With everything suddenly remarkably still, she untangles herself and rises to her feet, brushing the front of her top where she finds a streak of red marking the path of a single squashed bean.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, fighting for breath as she moves to crouch down by Mr Brooks. ‘This should never have been allowed to happen. But I swear this is not the man who killed Sally.’ As she says the words she once again feels the doubt, but there’s also her instinct, reassuring her that she’s right. She’s always been right, with every criminal she’s put away, even with the ones the court has allowed to walk.
‘What about the cuffs?’ Mark Brooks spits back, a string of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth. ‘Why is he wearing fucking cuffs?’
She already has her explanation prepared; it’s the same one she’s been using with her colleagues since Nathan’s return, to keep them quiet, to keep them away. ‘He’s a profiler,’ she says. ‘The best in the business. What he does is put himself in the heads of those responsible. To do so, he has to be them. That’s why he needs to be restrained, because he’s scared he might lash out, act out the sick fantasies he’s living. That’s why he did nothing when you attacked him. You saw for yourself he didn’t fight back.’
Mark blinks for the first time, and it’s quickly followed by a swell of tears. Rather than holding him back, the PC is now holding him up, and Katie reaches out to help.
‘Let’s go through to the living room,’ she says, cursing her unfortunate choice of words, as they both rise unsteadily. Her whole body aches from the fall, but she tries not to show any discomfort and gestures towards the door, letting go of Mark and turning back towards Nathan. She reaches down, holding out a hand for him, but he doesn’t move, or even look at her. Not willing to leave him alone in the kitchen, she drags him up and stumbles towards where Mark is waiting, with Nathan leaning on her like a dead weight.
Moving down the hall she glances up again at the two school photos, hoping for strength but discovering something else. ‘You find a way to fucking do this,’ she whispers into Nathan’s ear, before grabbing him by the chin and slowly turning his head towards the two smiling children. ‘I don’t care how, but you do it!’
* * *
‘How?’ asks Mark the moment they enter the room. Nathan is standing on his own now, as is Mark, pointing towards the kitchen, but looking at them. ‘How could anyone…?’ His arm and tear-filled gaze swings towards Nathan. ‘Can you explain it to me?’
‘I can’t.’ Nathan’s voice is as small as the gap it emerges from. He falls heavily into a seat, then removes a small toy ambulance from under his thigh. He stares at the toy for a moment, then carefully places it on the cushion next to him. Katie can see he’s avoiding eye contact, that his breathing is short and his throat constricted. His hands locked together, one kneading the other’s palm, then scratching at it as if trying to remove a stain.
‘Isn’t that your job, to explain that sickness?’ snaps Mark, taking a small step forward, closely shadowed by the PC.
‘It was,’ Nathan mumbles into his chest. He’s almost folded over on the sofa, his head drooping towards his knees. ‘But things just don’t make sense to me anymore. I’m so sorry about your wife. She was a good woman.’
Both Mark and Katie’s heads shoot across to look at Nathan at the same time.
‘You knew her?’ asks Mark.
‘In a way,’ says Nathan, without looking up. ‘I’ve seen your home and I’ve…’ He taps the side of his head. ‘It’s not just the bad minds I get inside. She loved you very much. And your children.’
Sam and Jess. Katie recalls the names. She can, in fact, summon up a hundred facts about Sally Brooks, seeing it not only important in her attempts to solve the case, but as her duty to the victim, to colour in and never forget the detail of a life that was so cruelly taken away. She looks across at the mantelpiece, at a wedding photo of Sally and Mark, both of them smiling broadly with the kind of love she has never felt. In a different life, in a different world, she could almost picture herself there on that day, as a friend of the woman who looks a little like her. But in this world, in this reality, it’s work that has brought the two women together. And it’s work she returns to now, searching for the strength to keep on hurting.
‘You will have heard there’s been another murder,’ she says, looking at Mark.
‘One of your colleagues informed me,’ he says, lowering his head. His hands are moving down by his waist, and Katie can see, in addition to the red marks on his knuckles from where he hit Nathan, that he’s found the headless doll again, the very reason for his visit, and is squeezing it tightly. ‘Was it the same?’
‘Similar,’ she says.
‘Will there be more?’ On many occasions Katie has sat with those who could not see beyond their own suffering, or some who took comfort in discovering they were not alone, but she can see that Mr Brooks wants this to stop as much as she does. ‘More children without a mother?’ he continues, tears now flowing freely. ‘More lives torn apart?’
‘No,’ says Nathan, standing suddenly, holding his cuffed hands in front of his chest. ‘No more. I won’t let that happen.’
‘You swear?’ says Mark, looking at him, childlike.
‘On my life,’ says Nathan.
Out of the corner of her eye Katie can see Nathan offer a clumsy bow, but her real focus remains on Mark’s hands. She’s sweating now, cursing her tiredness, cursing the madness that she’s now certain has caused her to make a terrible mistake. ‘Can I ask you to put that down, please?’ she says, nodding at the headless doll.
‘Why?’ Mark asks, lifting the toy and seeming to consider it for the first time, as if he too had been blind to its significance. ‘Christ, you don’t think…?’
‘I think it’s best to investigate every possibility.’ She reaches into her pocket, searching for a new pair of latex gloves, the others torn in the struggle, but all she finds is a condom wrapper and a crumpled cigarette.
‘But you couldn’t have missed this,’ says Mark, carefully placing the headless doll on the mantelpiece and taking a step back.
‘No,’ says Katie, with a surge of defensive pride. ‘We couldn’t.’
It takes a moment, but she can see Mark getting there, his eyes jolting across to the door.
‘So, you think he’s been back?’
‘I think we should leave,’ she says, as calmly as she can manage. ‘That way my colleagues can come in and check.’
* * *
Half an hour later, and she’s driving the car. Mark Brooks has been escorted away, seemingly more reassured by Nathan’s promise than anything she had said. Nathan, however, looks far from capable of solving any crime. He seems to have sunk back inside himself, as distant as he was on the journey down from Scotland. The only clue as to what he might be thinking about is in the anxious bending back of his fingers. Seeing this reminds her of her own increasing fear. Might the headless doll connect these murders to that same one last year? Or might that first murder simply have been the inspiration? She stares across at Nathan, knowing that whatever else he might be capable of, he is certainly capable of putting on an act. Had what she’d just seen been the big finale?