Before reaching the top of the stairs he stops and ducks sideways to shoot a look round the corner. Again he’s remembering all the places his brother would hide as a child, often leaping out and startling him. Of course, they’d soon learned to stifle their screams and giggles for fear their dad would come; heavy footsteps on the stairs and the promise of a smack with whatever book he’d been distracted from reading.
Katie is ahead, and Nathan hurries after her with the other three policemen close behind him. The first room they pass is the guest bedroom. He allows the three policemen to go in and can hear them searching cupboards and finding nothing. His focus is on the two rooms at the end of the corridor: his room, then his brother’s room. His room is exactly as he’d remembered: an eighteen-year-old’s hideaway, with the dark blue paint he’d fought for barely visible beneath the posters of depressing bands and flyers for the various theatrical shows he’d become involved in. Around the age of sixteen, when dramatic changes were taking place in body and mind, acting seemed a far simpler and more productive way of avoiding the thoughts that were troubling him. He remembers the release of getting lost in the parts, often to the point where he didn’t want to come back.
Framed and hung high on the far side of the room is his acceptance letter from RADA. His proudest day: the day he’d started to believe he could build a successful life out of pretending to be anyone but himself.
The bed is made and, save for the layer of dust and the moth-eaten curtains, the room looks tidy in a way that it never would have back when there was life in this house. He never kept his things in order, clothes and books and CDs strewn across the floor to his mother’s despair and his father’s rage. A mess to reflect the chaos in his head. Crumpled trousers, unruly hair, T-shirts adorned with skulls and troubled lyrics. Everyone thought he would grow out of it, but it only ever got worse.
He’s so wrapped up in the memories this room has stirred that he only notices Katie behind him when she accidentally knocks a lone trophy from a shelf. It would normally have been holding up a row of books, but those books were the only thing from the house he’d taken with him to Scotland, boxed up and put in the back of Katie’s car. How he wishes he could escape into one of those childish tales right now…
‘You never told me you were good at rugby,’ says Katie, looking at the trophy and carefully placing it back on the shelf. She seems to have relaxed now they’ve reached the final rooms and it’s clear they are alone.
He remembers his teammates had called him a madman while offering congratulatory slaps on the back. His only focus has been on winning, no concern for the welfare of himself or others.
‘We need to find something that shouldn’t be here,’ he says, returning his focus to the room.
Katie’s previous calmness disappears in an instant. ‘Why?’
‘Something doesn’t feel right.’
‘What sort of thing?’ says Katie, talking in that soft, persuasive voice she always used when he was slipping away into the thought process of their suspect.
He stares at the wall ahead, thinking about who used to sleep on the other side, and tucks his hands down by his sides so Katie can’t see how badly they’ve started to shake.
‘What if I was wrong about Christian?’
‘You think he’s guilty?’ says Katie.
‘No,’ he says sharply. ‘What if I was wrong about why he looked scared? What if he was being followed? What if the killer thought he was me?’
‘Even you don’t look like you anymore,’ she says, and he’s aware that she’s pointing at a long mirror in the corner of the room. ‘I could easily have walked past you in the street. So unless this killer saw you in Scotland…?’
He can picture her face, one eyebrow raised, waiting for his response. In the end, all he does is hover his cuffed hands above his stomach and move them slowly round, following the path of dirty marks he remembers so clearly from his other home.
‘He must have done.’
‘Unless that was from the J.M. Priest book.’
He looks down at the floor again, the place he’s always looked for inspiration, and another terrible possibility presents itself.
‘What if it wasn’t a mistake? What if he was targeting Christian?’ He twists the fluorescent top he’s been given, as if that might help wring out the tension in him. ‘Maybe he knows it’s the best way to hurt me. The only way.’ He glances down at his wrist, then back up at Katie, recalling his brother’s words in their phone call: I take it there’s no special person in your life… I thought maybe you could find yourself a nice policewoman, someone who understands that world, who could protect themselves.
‘It’s possible, I suppose, but it doesn’t seem likely.’
He nods his acceptance, returning his attention to the room, wondering if he should check the drawers or behind the curtains but, at the same time, knowing there will be no need. The clue will be obvious, like the beans and sausage on toast, like the birthmark at the top of the thigh, like the words that had brought them to this place. He turns and brushes past Katie. She doesn’t say a word, just follows close behind as he enters the next doorway along the hall, into the room that belonged to his brother.
The room is brighter than his, with white walls, colourful pop music posters, blue sheets and curtains and a thick white carpet that has somehow remained spotless despite the dust. The furniture in the room is all arranged in the exact same way as his own, but Nathan finds he’s far more comfortable considering the differences. He runs his fingertips along the unbroken spines of a number of difficult literary novels, and turns to find Katie holding one of Christian’s trophies.
‘Christian was into golf then?’
‘Yes,’ he says tentatively, knowing there must be meaning in her question. ‘He likes less aggressive sports. He wasn’t like me. He isn’t like me.’ Every time he says it he knows he sounds less certain, but he has to keep saying it until all hope is gone.
‘Sarah Cleve was twisted into the pose of a golf swing,’ says Katie. ‘Holding the same knife that had…’
Nathan looks away; she doesn’t need to finish.
The last time he stood in the centre of this room the whole world seemed to be vibrating with the possibilities the future presented. He was off to RADA, and his brother had a place to study law at Cambridge. Both were so overwhelmed, bouncing around like young boys again, turning their music up loud because their dad was out of the house. Those weeks for Nathan were the best of his life, the cresting of a wave he didn’t even know he was riding. At last, he and his brother knew who they were, and where they were heading.
Katie puts the trophy down and moves towards the door, and Nathan reluctantly follows. Out in the hall, shifting his weight from side to side, to try and compensate for the way the whole world seems to be moving, he becomes aware of the other police officers continuing with their work; doors being opened and closed and the occasional thump as they lower themselves to the floor to peer under a bed. He remembers the flutter of excitement he would get knowing that his thoughts, his insights, his curse, had brought his team to the verge of making an arrest. He also remembers the sense of hypocrisy he felt when they celebrated taking another ‘sick bastard’ off the streets. The truth is, he’d always felt closer to the criminals, perhaps even from the days when he would play the robber and his brother the policeman. Always the policeman.