As the lock clicks she feels the relief. At the same time, she’s telling herself to trust her instinct, to believe that it hasn’t left her entirely and that he’s still there somewhere behind that sickening smile. Yes, he had fooled her over the years, but there’s no way he could have done those things to those poor women, no way he could have walked all those miles to the nearest town to catch a bus to the nearest city, then hired a car, or jumped on a train for the long journey south. There’s no way he could have piped chocolate icing onto their bodies so that she, and she alone, would know she had to see him. There’s no way that those marks on his wrist were a sign of guilt, evidence of a struggle with internal demons, a struggle he had already lost. There’s no way that, when she takes him to the crime scenes, she’ll be taking him to places he’s already been. No way, she thinks, bending back her fingers till the knuckles pop.
Ten
Nathan sits in the interview room in a pair of cuffs, sweating and twitching like the guiltiest man who’s ever been invited in there. He’s wearing a pair of corduroy trousers, a pale blue sweatshirt and Nike trainers. All are in need of a wash but fit him well. He’d watched Katie retrieve them from the bottom of her wardrobe, a wardrobe that most of her other clothes hadn’t seemed to make it to. He’d wondered for a moment why she had men’s clothes in there and had felt the tiniest flutter in his chest, although that was nothing in comparison to the swirling in the pit of his stomach once he’d found out where they were going. He’d wanted to protest, to demand that she agree to a few more promises, but it was clear from the look on her face that the time for negotiation was over.
She’d maintained that same look in the hour it took them to eat breakfast, get dressed, trim his beard to an acceptable length and drive to the police station, and she’s wearing it still as she sits on the opposite side of the table from him. The one thing he had been able to insist upon was keeping the cuffs. On the way through the building several concerned-looking colleagues had pulled Katie to one side. He can’t for the life of him imagine what explanation she could have offered.
Back when he was working as a criminal psychologist, he only ever came to the station when he had to. He remembers how increasingly hard it had become to look into a killer’s eyes, knowing how close he was to being just the same as them. Worse even; most of them had motive, most had something to gain, most had limits to their imagination.
The room they’re in is small and dark, with no windows and a very thick door. It reminds him of the psychiatric units he’s helped to send so many people to, and of the times he’d considered finding a way to get himself locked up in there as well. What held him back was the thought of losing control, not of his freedom but of his story, and the one person who could never find out about his madness.
The man sitting next to Katie is in his late fifties, maybe older, well over six foot, with a broad nose, bad skin and a gut pushing his shirt to the limit. Nathan vaguely recognises him from the last time, but he can’t put a name to the face even though Katie introduced him when he entered the room. She’s leaning across the table towards him, and he can tell she’s on the verge of clicking her fingers in front of his face to get his attention. As in the old days, she is the exact opposite of him: all focus and no distraction from the job at hand. The difference is that this time he has no idea what that job might be.
‘Yesterday, a body was found in West Molesey,’ says Katie. ‘It was a thirty-eight-year-old mother of two, Sarah Cleve. I don’t suppose that name means anything to you?’
He shakes his head and pushes out a long breath. During the long journey down, and the hours lying fully awake in Katie’s flat, he’s had time to work through the possibilities, to try and figure out why Katie might have felt the need to hold back, and he’d managed to convince himself there was a personal connection, that the victim was going to be someone he knew. Unfortunately, the relief he now feels at that not being the case slips out in the faintest smile.
But when he looks up at Katie the smile disappears.
‘Her two little boys were with their father,’ she spits through gritted teeth. ‘And thank fuck they weren’t there. Thank fuck the neighbour found her. Thank fuck they couldn’t see her, because it was…’ She looks away, at the same time revealing a face he’d almost forgotten, a face that betrays both anger and unbearable sadness. It’s the face she would always adopt when standing over a body with him by her side, trying to figure out where they might go next. ‘It wasn’t pleasant,’ she continues, calming slightly and running a hand through her hair, but he’s already picturing the body of a thirty-eight-year-old mum, twisted and torn apart. He’s already calling on all the other images of bodies, real and imagined, that he has stored in his brain to make a collage of the perfect murder, not one inch of the flesh untouched, the insides out and spread across the floor.
Katie is looking down at her notepad. ‘We’ve just found the car. It was dumped at the Four Oaks Caravan Park on the outskirts of Henley.’
When she looks at him he can tell she’s searching for a reaction to this information. He hadn’t been expecting to have one, not now he knows the victim is a stranger, but the name triggers a memory which rushes into him without warning. Suddenly he can see all four members of his family squeezed inside a tiny CI Sprite caravan, their Volvo 240 Estate parked alongside. Bacon and eggs for breakfast, cooked on a stove outside. Long walks, early nights, games of chess and bedtime stories, barked orders, stifled giggles, secret pacts, a sense of security, a sense of eternity. Again, there’s nothing he can do to stop the smile spreading. Then he hears the screech of a chair, and he’s back in the room.
‘You know the place?’ asks Katie, leaning across the table so close he can smell the same soap he’d used to scrub his own skin earlier that morning. Distracted by this connection between them, he fails to respond immediately, and when he finally does, implored by Katie’s wide-eyed stare, it’s not the answer he’d intended to give.
‘No.’
‘You’re sure you don’t?’ she asks.
‘I’m sure.’
‘And you don’t know the woman?’
The images flash up again in his mind. He swallows hard, his feet shifting constantly under the table as he desperately tries to picture himself running circles round his house. But he feels so far away from there now.
‘I thought you were going to help!’
‘I’ll help when I can.’
‘Where were you the day before yesterday at around eight in the evening?’
Nathan can clearly see the truth of it now: she thinks he might be guilty. He realises it’s probably all his fault; he had warned her not to trust him and he knows his behaviour is strange. There’s also the way he was acting a year ago. He might never have shared his darkening thoughts and desires, but once he’d seen the body of Steven Fish, once he’d seen what losing control really looked like, he’d started to feel himself letting go. In that split second Katie spotted the change and saw him for what he really was. It was why she’d agreed to let him live in isolation, why she’d agreed to break off all contact without even saying goodbye. She’d probably believed him capable then, but hoped he might never act on his impulses. Now she’s dragged him back, believing that’s exactly what he’s done. Nathan knows there’s every reason for her to suspect him, and yet, despite it all, despite his behaviour, despite knowing himself and how close he has come to committing such a crime, he feels utterly betrayed that she’s questioning him like this. That she of all people can think he would ever let the monster inside him win.