The Goodnight Song: An absolutely heart-stopping and gripping thriller

by Nick Hollin

  Richard has been uncharacteristically quiet since they left the cottage, driving fast, silent beside them as they’ve bickered, but now Katie can see him shifting uneasily in his seat.

  ‘Can you drop me off as soon as we get to the outskirts of London,’ she says to the doctor. ‘I’ll make my way from there.’

  ‘But why not let me take you straight to the station?’ he asks, eyes still fixed on the road ahead as he weaves to overtake an articulated lorry.

  ‘Because I’m not going to the station.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ says Nathan, leaning forward again, his fingers gripping the seat just behind her right shoulder. ‘We are going to the station. We have to trust in the law. And each other.’

  Katie sees flashes of red behind her eyes that pulse in time with her racing heartbeat. In the last few months this anger has come frequently, and from nowhere, but there can be no doubt that it’s justified now.

  ‘Stop. I’m sick of you controlling me!’

  ‘The problem is, I’m not sure you can control yourself,’ says Nathan, softly. ‘Richard and I have been concerned about you for a while. You’ve been trying to hide it from us. Maybe you’ve been more successful at hiding it from yourself, but this is not you, this is not—’

  ‘Natural?’ Before she knows it, she’s turned in her seat and popped off her seat belt. The car is too old to have an alarm, but it’s like she can hear it, screaming inside her skull. It’s telling her to sit back and calm down, to save her energy for the investigation, but the hot rage is still drowning everything else out. ‘My dad is dead, and I didn’t even go to his funeral. Now my oldest friend is on a slab because I wasn’t there for him. My face and my stomach have been sliced open because I grew too close to you. And you…’ She pauses. This has been a long time coming, a pressure slowly building inside that she’s finally about to release. She glances up at the mirror in front of her, seeing the scars and feeling the charge. ‘You allowed your brother to take away my looks. But worse than that, so much worse, you allowed him to take away any chance of my ever being a mother.’

  With the words spoken at last, she falls back into her seat. It’s the first time she’s said it out loud since the doctors broke the news to her in the hospital. She and Nathan had never discussed having kids, but the news that she no longer had a choice hurt her in a way she never imagined possible. Every time she and Nathan had enjoyed a moment together in Wales, when they’d laughed, when they’d shared a lingering look, when she’d accidentally allowed herself to imagine a future for them, she’d felt the pain of this truth twist inside her as keenly as the knife that had caused it.

  She pushes out a long breath, wondering if she’s ever going to draw one back in again. Her eyes are fixed on the window, fixedly avoiding the passenger side mirror in case she should see the damage she has done to Nathan with her revelation. She notices, through her tears, that the car has slowed considerably and that they’re pulling in to the side of the road.

  The doctor is the one to break the silence. ‘You might not realise,’ he says, tentatively, running one finger across a bushy eyebrow. ‘You might not care… but this last month has been incredibly important for me. It’s been more than ten years since I retired from my work,’ he turns to look at Katie, blinking back tears, ‘work that I stuck with at the expense of everything else. I’ve spent those years without any company, without any friends, trying to deal with what my job was doing to me, how it made me look so much to the welfare of others and yet seemingly not give a damn about my own.’

  He coughs to clear his throat before continuing. ‘Before I met you two, I’d given up. I had nothing to look forward to, other than…’ He doesn’t say the word. He doesn’t need to.

  Katie knows only too well what it’s like to wait for death. She had sat for months with her dad in the care home, cursing herself whenever she found she was hoping that the end would come.

  ‘Perhaps I was only welcomed into your home because you wanted to make sure I wasn’t talking to anybody else, to check I was keeping your secret. Whatever the reason, I’ve loved every minute we’ve spent together. And I’ve loved seeing the way you two are with each other. I haven’t been with someone like that in such a long time.’ He stops and swallows hard, turning towards the driver’s side window, where vehicles flash by. ‘I lost my partner in a car crash nearly forty years ago.’

