by Nick Hollin
‘Where did you leave the book?’ she asks.
‘I don’t remember,’ he says, his face twisting in confusion. ‘Why the hell can’t I remember?’
‘I have an idea why,’ says Superintendent Taylor quietly, and Katie shoots him a look.
Nathan appears not to have heard, gripping the back of his neck and drawing in a long breath. ‘After my parents died… I filled up all the pages in a hurry.’ He recovers and looks straight at Katie. ‘It was probably at my parents’ home, though. Markham could have found it and used it to frame Christian.’
Superintendent Taylor closes the bag and opens the car door again. ‘It’s a line of enquiry. But for now, our focus remains the same and we need to find both Markham and Christian, as quickly as possible.’ He turns to look in the back. ‘Go home. Get some rest. And come to the station to make your statement in the morning.’ He directs his stare at Nathan, who seems not to be looking at anything at all. ‘Keep out of trouble. And stay out of the way. I don’t want a load of false sightings when the photo gets out.’
Katie watches her boss walk away, passing the evidence bag to DC Jones before pulling off his latex glove and retrieving his hat from the back of the forensics van. When he walks past the van and out of view there’s a flash of lights in the distance; the press, eager to get the very latest on ‘The Cartoonist’, desperate to find out if there’s been another victim. She looks down at the paper suit they’ve dressed her in and considers how close she came to being one. She can see from her reflection in the window that she still has a line of chocolate icing drawn across her neck. She wants to wipe it off, she wants to scrub every inch of her body, but for now she doesn’t seem able to move. She slumps down in the seat and draws in a long breath. One hand is squeezed inside the other, and her knuckles start to whiten.
‘Give me the keys to your car,’ says Nathan. ‘I’ll drive us back.’
‘Yeah, right!’ she says. ‘You’ve broken enough laws already.’
‘I have,’ says Nathan, distractedly. ‘I have.’ He seems childlike and excited, the discovery of the journal convincing him of his brother’s innocence and lightening his burden.
Katie turns for the door before her unsteady smile slips away completely. She doesn’t want to spoil his moment. She knows it may not last.
Twenty-Six
The journey back to Katie’s flat is silent. He’d like to talk to her about the journal, about how it all makes sense to him now, but at the same time he’s fearful of the questions she and the others will ask once they’ve read it, once they’ve shared his most intimate thoughts. He risks a glance across and wonders if he shouldn’t be saying something to check she’s okay, although it’s clear that she isn’t. Her driving is unusually reckless and aggressive. Back at Markham’s he’d witnessed her retreat, slipping back into the place he’s been so many times himself, unable and unwilling to process emotion, but now that she’s re-emerged, one emotion seems to be dominating all others.
‘That fucking idiot!’ she shouts out as onrushing headlights flash their own complaint.
The glare of lights, alongside the horns, the swearing and the scream of the Rover’s engine has given Nathan an appalling headache.
‘Stop!’ he shouts as they race towards a pedestrian stepping out into the road.
‘Relax,’ says Katie, as a dab of the brakes and a twitch of the steering wheel guides them by.
‘We have to go back,’ says Nathan. ‘I did that – I stepped out like that so I could steal somebody’s car. I left it at Markham’s.’
‘I guessed as much,’ says Katie. ‘There will be a report. The guys will probably put two and two together.’
‘You mean, they’ll think it was my brother? I can’t let that happen.’
‘I’ll let DS Peters know,’ says Katie. ‘Hopefully he still won’t need you until the morning, by which time some of that alcohol might have left your system.’
Suddenly the world around Nathan swims, a little reminder of what he’d somehow forgotten. ‘It worked,’ he says. ‘The drink. It allowed me to see what I was too controlled to see when I was sober. My brother is innocent.’ He sinks lower into his seat and his voice weakens as the truth hits home. ‘I betrayed him. I thought he was like me.’ He presses his head back. ‘And you’ll know what I’m truly like when you’ve read that journal. I’m a monster.’
She turns to look at him now, her face occasionally lit up by flashes of passing streetlights.
‘Just words,’ she says softly.
‘Words that represent feelings.’
‘But not actions.’
‘Not yet.’
Katie squeezes the steering wheel and stares straight ahead. ‘Recent events,’ she says, a hand coming up to her throat, then dropping down again, ‘have opened my eyes to a few truths. And you’re not the only one feeling guilty for blaming someone, someone…’ She looks away, as if checking the side mirror, but there’s nobody on the road behind. ‘Important. I told myself I was mad at you when you went away because you’d hidden how you were struggling, because you’d been putting on an act for me, for everyone. The truth is I don’t think I ever fell for it. I could see that struggle; I just chose to ignore it and keep on pushing because I was getting what I wanted.’
‘What we wanted,’ Nathan corrects her.
‘I think the real reason I was mad at you was because you couldn’t go on…’ She lifts her fingers from the steering wheel, bending them backwards. ‘And because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go on without you.’ Now she checks the rear-view mirror, and this time Nathan knows exactly what she’s looking at. ‘So, who’s the monster really?’
