by Nick Hollin
‘What are we looking for?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, although as he stands there, barely inside the house, he feels like he’s seeing everything. To his right is the corner where he would fling his school bag and kick off his shoes. To his left is the place he stood punching the air on the day he got his acceptance to RADA. Ahead, at the base of the stairs, he can see the rug he’d tripped over while doing some acting a few years before the RADA letter, running around pretending to be a policeman, a fall that had resulted in a deep cut to his chin. He lifts a hand to feel for a scar, then realises there’ll be nothing there. Not because it has long since healed, but because it was never there in the first place – he wasn’t the one who got hurt. The mistake is not surprising: the line between him and his brother was always so blurred that he has difficulty remembering who did what; although he does now recall that he wasn’t the policeman. He was never the policeman.
As they reach the top of the steps and enter the hall he looks to his left, seeing the kitchen door still closed. He reaches for the edge of a cabinet to balance himself and when he pulls his hand back he can see he’s left a sweaty palm print. He moves hurriedly ahead, not sure where he’s going, just wanting to be away from that room.
The lounge seems even larger than it did when he was a child. The ceiling is high, with ornate plasterwork and a huge chandelier. The walls are lined with hundreds of books, many of them leather-bound and dating back centuries. Tucked in the corner, on an antique table, is the huge family telly. Huge in depth, that is, with a screen that seems ridiculously small compared to modern sets. The ornate rug that covers two thirds of the dark wood floorboards is old and starting to fray at the edges. It’s the same rug Nathan and his brother had lain on as children; most likely it was the same rug they’d been put on as babies, staring up at the ceiling, understanding nothing of the world. Were it not for Katie, he would lie there now.
The huge windows at the far end of the room have the curtains drawn and only a narrow strip of sunlight has made it through. Nathan moves over and readies himself to pull them back. His dad had never allowed them to do so, preferring to sit in darkness with only a lamp by which to read his books. It’s therefore with a sense of rebellion that Nathan grabs the curtains and throws them open.
The face is up against the window, so close that its features are pressed against the glass, squashed, deformed, hideous. A flash of something out of the corner of Nathan’s eye draws his attention down, and he can see a hand holding an object, long, polished and coming to a point.
‘Get away!’ screams Katie, as she rushes forward.
Nathan doesn’t move, but the figure on the other side of the glass does, jumping back and almost tumbling down the rickety wooden stairs that lead up from the garden, revealing the object in his hand to be a pair of garden shears. The fear and tension instantly flood out of Nathan, a change so dramatic and so sudden that he very nearly drops to his knees. In its place is something unexpected, and equally strong. Disappointment. He knows that this could so easily have been the end, for him or for the case. Either way it would have been fine. Just a day ago he’d have wanted to wait for the perfect moment. Now it would be enough to know his worst nightmare hasn’t come true.
He reaches forward and unlocks the glass door, pulling it open.
‘Are you okay, Mr Markham?’
Nathan had remained on the pavement the last time they’d met, peering over the low white wall at the front of the garden, resisting all requests to step onto the property. The old man doesn’t seem to have changed at all in the five years since. He has the same close-cropped grey hair receding to the crown, the same small, dark eyes hidden behind thick-rimmed glasses, the same narrow lips, topped by a straggly grey moustache, the same hollow cheeks, tanned and weathered. Even his clothes are as Nathan remembers them: a blue checked shirt, rolled up to the elbows and a pair of pale brown corduroys, for ever dirty on the knees.
‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ he says in a strong Northern accent – Yorkshire, from what Nathan recalls of their rare and brief conversations. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I was down the other end of the garden, and I thought I saw movement inside. Then the light came on and… well, I were going to call the police.’
‘No need,’ says Nathan, managing a smile and directing an arm towards Katie. ‘This is Detective Inspector Rhodes.’
