The Goodnight Song: An absolutely heart-stopping and gripping thriller

by Nick Hollin

  ‘You’re insane,’ says Sam.

  ‘Quite possibly,’ says Katie. Nathan’s disappearance has pushed her over the edge. She doesn’t feel she can control her temper anymore. She certainly can’t control her words. If this were an interview room, her boss would most likely have thrown her out by now, but there’s nobody around to stop her here. ‘Mike Peters doubted you. He told Ben Peters that just before he died.’

  ‘And who told you that?’ asks Sam, unruffled by the accusations. ‘Would that be the oh-so-reliable witness, Ben Peters?’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ says Katie, the thumping at her temples seeming to urge her forward, to quit with the interrogation and launch the attack.

  ‘I dare, because I’m still thinking rationally,’ says Sam. ‘You, clearly, are not. Why would I want to hurt Nathan? He’s been helping me with the case, with the only thing I care about.’ For the first time a trace of emotion colours Sam’s voice, and Katie takes a breath and a moment to consider what this might mean. Was Sam’s relationship with Carl Watkins more than just professional? And if so, what might she do to find out about his disappearance?

  Suddenly Katie can see how alike she and Sam are. More than that; she can feel how similar they are. There is nothing Katie won’t do to find Nathan. Nothing. Katie lifts a hand and draws in a breath as if about to ask a question before suddenly jumping forward. She takes Sam by the neck, twisting her round. From her instant reaction she can tell that Sam is strong, but Katie is strong, too, strong from running up and down hills, powered by her motivation. She has Sam’s arm up behind her back in less than a second and lifts it upwards till she hears her groan.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Sam screams. She may be able to hide many emotions, but pain is clearly not one of them.

  ‘The very thing I believe you did to Nathan. Only I don’t have a knife to carve any skin from your back.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Are you totally mad? You think I killed Steven Fish?’

  ‘No,’ says Katie, rapidly piecing it all together. ‘But you believed that Nathan had. You were aware of the relationship between Fish and Watkins, and given the timing of Watkins’ disappearance and the details in Nathan’s journal, I think you came to an entirely false conclusion. You tortured my partner.’ As she says the words, Katie can’t help but give Sam’s arm another lift, stretching the muscles further and threatening the bones.

  ‘How the hell could I have done that?’ says Sam, struggling and panting. ‘I was knocked out.’

  ‘I don’t like coincidence. And it’s quite a coincidence that you decided to go to the school where Steven Fish was attacked and that someone else was either already waiting or able to follow you there. I don’t like that you sent away your colleague, the only potential witness, at the very last minute.’

  ‘And how exactly did I knock myself out? Where did the brick go?’

  ‘I imagine it went wherever your blond-haired colleague, or rather, accomplice managed to secrete it before you called him. Either that or you found somewhere to hide it yourself. A brick would be easy to hide. Maybe you went back and collected it later.’

  Katie starts to nod, encouraged by how logical this sounds, despite Sam’s protestations of madness. ‘Yeah, I reckon that’s what happened. You most likely don’t trust anyone else enough to involve them in your crimes. I think you hit yourself just hard enough to make it look like you were out, but in reality you were able to hide the evidence before calling your partner.’

  ‘Are you forgetting I saved your partner’s life making that call?’

  ‘Rubbish. The only thing that saved Nathan’s life was the realisation that you weren’t going to get what you wanted out of him. He didn’t confess, and so you decided to try another approach, to keep him close and watch for signs of guilt. Well, I’ve decided to do the same but in a different order. And I’ve seen more than enough signs of guilt to convince me we should move on to the torture stage.’

  ‘I could easily shout out,’ says Sam, her face revealing panic for the first time.

  ‘You could. But given the distance and direction of the wind, there’s a good chance that nobody would hear. And if they do, well, then I’m going to tell them what I know about you. More specifically about you and Carl Watkins. I don’t care what damage that might do to your career, or to mine. I only want to have Nathan back.’

  ‘I haven’t taken him,’ says Sam.