  He places a hand on the steering wheel and squeezes hard, meeting Kate’s gaze again, tears on his cheeks. ‘I dedicated my life to doing what they weren’t able to do for my Maggie. But age,’ he lifts fingers badly bent by arthritis, ‘took that away from me. What fight I have left in me now will be used to help you two. I’ll drive you to the station. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go. I’ll keep your secret. I’ll keep quiet about whatever you want me to. But I will not sit here and watch in silence while you hurt each other like this.’

  Through her own tears, Katie wants to reach out and touch the old man’s hand, to reassure him that she’s okay, that this is just a momentary blip and she will be herself again soon. But the fist in her lap will not budge. Nor will her conviction that she is right.

  ‘All I care about,’ she says, her mouth barely opening, ‘is finding justice for Mike.’

  ‘Then why are we sitting here?’ says Nathan from the back. ‘Let’s go to the station. Find out the facts. Do what makes us right. Or, if it’s too late for that, if we can’t function anymore, even when working, then you go off and do your own thing. Hell, maybe you’ll have to. Like you said, I’m the suspect. I’m the one they’ll be locking up.’

  She can hear Richard sigh, and feel her shoulders sink, but with the professional focus she’d always been famed for tingling beneath her skin, she nods at the road ahead and waits for them to start moving again.

  Seven

  Nathan and Katie are sitting in an interview suite at their old station. It’s a room they’re both very familiar with, although nothing really feels the same to Nathan anymore, not after what Katie has just told him. He’s reliving every word over and over in his head, the pain and heartbreak more acute each time. He’d never dared to dream of having children before, the fear that they might turn out like him too strong.

  But now he knows it will never happen; that although there are no two people more equipped to guide an innocent child away from darkness than he and Katie, two people who have seen it all and survived, they will never be parents. Nathan feels his body start to tremble as he considers what he would have done to protect his own, how much he would have sacrificed for a daughter or son. He finds himself starting to drift into a daydream, seeing himself in a parallel life, picturing the details and starting to believe, when the door to his left is flung open and he is startled back into the present.

  ‘What the hell are they doing in the same room?’ Nathan looks up to see a man with slicked-back black hair filling the doorway. DCI Ken Stocks, head of a different crime team to the one he and Katie were part of, is glaring at the low-ranking officer that has escorted them here following their arrival at the reception desk. Alongside Stocks and offering a similar glare is Katie and Nathan’s former boss, Superintendent Taylor.

  ‘Easy, Ken,’ says Katie from a chair to one side of the table in the centre of the room. ‘Nathan and I have been together for the past six months. Every single day. If we needed a story, we’ve had plenty of time to prepare one.’

  ‘That’s Detective Chief Inspector Stocks to you, Detective Inspector Rhodes. They haven’t thrown you out of the force yet.’

  ‘Glad to hear it, sir,’ says Katie. ‘Because if you’re stupid enough to think that Nathan had anything to do with Mike’s death, then you’re definitely going to need my help.’

  ‘This is the end of our conversation,’ says the big man, his face flushing, ‘until we’ve made this official.’

  ‘You mean, you’re going to charge him?’ says Katie, failing to hide her disbelief.

  ‘We have the evidence to do
just that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Are you going to pretend you don’t know?’

  ‘I’m going to reassure you that we don’t. Mike is dead, and you want to speak to us about it. That’s everything we have.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Ken scoffs. ‘The whole world has heard this story. Have you been living in a cave?’

  ‘More like up a mountain. No television, no phone. No car to get back to London.’

  Ken runs a hand across a stubbled chin. ‘So how did you get back here?’

  ‘The same way we heard what little we know. I got ill a while back and we needed a doctor. He became a friend, someone we could trust. He heard the headline on the radio and came to get us.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asks the DCI, peering down the corridor.

  ‘He was worn out by the journey, so I told him to go and find a hotel.’

  Ken looks back into the room, eyes narrowing. ‘Which hotel?’

  She shrugs. ‘Whichever one he’s been able to find in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Do you have a mobile number for him?’

