She’s remembering the way he’d been unable to look at Mark Brooks. The way he’d apologised and flinched at hearing the children’s names; the way he’d seemed happy to die in that kitchen, and the conviction with which he’d sworn to make it stop. She’s thinking of the way these murders feel like a horrible amalgamation of all the cases they’ve previously investigated. And she’s thinking of her dad, of those few words he’d said in a rare moment of clarity: words that have since forced her to question everything, including her instinct for identifying killers.
And what if her instinct is wrong? It was Nathan who had taught her to trust in it, to use her heart as well as her head, and convinced her to look beyond the evidence she’d so carefully collated. What if he knew the flaw all along, that she was blind to those she cared about? The world around her suddenly starts to spin, following the path of the wounds on the second victim. Fearing she’s about to crash the car, she slows rapidly, pulling into a space she can barely make out through the swirl. She opens the window and starts to suck in the air, fighting the tiredness, the nausea, the doubt. When it’s over, when the world has settled and clarity has returned, she turns to Nathan and finds him slumped against the door with his eyes closed.
‘It can’t be you,’ she says softly, reaching out towards him, wanting to touch the side of his face, to at least feel a physical connection between them: the same connection she’d been searching for with all of those guys she’d slept with – guys like Nathan – that she’d let in and then pushed out before they could hurt her. ‘If it’s you, then there’s…’ she pauses, feeling the truth before saying it out loud, ‘nothing.’
Thirteen
Nathan hears the bedroom door lock. He’s lying on Katie’s bed, clothes on but loosened and handcuffs removed, having been half-carried all the way up from the car. He knows he shouldn’t have put her through that – another deception, another lie – but he can’t afford to have her asking questions, not until he’s figured out what is going on.
He’d managed to grab the landline handset while she was manoeuvring him past the sofa, then tossed it at a pile of dirty washing in the corner of the room. There’s a chance she’ll come searching for the phone in a couple of minutes, but there’s a better chance, given the state of the place, that she won’t notice at all. He moves over to the far side of the room carrying a pillow to muffle his voice. The number comes to him instantly despite it having been more than a year since he last dialled it. He remembers every word of that call, in particular the end, when he’d asked the other man not to worry about him and not to try and track him down. It was for the best, he’d said, and he’d truly believed it. Now he’s the one breaking the silence.
It rings several times before it’s answered with a tentative ‘hello?’ It’s only one word, but hearing it makes him want to cry. He responds with a choked-up ‘hello’, and then nothing more is said for at least a minute, just a silent acceptance that the connection has been made.
‘How’s Cornwall?’ he says eventually, summoning up the images that have comforted him before.
‘Sunny. How’s… wherever you are?’
‘The same.’
Another drawn-out silence, and then the conversation begins for real.
‘Are you okay?’ says the voice on the other end of the line.
‘I am,’ he says, trying to summon up a smile. From where he’s sitting, and peering past the pillow, he can make out a full-length mirror. He stares at his reflection, at a face he hasn’t confronted in more than a year, but it doesn’t feel like he’s looking at himself at all; it’s the man on the other end of the line who he hasn’t seen in… he starts to count back, seeing only swirling stripes, for so long his only way of keeping track of time.
‘Six years,’ comes the answer to the question he hadn’t asked out loud.
‘Almost exactly,’ he says, reminded of the perfect symmetry, and of his need to get back to Scotland in less than two days.
‘I was worried. I thought…’
‘Don’t,’ he says, firmly. ‘Don’t you ever think that.’
‘I took comfort in the fact that I would know if you had.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nathan breaks off and grabs at his wrist, nails scratching the hardened scar. He’d thought it was only him, another part of his madness that he’d never spoken about, never shared, never even dared to test these past few years for fear of being reminded of what he had lost.
‘Don’t you feel it too?’
‘Feel what?’ he says with a grimace, loathing the need to deny something so miraculous, so beautiful. But he has no choice, not now he knows the connection goes both ways. He needs to make the other doubt so that, when the two days are up and he is gone, there’ll be nothing missed, no clue at all. He waits for an explanation, or perhaps just confirmation that the possibility has been dismissed, but there’s silence at the other end of the line. Nathan speaks again, to break it before it breaks him. ‘Just know that I could never do what she did.’
‘That wasn’t what I was worried about, Nathan. I take it you’re still doing that stupid job?’
‘It’s not stupid,’ he snaps, surprised at his anger, defending a job he isn’t doing and has never done. ‘You know I’ve found my purpose.’
‘I don’t know anything. You never talk. You won’t even tell me why we can’t talk.’
‘It would put you at risk. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’
‘And yet, I have to live with that worry every single day?’ The sound of a sigh, sad and familiar. ‘Same old big bro.’
Nathan’s surprised how much it shakes him to hear himself described as brother. He’s tried for so long not to think of that word, to pretend that he doesn’t feel torn in half. The memories surface from time to time – he could never erase them entirely – but the good ones, the ones he can stomach, are restricted solely to his youth. And it’s to his youth he returns, to a phrase he’d said on a thousand occasions when something was wrong, something he didn’t want to have to explain, something he didn’t feel he needed to explain, not to his brother.
‘You’re supposed to understand.’
A momentary pause, followed by a deep inhalation, and he can picture that head dropping forward the way it had all those years ago when they’d both come to the realisation that this argument could not be won.
‘I do, Nathan, of course I do. But for the very same reason I know you’re not being true to yourself. This is not the life you want to lead.’
‘We can’t always do what we want.’ Another look in the mirror, and Nathan silently mouths: ‘Or be…’
‘You are acting, of course,’ says his brother.
Nathan feels a twist of panic, certain his brother has seen through his lies and read his intentions, that he understands it all.
‘Only, it’s not about good or bad reviews anymore,’ his brother continues. ‘This acting is life and death. Say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, and it’s over. Isn’t that right?’
Nathan allows himself a shallow smile, content he’d been panicking for no reason before. His brother had not seen through his deception, just as he hadn’t for all those years they’d lived together, when Nathan had pretended to be okay; to be normal, to be the same.
‘I’m very careful,’ he says, eventually.
‘You were never that, big bro,’ says the other voice, so softly and warmly that it feels like he’s reached out and taken him in an embrace. ‘I know I have to accept your decision.’ He laughs, but it’s a sad laugh, the sort of laugh that tries desperately to distract from the horror of an associated memory. ‘I just thought we’d always be together.’
Nathan’s lips start to shape the sentence, but before he’s found the strength to share he hears it at the other end of the line.
‘So sorry to have left you alone.’