by Nick Hollin
‘He believed you were guilty!’ somebody shouts out from the back of the crowd. ‘Peters found out that you killed Steven Fish, not your brother.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Nathan calls back in reply, once again overwhelmed with how little he does know. ‘What proof do you have?’
‘Your friend Peters,’ shouts out a different voice. ‘He died the same way.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ says Nathan. ‘I meant, how did Mike know? What made him suspect my brother wasn’t to blame?’
‘Why don’t you tell us?’ calls out another voice, a different voice, but in the same accusatory tone. ‘Isn’t that why you tortured DS Peters, to find out what mistakes you’d made, before killing him to shut him up?’
‘Of course not,’ says Nathan. ‘I could never have hurt Mike. I could never hurt anyone.’
‘Not even when you should have done,’ says a third voice Nathan can’t locate. ‘Not even when you could have helped your partner. You could have saved Katie Rhodes all that pain.’
‘I could have,’ says Nathan, so quietly he doubts his words have carried as far as those standing just a metre or so in front of him. And it’s from those very people that the next question comes.
‘Where were you when DS Peters was killed?’
‘A long way from here,’ he says, lowering his head. ‘And I shouldn’t have been. I should have been here, for him.’ He meets the gaze of a couple of the journalists directly in front, and again they retreat a few more inches. ‘I guess we’re all scared – scared of people knowing our thoughts, our desires, especially if those thoughts and desires aren’t who we really are.’
‘Your brother was a monster!’ comes another shout from over to Nathan’s left.
‘He was,’ says Nathan, nodding slowly. ‘And while I’m glad I was able to help bring his horrific crimes to an end, I will never stop wishing I had seen the signs earlier. People died because of me, families have been torn apart because he wanted to play a game with me. It’s a nightmare I had hoped was over. But I think…’ Nathan pauses and considers the sky. ‘I think whoever killed DS Peters is doing the same. They had no need to take his life the way they did,’ he looks towards the back of the crowd, ‘and it’s clear that most of you already know the details of his death.’
‘They wanted you accused of the crime?’ asks a woman just a few feet away, her eyes wide, her phone stretched out in front of her.
‘Initially. But they must have known I would soon be able to prove my alibi. And I do have an alibi.’ He pauses, to let the crowd absorb that fact. ‘No: what I think they wanted most was for me to return.’ He turns to the nearest of the television cameras and leans in, his nose only inches from the lens. ‘Well, here I am. And let me speak to you directly. If you want something from me, if you need to talk, then find a way to get in contact. If you blame me for something, if you want to kill me, then let that be your focus. But please do not hurt anybody else.’
Nathan hears an individual clapping of hands from over to his right, followed by a shout. ‘Bravo! Still good enough for RADA.’
With nothing left to say, Nathan pushes his way forward and the crowd ahead of him slowly parts. He’s bombarded by questions, and he ignores them all. As he reaches the far side of the car park, he feels a blow strike his shoulder and he stumbles slightly, but he keeps walking. Another blow, this time on his ear. He picks up his pace and very nearly collides with the side of a dark saloon car that appears out of nowhere. The windows are tinted, but he knows who must be inside, so he opens the rear door and jumps in, receiving a final, painful kick to his calf in the process. As the car pulls quickly away he can hear hands thumping against the sides and the roof, just as he’s seen so many times as suspects he’s helped to convict have been driven away from court.
Ten
‘I’m afraid I don’t know where we’re going,’ says Dr Evans, accelerating hard as Katie stares into the mirror to check they’re not being followed. There are cars around, but she’s confident they’ve given any pursuers the slip.
‘You’ve never been to Ben Peters’ house?’
The old doctor shakes his head. ‘He’s only ever come to me in Wales. And we didn’t talk much. I wasn’t his therapist, I was just trying to help him kick the drugs.’
‘I’ve only been to his house once,’ says Katie, thinking back with a thickening throat to the day she’d recognised the trust that had developed between her and Mike. When he’d parked the car outside his brother’s house, she hadn’t even known he had a brother. Nobody had known.