  ‘No mobile. But he’ll be over in the morning to confirm he was with us when Mike was killed.’

  ‘How do you know when Mike was killed?’

  Nathan opens his mouth to answer, then realises, with a look across at Katie, who has just come to the same realisation, that they only know Mike was pulled out of the river yesterday evening. He could have been there for days.

  ‘Whenever it was, we were in Wales,’ Katie corrects herself.

  Ken’s eyes flick back to the corridor and he suddenly stiffens, instinctively lifting his hand to straighten his tie even though he isn’t wearing one. He takes a step back and a woman enters the room. She’s mid to late forties, with dark red hair styled into a bob so sharp and precise it could be made of plastic. Her face is unreadable, something that Nathan, with his eye for detail, finds instantly unnerving.

  The woman points at Katie and gestures for her to leave the room, but Katie doesn’t budge.

  ‘I want to sit in on this,’ she says, folding her arms.

  The woman ignores her and moves over to an empty chair. Ken speaks next, his voice slightly pinched.

  ‘You know how this works,’ he says to Katie before clearing his throat.

  Katie ignores him and bristles at the woman now sitting across from her, her fingertips pressed together, patiently waiting.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Nathan says, reaching a hand tentatively towards Katie. When she turns to look at him, he can see that he was right to be concerned; the heat in her eyes has returned, the look of a caged tiger ready to attack.

  ‘Fine,’ Katie says, standing up quickly. ‘There’s no point wasting my time here, anyway. I’ve got a killer to find.’

  ‘You’re not leaving,’ says the red-haired woman softly. ‘You’ll wait until we are done with Nathan and then you’ll answer our questions.’

  ‘Maybe after you answer one of mine,’ says Katie, brushing off Nathan’s hand as she leans in. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘All you need to know is that she is your superior,’ says Stocks sharply, before looking over at the woman he’s rushed to defend, as if seeking an apology from her for having interrupted. She nods, then waves her hand and Katie is shepherded towards the door.

  ‘Wait,’ the woman says, gently but effectively. ‘I’ve changed my mind. She can stay. I don’t doubt the two of you have had plenty of time to get your story straight. But the question is, have you told each other the whole story?’

  ‘We tell each other everything,’ says Nathan, hoping, after the revelation in the car, that that may finally be true.

  ‘Domestic bliss, I’m sure,’ she says, sarcastically. ‘You could cut the tension in here with a knife.’

  Katie takes her place back at the table as Stocks starts going through the motions of setting up the tape and registering who is in the room. He introduces the redhead in charge as Sam Stone from the National Crime Agency. Nathan studies her face, wondering why he’s never heard of her before. She has deep, rich brown eyes like Katie’s, but there’s no life in them; no excitement, no anger, every emotion perfectly under control.

  ‘We shouldn’t have left without telling you all,’ he hears himself saying. ‘But we’d done everything asked of us, and we needed some time out of the limelight.’

  ‘So where exactly have you been these past six months?’ says Ken.

  ‘The middle of nowhere,’ says Nathan. ‘I can point to it on a map if you want, but for now I guess you’ll have to make do with Pembrokeshire.’

  ‘And last night?’

  ‘Enjoying a drink with Katie and the doctor.’

  ‘You invited a friend for Valentine’s Day?’ says Ken, raising an eyebrow. ‘Isn’t three a crowd?’

  The significance of the day hadn’t even registered with Nathan until the doctor had suggested he leave them in peace for the evening, but Katie had insisted he join them. At the time it had seemed a typically caring act, but now he’s wondering if it was another sign of Katie caring less than she used to.

  ‘Let’s just get to it,’ says Nathan. ‘What possible motive could I have for killing Mike? He gave us the house in Wales to use. He was the only one we trusted with the knowledge of where we were hiding.’

  ‘Interesting choice of words,’ says Ken. ‘Why did you need to hide?’