  ‘Nobody could have known he was coming here,’ says Katie. ‘And he would have been careful not to be followed. But you could have used the mobile I gave him to track him, the same way you used it to track me.’

  ‘I said, I haven’t taken him,’ Sam repeats.

  ‘But you admit that you did torture him before?’

  A pause. Several pained breaths. And then finally the truth. Katie had seen this with so many criminals over the years, but there’s no elation in hearing the confession, only horror, and burning anger. ‘You don’t understand what Watkins did to me.’

  ‘You think I don’t understand love?’ asks Katie, her anger building.

  ‘It wasn’t love,’ says Sam, and Katie can feel the struggle go out of the other woman. ‘It was an obsession. He had control over me. Complete control. I needed him. For everything. For information. For my career. For strength. For a reason to get up in the morning.’ She almost laughs, but there’s no humour. ‘He was like a drug.’

  Despite her rage, Katie finds herself nodding freely, thinking of the relationship she has with Nathan. It’s about work, about success, yes – but it’s so much more than that. Her identity changes when he’s not around.

  ‘He kept saying your name,’ says Sam, seeming to brace herself again.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I was . . . when I was hurting him. He’d gone into some kind of trance and he kept saying your name over and over, and it was like he was immune, like he wasn’t feeling anything anymore, at least not pain.’

  Katie adjusts her stance in the mud, scared she’s going to lose her balance, her grip. And not just on Sam, but on everything. Even in his darkest moments, when he must have feared he was close to death, Nathan had thought of her, had used her to bring him comfort. Katie can feel the desire to hurt Sam strengthening again. She pictures the look, the sound, the feeling as the other woman’s arm snaps, and she’s so close to getting there. She knows that she could, incredibly easily, like pulling a trigger, like giving a man on the edge of a building a push. It’s that comparison that is holding her back. She’s seen the effects of those crimes on Nathan and on her dad. With her dad she’s certain it had played a part in his mental decline and ultimately in his death.

  But then, she too has experienced the devastating effect of hesitation, and she can feel the strain on the muscles in her stomach, muscles that had been parted by Christian’s knife on its way to denying her the chance of a child. In the end, what determines her action is Nathan. Just as he had turned to her in desperation, she now turns to him, picturing his face. It rises to the front of her mind so clearly that it almost makes her gasp. He’s smiling at her broadly, an expression that speaks of contentment and trust, trust in her to maintain control and to remain on the right side of the law.

  She lets go of Sam’s arm and pushes her forward so that she falls into the mud. Sam struggles to get up, brushing the dirt from her knees, her stomach and the one arm she has managed to extend to break her fall. When she finally looks up, Katie expects to see Sam’s eyes full of rage, but instead there are tears.

  ‘I don’t know who I am anymore,’ Sam says, weakly.

  ‘You’re a detective,’ says Katie, with the coldness that she’s so often heard from the other woman. ‘So rather than wasting time on self-loathing, why don’t we do what we’re supposed to be good at and solve this case?’

  Sam straightens herself and nods, wiping a tear from her cheek, then rubbing her shoulder.

  ‘Your attack on me might actually have helped.’

  �
��In what way?’ says Katie, not hiding her confusion.

  ‘Well, you’ve revealed a few secrets. Mike Peters’ suspicion of me, for a start.’

  ‘A woman was following him, supposedly. And according to Ben, Mike was scared.’

  Sam nods. ‘Just like Thomas Shaw.’

  ‘And then there was whoever was living with Christian. There’s a good chance it was a woman.’

  ‘So you think that’s who we’re looking for?’

  ‘Carl always had a kind of sixth sense around men,’ says Sam, ‘a way of reading their intentions and keeping himself out of danger. But with women it was different. Maybe he simply didn’t understand them. So yeah, I think I’ve always believed it was a woman.’ She lowers her head and finds Katie’s stare. ‘I believed it was you for a while.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ says Katie. ‘I can’t say I didn’t think about killing him from time to time. Because I knew he was guilty of those murders you helped him get away with. But this isn’t about Carl. It’s too late for him. Hopefully not for Nathan.’ It’s been a relief to find that Sam hasn’t taken Nathan, but it also means she’s no closer to finding out where he’s gone. She knows what he went through with the torture before. She can’t bear to think of it happening again. And this time at the hands of someone who most likely won’t stop.

