‘No,’ she says, clearly. ‘I don’t.’
‘Of course you do,’ he says, with an unsteady laugh. ‘Think of those mothers. Think of those children. Think of what might still be to come.’
‘I didn’t think I’d ever have a limit,’ Katie says, eyes wide in revelation. ‘I’ve been stabbed, shot at, thrown myself down a flight of stairs…’ She lowers her head. ‘And I’ve done far worse to others to get a result. But this… You… I guess I’m just realising how important you are.’ She drags at her hair. ‘And I don’t just mean the work.’ She waves an arm at her surroundings: the dirty flat filled with dirty clothes, cigarette ends and empty bottles. ‘This mess isn’t just because I can’t do the work.’
A new fear starts to spread through Nathan, something stronger than the anticipation of what he might find in that tiny room behind him. The only thing more terrifying to him than his constant fight with the darkness is what might happen to him if he ever let in a little light. He searches Katie’s face.
‘We need to go ahead with the plan,’ he says finally, through clenched teeth. ‘If I can make it through this, then maybe…’
‘It’s too much,’ says Katie. ‘I mean, look at you.’ She fails to do so herself, gesturing, instead, at somewhere near his feet. ‘You’ve been away too long.’
‘I only have one more day.’
Without warning, she reaches out and grabs him by the wrist, her fingers pressed against his scars. ‘That’s enough! I know you feel like you need to take back control over all this madness. But that is not the way.’
‘And I know you don’t want me to walk away from this case.’
‘That’s the last thing I want.’ She lets go and knocks past him on her way towards the tiny room. She disappears into the darkness, flicks on the light and he can soon hear paper being torn from the wall. When she emerges, he already knows what she’s holding before she shows him: details of the murder that he has never been able to face. The crime scene that he knew for certain would push him over the edge. The body that proved to him that his darkest desires were possible and sent him running for the hills.
‘I shouldn’t have been such a coward,’ he says, realising he’s started bending his fingers back, testing the resistance. ‘I should have tried to solve that a long time ago.’ He points at the papers in her arms. ‘Unless I always knew, deep down, that it was Christian.’
‘We don’t know for sure it was the same person. Steven Fish’s murder was very different.’
‘How else could Christian have got hold of the skin he left inside the doll?’
‘Well, then maybe it was different because it was his first.’
‘The doctor was the first.’
‘Maybe Steven Fish was when he really lost control, killed a stranger, tortured a stranger. There are no signs he’s tortured anyone else.’
‘Only the families of his victims.’
‘That does seem to be the point.’
‘I think maybe I’m the point,’ says Nathan. ‘It’s twenty years since Mum took her own life…’ He pauses to squeeze his eyes shut. ‘“So sorry to have left you alone”, that’s what she said, written on the same squared paper. And I think Christian does feel alone. I think he’s doing this in the hope that I’ll join him, that I’ll be his twin again.’
Katie wraps her arms even more tightly round the papers held to her chest. ‘And maybe that’s why he’s given us this link to the Steven Fish murder. He thinks it will be the trigger for you.’
Nathan takes a step back, recognising the sense in her words and the danger in what she’s holding.
‘But what was Christian’s trigger? The doctor wasn’t killed when I wanted to kill him, more than twenty years ago. The autopsy will likely prove it happened in the past year. So why did Christian wait so long after my dad died?’
‘Maybe something else happened in his life to send him insane. He could have lost that wife he told you about. He could have lost the child.’ Katie takes the papers from her chest and slips them into a discarded supermarket bag, tying the top as if to hold in a stench. ‘Or maybe there’s been nobody. Nobody to keep him in line.’
‘I should have been there for him,’ says Nathan with a grimace, remembering what his brother had said on the phone: I thought maybe you could find yourself a nice policewoman, someone who understands that crazy world of yours.
‘So how long do you need?’ says Katie, nodding back at the little room.
‘A couple of hours. I’ll also need something to drink – something strong – to get past myself. Because this will be different to the other times. I’m not imagining a stranger.’ He nods towards an almost full bottle of wine next to the television. ‘That’ll do,’ he says. ‘All of it. In something unbreakable.’
‘How will I know when it’s over?’
‘Come back in two hours. Go to the station, or something.’
‘Not the best idea. I’m meant to be with you at all times, remember? But I think I might know somewhere I can pay a visit.’
Katie heads towards the kitchen, pulling open a cupboard and locating a red plastic mixing bowl which she holds up for approval.
‘Two hours.’
She reaches out and grabs his hand, and he feels a jolt. He pulls away but continues to look her in the eye and, despite the tightening he can feel in every inch of his body, he somehow forces a faint smile.
* * *
Nathan stands in the tiny room with his head pressed against the door. Fifty minutes have passed since he heard Katie turn the key in the lock and then the sound of the front door closing. Since then, he’s been working his way through the evidence from the Brooks case, reading every report and every forensic note, stopping every now and again to make sure she hasn’t returned. If he’s going to commit to this he needs to know she’s not nearby.
When he’s finally happy he’s on his own and that he’s read all he can about the killing of Sally Brooks, he reaches down and picks up the mixing bowl, watching the contents swish around – red bowl, red wine, red visions already starting to appear. It takes several gulps to finish it all and no little effort to keep it down. He’s never been a drinker – always so afraid of letting go.
The room starts to swim as he finally turns towards the images and forces himself to look, pressing his nose right up against the bloody scenes until it feels like there’s no air left in the room and he is forced to sit down on the spinning chair in the centre. Gripping the arm with one hand, he lets his eyes follow a path around the walls, taking in a series of photographs pinned to the wall of the victims Katie has failed to find justice for in the year he’s been away, and noticing the blank space where the papers about the torture and murder of Steven Fish have been removed. Round and round he goes, running laps around the room with his eyes and tiring out his brain just like he did in Scotland. Suddenly he stops, lining himself up with an enlargement of the chocolate copy of his birthmark on Sally Brooks. He hadn’t considered his birthmark had looked like a skull until he was in his teens. Before then it had always been an animal’s head, a monkey or pig, but as his thoughts grew darker the skull seemed the perfect fit. He’d once wanted to take a knife to it, desperate to break free from the curse, but as he’d sat on the side of the bath with a shaking hand he worried it would achieve the very opposite: that the blood would represent the beginning, and not the end.