  ‘Because we needed time to recover without the world’s media parked on our doorstep.’ Nathan pushes his shoulders back and feels his temper rising. ‘Perhaps if you’d managed not to leak my journal, I might have got a bit more peace.’ The leak had happened during the inquest, when far too much of his life was already being shared with others. He’d walked out of court to a barrage of frenzied questions from journalists that told him the dark fantasies he’d written down in his youth, in a journal previously under lock and key at the police station, were now public knowledge. ‘Have you arrested someone for that crime, by the way?’

  Superintendent Taylor looks down and Ken Stocks shifts in his chair.

  ‘Let’s talk about the journal, shall we?’ says Sam. ‘Let’s talk about the four pages that were missing.’

  Nathan groans and looks towards the ceiling. ‘I’ve been through this a hundred times. I’ve no idea why Christian took them out. And I can’t remember what was on them.’

  ‘Well, let me try and refresh your memory,’ says Sam, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a sheet of A4. ‘This appeared on the web page of a popular crime blogger yesterday morning.’ Sam places the paper in the centre of the table and smooths it out. As soon as he sees the tiny scrawl, filling every inch of the page, Nathan is back there, up in his bedroom in his family home, hoping against hope that by putting his increasingly dark and dangerous thoughts on paper they would become fiction, and not a reality that he couldn’t resist acting out. Katie scrapes her chair in closer and starts scanning the words too.

  ‘Let’s just focus on this bit,’ says Sam, lightly tapping the centre of the page.

  Nathan starts to read.

  ‘It’s like art. Although not nearly as boring as the class at school…’

  When he’s finished, Nathan slumps back. ‘I’d forgotten,’ he says, looking across at Katie, who’s wearing an expression of total shock. ‘I mean, there were descriptions of thousands of murders in that journal, literally thousands. I can’t remember them all. Even if I could, I must have found a way to blank that one out. It must be why that case had such an effect on me.’

  ‘Just to be clear for the tape,’ says Ken, raising his voice and leaning forward, ‘the case you’re talking about is the torture and murder of Steven Fish, the case that made you quit the police force the first time and go running for the hills. Wasn’t it the case that pushed you to the edge of sanity?’

  ‘I guess it makes sense,’ says Nathan, rubbing his hands roughly across his face, realigning his features in an attempt to bring his thoughts to order. ‘My brothe
r must have taken inspiration from my teenage journal when he killed Steven Fish.’

  ‘That would indeed make sense,’ says Sam, lifting some of the papers on the table in front of her and tapping them straight, ‘if Mike Peters hadn’t just been killed in a far too similar way.’

  It takes Nathan a moment to process what he’s being told, but for Katie the response is instant, a hand shooting up to her mouth, failing to stifle a groan. ‘Oh, Christ, tell me that’s not true!’

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ says Superintendent Taylor, finally joining the conversation. ‘Nobody deserves to suffer like that, but Mike…’ The superintendent squeezes his eyes shut to block out the emotion. ‘He was one of the best men we’ve ever had on the force.’

  ‘This diary extract appeared on a popular true crime blog the morning before Mike was killed,’ says Sam, coldly cutting in. ‘I understand from Superintendent Taylor that it was being discussed in the office when Mike arrived for work. He read it and left the office without a word, and that was the last time he was seen alive.’

  ‘We went to his flat early this morning,’ says Stocks. ‘And we found the kitchen table covered in notes and photos from old case files. Or rather,’ Ken dips his head to one side, ‘one specific case.’

  ‘Your old colleague clearly didn’t believe your twin Christian killed Steven Fish,’ says Sam. ‘And after last night, neither do we.’

  Nathan closes his eyes and tries to find at least something that makes sense. It always used to be Katie, the way they felt about each other, the way they were able to work together in perfect harmony, but now even that has been left in doubt. He remembers the words his brother had said right at the end: there’s still plenty to reveal about that particular case. Had Christian left them one last mystery? One more nightmare?

  ‘We need to see his body,’ says Katie, firmly. ‘I want to see Mike Peters.’

  Nathan opens his eyes and finds Ken Stocks shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Have you not been listening to us? You’re a lead suspect in his murder.’