  ‘So what does this woman really look like?’

  ‘I guess there’s a good chance she looks like you,’ says Katie. ‘Vicky Shaw thought she recognised you. Maybe the other woman had been following Shaw’s mum, like she’d followed Mike Peters, making sure her identity was being kept secret.’ Katie clicks her fingers, remembering something else she’d heard. ‘And then Ben said something about a bob haircut.’

  ‘There’s also a good chance she looks like you,’ says Sam. ‘From what I understand, you used to have a haircut not dissimilar to mine. And if we’re talking about a woman who was living with Christian, a man who was obsessed with being like his twin…’

  ‘Have we had any more from Forensics on DNA left on the houseboat?’ asks Katie.

  ‘Nothing conclusive yet,’ says Sam. ‘And I very much doubt it will be. I think this person will have a clean record, much like Christian’s was. So do you think the size eights were just to get us thinking it was a man?’ Sam gestures back towards the location where they’d found the boot prints.

  ‘There was something about the pressure within those prints that made me wonder from the start,’ says Katie, thinking back to the size fours they’d seen today. ‘And this last time she didn’t bother with the pretence.’

  ‘Why has she taken Nathan now? Was he getting too close? Had he figured something out when he came here, and they were watching him again?’

  ‘Or was she running out of pages from Nathan’s journal?’ says Katie, swallowing hard. ‘There were four missing pages. She’s used three of them to inspire her killings.’

  ‘But you said yourself, when you thought I was the one who had attacked Nathan, she can’t have known he would come here. This can’t have been planned.’

  Katie closes her eyes and considers the possibilities. She thinks about how Nathan had been when she’d spoken to him on the phone. He’d sounded strange. He’s sounded close to the way he had before he’d run away to Scotland. Had her distancing herself from him, or perhaps the killing of Thomas Shaw, led him to do something reckless?

  ‘Maybe not planned by her,’ says Katie under her breath, wondering if Nathan had allowed himself to be followed and had wanted to be taken. ‘No,’ she says, opening her eyes wide. ‘Let’s do this your way. Let’s look at the science. And let’s find the connection between Christian Radley and Watkins and Fish and Hartham and Shaw. I don’t think they were killed randomly. I don’t think anything about this has been done randomly.’

  ‘I wasn’t lying earlier,’ says Sam, ‘when I told you I was looking into the drugs link between Carl Watkins and Thomas Shaw. Carl had never spoken about Shaw.’

  ‘Did he tell you everything?’

  ‘What he didn’t tell me I made sure I found out. I wanted to know all about his business, not only so I could try and keep him in line, but so I could keep him safe.’ Sam lowers her head again, but only momentarily. ‘What I’m saying is that I don’t believe drugs are the connection. At least not in that form.’

  ‘What about Shaw’s girlfriend?’ says Katie. ‘Do you really think she’s police?’

  ‘I’m not convinced,’ says Sam.

  ‘I agree,’ says Katie. ‘I imagine Thomas was lied to, perhaps to ensure he kept his mouth shut, or, given that he didn’t, as part of a long-term plan to get us suspecting each other.’ Katie looks at the mud on Sam again. ‘I guess it worked.’

  ‘I’m also wondering about the gun and the drugs,’ says Sam. ‘It was far too convenient that they were there for us to find, and to escalate things when you went to call.’

  Katie sighs, acknowledging the possibility that their actions have been predicted yet again. ‘What about Ben Peters? I don’t understand why he had to die. Whoever killed him must have known he’d already shared all that Mike had told him. And there’s no evidence his house was searched.’

  Sam continues to grimace and squeeze her arm and Katie wonders if she might have done some damage after all. There’s dirt on her elbow, and when she lifts her hand to her face again, perhaps to remove any trace of tears, she leaves a muddy mark, a line not entirely dissimilar to the scar on Katie’s face. Katie thinks about telling her, but it seems appropriate somehow, like a sign that they’re in this together now.

