‘It’s probably like the doll,’ she says, shakily. ‘It means that he didn’t just want to cut my throat; maybe he had trouble getting the lines to meet at the back? Or maybe his hand was shaking?’
On the steering wheel he can see hers doing the same, and he wants to tell her that it’s okay, that she doesn’t need to share what she’s really thinking, not yet. Instead he stays quiet and settles back into his seat, thinking of the first time he’d met this remarkable woman. She’d been so different back then; so self-assured, so in control. If there’d been doubt in anything she did she was able to hide it well, but with his eye for detail he’d also noticed a trace of something else, a sadness he couldn’t ever pinpoint. He remembers going to her previous flat once – far larger, in a far better part of town – to pick up something on the way to a crime scene, and he couldn’t help but absorb every detail of the immaculate interior around him. When he’d got home that night he’d played it back in his mind, finding himself living her life, behind her eyes, and eventually those eyes, or perhaps his eyes, had started to cry.
* * *
As they walk up the stairs to her current home, he watches the bright strips of material on the backs of obviously well-used trainers Katie had pulled out of her car. He starts to feel as if he’s just finished one of the runs around his house in Scotland, a marathon that never took him more than a dozen metres from his front door. He doesn’t notice Katie has stopped in front of him until he’s very nearly walked into her, bashing instead into the plastic bag containing the Steven Fish file. He’s about to ask what’s wrong when she spins towards him, holding a finger to her lips, eyes wide. That same finger then points ahead, and when he leans to look past her he can see that the door to her flat is open.
‘Probably me,’ he says, as quietly as he can manage. ‘I left in a hurry.’
This time her finger directs him to the floor just ahead. The lights in the stairwell are not the strongest but he can see the muddy marks leading up to the door. He makes the shape of a phone and holds it to his ear, but she shakes her head and starts moving on. Reaching the door, Katie pushes it open a fraction more, enough for them both to slip through. He’s keeping close, but not so close he can’t fling himself in front of her should there be an attack.
The flat is exactly as he had remembered, still a bit of a mess, still with the spare room door he’d shoulder-barged open hanging from one of its hinges. The light in the little room is still on, just as he had left it, but the broken door is blocking his view inside. Katie moves swiftly to the bedroom, leaping through the doorway and turning to her right into one of the few parts of the flat that can’t be seen from the centre of the living room. She comes back out, eyes wide and shifting rapidly from side to side.
‘Perhaps you left the mud and we just didn’t notice it,’ he whispers.
Katie says nothing, moving across and slamming the front door shut before fastening the chain.
‘Or perhaps it was a neighbour who noticed the door was open and called in to check you were okay.’
She switches on the main light and, looking down, they can both see that the mud extends into the flat. They follow the footprints round to the kitchen. And it’s there, in the centre of the table, that they spot the knife. It is the largest of the knives taken from the block on the side: the very knife that Katie had placed between them the night before. Alongside the blade are two small objects. From a distance they remind him of the chopped carrots he’d seen in Markham’s kitchen. There’s no pool of blood here, but they have a redness at one end that makes his stomach twist. He moves closer and Katie tries to block him off with her arm. It’s too late; he can make them out clearly, as clearly as he can see his own fingers.
He pushes past her and steps in close, so close that he can see the white of the bone. Both fingers have been severed cleanly, cut off just below the second knuckle with a precision that suggests they were taken individually. Nathan stumbles backwards, slamming into something hard, then sliding down towards the floor.
‘My brother,’ he says.
‘We don’t know that for sure.’
‘I felt it,’ he says, squeezing the tips of his fingers where the burning and then the numbness had been. ‘And I did that.’ He points at the smallest of the fingers. ‘I accidentally shut Christian’s in the car door when he was seven. It broke and never straightened. I-I remember being horrified that we were no longer the same, that I’d made him different to me. I even thought about breaking my finger too.’ His voice emerges so flat and cold he’s almost convinced it’s not his own.
‘You’ll have mentioned the broken finger in the journal,’ says Katie, pushing herself up straight, then squatting down next to him, reaching out to touch his arm. ‘He’s just showing he knows things that he shouldn’t, things that are secret and private. It doesn’t mean that Christian is dead.’
Nathan reaches out for the connection to his brother, searching for comfort and finding pain. ‘He’s not,’ he says, glancing across at the plastic bag that Katie had dropped upon entering the kitchen. ‘But this is worse.’
Twenty-Seven
Katie follows Nathan’s glance at the bag and suddenly understands what he means by this is worse. It also reminds her that there are other murders and other pieces of evidence hidden in this flat. She moves quickly, almost tripping over Nathan’s legs as she runs out of the kitchen through to the tiny room and instantly surrounds herself with the images that have filled her mind, her days and her nights for so long. But there’s only one she’s looking at now, pinned in the gap she had made to protect Nathan. And it’s Nathan’s face that fills that gap now.
She’d taken the photo with her mobile at the end of one of their biggest successes. He looks young and handsome, with close-cropped hair and a broad smile. She remembers that smile, remembers the effect it had on her before she’d pushed those feelings down. It’s then that she spots the addition to the photo: the narrow line of what she’s sure is chocolate icing drawn across Nathan’s throat. She lifts a hand to her own throat, feeling the raised line before rushing into the bathroom and vomiting in the sink.
She throws water on her face, then, almost without thinking, starts to rub angrily at the chocolate icing on her neck. Even this past year, when she’s never been more desperate to make things right, to find a way to get the results she craves, she’s never tampered with or destroyed evidence. She’s always followed the process and never been anything less than the policeman she’d always thought her dad had been. But now… She closes her eyes and releases a breath that seems to empty her of far more than a lungful of air.
Lifting her eyes to the mirror to check it has all been removed, she sees another version of herself reflected back. A second photo has been printed out and stuck up, this time of her from the early days, when she too looked younger, when she too could wear a smile. But that smile has been broken by a thick line of smeared chocolate icing running north to south across her lips.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ says Nathan, and she turns to see him standing in the doorway. ‘What does that mean?’
Katie starts to work through the possibilities, alarmed at how easily her mind settles itself to the task. Although this feels like the lowest point, she also knows this has moved them forward, towards the end, somewhere closer to a final understanding. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her mobile, starting to punch in the only number she’s ever dialled of late. Then she looks at the photo of herself again and stops.
‘He’s warning us not to share what we’ve found here,’ she says, lifting a finger to her lips and mirroring the line on her image. ‘Did you see the other…?’
He nods.
‘Maybe that will only happen if we don’t do what he wants.’