Nathan follows his partner DI Katie Rhodes under the police tape and through the front door of the long-abandoned school. Ahead of them is a damp corridor, paint peeling from walls that would once have been covered in posters and artwork, adding colour, life. It’s an old comprehensive, nothing like the expensive college Nathan’s mother’s multi-million selling novels paid for him to attend, but something about the place does seem familiar. Might he have been here before? No. He would remember. Along with his imagination, his memory is key to who he is and what he does. No matter how often he might have wanted it to, his memory has never failed him.
‘Careful,’ says Katie quietly as they reach a doorway that leads through to a large room. ‘I hear it’s pretty bad.’ Nathan stops and looks at his partner; she’s never showed such concern before.
‘Steven Fish,’ she says. ‘His body was discovered early this morning by kids who rang in and didn’t want to leave their names.’ Nathan can see why when he tentatively peers into the assembly hall and sees several smashed windows and a wealth of graffiti. He takes careful steps towards the crime scene in his paper suit and paper shoe covers, but his balance is slightly off and he bashes his shoulder against the door frame as he enters the next room. Again, Katie looks at him with concern.
‘Do you want to take a few minutes?’ she says, stepping across and blocking his view of the area where he knows the body will be.
‘I’m fine,’ he says defiantly, sidestepping her to give himself a clear view.
The body of Steven Fish has been strung from the climbing bars on the wall, his arms outstretched, fingers wrapped around the uprights. You’d think he was alive and mid-ascent, were it not for the two fingers that have been snapped back, and for the cut where a knife has been dragged up from his ankle to his neck. And then there’s the head that’s been hacked from his shoulders, sitting propped upright on the floor, the eyes – still open – staring straight at Nathan from an enormous pool of blood. Nathan can feel his own blood thumping violently in his throat and chest. He crouches down, feeling increasingly unsteady, and sees that, running across the badly scratched floor of the hall, are lines of a different liquid.
‘Water,’ says Katie, following his stare. ‘They think he was part-drowned in the toilets, over there, before being dragged across.’
Nathan rises and takes a step closer to the body. He pushes out a long breath, then draws it slowly back in, working through the tried and tested process that allows him to detach from the reality and consider what might have been going through the killer’s mind as they worked. Normally he waits for Katie to share all the evidence she’s so carefully gathered, but he seems unable to wait on this occasion; he needs to be there straight away, to dive into the details and use his imagination to re-enact the killing in his mind.
The connection is instant. He feels a powerful wave of emotion taking him over. On previous occasions, there’s always been some part of him still fighting for control, but that defence isn’t there; this time there is no resistance. It’s as if a drug has entered his system and there’s nothing he can do. Not that he wants to do anything. In fact, there’s nothing in the world he wants more than to go with this ride, wherever it might take him.
He feels a jolt. With his eyes closed and his mind as open as it’s ever been, it takes him a moment to realise what’s happening. A hand has grabbed his arm and is dragging him away from the body and out of the thoughts and feelings that he was starting to love. He wants to shout out, to tell whoever it is to leave him alone, but the move is so sudden and so violent that there’s nothing he can do until he’s outside the school, in the bright sunshine, staring into Katie’s eyes.
He plays back the events leading up to this swift departure and realises that he had been smiling broadly as he stood over the headless body of Steven Fish. This wouldn’t have been obvious to most people in the room, not beneath the face mask he’d been wearing, but the fear and disgust on Katie’s face tell him that he’s not fooling her.
‘It’s over,’ he says, peeling off his paper mask.
‘What is?’ asks Katie.
‘All of this.’ He gestures back towards the crime scene, but the sweep of his arm takes her in, too. And it’s this realisation that almost drops him to his knees. Their partnership is finished. ‘I need to go away,’ he says, with greater urgency, already taking a step towards where they’ve parked the car.
‘Where?’
Nathan considers this and realises that for now, there is only one essential requirement. ‘Where nobody else is.’
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I know it’s almost six months since the inquest in the Cartoonist murders finished, but much like the press, I keep coming back to the case. I want to get it straight in my mind, but there’s just too much that’s happened, too many unanswered questions. I’ve tried to break it down to the most basic facts, to see if that’s helped. I’m not sure it has, but perhaps it’ll trigger something for you:
‘They might have forgotten,’ says Katie, pressing her face up against the window, staring out at the hillside behind their stone cottage.
‘They’ll never forget,’ replies Nathan, seated at the kitchen table, his hand wrapped round a glass of white wine.
