‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘I understand from my colleague that someone was attacked here.’
‘Yes,’ she says, as the memory flashes up in her mind. ‘My dad. He was humiliated.’
‘Jesus! I’m so sorry, Katie. Who would do a thing like that?’
‘Have you heard of “The Cartoonist”?’
Martin’s face visibly pales. ‘He’s been here?’ He looks up at her dad’s room again. ‘Why?’
‘To hurt me. And now I’m going to hurt him. I’m going to find him, and I’m going to kill him.’ The confession takes her by surprise, more proof that she’s starting to lose control. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go.’
Martin stands between two cars, not a tall man but wide enough to block her path. She knows he’ll be worried by what she’s said and will want to try and stop her, so she starts backing up to find a way to walk around.
‘Wait,’ he says, and she doesn’t want to.
He has this way about him that makes her suspect he could talk her into, or out of, anything. He’d been the only carer to ever make any impact with her dad, triggering tiny movements in him whenever he was nearby. Initially giving her so much hope. ‘I might be able to help,’ he says, and suddenly she’s listening. ‘There was someone here. I caught him hovering near your father’s room the other day. I didn’t get a good look as he ran away, but I had a photo taken from the CCTV. I was going to ring the police about it, I was going to ring you, but then…’ He looks away, face reddening again, and starts to move towards the back of the car. ‘It’s tucked in one of my files. Come and look.’
Katie follows as if in a daze. If the photo is good then it changes everything, ruins everything. She steps past the raised boot of the car, glancing up at Martin; his hair is a mess, his clothes the same: a crumpled shirt and an old pair of cords. He’s tucked one hand out of sight as if he’s holding something he doesn’t want her to see, but that’s not the hand she’s staring at, it’s the other one. A jacket had been covering it before, but now the jacket has slipped back to reveal a bloodied bandage wrapped around his fingers. Katie feels the world tilt, reaching out a hand to the corner of his car to steady herself. The boot is empty, except for a rope that already feels like it’s coiling round her neck, stopping her from shouting out, stopping her from running. Even if she could move, she knows it’s too late. Just as it had been back in Markham’s house, she waits for the blinding light, then darkness.
Thirty-Three
Christian is dead. For Nathan there can no longer be any doubt. The moment he’d heard those words, Do you really need me to spell it out for you? he’d known all trace had gone. Katie had known it too, cutting off the phone call because she knew it was all over.
He’s not moved from the steps for half an hour, maybe more, working his way through the words of the children’s books in his mind, repeating each sentence to calm his burning desire to kill. If he waits just a little longer he’ll finally be able to answer it, or at least die trying. Every muscle in his body is aching to run, in a straight line at last, right to the place where he knows Markham is waiting for him.
Why didn’t Katie spot the clue? So many hours spent staring at it in that tiny room in her flat. He fears she’s given up. He’d never believed she could quit anything, not in all the years they’d worked together, but so much is different this time around. If he could, he’d go and speak to her and explain why he cannot be there to help her anymore. He must remain silent for his plan to succeed. This is how his mum must have felt at the end; he cannot deny the irresistible parallels.
He feels his feet starting to twitch, feels the words of the children’s books losing their effect. But it’s all right; he’ll be able to slip away from the slowly dwindling numbers of police soon. He knows there’s one still watching him, but now he has a plan to escape. He rises slowly and unsteadily from the steps before pretending to gag into his hand.
‘Toilet,’ says Nathan to his only guard before stumbling towards the building, the young PC following close behind. He’d noticed the signs for the toilet on the mad rush up to Katie’s dad’s room, and had figured out since that it backed on to the car park.
Once he’s inside, he climbs out the window with the minimum of effort and starts to move quickly between the cars. It’s only as he’s passing a rusty old Rover that he realises he doesn’t need to run all the way to Markham’s location. The keys are still in the ignition. He slips into the driver’s seat, praying the old car will start and that Katie’s not watching him from the window of her dad’s room. The Rover bursts into life on the second attempt, and his brain is flooded with images of what might be waiting for him at the end of his journey.
Thirty-Four
Katie opens her eyes, but her head is covered by a hood and the only light is a flash of pain through her head like a lightning strike. She whimpers, wanting to reach up and touch the pain but finding her arms are pulled tight behind her back. Her feet aren’t moving either; her knees are drawn up towards her face, her body numb. She knows her time is up. All that’s left to do is wonder what it’s going to say in her speech bubble, what message her colleagues will read when they look down at her contorted body. COP-OUT, POLICE CUTS, or, with a tiny slice to a vein in her neck, NICKED. Unless, like Steven Fish, there’s still a lot more to endure before then.
It makes sense to her now, horrible sense; the way the two of them had been able to talk, the connection she’d felt, how she’d finally found a solace for her separation from Nathan. Even the killer’s knowledge of her dad’s secret and of the book from her mum she had tried to burn. She pushes against her restraints. If his intention in exposing the Maclean case had been to ruin her relationship with her dad then he had, for once, read things very wrong; she feels closer to her dad than she has ever done. If only she could free herself from these restraints, she would show them how alike she and her dad really are. There would be no witty comments written on the floor, no careful arrangement of the bodies. She’s often wondered how Nathan’s imagination could seem so real to him, but this one, now, soaked in red and framed by a huge surge of adrenaline, seems so close to life the only thing missing is the satisfaction of knowing her victim is feeling that reality too.
She silences her thoughts at the creak of a door opening, followed by footsteps on an uncarpeted floor that only stop when they seem to be beside her. She readies herself for another blow.
‘How are you, lassie?’
She sinks back. It’s not the voice she’d expected, even though she’d known that Markham would be there too. She wants to reply, to show both of them that she’s not scared, but her mouth feels like it’s only good for biting, tearing and spitting out flesh. If she’s scared of anything it’s of who she’s about to become.
The hood – and she’s certain now that’s what’s blocking her view – has been pulled a little too tight around her neck, restricting her breathing. Markham reaches down to loosen the string.
‘I hope that hasn’t hurt you,’ he says, retreating a few steps. Through the fabric, she searches for shapes but finds none, only the images of all the victims she’s come here to avenge.
‘Why?’ she says, with a dry rasp.
‘I didn’t know. Not until it was too late.’
‘It’s not too late now.’
‘I’m afraid it is.’
‘You can help me,’ she says, lowering her voice but still fighting against the ties around her wrists.
‘There’s nothing I can do,’ Markham whispers back. ‘We shouldn’t even be talking.’
‘Free me.’ She twists her wrists again, completely unable to tell how much he can see of this desperate attempt. ‘If you don’t, we will both be victims today.’