Out of the corner of Nathan’s eye he can see a plastic bag tucked down in the footwell behind the driver’s seat: the bag that Katie took from the flat – the bag with contents he must never see. ‘It’s not Christian,’ he says. ‘We’re not the same.’
‘None of us knows what we’re really capable of,’ says Katie, her attention once again fixed on the road. ‘And none of us is entirely the same. I always thought I was like my dad: driven, decent, moral…’ She releases a long, uneven breath. ‘But now…’
‘Now you’d do anything to make this stop, maybe even take a life. Is that what you’re trying to say?’
‘Maybe.’
Nathan can see, even with her face turned away, that he’s got it wrong. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all. He can also see that she’s not about to correct him with the truth. They sit in silence again, his previous elation now a gnawing worry for the only two people in his life he cares about. He starts to knead one hand inside the other, a burning sensation at the tips of his fingers and an itch related to the plastic bag behind him that he can’t even bring himself to look at directly. The discomfort sharpens his thoughts, bringing them to a possibility that he had somehow overlooked.
‘Markham’s plan was to make Christian take the blame,’ he says slowly, as his fear starts to build. ‘So there’s no way he could allow him to come forward and provide an alibi. He needed to make sure my brother was silent.’
‘But he wasn’t silent. You spoke to him on the phone.’
‘Markham could have taken him since.’ He pinches at the hardened skin of his scars.
‘He’s not dead,’ says Katie.
‘No,’ Nathan agrees, his thumb now resting on the inside of his wrist, checking for a pulse which isn’t hard to find. ‘I’d know if he was.’
Katie takes her hand from the steering wheel and lightly places it on the back of his.
‘If this is Markham, though…’ she says. The if makes Nathan pull his hand away, turning towards the window. ‘I’m sorry,’ she continues, ‘but we have to keep asking the right questions. Like, why would Markham be doing this to us? He has no connection to me as far as I can tell, and if anything, he should be grateful to you and your brother.’
He leans towards her, jabbing a finger into his temple. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense! You s
hould know that. I definitely know that.’
‘How did Markham end up working for you?’
‘Christian put an ad in the paper.’
‘When was this?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Not long after you and I had started working together, and so by that point,’ his fingertips prickle and he gives his hands a shake, ‘by then I’d decided I couldn’t risk seeing Christian. He couldn’t know what I was like.’
‘Couldn’t Christian have found your journal?’
‘No,’ he says sharply. ‘He doesn’t know about me.’ He’s run through the possibility so many times, piecing together old conversations, fleeting looks, unanswered questions, and not once has he suspected that his secret has got out. He’d given up everything to keep it that way: his friends, his name, even his relationship with his brother. Given that sacrifice, a lifetime of effort and a memory that can call up a million details of much less importance, it makes no sense that he can’t remember where he last left the journal. But then the lingering ache at his temple where he’d jabbed it with his finger reminds him of his own words: it doesn’t have to make sense.
Katie brakes hard before pulling over into a side road. There are no street lamps and he can see little more than her outline.
‘I know you want me to trust your brother, but I have to work with the evidence. We’ve been here so many times before, and on each of those times you’ve been right, but we’ve always needed evidence, and when it’s this close, when it’s family…’
‘I know,’ says Nathan. ‘I know.’ He places a fist against his forehead, lightly tapping it over and over. ‘Jesus, how often have we sat talking to family members, listening to them defend their loved ones to the last, blind to the evidence in front of them.’ He stares at Katie, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark, and he can see her lift her hand to her shoulder-length hair, tucking it behind her ear. It’s something he remembers from before: an action that he’d recognised as a need for distraction. And this time it has distracted him, taking him away from concerns about his brother. He reaches up and switches on the light, catching the startled look from Katie as she retreats from his outstretched arm.
‘It’s okay,’ he says, reaching towards her and pushing back the hair. It reminds him of a girl he’d known in his teens. She’d been clever, beautiful, funny, and he’d hoped that the light she brought to his life might somehow counteract the dark that was descending. For a while it had worked, and he’d started to believe he might be okay, but then had come the intimacy, the time spent alone, and he’d realised that breaking her heart by walking away was far better than what he was imagining doing to her.
Lost in the memory, he almost misses what he’s exposed in this intimate moment with Katie. With her hair pushed back he can see that the line of chocolate icing on her neck is not only at the front. He follows it with his finger, and she lets him, until he reaches a point at the back where the two meeting lines are wrapped around each other.
‘What is it?’ she says.
‘I don’t know. A link to another case, perhaps.’ He reaches under his hair, still held at the back by a single rubber band. ‘I don’t remember seeing it on the wall in your flat, but did any of the victims wear a necklace with a fastening like twisted wire?’
Katie reaches up instantly and turns off the light, but not before he catches the look of confusion quickly turning to terror.
‘It’s probably like the doll,’ she says, shakily. ‘It means that he didn’t just want to cut my throat; maybe he had trouble getting the lines to meet at the back? Or maybe his hand was shaking?’