‘Nice to meet you, lassie,’ says Mr Markham, holding a hand out towards Katie, before spotting the dirt coating his fingers and withdrawing it quickly. ‘Detective, you say?’ The gardener hesitates and looks down at his shoes, old brown brogues as filthy as his hands. ‘Of course, it’s none of my business.’
‘Nathan and I are friends,’ says Katie with a smile.
The comment causes Nathan to smile too, albeit briefly.
‘Have you had any trouble with people trying to break in?’ she adds casually, looking out at the huge walled garden, a square of immaculate lawn surrounded by roses, hydrangeas and various other plants the names of which slipped Nathan’s mind the very moment his mum taught them to him.
‘No, ma’am. I’m only here once a week, mind, but I do keep an eye out and check all windows and doors are locked.’ He glances across at Nathan, seeming a little embarrassed. ‘I know it’s not my role to pry, but I thought…’
‘Thank you,’ says Nathan. ‘You’ve been doing a brilliant job. Mum was so passionate about this garden, and would have loved what you’ve done. In fact, I haven’t increased your wages while I’ve been away, have I?’ He taps his pockets as if his wallet might be in there. There’s no cash. No wallet. Nothing in his trousers. They’re not even his trousers. ‘I’ll make sure to do that as soon as I get the chance.’
Another look of embarrassment crosses Mr Markham’s face, and he lifts his hand to rub the back of his head. ‘Thank you, sir. But that really isn’t necessary. You and your brother—’ He cuts himself off, a filthy hand part-rising to his mouth. ‘You’ve always been very kind.’
Nathan shoots a quick look at Katie, and her surprise alongside a flash of anger confirms that she hasn’t done her research and knows nothing of his family.
‘You deserve it,’ he says. ‘I’m only sorry I haven’t been able to appreciate the garden myself.’ He smiles and hopes the man in front of him will relax, but if anything his discomfort appears to be growing. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘No, sir,’ he answers quickly. ‘No. It’s just…’ He starts to rub the top of his head.
‘You can tell me. Do please tell me.’
‘It is Nathan, isn’t it?’ he says, finally managing a smile. ‘Not Christian?’
Another look across at Katie, and this time her confusion is expected. ‘Of course.’
‘Then I must have got it round the wrong way. Or misheard. My wife always used to say I’d had too much sun. I guess it’s why I chose gardening and not driving a bus or the like.’ He smiles again, a broad smile, but still with a trace of discomfort.
‘Have I said the wrong thing?’ he asks, desperately trying to run through what he has said in search of his mistake.
‘Not the wrong thing, sir,’ says the gardener, lowering his head again, both hands now fumbling with the shears down by his waist. ‘The same thing.’
Nathan’s heartbeat starts to rise, his fears already well ahead of his thoughts, thoughts he’s so desperately trying to restrain. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘About the garden. And your mother. And about raising my salary. Which is very kind, and I’m not trying to be rude, sir, and I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all, but…’
Nathan takes a small step back, as if the space might give him room to breathe. It’s true he hasn’t done much talking, and there’s no chance he could recount word for word what he’s said in the last few minutes, but he knows he’s only said it once. And then there’s that fear, growing, sharpening, slicing through his defences. He turns to Katie, as if she might be able to protect him, to offer an explan
ation other than the one he can no longer avoid. ‘Did you catch any of our conversation?’
‘Enough,’ she snaps, clearly angry at the information he’d failed to share.
Nathan turns back to the gardener, taking in his age, the potential for confusion. He’d always put him at around seventy, but he has one of those faces that could easily belong to someone ten years older.
‘The lassie weren’t in the house before, was she?’ asks Mr Markham, leaning in through the window to get a better look.
‘Right over there,’ says Nathan, aware that the curtains must have blocked his view of her a few minutes earlier.
‘Oh, right,’ he nods. ‘Only, you said you couldn’t bear to go in there. I guess I just assumed nobody was. That’s why I wasn’t expecting to see anyone in there today. Why I came rushing across.’
