‘I was at home,’ he snaps, ‘where I’m returning very soon.’
‘I thought you came down to help us find this monster?’ This time it’s the other policeman speaking.
‘So did I,’ Nathan says quietly, pulling at his cuffs.
‘Have you ever seen me naked?’ asks Katie.
It’s a question that takes him by surprise, and he can’t quite look her in the eye.
‘No,’ he says. He wonders if this is for the record, something to set things straight with her boss and end the speculation that had started to grow the longer the two of them worked together.
‘The man we’re after has.’ She presses a finger against the base of her left breast. He follows this movement out of the corner of his eye, feeling his cheeks blush. He looks across at the other policeman, wondering if he’s feeling similarly embarrassed. Instead, he finds the older man staring at Katie with a look of confusion, as if this is news to him too.
‘There are two marks on the second body that exactly match moles on my chest,’ says Katie. ‘They were made with dabs of chocolate icing.’
Nathan instantly thinks back to the chocolate he’d been given in the car: a test, no doubt, and another connection to the crime. Before he can stop himself, he licks his lips, thinking of that sweet taste, a taste that he’d frequently turned to when feeling stressed. It took him back to his childhood, when a chocolate bar had been waiting for him every day after his return from school. Then he thinks of the chocolate on Katie’s body, and this time manages to keep his tongue under control, in part because he knows she’s looking now, but also because his mouth has suddenly gone bone dry.
It was only a few months back, so he should have remembered straight away, but with all the distraction, with the running and the reading and the sleeping through the night, his mind can’t call on memories the way that it used to. He’s seeing it clearly now, though, every detail of the daydream that had risen as he’d stood stirring a pan of beans on the hob. It had been a frenzy, an ecstatic blur of blood and guts and, at the end, when everything was still, including the woman who had been at the centre of it, he’d marked the body with melted chocolate, following the path of the filthy streaks on the wall, spiralling round and round.
He shakes his head violently, wiggling his feet inside the slightly oversized trainers Katie had given him, feeling the hardened skin from all that running and reminding himself that he had evidence. Every single day he ran and drew a mark on the wall, proof that he was all the way up there in Scotland, waiting for both the year and his life to end, and never down here, killing people.
‘We don’t have any suspects yet,’ says Katie, looking away.
It’s clear that if that’s what he is to her, she’s not sharing this information with her team.
‘But we do have another murder to talk about.’
He can hear her stand up and move towards the far wall, breathing out slowly.
‘A week ago, another mother of two, this time with young girls, was killed in an almost identical way.’
Nathan can feel his forearms tighten and, for a second, fears he’ll find a way to pop the cuffs open. ‘With the same marks?’
Katie doesn’t answer immediately, instead she shifts uneasily on her seat, the briefest of looks at the man sitting next to her.
‘This is about you and me, Nathan,’ she says, locking onto his gaze. ‘It might be somebody we’ve come up against before. He knows about the work we’ve done. It’s like he’s taken elements from each of the crimes we’ve investigated together and sewn them into the crime scenes.’
‘Each?’ says Nathan, lifting his cuffed hands and bending back his fingers, unable to hide the tremor in his voice.
‘Not that,’ she says, making the connection. ‘But many of the others.’
Nathan lowers his head and closes his eyes, wishing he could shut it all out, maybe take a sleeping pill as he’d done so many times to block the images he’d started seeing at night: bodies broken and ripped apart, elements from all of the crimes he’d ever investigated. But there’s hope in the way Katie has started looking at him again, as if he’s a partner, not a suspect. He doesn’t know what’s suddenly caused things to change back, and he’s not about to ask, but it’s made him more confident in his innocence, too, reminding him of the remarkable things he used to be able to do: the things he could see that he should never have been able to see; all the crimes he’s acted out that he never committed; all the killers he’s put away.
‘Bollocks to this,’ Katie says, standing up, the metal chair scraping across the floor, creating a high-pitched screech that causes him to flinch. ‘I’ve not lost it completely. There’s no point wasting what little time we have here. Nathan and I are going to go and do what we’re good at.’ She turns to the bigger policeman, who looks as uncomfortable with this idea as he had with her sudden outburst. ‘Relax, Mike, this is entirely on me.’
The words take their time again, fighting their way from ear to understanding. When Nathan finally figures out what’s happening he grips the table leg tightly and lets out a groan. He’s already picturing the things they’ll see. He’s horribly vulnerable here without his routine, and he knows that as soon as they step outside the door, as soon as they step back into the world he had thought he’d left behind, it will only get worse.
Eleven
‘What the hell has happened to you?’
It’s a familiar question, one Katie has asked herself on a hundred occasions, staring into the mirror at a woman she barely recognises. This time, however, the words are coming from her boss. He’s a big man, broad at the shoulders and fighting the spread, dressed as immaculately as ever in his tightly pressed uniform, his hat tucked under his arm.
‘I think you’re aware of the difficulties I’ve been having,’ she says, maintaining the flat tone that she knows annoys him most.
‘That’s not what I’m talking about. You know full well we’ve given you more than enough support in that area.’
‘You can name him, you know,’ she says, moving in closer. ‘He was a friend of yours.’
The big man coughs and inches back. ‘All I’m saying is you could have taken some leave, should have…’ He stops himself just in time, perhaps seeing her anger rising to dangerous levels. ‘Instead you insisted on working.’
‘And commitment to the job is a problem, is it?’
‘The problem,’ says Superintendent Taylor, seeming to gain another couple of inches in height, ‘besides your general attitude, and the rumours I’m constantly hearing of inappropriate behaviour, is that your work is not even close to what it used to be. I could forgive almost anything if you were still bringing me the results.’
‘My partner is back,’ she says, nodding towards Nathan, who’s standing at the end of the corridor outside the interview room, shuffling from foot to foot. ‘We’ll get you what you want.’
‘There’s plenty of questions to answer there, too,’ says Taylor, not turning to look and lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘Where has he been? I understand the work took its toll and he needed to get away, but I think you also know…’ This time he does glance over his shoulder. ‘Well, I’ve always felt he’s the type that needs to be supervised.’
‘I know what you felt, sir,’ says Katie, placing just enough emphasis on the sir to let him know it hasn’t come from respect. ‘But you always trusted me, trusted my view on him. That view hasn’t changed.’ She struggles to hold her boss’s gaze, and to keep it from Nathan, scared whatever doubt she might still be feeling could reveal itself on the surface. ‘Or perhaps,’ she adds, ‘you just trusted in the results.’