Ben’s mental health issues had been diagnosed from a young age, as had the need for him to live a stress-free life. Time and again Mike had taken his brother away to the house in Wales, locking him up in an effort to help him shake his dependence. Time and again his brother would relapse. It was Ben who had insisted that Mike keep him a secret, to avoid damaging his brother’s career, of which he was so proud; so that one of them at least could succeed in life.
Mike had mentioned Ben just before Katie had left for Wales, making her promise to come back and take care of his younger brother should anything happen to him. He’d been thinking of illness, of old age, she was sure of it; but there may have been another suspicion at work there. More now lingers. Part of her regrets that she didn’t come here first; she knows that’s what Mike would have wanted. But as usual she’s thinking of the job, of justice, and, in this case, revenge.
‘Take the next right,’ she says, pointing at a sign ahead. ‘I can’t think of the exact address, but hopefully I’ll remember the route as we go.’
Twenty minutes later, and they’re parked outside a run-down terraced house on an equally run-down estate. Richard keeps quiet; it’s one of the many things she’s always liked about him, his ability to read a situation just right.
‘There’s a very good chance Ben doesn’t even know what’s happened to his brother,’ she says, popping open the door. ‘But it’s important that he does know, and all the details. We both know he won’t take the news well, but I’m afraid I will have to keep pushing to find out what I need.’ It’s an explanation Katie hasn’t had to make in a while, Nathan always having understood what was necessary to get to the truth. She’s often walked away from a witness hating herself for the emotional pain she’s inflicted, but her justification has always been the result she knew would come.
Richard and Katie walk towards a red door, beside which a rusting car is jacked up on bricks. The front lawn is a mess of brambles and is surrounded by a crumbling wall. On the doorstep are three empty beer cans and a heavy peppering of cigarette butts, some hand-rolled, and some, she suspects, that contain more than just tobacco.
The first two knocks receive no response, but she’s certain there’s someone inside. This isn’t based on any intuition she might have picked up over the years; it’s the knowledge that Ben Peters hardly ever leaves his house. Of course, knowing he’s in is one thing; whether he’s capable of making it to the door is another. She smacks the door with even more force, wondering if perhaps Ben has heard the news and hasn’t been able to cope. No answer. She’s about to move round to the back, which would most likely involve her circling the entire row of terraced houses and hurdling those back fences that are still standing, when the door finally opens and Mike Peters’ younger brother Ben leans on the door frame in front of her, his face soaked with sweat and his pupils wide and black.
Katie almost gasps at how frail Ben looks. He’d always been smaller than his brother, a good five inches shorter and perhaps three stone lighter, but there’s absolutely nothing of him now. She can’t bear to think that he’d had another relapse in the time they were away and that Mike didn’t feel he could use the house in Wales. Just as shocking as Ben’s physique is the paleness of his skin. He looks like a ghost. He looks like his brother when she’d seen him just an hour before, laid out in the mortuary.
‘I know you,’ says Ben, although from the look on his face it’s o
bvious the details haven’t yet come to him.
‘Detective Katie Rhodes. I worked with Mike for many years. He was a friend.’
‘Katie Rhodes,’ Ben repeats, pushing himself up from the door frame. ‘Yeah.’ He tries and fails to click his fingers. ‘He talks about you.’
She waits for him to correct the tense. When he doesn’t, she wonders if the drugs have taken him to a place where reality doesn’t apply anymore, or if she was right about Ben not having heard the news.
‘When did you last see Mike?’ she asks tentatively.
‘Same place I last saw you,’ he says, and if his eyes could widen further she’s sure that they would. ‘You and that psycho’s twin.’
‘On the news?’
He nods enthusiastically, an action which threatens to send him toppling forward. ‘I turned on the telly last night, hoping for some sport, when suddenly Mike’s picture pops up on the screen, and then…’ The weight of the discovery seems to hit him again. Ben expels a long breath and Katie throws out an arm, expecting to have to catch him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, when he’s found his balance. ‘Can we come in?’