Now it’s Katie’s turn to do the same; she appears at Nathan’s shoulder, almost barging him out of the way. ‘Today? You mean somebody was here before? Somebody who looks like Nathan?’
‘Exactly like him,’ says Mr Markham, directing the shears at Nathan. ‘I guess it must have been Christian, then, but I’m sure he said he was you. And the funny thing is…’ His hand comes up to his chin, drawing down his fingers to suggest the length of beard. Then it moves behind his neck to show the length of the hair.
‘You’re wrong,’ says Nathan. ‘He wouldn’t have come here. He’s just like me.’ He wipes his hands down the sides of his trousers, as if suddenly finding they’re as dirty as the gardener’s, adding a barely audible, ‘Not like me.’ He remembers the phone call, remembers the doubt so swiftly answered, remembers the vision of sunshine and beaches and the nephew he’s never met. ‘You’re wrong,’ he says again, this time with a little more force. ‘Christian is down in Cornwall. I spoke to him only yester—’ He cuts himself off a second too late, and doesn’t need to look at Katie to know that she’s staring. He returns to the phone call, carefully working through the conversation. Had Christian specifically said he was in Cornwall? No. He’d simply said it was sunny there. Might he have been worried by the call, sensed something in his voice and come to London looking for his brother, starting in the most obvious place? The timings don’t work, even Nathan with his loose grasp of time can see that. But he can also see that it doesn’t matter, because his brother might not have needed a phone call to sense something was wrong; it might have been in the connection he’d described, the one that Nathan had tried to deny, the one that might also explain how he’d grown the same hair and a beard.
‘I think you must have misheard,’ he says, a calmness in his voice to reflect his growing satisfaction with the explanation. ‘He probably said he was looking for Nathan.’
Markham nods. ‘I imagine you’re right. My ears are not what they used to be. And maybe he thought I were answering that question when I told him I hadn’t seen either of you in years.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘No. He left quickly. I think he got a bit upset about…’ He looks over Nathan’s shoulder into the house.
‘But did he seem okay in general?’ Nathan asks, a different concern growing this time. If his brother looked exactly like him in his current state then he couldn’t be doing very well at all. It’s a far cry from how he’d pictured him on the days he’d allowed himself to do so: the perfect life, the perfect family, playing on the beach or quietly pottering around his legal practice in a pinstriped suit.
‘If I’m honest,’ says Markham, ‘he seemed a bit…’ He tips his head back, as if the word he’s searching for might be somewhere up in the clear blue sky, or in the tangles of clematis trained to the wall above the door. Several possibilities present themselves to Nathan, although none matches the answer that finally emerges, ‘… scared.’
‘You mean, worried?’
‘No, it was definitely more scared. He was constantly moving and kept looking around, peering down the side of the house.’
‘Like he’d seen something, or someone?’
‘Kind of,’ says Markham, and now it’s the gardener’s turn to be shifting nervously from foot to foot.
‘What do you mean?’ says Katie, cutting in.
‘Well… it don’t make sense, because it’s your house and everything, even if you couldn’t ever bring yourself to…’ He readjusts both his feet and his line of conversation, before returning to Nathan. ‘The point is, although I haven’t seen you and your brother that often, I know you two. I know you’re good people, and so…’
‘So…?’ Katie jumps in again with increasing impatience.
‘It was like he didn’t want to be seen. I mean, when he first spotted me I think he were surprised. I’m not supposed to be here on a Wednesday, you see. Today is my normal day, but the work were getting on top of me a bit so I came in yesterday as well. Plus…’ Markham looks directly at Nathan as if waiting for permission to proceed, which he eventually gives with a reluctant nod, eyes closing in anticipation, expecting the worst. ‘He told me not to tell anyone he’d been around. And I wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t been you, or rather if I hadn’t believed you were him come back.’ The gardener glances nervously across at Katie. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
Katie answers for Nathan, a tightened excitement in her voice. ‘Absolutely not. You’ve helped a great deal. Now I need to have a quick word in private with my friend, and then we’re going to have a look around the house. I hope you don’t mind, but it’s probably best if…’
Nathan is aware of her looking across at him, despite the tears blurring his eyes, despite the whole world seeming to tilt and sway.
