    “You don’t mean -”
    “I should’ve put a sack over his head,” he continued. “There, I said it. You know what he’s like, always coming and going, would anyone really have missed him if he’d gone one time and never come back? Would anyone have even known? You’d all have just figured he was off on his travels, but I could’ve ended the misery for all of us.” He sniffed, before taking another swig of beer. “Don’t think I never considered it. I just never got to the point of doing it, that’s all. Maybe I’m a coward.”
    They sat in silence for a moment, each of them contemplating what it would have been like if Harry had killed Ben.
    “Where is he now?” Harry asked finally. “Where’s he spending his final night of freedom?”
    Jack shrugged.
    “I’ll sleep better when I know he’s caged,” Harry continued, finishing his beer and immediately grabbing another from the floor. “I won’t go to visit him in jail, though. Or the loony bin, wherever he ends up. I won’t go, not ever. I don’t want to see him once this is over, I’d rather just pretend he never existed.” He turned to Jack. “What about you? Are you gonna stay in touch with him?”
    Jack paused for a moment. “I have to,” he said finally. “After all, he’s still my brother.”
    ***
    Sitting on a bench in the town square, in the