On the steering wheel he can see hers doing the same, and he wants to tell her that it’s okay, that she doesn’t need to share what she’s really thinking, not yet. Instead he stays quiet and settles back into his seat, thinking of the first time he’d met this remarkable woman. She’d been so different back then; so self-assured, so in control. If there’d been doubt in anything she did she was able to hide it well, but with his eye for detail he’d also noticed a trace of something else, a sadness he couldn’t ever pinpoint. He remembers going to her previous flat once – far larger, in a far better part of town – to pick up something on the way to a crime scene, and he couldn’t help but absorb every detail of the immaculate interior around him. When he’d got home that night he’d played it back in his mind, finding himself living her life, behind her eyes, and eventually those eyes, or perhaps his eyes, had started to cry.
* * *
As they walk up the stairs to her current home, he watches the bright strips of material on the backs of obviously well-used trainers Katie had pulled out of her car. He starts to feel as if he’s just finished one of the runs around his house in Scotland, a marathon that never took him more than a dozen metres from his front door. He doesn’t notice Katie has stopped in front of him until he’s very nearly walked into her, bashing instead into the plastic bag containing the Steven Fish file. He’s about to ask what’s wrong when she spins towards him, holding a finger to her lips, eyes wide. That same finger then points ahead, and when he leans to look past her he can see that the door to her flat is open.
‘Probably me,’ he says, as quietly as he can manage. ‘I left in a hurry.’
This time her finger directs him to the floor just ahead. The lights in the stairwell are not the strongest but he can see the muddy marks leading up to the door. He makes the shape of a phone and holds it to his ear, but she shakes her head and starts moving on. Reaching the door, Katie pushes it open a fraction more, enough for them both to slip through. He’s keeping close, but not so close he can’t fling himself in front of her should there be an attack.
The flat is exactly as he had remembered, still a bit of a mess, still with the spare room door he’d shoulder-barged open hanging from one of its hinges. The light in the little room is still on, just as he had left it, but the broken door is blocking his view inside. Katie moves swiftly to the bedroom, leaping through the doorway and turning to her right into one of the few parts of the flat that can’t be seen from the centre of the living room. She comes back out, eyes wide and shifting rapidly from side to side.
‘Perhaps you left the mud and we just didn’t notice it,’ he whispers.
Katie says nothing, moving across and slamming the front door shut before fastening the chain.
‘Or perhaps it was a neighbour who noticed the door was open and called in to check you were okay.’
She switches on the main light and, looking down, they can both see that the mud extends into the flat. They follow the footprints round to the kitchen. And it’s there, in the centre of the table, that they spot the knife. It is the largest of the knives taken from the block on the side: the very knife that Katie had placed between them the night before. Alongside the blade are two small objects. From a distance they remind him of the chopped carrots he’d seen in Markham’s kitchen. There’s no pool of blood here, but they have a redness at one end that makes his stomach twist. He moves closer and Katie tries to block him off with her arm. It’s too late; he can make them out clearly, as clearly as he can see his own fingers.
He pushes past her and steps in close, so close that he can see the white of the bone. Both fingers have been severed cleanly, cut off just below the second knuckle with a precision that suggests they were taken individually. Nathan stumbles backwards, slamming into something hard, then sliding down towards the floor.
‘My brother,’ he says.
‘We don’t know that for sure.’
‘I felt it,’ he says, squeezing the tips of his fingers where the burning and then the numbness had been. ‘And I did that.’ He points at the smallest of the fingers. ‘I accidentally shut Christian’s in the car door when he was seven. It broke and never straightened. I-I remember being horrified that we were no longer the same, that I’d made him different to me. I even thought about breaking my finger too.’ His voice emerges so flat and cold he’s almost convinced it’s not his own.
‘You’ll have mentioned the broken finger in the journal,’ says Katie, pushing herself up straight, then squatting down next to him, reaching out to touch his arm. ‘He’s just showing he knows things that he shouldn’t, things that are secret and private. It doesn’t mean that Christian is dead.’
Nathan reaches out for the connection to his brother, searching for comfort and finding pain. ‘He’s not,’ he says, glancing across at the plastic bag that Katie had dropped upon entering the kitchen. ‘But this is worse.’
Twenty-Seven
Katie follows Nathan’s glance at the bag and suddenly understands what he means by this is worse. It also reminds her that there are other murders and other pieces of evidence hidden in this flat. She moves quickly, almost tripping over Nathan’s legs as she runs out of the kitchen through to the tiny room and instantly surrounds herself with the images that have filled her mind, her days and her nights for so long. But there’s only one she’s looking at now, pinned in the gap she had made to protect Nathan. And it’s Nathan’s face that fills that gap now.
She’d taken the photo with her mobile at the end of one of their biggest successes. He looks young and handsome, with close-cropped hair and a broad smile. She remembers that smile, remembers the effect it had on her before she’d pushed those feelings down. It’s then that she spots the addition to the photo: the narrow line of what she’s sure is chocolate icing drawn across Nathan’s throat. She lifts a hand to her own throat, feeling the raised line before rushing into the bathroom and vomiting in the sink.