by Nick Hollin
Katie pushes herself up and gives Ben’s arm a gentle squeeze. ‘You’ve been a great help. Is there anything you need?’
‘Just to be left alone,’ says Ben, reaching for the television remote and turning it on. ‘That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Just my programmes and other distractions.’ Kate follows his eyes to a little packet of white powder on a DVD case on the floor. Quickly determining that it’s not enough to kill him, she’s happy to grant him his wish and go.
Standing on the doorstep with the doctor, Katie starts to scan the street. She’d like to get a team in for door-to-door to follow up on a theory, but she’ll give Ben a little longer. There’s also Mike Peters’ warning to consider, about not trusting the police. And the question of why they’re not already here.
‘What are you thinking?’ asks Richard, stepping out on to the badly cracked front path.
‘Mike’s last calls,’ says Katie. ‘The team will already have had a chance to trace them. And yet they haven’t visited.’
‘I’m far from an expert on technology, but if Ben’s right about his brother not trusting some of your colleagues, then might he have had another phone they couldn’t trace?’
‘In which case, where is it now?’ says Katie, pulling out a mobile given to her by Sam. She stares at the device and considers what else she’s just been told: Mike believed he’d been followed by a woman with cropped hair. Unless it was Ben who saw her and recognised her. Either way, it can’t be a coincidence. She doesn’t believe in those.
‘Can you be followed with that phone?’ asks Richard, recognising Katie’s concern.
‘Undoubtedly,’ she replies with a sigh. She considers doing what she can to prevent that: turning off the GPS tracking unit, or even dropping it in a bin, but as she looks back at Ben’s house, she realises it’s already too late. She decides instead to head for the place that started all of this: the internet.
* * *
Searching Nathan Radley in her phone’s browser, she sees there are already headlines about his visit to the mortuary and statement to the press. It seems strange to see his face in the photos, for almost the whole decade they’d worked together he’d successfully avoided being photographed at all. She scans a couple of hastily written articles. His denial is there. So are the accusations. And then, with a quick search of social media, she finds some of the anger. Plenty of people still believe him to be guilty. Plenty of people want him dead. She feels a sudden protectiveness, a desire to be with him, to tell him she believes in him, so she searches through the phone’s address book to try and find a way to get in contact with Sam, but there’s only one name on there, and not even a name, just a single letter: C.
She calls the number and doesn’t get through. When she checks the call history, she finds it’s the only number Sam has ever called from this phone. The calls go back more than three years, regular and very short, but just under two years ago the calls from this end stopped getting through. Although that doesn’t prevent Sam, if that’s who was making the calls, from trying. In fact, Katie can see she’s tried hundreds of times. Then, a year and a half ago, the calls stop completely.
‘I don’t like this,’ says Katie, staring over at a concerned-looking Richard. Although if she’s being honest with herself, this is what she’s been missing – the doubt, the excitement, the unpredictability, and, perhaps most of all, the danger. As a colleague once far too accurately suggested, she’s only ever happy when she’s chasing shadows in the dark.
Eleven
‘Still no response from your partner,’ says Sam, lowering the mobile phone from her ear and peering at the screen. She’s sitting next to Nathan in the back seat of the car. The driver in the front is a young man with very short blond hair, who hasn’t said a word in the half hour it has taken them to reach the edge of the city.
‘I think some of those people wanted to kill me,’ says Nathan.
‘I think you’re probably right,’ says Sam, running her finger across the screen of her phone then lifting it towards Nathan. She presses a button and a video starts to play. ‘The question is, have any of them killed already?’
He watches the crowd of people, which seems much smaller on the screen, perhaps only a dozen people.
‘Could the killer have heard about my being there in time to rush across?’
Sam glances over her shoulder. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve followed you from the very beginning. I think I heard you suggesting yourself that Mike Peters was killed to bring about your return. That being the case, they will have been waiting in the most obvious places.’
‘The police station,’ says Nathan, nodding his head. He tries to think back to anyone he might have seen outside, but he’d been so distracted when they arrived they could have been sitting in a bloodstained shirt on the steps out the front and he’s not sure he’d have noticed. He searches the faces on the screen, playing the video several times, but there’s nobody he recognises and nobody that stands out.
‘We have to be even more careful,’ says Sam. ‘Your face was pretty well known before, but now…’ Again, she lifts the phone towards him, an enlarged image of him in the centre of the screen. He looks a little lost, but no way near as lost as he feels right now.
‘I could shave my hair off,’ he says, pulling at the long strands at the back of his neck.
‘It’ll make little difference. Especially once we’ve caught up with your partner.’ Sam touches her cheek, indicating the scars that Katie has no way to hide. ‘Any idea where she is, by the way?’
‘No, none,’ says Nathan, holding Sam’s gaze.
‘Hmm,’ says Sam. ‘I could have sworn you said in the interview yesterday that she told you everything. Although I did also sense a little bit of tension between you. Quite understandable, I suppose.’ Sam stares out of the window as they pass a school, kids racing around the playground. ‘I couldn’t have smacked somebody over the head with a metal bar. Especially if they were my twin brother.’