The word we suddenly registers with Ben, who looks over to where Richard is standing a little further back. He stumbles, lifting a hand as if to protect himself from imminent attack, but Richard offers a broad smile in return.
‘You might not remember me, Ben,’ Dr Evans says. ‘You’ve been a little unwell whenever we’ve met.’
‘I remember,’ says Ben, before taking another step back. ‘But we don’t need a doctor. It’s far too late for doctors now. Mike’s dead, you know. Dead.’ Ben staggers back into the house and Katie and Richard follow him inside, shutting the door behind them.
‘I realise it’s a very difficult time,’ says Katie, ‘and I’m very sorry for this disturbance. But I promised Mike I would drop in and check up on you if anything ever happened to him.’
‘I don’t need checking up on!’ says Ben, kicking at an almost empty curry container and spraying the contents up the wall. ‘God, even now he’s gone he’s still treating me like a kid, like I can’t cope, not with my life. Or his death.’ Ben had been making surprisingly good progress towards the back of the house, but now he slows, his shoulders sinking and his knees looking as if they’re about to give way. Once more Katie reaches out, her fingers just a couple of inches from his back, ready to grab the foul-smelling, badly stained shirt that hangs loose on his frame.
‘He was a good brother.’
Ben’s got the tense right this time, and the pain in his voice reveals he’s slipped out of the protective fog of booze and dope and whatever else is rushing round his veins. He sucks in a breath that causes him to cough, then stumbles into a tiny living room that looks like so many crime scenes Katie has visited.
‘He was a good brother,’ Katie says softly.
‘And what was I?’ says Ben, this time punting an empty beer can across the room so that it clatters against an oversized television screen. If the sight is bad, the smell is far worse; half-eaten takeaways, spilled booze and evidence that Ben didn’t always make it to the toilet. Katie thinks about the cigarettes on the doorstep, and the absence, amid everything else, of the smell of smoke. Why had he gone outside to smoke? Was it simply habit? Katie thinks back to the last time she’d been here, how much tidier it, and Ben, had been; as if he was finally turning a corner. At the age of forty-nine, he’d left it late, but he still had years to enjoy with his brother, albeit within the confines of his house and his troubled mind.
‘You were everything to him,’ says Katie, perching herself on the edge of a sofa, ignoring the stains and the feeling that it might be about to give way beneath her. ‘He was proud of every little victory you had.’
‘And yet I imagine that you two,’ he jabs a finger at them both in turn, ‘are the only people in the world who know I exist.’
‘That was your—’
He cuts her off with a raised hand and she allows him to. This is not the time for her to bully her way through a conversation.
‘It’s a good job I saw it on the telly,’ he continues. ‘Because nobody was coming to say, please take a seat, Mr Peters… I’m afraid I have some bad news… Do you have anyone to be with you? And all that other shit you see in cop shows.’ Katie looks away, over at the telly, at the drops of beer trickling slowly down the screen. When she looks back she can see his accusatory stare turn to fear. ‘Why are you here?’ He tilts his head in contemplation, before his features freeze. ‘Some people on the news were saying you and your partner might have killed Mike. Did you?’
‘Jesus, no!’ says Katie, reaching forward and clutching Ben’s arm. Were he less under the influence, he might have drawn it back, but he barely seems aware of the contact. ‘How could you possibly think that? He was my friend.’
‘Then why did you leave him on his own?’ says Ben.
As Katie considers the question she very nearly breaks, a tidal wave of repressed emotion threatening to come crashing down. It’s only Richard resting his hand on her shoulder that keeps her upright. She hadn’t noticed him moving close, but he seemed to have spotted where the conversation was heading.
‘I needed to hide away for a while,’ she says, taking in her surroundings and hoping that Ben will understand. She belatedly realises that all she has to do is point at the scars on her face, physical evidence of a very small part of what she’s been through. ‘I didn’t think it would be forever.’
Silence follows, save for the sound of car tyres screaming in the distance and a dog she realises has been barking ever since they arrived.
