At the end of the corridor is another staircase, smaller, narrower, leading up to the third floor. Nathan could never sleep while his parents were downstairs, always waiting to hear his mother creeping by. He recalls the times he would sneak upstairs in the middle of the night, whispering for his mum to come out of the bedroom. Somehow she always managed to hear him, like she’d been lying there, waiting. They’d sit on the top step and talk quietly about his latest nightmare. Christian was never troubled by such things; always smiling, always happy and joking about. In their teenage years he started calling Nathan ‘big bro’, not because he was older but because he’d always seemed so aged by all those dark thoughts.
Nathan finally steps over the threshold of his parents’ bedroom. He breathes in deeply and is convinced he can smell his mum’s perfume, but he knows there’s nothing left here but memories and dust. The beds are made tightly, the way his dad had liked it, and pushed close together. Nathan realises his mum must have done this in the days leading up to their dad’s death. On the final day she had telephoned both boys to share the news, told them she loved them and to take care getting home. She’d then tidied the house from top to bottom, scrubbed every surface till it was gleaming. She’d prepared a meal, not for her, but dished up on two plates and placed on the kitchen table. It was the boys’ favourite, a comfort food from when they were children: a tin of beans and sausage on toast. By the time Nathan got home, and he was the first home, travelling from central London rather than Cambridge, the food was stone cold. Their mum was not, but she was well on the way, sitting at the kitchen table with a half-empty bottle of wine and an entirely empty bottle of sleeping pills.
Standing in the middle of his parents’ bedroom, Nathan’s eyes are locked on those same two things tucked away at the back of his mum’s dresser. He might have missed them had he not so vividly remembered the room from the last time he was here, having travelled home to see his bedridden dad and to hold the hand that no longer had the strength to smack him. Nathan has always had a remarkable ability to take in his surroundings, to notice the details that others miss. Many times, like that last day spent with his dad, he’s wished he didn’t have that gift, but it’s served him well in previous cases and it’s serving him well now. He approaches slowly, not quite believing his eyes, looking back over his shoulder and half-expecting to see his dad’s twisted, pale body stretched out on the bed, a scene he had never actually witnessed but that he’s imagined a thousand times. When he does finally touch the surface of the wine bottle he strikes it so hard, half-expecting his fingers to pass straight through, that he nearly knocks it over. It rocks and then straightens, his body following a similar path. He reaches out again but Katie grabs his shoulder.
‘If you think it’s something, then don’t!’ she says sharply. ‘Not without gloves.’
‘Prints.’ He says the word out loud while looking down at his fingertips, at the one part of his body that isn’t identical to his brother.
Katie pulls on her gloves and carefully lifts the bottle, revealing a label that Nathan instantly recognises. It was one of his dad’s favourites, a case he would select from when they were celebrating: the last time being the evening the boys had got their places at Cambridge and RADA. He’d looked proud, smiled even, but they could never have known what was going on inside his body. Nathan turns and looks at a box of tissues on the bedside table and remembers his dad hacking away so loudly he’d woken them downstairs, wondering when was the first time he felt that strange metallic taste.
Nathan turns back to the bottle, wishing he could take a swig, but he can see from the light streaming in through a gap in the curtains that it’s empty of wine. Instead, there appears to be a white square of paper curled up in the neck. Katie has spotted it, too, because she’s started to stick a single finger inside to try and draw it out. It’s a slow process, but somehow Nathan knows it’ll be the same squared paper he found in the toaster at the Brooks’ house, with the same thick ink soaking through. He also knows what will be written on it, the words carefully shaped on his lips, just as they had been during his phone call with Christian. So sorry to have left you alone.
Eighteen
‘What do you think it means?’ Katie asks, moving the paper closer to Nathan’s face, hoping to break his glazed expression.
Nathan slumps to the floor, grabbing a handful of the thick rug beneath them.
‘Is there another body here?’ she asks, urgently.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, eventually. ‘I don’t know anything.’
She can’t help but notice the two sides of the bed don’t match. One is a pale pink, the other white. It looks like they’ve been pushed together at some point; a sign, perhaps, of marital issues. She sits down on the floor next to Nathan and lightly places a hand on his arm.
‘Is it his handwriting?’ she says. ‘Have they all been his handwriting?’
He shakes his head, but she can see the truth in the way he’s sitting, part folded over, every slow breath seeming to squeeze a little more life out of him. She’s trying to think of something she can do when he suddenly sits up straight and pushes back his shoulders. She can’t help but be impressed by this act of strength, one final fight against the truth. But then she feels something else building inside. She’s thinking of school photos in a narrow corridor; she’s thinking of a boy’s little shoe; she’s thinking of an anniversary and of a kitchen that cannot be entered; she’s thinking of a house that has not been used for a very long time. She’s also thinking of what Nathan intends to do in less than two days’ time.
‘It’s the anniversary of the death of your mother.’ She speaks quietly so she can’t be overheard by the other policeman on the landing outside.
He shoots her a look, a mix of surprise and anger.
‘Might that explain your brother’s choice of victims?’
There’s no reaction, this time, beyond a slow exhalation; a pressure finally released.
‘Give us a few minutes,’ she calls out to the men by the door. ‘Maybe check the other floors again. And again, if you find anything, or anyone, don’t play the hero.’
When they’ve gone, she turns back to Nathan. He seems, as she had feared, to be drifting away, but he squeezes his eyes shut and forces the words out.
‘I’m not stupid.’
‘You’re the least stupid person I’ve ever known.’
‘And yet I might have missed this.’ A sweep of the arms seems an attempt to take in everything, as if everything is what he’s missed. Then he lifts his cuffed hands in front of his face. ‘I could see it in myself, but not in him. He even told me on the phone yesterday that we were the same, and that was how he knew I wasn’t living the life I wanted to. I thought he meant…’ His head sinks further into his chest, and his words become muffled. ‘I don’t know what he meant.’
‘You think he was trying to confess to you?’
Nathan pauses before replying. ‘It hadn’t sounded like a confession. Maybe he was trying to recruit me?’
‘Then he is stupid.’ She reaches out and takes his arm, holding it just firm enough to stop him retreating. She can feel his heartbeat jumping under his skin. ‘I may not know this.’ She nods towards the room. ‘But I know you. I know what you are and aren’t capable of…’ She hesitates, remembering the doubts.
He pulls his hand away. ‘Family,’ he says, ‘family shows you what you can’t see on your own.’ He glances across at the empty pot of pills on the dresser, and presses his back into the pink side of the bed. ‘I thought it was just me that had these awful thoughts, for such a long time, right up until…’ He reaches out to the carpet with both hands and with his two forefingers starts to draw circles in the rug, spiralling inwards towards the centre.
‘You knew when you saw the second victim?’
‘No,’ he says, his voice growing distant again. ‘I knew from the moment I saw my mum’s book.’
Katie stares at his spiralling fingers, feeling almost hypnotised by the movement until something finally clicks at the back of her mind, a connection that could only have been made sitting here, in this expensive house with a dark story. Flawed police, likeable villains, unthinkable crimes committed by both. It’s all there in the case they’re working now, and in the dark imagination of the man sitting next to her.