‘I should have done it,’ says Nathan, gripping the handle of the door. ‘He deserved to die.’
‘He did die.’
‘Too late,’ says Nathan, quietly. ‘Too late.’
Sam leans forward and whispers something to the driver, who nods and pulls over to the side of the road. He then climbs out of the car and walks away while Sam switches to the driver’s seat.
‘What’s going on?’ asks Nathan, twisting to watch the driver disappear round the corner.
‘He’s got work to do,’ says Sam, indicating to pull away. ‘And so have we.’
They continue driving in silence for another five minutes, before the car pulls up at a locked metal gate. A board on the gate says something about the site awaiting planning permission for construction of a business estate, but Nathan isn’t looking at that: his attention is drawn to the sign behind. It’s badly scratched and covered in graffiti, but even with half the letters missing he still recognises the name of the school.
‘You know where this is?’ Sam asks, turning to face him.
‘You think I could forget?’
Sam pops open her seatbelt and reaches into the centre console for a key. ‘Come on,’ she says, climbing out of the car.
‘What if I don’t want to?’ he calls after her.
‘I’m not asking you to try and enter Steven Fish’s killer’s mind,’ she says. ‘You’ve already proved back at the mortuary that it would be a waste of time. We’re just going to look at the scene. There might be something you missed the first time around, seeing as you were so distracted.’
Distracted was the very last thing Nathan was the day he came to see Steven Fish’s body. His focus was such that he couldn’t step back, couldn’t withdraw from the horror of it all. Not until Katie had physically dragged him away. But by then it was too late. There was a smile on his face that told his partner, and him, that he could no longer be trusted to perform his duties.
‘I’d like Katie to be here with me.’
The school is exactly as he remembers it from two years earlier, apart from the few remaining windows, which have now been smashed. Despite the damage, he can picture kids running around in the playground. Worse still, he can picture his and Katie’s child running around, until, like the fantasy child that he or she will always be, they disappear.
‘I hated school,’ says Sam. ‘Too many rules.’ It’s an unexpected admission for many reasons, and to Nathan it doesn’t ring true, but he decides to go with it to break the silence and to try and find out more about the person he’s with.
‘Public?’
‘State. My parents couldn’t stretch to the kind of place you went to.’
So many of the details of Nathan’s life were shared with the world after his brother’s death. Old school friends gave interviews in which they claimed to have seen the darkness in the twins long before. There was even a girl Nathan had once dated who claimed she ‘had felt uncomfortable around him’. He could hardly blame her for that. If she’d had an inkling of what was going on in his mind during those adolescent years, the constant battle between fantasy and reality, then she would have felt a lot more than uncomfortable.
‘What did your parents do?’ asks Nathan.
‘They argued,’ says Sam.
‘I meant for work.’
‘Pretty much the same thing. They were human rights lawyers. On the side of righteousness, but not of wealth.’
‘Did they want you to join the police?’
‘They wanted me to be quiet most of the time. Human rights were not always observed at home, you see.’
Nathan does see, and he feels a little sympathy as well as understanding. His dad had been strict. His dad had also worked in law.
‘They must be very proud of you now.’
‘Both dead. Heart attack and a stroke. They worked too hard. Didn’t know when to stop. Until they were stopped, one within a year of the other.’
‘Goodness, I’m sorry,’ says Nathan.
‘Could have been worse,’ says Sam, flashing Nathan a look that makes him certain she’s well aware of the fate of his parents: death by cancer and suicide, and on the very same day. And then, of course, there’s his brother.
‘Siblings?’ he asks.
‘Just me,’ says Sam. ‘Which is just the way I like it.’
Nathan’s already spotted the absence of a wedding ring on Sam’s finger. Although far more evident is the absence of any kind of warmth. He can’t imagine what sort of man or woman could ever share a life with someone who gives so little of themselves away. That said, she’s talking to him now, and he’s enjoyed the brief distraction from what lies ahead.
Steven Fish was murdered in the school assembly hall, his body tied to the gym bars on the wall, the skin peeled from his back, a knife drawn up the length of his body and his head cleft from his shoulders and carefully placed beside his body on the floor. When Nathan steps into the building he sees it all as he had on the day that he and Katie had arrived. It’s like he’s slipped into one of his fantasies, only he’s not reliving a murder, he’s standing on the outside watching his own descent to the edge of insanity. He sees himself standing in front of the body, absorbing all the information. Then he sees himself smile, and Katie drag him towards the door. Nathan wants to do the same now, to run for the door and put as much distance as he can between himself and this place, and these memories. But when he does so, he realises something he hadn’t noticed before.
He is alone.
‘Sam?’ he calls out. It feels strange to use her name like that, as if they’re friends, but not as strange as it feels to get no response. With the exception of the confrontation with the press, she’s barely been more than a metre away from him all day, and now she’s disappeared. He calls out again, and hears nothing beyond the echo of his own voice in the empty hall. Is she playing a trick on him? Is she giving him space to think? If so, it isn’t working. All he can think is that something isn’t right.