‘Katie Rhodes,’ says Ben finally, with the faintest smile, as if another memory has risen to the surface and he’s rediscovered the name. ‘Yeah, you and Mike were real close.’
She nods and folds her hands in her lap. ‘So were you. I know he told you things about his work. He did it because he wanted to involve you, to show you how smart you are.’
‘If I’d been smart,’ he says, before reaching for another can on the sofa next to him and draining the dregs, ‘I might have spotted the danger he was in.’ He tips his head back and squeezes his eyes shut. When they open he takes a step away from Katie. ‘No, hang on. I remember,’ he says. ‘I remember I shouldn’t be talking to you.’
‘Why not?’
He seems to have lost the thread again, then he starts to wag a filthy finger. ‘At the end, Mike started to have doubts, about everything, about everyone. He said not to trust the police. No, wait.’ His words stop and so does the finger and the anger slips away as quickly as it had arrived. ‘Other than you,’ he says, slumping back onto the sofa before repeating his brother’s words in a voice that sounds unbearably like him. ‘Katie Rhodes is the only one you can trust. And if you ever need justice for me…’
Katie crouches down next to Ben, but she can’t bring herself to take the hand that is just a few inches away. It wouldn’t be welcome, and fighting against the desire to comfort this man is that familiar hunger for knowledge, to drive the case forward. She stands back up, needing to move and allow her body to mirror the activity of her mind.
‘I’m so sorry,’ says Katie, words that she had never said as a police officer because she knew they would never help. It would never bring those people back. ‘I will find who did this.’ When Ben looks up at her, eyes wide and childlike, she can tell that he believes her.
‘He was happy,’ says Ben, looking happy himself for a fleeting second as he realises the can he’s reached for on the floor next to the sofa is a full one. He pops open the top and takes a large swig. ‘For the first time since you’d gone. He was doing something on his own, making progress in a case.’
‘The Steven Fish case?’ says Katie.
‘I don’t know names. I’ve never been able to deal with names. But there was a murder, they lost their head.’ Ben draws a finger across his neck. The naive fascination with something so gruesome is suddenly replaced by a very
adult fear. ‘Is it true what they’re saying on the telly? Did Mike die like that?’
‘It was similar,’ says Katie, wanting to lie, but again feeling that it might impact on what they’re getting out of this witness.
Ben screws his face up and thumps his forehead with such ill-judged force Katie’s frightened for a moment that he’s knocked himself out. But when he sits back up there’s a clarity in his eyes.
‘He was being followed, you know.’
‘I didn’t know. Do you know who it was?’
‘He wasn’t sure. A woman, maybe. Cut-off hair.’ He holds a level but shaking hand just above his shoulder.
Katie feels her stomach twist. ‘Sam Stone?’
He looks at her, and for a moment she’s certain he’s about to nod, but then his shoulders slump. ‘I told you I don’t do names.’
‘You saw her yourself?’
He tilts his head. ‘Maybe. Everything’s so blurred. I feel like I did. And I feel like I might have recognised…’ Now his head is shaking. ‘No. I can’t have done. It must have been Mike who told me.’
‘When was the last time you spoke to Mike?’
‘On the day he was killed.’ Ben looks around the room, an act which causes him to lose his balance. Eventually he stops and points at a phone half tucked under a filthy blanket. ‘He called me. Told me to lock the doors and not let anybody in, said he was coming straight over.’ Ben thumps his forehead again. ‘He was worried about me, like I was the one in danger.’
Katie can feel her excitement growing, the thrill of the chase, a rush she has to admit she’s missed despite the events that have led her here. ‘Can you remember his exact words?’
Ben shakes his head. ‘I’m not really one for “exact”. But it was definitely something like that. You’re in danger, Ben, he said. Stay inside. As if I ever do anything else.’
‘And you’ve not shared this with anyone?’
‘Like…?’ He holds his hands up and gestures at the room, as if it represents the whole of his life. Besides, ‘No police. Only Katie Rhodes. Those are words from Mike. I’m a hundred per cent sure.’