‘Is there someone out there?’ says Tracy, twisting awkwardly to look outside. ‘Is it Dad?’
‘Just wait here,’ Katie barks, grabbing an open-mouthed Nathan by the arm as she hurriedly draws back the patio door. ‘And once we’ve gone, keep everything locked!’
Thirty-One
‘What the fuck is going on?’ asks Nathan as they rush across Tracy’s back garden, heading for the stone wall at the bottom end.
‘He’s been watching us,’ Katie says breathlessly, her boot crushing the stem of a rose to place her foot on a much lower side wall so she can spring up and throw herself over the top. Nathan follows close behind and lands heavily on the other side into a bed of brambles and two-foot nettles that haven’t been maintained in a long time. He ignores their sting and the shooting pain in his ankle, heading across the unmown lawn towards the back of a small red brick house. He’s scanning around for movement, but all he can see is Katie, several strides ahead. They arrive at the back door and find it open.
‘Stay behind me,’ Katie whispers, shooting him a look that says no argument. He nods and they enter, the tiniest groan as the door is pushed open.
At first he finds nothing, no sound, no evidence of life, until his nose picks out a smell, sickly sweet and unmistakable, the finishing touch on his most realistic of fantasies. He follows the smell to the living room, where the body of a man has been laid out across the carpet. Nathan’s heart freezes, desperate to look but unable to do so.
‘It’s not him,’ says Katie, and he hears himself breathe.
It’s obvious now: he’s too tall and too far gone, his unfamiliar face turned a terrible blue. Dressed in black, his legs are bound together and his arms are extended equally on either side, as though his head, covered in thick black hair, is the tip of an arrow, pointing back to where they’ve just run from. It’s a comparison supported by the words written in baked beans on the floor alongside:
LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION
‘Is he here?’ asks Nathan. ‘Markham, I mean.’
‘We’d better check,’ says Katie, already heading out of the room.
When they’ve both carefully searched the sparsely furnished two-bedroomed house – Nathan fearful of finding his brother’s body, or bits of that body, at every turn – they push past the mountain of post, open the front door and slump down next to each other on the doorstep. They had intended to call it in and race back to Tracy’s to make sure she was okay, but from the upstairs window they could see that the local police had already arrived.
‘We’ll have to go and face the music soon,’ says Katie. ‘Jesus, when Taylor hears about this, when he finds I’ve gone off on my own again—’
‘Not on your own,’ says Nathan.
‘No,’ says Katie, and he’s aware of her hand resting on the step between them, just a few inches away from his own. The memories are returning now. His connection with Christian had been there from birth, it was natural and unshakeable, but with Katie it was different; their relationship was something they had formed together, and it could be broken.
He looks up at the sky, spotting a buzzard circling above them, a sight that reminds him of his time in Scotland, a sight that reminds him why he can’t take that hand in his again. This might not be his last day on earth, but that last day is still coming. He cannot afford to think that just because his desire to kill at this moment is focused – normal, even – that it won’t return to how it was before. If anything, it’s likely to be far worse.
‘He killed the poor sod simply to be able to watch us,’ says Katie, finally pulling the hand away and tucking it in her lap.
‘More of a reason than any of the others.’
‘Why didn’t any of his neighbours suspect there was something wrong?’ She pushes herself up and peers over a hornbeam hedge at an identical-looking house with a white van in the drive.
‘Why didn’t his family? By the state of him I’d say he’s been dead for weeks.’
‘Is that how long Markham’s been planning this?’ Katie asks, as much to herself as him.
‘Years would be my guess. He’s certainly had time to figure everything out.’
‘But I still don’t understand why he’s targeting us. What have we done to him? He should be fucking grateful to my dad for letting him go.’
‘Your dad killed Maclean.’
‘But he can’t have been a true friend of Markham’s. Maclean was a monster.’
‘And that’s what Markham has become now. Maybe promising to stay away from his family, threatened and watched by your dad, brought about a terrible change. Perhaps he can only find comfort in destroying families. Even his own.’ Nathan breathes out slowly, a tingle in his fingertips as he thinks about his brother. ‘Is he done?’
Katie doesn’t answer, rising to her feet and tentatively rubbing the dull ache at the back of her head where Markham had struck her. Nathan closes his eyes and presses his knuckles against his temples, trying to trigger the positive side of his affliction – the ability to see inside a killer’s mind – but as had been the case in the last few months before he’d run to Scotland, he finds it almost impossible to escape from his own.
‘Shit!’
He hears the word and opens his eyes, but Katie’s already off, running up the drive. He follows close behind.
‘Where are we going?’ he calls out.
‘He was never in there,’ she shouts back, without slowing. ‘There was no mud on the carpet, no side gate, no window open, and therefore no chance he could have got out the front door without disturbing the pile of mail.’
He’s almost alongside her now, running effortlessly, his body seemingly delighted at the chance to do so. ‘So, the guy back there died for nothing after all?’
‘I think he died to keep us occupied for a while,’ says Katie, picking up her pace. ‘It was location, location, location, all right – ours and fucking his!’
* * *
They arrive back at Tracy’s house two minutes later, both twisting and turning to try and take in everything around them, to try and spot what Markham has been up to while they were away. Two police cars are parked haphazardly on the pavement and a fresh-faced PC has stepped out of the front door and is making his way towards them.
‘Have you seen anyone?’ says Katie, holding up her warrant card.
The PC stops, nods and looks round. ‘Sorry, ma’am, but what’s going on?’
‘There’s a dead man in number five of the road behind this one, Chilcott Way, I think it’s called. You need to get round there and secure the scene. My colleague and I,’ she nods towards Nathan and cuts off the question when she sees the young officer’s mouth fall open, ‘the brother of the man you will no doubt have been told to keep an eye out for, came to talk to the woman here,’ she gestures towards Tracy’s house, ‘about something related to—’ Suddenly Katie breaks off.
Nathan imagines she’s hurriedly working through what she does and doesn’t want to say, a last desperate attempt to protect Tracy’s identity. He imagines Tracy must have been the one to call the police, but from the PC’s confusion it appears she isn’t talking now.
Katie pulls Nathan to one side, needing to talk, to share, to find one of those moments of revelation that brought them so much success.
‘He brought us here to have his fun,’ she says breathlessly, aware of the curtain twitching at Tracy’s house. ‘But there must have been something else, another reason he wanted us out of London.’
‘Another murder?’ says Nathan. He poses it as a question, but he’s already working through the possibilities. ‘But why would he need us out of the way for that? It seems his previous victims were entirely random. There’s no way we could have predicted who they would be.’