He starts to move towards the door, entering the long, unlit corridor he came in by. It seems so much darker now that he’s on his own. His shoulder bumps into the frame of the door. He continues forward, heading for the daylight at the end, trying to keep his nerves and his imagination under control. He calls out again one more time, the way he might have done as a child when he was having one of his many nightmares. Then, suddenly, a light at the end of the corridor explodes in front of him as pain registers from behind. He knows he’s been hit by something hard, but that’s all he has time to think as the floor rises up rapidly towards him.
* * *
When Nathan comes to, it takes him a moment to figure out where he is. His face is pressed up against something hard and his hands and arms are bound. The truth comes in waves, each one more horrifying than the last. He is in a school. He is in the assembly hall. He is tied to the bars on the wall in the same way that Steven Fish had been. He tries to locate specifically where the pain he is feeling is coming from. His head, obviously, although that’s still attached. And his back, which feels like it might be on fire.
He hears a sound and tries to turn towards it, but can only twist his neck a short distance. In the process of doing this, causing himself more pain, he realises the sound is his own. He quietens himself and steadies his breathing, only to realise there’s someone else, breathing slowly, rhythmically, just inches from his ear. He can’t hear them over the sound of blood thumping at his temples and in his throat, but they’re so close he can feel their breath on the back of his neck.
‘What do you want?’ he asks in a fragile voice.
‘The truth,’ comes the reply, so soft he can’t tell if it’s male or female, or even if it’s real. Might all this be his imagination? Might this be the madness he had feared the Steven Fish case would ignite? If he could so vividly imagine a stranger’s murder, couldn’t he do the same for his own?
Nevertheless, he decides to play along. ‘The truth about what?’
‘Fishhh…’ The last two letters of the name are drawn out and accompanied by an agonising pressure on the wound on his back.
‘That was my brother. My brother killed him.’
The force on his wound grows stronger and again he hears himself cry out.
‘What do you want?’ he asks again, this time close to screaming the words.
‘The truth.’
‘I can’t… I don’t…’ Sweat, or perhaps blood, is dripping from his brow as he considers where this is heading. He knows what Fish went through. He knows what Mike went through. The murders were slightly different, but the end was the same. And before that, there was torture. He hasn’t had his head stuffed down the toilet bowl like Fish, perhaps because those toilets aren’t there anymore, but that’s hardly a relief, knowing what comes next. He strains to look across at one of his hands, sees the fingers still following a natural curl. Some of them won’t be like that for long. But he might get a glimpse of his killer as they attach the pliers and twist. He won’t be able to tell anyone else, but at least he’ll know. A hand presses hard against the side of his head, preventing him from moving, and he feels cold metal grip the tip of his little finger.
Nathan knows what pain will follow; he imagined it the day he stood over Steven Fish’s body. Instinctively, he falls back on his only defence: he closes his eyes and he can see her, every inch of her, every scar that he’s traced with his fingers, every perfect curve. He knows what’s coming; can taste a pain more agonisingly and beautifully perfect than his wildest dreams. He digs deep within himself, looking for a light in the darkness. That name, those curves, those scars, that smile. He sees Katie so clearly he almost believes he can reach out and touch her with hands that are no longer tied to bars in front of him, with fingers that are not being twisted and broken.
He has no idea how
long he remains in that place within, where he sees nothing but Katie, and feels nothing but his love for her. When he retreats it’s because some part of him knows that he can, and that the worst is over.
Twelve
Katie pushes past a police officer and enters the hospital room where Nathan is being kept. He’s hooked up to a couple of machines that instantly reassure her he is still alive.
He’s on his side, a thick bandage across his shoulder, and when she walks to the other side of the bed she can see that the fingers of one hand are wrapped up as well. She goes cold at the thought of what he must have been through. She’d first heard about the attack when she’d checked the headlines again on her phone, but there had been no details.
Now those terrible details are all too clear. Steven Fish had been the case that had sent Nathan running for Scotland. It had also been the unsolved case that had nearly ended her career. She’d done everything she could to try and find the real killer, but her motivation back then is nothing compared to what she feels right now. She leans on a bar at the end of the bed, looking down on a still partially drugged Nathan, gripping so hard she feels certain the metal will bend.
‘He’s going to be okay?’ she asks, turning to Richard.
‘Physically, yes,’ he mouths, out of view of Nathan, and she knows exactly what he means. Nathan had been struggling enough before, but now Katie doesn’t know how he’ll ever recover. She touches his good hand gently to stop the room from spinning around her, and he wakes, offering a smile of such purity that it gives her hope.
‘I guess they’ll believe I’m innocent now,’ he says, slurring his words. He tries to lift his hand towards his shoulder, but the grimace suggests it’s a movement that is costing him dearly. ‘Unless they think I somehow carved the skin from my own back.’
