‘Which is what’s worrying me,’ says Katie. ‘He doesn’t need to pretend to be your brother anymore. He might still have Taylor fooled, but I don’t think he expects that to last long.’
‘So, what? So he can kill who he really wants to now, rather than just trying to hurt us?’ Again the question is out there, hanging in the air between them, but both are already working it through, weighing up the evidence, thinking of the man whose identity they have finally revealed.
They come to the answer at the very same time, Nathan turning to warn Katie only to find her standing frozen, staring at the old Rover. Then she starts to run, arriving at the car in a few seconds, Nathan just behind. Thirty seconds later they’re accelerating hard, as a bewildered-looking PC shrinks in the mirror.
‘He must blame Dad for failing to stop him,’ she says. ‘For making him into the monster he is now.’
‘How far?’
‘Too far,’ she responds, placing her warrant on the dashboard, ready, he imagines, to be waved at any police car that might try to flag them down. ‘Maybe an hour.’
‘He’ll be okay,’ he says, reaching for the warrant to stop it sliding off. He wonders if this is it; if they’re racing for an ending that’s already mapped out. Or whether, for once, they’re moving ahead of Markham.
‘He was there,’ he says, as the old car takes a pothole badly. ‘The timing of the text told us that, proved that he was watching Tracy. And he’s not matching these speeds. He can’t afford to get stopped, not now his photo is everywhere.’
‘Maybe,’ Katie says, fighting the gears as hard as her thoughts.
‘Shouldn’t we phone ahead?’
‘But what if this is what he was telling us to keep quiet about? You wouldn’t risk hurting Christian, and I can’t risk him hurting Dad.’ He can see her knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. ‘If he has…’
Nathan nods, falling back into his seat. He knows exactly what she means, reminded of the truth he’d shared right back at the beginning: it ends the way it has to end for us.
‘Do you think Christian might be there too?’ He can hear the desperation in his voice, embarrassed that for once he can’t predict Markham’s actions.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Do you think he’s still alive?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, slipping out past the back of a lorry, barely a foot between them.
He stares at the side of her face; it’s beautiful, there’s no denying it, not anymore, but it also has a tell, a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth. She’s holding back. He tries to reassure himself that he’s mistaken, that it’s simply his imagination trying to make him doubt everything, and everyone, and lead him down the darkest path.
He twists to have a look behind Katie’s seat, seeing the plastic bag with the evidence from the Steven Fish case that he still hasn’t looked at, that he will never look at for fear of becoming as bad as the person they’re after. They had been wrong about the murder of Steven Fish being the beginning for ‘The Cartoonist’. The beginning had been the day Markham had stood in front of another man attacking his own daughter and had done nothing other than absorb the evil.
Nathan closes his eyes and seeks out the words of one of his favourite children’s books, but instead he finds the words that come are from the book he read in his youth, the book that spoke to him like no other, that made him feel like he was not alone. If only his mother could have shared her secret with him. If only Katie’s dad could have done the same before it was too late. If only they’d known what their silence would cost so many people. Nathan slumps back in his seat and lets the darkness take him without a fight.
* * *
When he opens his eyes again, everything is different. He’s surrounded by trees, manicured lawns, carefully tended rose beds and, in the distance, a gently meandering river. The rain has gone, replaced by a soft sunlight that seems focused on the large Victorian building at the top of the narrow drive ahead.
What is this place? he’s about to say, but to his right is a sign stating they have arrived at GREEN ACRES, a private care home.
Katie has slowed, perhaps not to the ten-mile-an-hour limit, but close enough. They continue up the drive before arriving at a car park in front of the huge building. She pulls into the nearest free spot and kills the engine. It feels strange to suddenly have silence and stillness, almost as though the chase is over, but then Katie pops open her seat belt, opens the door and is running towards an entrance at the back before he’s had a chance to ask what’s going on. What help can he be? Is he even ready to take on the man who’s outsmarted them at every turn? He hardly has the strength left to get out of the car.
Looking around him, he almost expects to see men in white coats coming to take him carefully by the arm and lead him to his room, where he can stare out of the window at circling birds and draw patterns on the walls with dirty fingers. The truth is, he broke a long time ago; not when standing in the centre of an horrendous crime scene had started to give him pleasure, not even when he stood in the kitchen of his family home staring down at his mother’s lifeless body. But with his first, terrible thought. Everything that followed that moment had been madness. He’d solved a few cases, built a reputation, but it was nothing to be proud of; it was something to be feared. And what of his brother? The connection he senses between them has faded to the point where he’s not certain it was ever there at all. Does Katie know? Has she weighed up the evidence like she’s always done, meticulously piecing it all together, while he’s been lost in his fantasy?
The sun is on him, a great shaft that’s cut between the oaks above that does nothing to stop him shivering. He’s holding onto the door handle as if they’re doing ninety again. He looks up the pathway to where Katie disappeared; of course she had to keep the truth from him, she needed to focus on saving her dad. But does he even want to save him? That’s the real question; the question that’s most likely kept him in his seat. Maybe he feels the same as Markham: that Katie’s dad is to blame for all of this, for creating the monster. Nathan squeezes his fingers, feeling the blood, feeling the pain. ‘But he did it for family,’ he says quietly to himself, before repeating it louder, ‘he did it for family!’ He’s thinking only of Katie now, as he throws open the door and jumps to his feet, sprinting towards the point where he’d last seen her.
Everything about the care home screams money. He can see now how someone on Katie’s wage would have had to downsize her life to afford it. The likelihood is her dad is totally oblivious to it, but if it makes Katie feel better… They’ve obviously spent money on security, too – CCTV cameras are fixed above many of the doors.
The door that Katie went through is locked with a keypad, and there’s nobody sitting behind the desk he can see when he presses his face up against the glass. He starts to run again in a desperate search for another entrance and eventually finds an open door round the back. He moves quickly through it, expecting to be accosted at any moment by someone who’s been watching the news and wants to act the hero, fearful of what he might do if they get in his way. But the place is empty. There’s no sound beyond the soft tick of a clock somewhere nearby. It reminds him of the clock in the Brooks’ kitchen; it reminds him he’s taken far too long already.