  ‘You think there might have been a personal connection to Ben?’ asks Sam. ‘Like Carl, he was killed in a way that was different. As though they cared about him.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ says Katie. ‘But then Ben didn’t really have any personal connections. Although he was hospitalised a couple of times. Maybe it was another addict, someone he could have identified.’

  ‘Maybe someone Dr Nigel Hartham could have identified, too.’

  Katie is already moving as she recognises another line of enquiry, and another potential threat. ‘Richard,’ she says, sharply. ‘We need to find Dr Evans now.’

  Thirty-Six

  Nathan opens his eyes. All around him is darkness and silence. He ends that silence with a groan, feeling the wound on his back and the ache in his broken fingers, and a headache which intermittently trumps everything else. He feels like he’s lying on his side on a cold, hard surface. His limbs are tied, his arms and feet held behind him. He tries to work back through the events that have brought him here. It’s taken a while, and concentration that seems to cost him some of what little strength he has, but eventually he has it all in order.

  ‘Sam?’ he calls out. There’s an echo to his words. But no reply. He’s not convinced that Sam’s there. He’s not convinced that it’s her, but whatever it was that had just been eluding him before he was grabbed and drugged continues to remain frustratingly out of reach. He had seen something in his daydream, or at least made a vague connection that registered as true. He doesn’t believe it will make much difference now if he figures it out, but it will still provide a crumb of comfort, the faintest sense of satisfaction.

  ‘I know how important Carl Watkins was to you,’ he says. He’s starting to believe that he’s alone – he certainly can’t hear anything around him, other than his words bouncing back off the walls – and the statement is as much to get his thoughts out, to hear them and judge them and see what follows, as it is an attempt to start a conversation. But just as he’s about to say something else, he feels a warmth on the back of his ear. He imagines it must be a draught, or perhaps it’s his imagination, but then the words come:

  ‘You know nothing.’

  They are so gently spoken that once more he could almost believe that they’ve been created in his mind. But when the warmth comes again he realises it’s someone’s breath, so soft on his ear. Having come to this conclusion, he tries to figure o
ut how they could possibly be low enough down to breathe on his ear, as he’s lying on the floor. All he can imagine – it’s the strangest image – is that they’re lying behind him, mirroring his position, like a couple in bed. Only there’s no contact. It reminds him, sadly, of the last few weeks in Wales with Katie. He’d convinced himself that it was all part of the healing process, that the distance between them would shrink again, but it turned out to be one of the many ways in which he’s been proved a fool.

  ‘Apparently I don’t know anything,’ says Nathan finally, hearing the tremor in his voice. ‘Because you’re not Sam.’ Again, he doesn’t know this for sure, the voice so quiet as to be impossible to identify. Although he is almost convinced that it does belong to a woman.

  ‘Who am I?’ the voice asks.

  ‘Now there’s a question I’ve been asking myself,’ says Nathan. ‘Ever since I took a life. I was hoping…’ He feels his stomach sink as the reality of what he’s saying hits home. ‘I was hoping you were Thomas Shaw. Nobody wants to kill an innocent man.’

  ‘I won’t be.’

  ‘Although,’ Nathan continues, ignoring the chance to ask what it is this person thinks he’s guilty of, ‘I killed plenty of innocent people in my journal.’

  ‘An inspirational work.’

  ‘Not for myself. In fact, quite the opposite. It helped me to avoid acting out any of those fantasies. And now that I have killed someone, well, it was very different to how I’d imagined. But then I don’t need to tell you that.’

  ‘It’s far better,’ says the voice.

  ‘So my brother told me. But then perhaps you’re struggling to make the comparison. Perhaps you’re lacking an imagination. You have, after all, needed to borrow from me. “The Plagiarist”, isn’t that what they’re calling you?’

  ‘People do what I want them to do,’ says the voice. ‘They always have done, and they always will.’