‘Look inside the skeleton,’ he says, lowering his head.
It’s the policeman over his shoulder who tells him he’s right with a horrified gasp. Nathan starts to retreat, back towards the stairs, and he can see the other policeman stepping out of the way, giving him far too much room to pass. When he reaches the unsteady banister he grips so hard he feels it almost give way under him. Or perhaps that was his balance; the weakness in his legs; or the sense that everything is shifting again, moving under him like the pile of post in the hall, or spinning like the marks in the dirt, on the wall, on a book, on a body. As he rises towards the door, he reaches out and flicks the switch, filling the room behind him with light. He doesn’t turn back.
Twenty
‘You want one?’ Katie asks, holding out a packet of cigarettes towards Nathan. He doesn’t react. She crumples up the packet and slips them in her pocket, feeling foolish. They’re sitting on the front steps, tucked to one side, allowing the forensics team to move in and out. Any chance of keeping things secret from the neighbours, and therefore from the rest of the world, has gone. The first two murders have already become big news; the media have even snappily named the killer ‘The Cartoonist’.
‘Do you want me to take you somewhere to try and get some sleep?’
‘I must have been asleep all my life,’ he says softly, casting a glance back at the house.
Katie looks at him, knowing she has to find a way to keep him here, for his sake and for hers.
‘I’m going back to Scotland,’ says Nathan, as if reading her mind. ‘I’ll make my own way.’
‘You’d leave before we’ve found your brother?’
He’s staring out at a clear blue sky. ‘What makes you think I want to find him?’
‘What makes you think you have a choice?’ she says, feeling her anger starting to build, remembering the other man she can’t get through to, the other man she couldn’t stop slipping away. ‘He wanted you down here. He wanted you to find out the truth.’
‘And now that I have, I don’t give a fuck what he wants.’
‘So, you’d just walk away? He’s killed three innocent people!’
‘You think the doctor was innocent?’ Nathan snaps back.
‘He didn’t deserve to die. Nor did those two mothers. Jesus, if you’re willing to let him get away with this and carry on killing, then you’re as guilty as he is!’
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, looking away, ‘I won’t be getting away with it.’
‘That is not fucking happening either!’ she says, reaching to take hold of his cuffs, only to remember that she’d insisted on him taking them off before they left the house, not wanting the press to get a shot of him in them.
He moves close, pressing his face up to hers. ‘Unless you arrest me, I’m gone.’
‘Fine,’ she says, reaching for the cuffs again, certain she’ll have no trouble convincing her bosses that Nathan could have been involved, or was at least aware of what his brother was doing. When she thinks about it, clearly, professionally, she can see that possibility herself. Back in the day she would always make sure to look those she was arresting in the eye, either searching for more evidence that she’d got it right, or conveying through an unblinking stare that justice had and would always win. But when she looks at Nathan, the truth is there, as clear as it has ever been. He’s not acting this time. The pain she’s seeing is very real. How could this be justice, to take the freedom away from the man she has dragged back into this nightmare? And why has she dragged him back? If this is a moment for honesty, then she also has to accept that it wasn’t just work.
‘Okay,’ she says, finally, blinking back the tears. The words she turns to in the end are the very same words she had spoken to her dad: ‘I will let you go.’ They stand in silence, holding each other’s stare, feeling the connection again after more than a year; stronger than ever, perhaps.
The spell is broken by the slamming of a car door. She turns to see that a new vehicle has arrived on the other side of the street; black and shiny and not at all out of place in such a prosperous area.
‘Shit,’ she says, shifting herself and preparing for the verbal onslaught she knows is coming.
The man shoving the gate open at the end of the path ahead of them is tall and broad, with a shock of white hair swept back tight. He’s removed his hat and tucked it under his arm, but the medals and the silver braid and the perfect shine on his shoes tell her he’s rushed from an official engagement. He waits until he’s just a few feet away before he speaks, but she’s felt herself flinch with his every approaching step.
‘No more fucking lies from you!’ he says, pointing at Nathan. ‘This ends right now.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ Katie says, surprised that the first blow was aimed at Nathan, and moving across in front of Superintendent Taylor. ‘Do you have any idea what he’s going through?’
‘Do you?’ says the superintendent. ‘I don’t think we know a single thing about this man.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘This is the man whose successes you’ve been taking the credit for, for years.’
Superintendent Taylor leans out to get a view of Nathan, who has slumped down on the steps behind. ‘And why do you think he was always so keen not to take the credit himself? Why do you think he would never allow his name or photo to make it to the papers? Why do you think he always sneaked away from crime scenes, hiding away in the shadows when anyone arrived who might be asking questions?’
Katie believes she knows, but she’s not about to share. ‘Because we’re not all after the celebrity,’ she says, holding her boss’s glare. She’s waiting for the satisfaction of seeing that vein throbbing in his temple, but instead his face splits into a smile.
‘You really don’t know the first thing about this man, do you?’
‘Nathan,’ she says. ‘His name is Nathan.’
‘That much I’ll give you,’ he says. ‘That much he didn’t steal. As for everything else…’ He broadens his stance. ‘I had a bit of time on my journey over here, got some people to do a bit of digging around based on new information that has come to light,’ he gestures towards the house, ‘and I suspect Nathan, here,’ his face twists as he uses the word, ‘is not the man he told us he was when he took on the role. Indeed, he hasn’t been himself for the last twenty years, which, coincidentally or not, is the same number of years ago that Nathan Marks, a highly educated but highly troubled young man, disappeared from the streets of Bristol.’
She turns to look at Nathan in utter shock, and having to think fast about how much she wants and needs to defend him, her head telling her this could damage her career beyond repair, her heart telling her that that career is as fucked as the rest of her life and there’s only one thing that matters anymore. ‘Fine,’ she says, holding up a hand. ‘So now you know. I didn’t want to say anything for the very same reason that Nathan didn’t, because he wanted to protect his brother from knowing what he did. Because he didn’t want him following a similar path. One,’ she stops and gestures towards Nathan, ‘that has clearly taken its toll.’
The superintendent tips his head back and barks a laugh that echoes off the walls of the buildings around them. ‘You expect me to believe that he didn’t know?’