Markham offers a little bow and starts to retreat. ‘I understand, ma’am,’ he says. ‘I’ll pack up my things and be off. I’d done most of what I needed to anyway.’ He catches Nathan’s eye and offers a hesitant smile. ‘I hope you and your brother are okay.’
‘So do I,’ says Nathan, weakly.
Sixteen
Katie stands facing Nathan, not knowing which emotion to turn to. There’s the fizzing excitement of a breakthrough in the case, a suspect she’s never met before but whose face could not be any more familiar. There’s also the doubt; how long had Nathan suspected his brother? Long enough to have cost someone their life?
‘I need everything,’ she snaps. ‘Now!’
‘It’s not him,’ Nathan snaps back.
‘I will be the judge of that.’
‘Says a detective who can’t solve a case.’
The words strike her with a physical force and she steps back, taking a moment. ‘Well, this one seems clear enough, even to me. Food from your childhood, references to home, knowledge of intimate marks on your body—’
‘And on yours.’ His body has straightened, stiffened, set firm. He looks ready to attack. ‘Is my brother one of the many men you’ve fucked recently?’
‘You think I’d go anywhere near someone who looks like you?’ she shoots back.
His hand leaves his side and she’s ready for him, but it’s only to grab the shirt she lent him. ‘The clothes certainly fit.’
‘It’s what’s on the inside that counts. And you’re not fooling me about that anymore.’
‘You still think I am capable of killing someone?’ he says, the anger suddenly leaving his eyes.
‘I think you would let someone else die to protect your brother.’
‘And what about your dad? What secrets are you keeping to protect him?’
Her mouth falls open. How could he possibly know? But it’s the same question she always asks about Nathan. The question she’d asked right back at the beginning, after she’d first taken the young profiler to a crime scene and watched him perform his magic. Although this is different. No good can come from this. She shouldn’t have trusted him; shouldn’t have allowed her desperation to cloud her already questionable judgement. She shouldn’t have invited him into her home.
She’s looking at the ground now, fighting the urge to sink towards it, but aw
are he’s moving closer.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Your family has nothing to do with this. And this is what we agreed to focus on. Nothing else.’
She lifts her head and meets his gaze, seeing the sadness she’d thought she’d heard. ‘You need to help us find your brother,’ she says, pulling out her phone, trying to remember what she’d already found out from the gardener, Markham. ‘It was Christian, wasn’t it?’
Nathan pushes out a long breath before answering, as if even this is some kind of betrayal. ‘Yes.’
‘And do you have an address?’
‘I have a telephone number.’
She remembers the phone in her bedroom, and Nathan’s attempt to cover it with the dirty washing. ‘Did you call him last night?’
‘To check he was all right.’
‘And to check he was innocent,’ she says, shaking her head as she punches DS Peters’ number into her phone.
‘He is innocent,’ Nathan insists. ‘He couldn’t have committed those crimes.’
‘How can you be so certain?’ she asks.
His eyes open even wider and seem to draw her in. ‘I know how killers think, remember. That’s what you always used me for.’
Used. She could hardly argue with that.
A voice answers at the other end of the line. She gives the name and the telephone number Nathan reluctantly shares. She also gives the address they’re at, along with instructions for a team to get here ASAP. Her discomfort grows with her own sense of urgency. She hadn’t considered that the brother might still be here, in the house with them now. She’s about to ask Nathan for a description to share with the team, already knowing there must be a strong resemblance given Markham’s confusion between the two, but over his shoulder she spots a selection of family photos. She pushes past him and picks up a small silver frame tucked away at the back. It shows two teenage boys standing side by side; their clothes, their height, their faces identical.