‘Plenty more will have happened in the world since we left.’ She takes a large swig from her glass and moves over to the sideboard where the radio had once been. The day they’d moved in it had gone the same way as the television and the phone, ripped out by them and broken beyond repair so they couldn’t change their mind about shutting themselves off from everything.
‘I prefer not knowing,’ Nathan says quietly.
‘What’s happened to that famous imagination of yours?’ says Katie. ‘Have you managed to shut it down completely?’ He turns to look at her, still surprised whenever she snaps at him like this, even though it’s becoming more and more frequent of late.
‘If you want to go back to London, then we can. I’ll just deal with what happens. Or you can go back on your own. It’s not your journal they’ve read. Not your thoughts.’
‘We’re in this together now,’ says Katie. ‘Forever.’
Nathan feels the warmth of her words at last, and can’t help but smile a little. ‘And we’ll find a way to work it out.’
‘You’re right,’ says Katie, matching his smile. ‘Sorry, I’m just having a bad day.’
‘Anything I can do to make it better?’
‘You could find me something more exciting for dinner than pasta,’ she says. ‘I don’t think my stomach can take any more.’
‘I know what you mean,’ says Nathan, with a sigh. ‘Maybe we can risk a delivery. We could ask them to leave it up at the end of the drive. I’ll hide behind the wall and wait till they’ve gone.’
Katie laughs. ‘Ordered how? And paid for with what?’
‘We’ve got some cash.’
‘But no phone. And no internet. Maybe I could walk half a mile up the hill and wait for the shepherd to pass on his quad bike, and when he gets close I could throw fifty quid and a shopping list over, tell him I’ve got some sort of psychiatric condition that means I don’t like being seen.’ As she says this she lifts a finger to one of the scars on her cheek, and Nathan remembers the flash of the cameras on the steps outside the courtroom at the inquest, how she’d buried her face into his side to hide them.
‘You make our situation sound ridiculous,’ he says.
‘It is ridiculous.’
‘It’s necessary. The first time anyone recognises us, it’s over. The world and his wife will be on our doorstep in under an hour.’
‘Do you really think we are that significant anymore?’ asks Katie, before adding quietly, ‘I certainly don’t feel significant.’
‘It won’t be forever,’ says Nathan. ‘When things have calmed down, and we’re better, then maybe—’
‘What do you mean, better?’ she asks, cutting him off. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Yes, but…’ Nathan doesn’t go on. Mentioning his concerns over her recent mood swings will only make them worse.
‘Even if we’ve both gone a bit crazy,’ says Katie, ‘how on earth would we even know? Who do we have to compare ourselves with?’
Nathan shrugs to acknowledge her point. ‘Just try and remember who you were before.’
He watches as Katie’s hand moves down to her stomach, not the point on the side where the knife went in, but the centre, which she softly strokes. ‘I’ll never be that person again.’
Katie is pacing backwards and forwards in front of the window, reminding Nathan of a caged tiger he saw once with his family when he was a boy. A sad zoo. And a very sad memory. Then suddenly she stops, a grimace on her face.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks, rising from his chair.
‘No,’ says Katie, doubling over and falling sideways against the wall, her hand now pressed firmly into her stomach. ‘I’m not sure I am.’
‘I have to go!’ Nathan says, crouching down next to where she is curled up on the bathroom floor. She’s been like this for more than an hour, vomiting, gasping and groaning, pleading with him to stay, telling him it’s all right, that she’s all right. She’s holding her stomach in the exact place where his brother Christian had plunged a knife eight months before. There had been a lot of blood that day, but this is almost worse, not knowing what’s going on inside her, no way of knowing how bad it is, how long she might have.
He stands up and slaps his trouser pockets for the hundredth time, cursing their decision to get rid of their phones. If only they’d thought to keep a mobile for emergencies. ‘I’ll run to town,’ he says, grabbing his trainers, still covered in mud from the two hours he spent running up and down the hill at the back of their cottage earlier that morning. His legs are tired, but he’ll have no problem covering the five miles to town, and if he gets lucky he might spot a car and be able to flag it down. He bends over and places a hand on her forehead, pushing back the strands of sweaty hair and feeling the heat. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘Wait!’ she cries, through gritted teeth. ‘If you have to…’ She groans again, and curls into an even tighter ball. ‘There’s a house. This side of town. A yellow front, a blue Saab in the drive. He’s a doctor. He can keep a secret.’
Nathan hardly has time to wonder what secret she’s been keeping from him in this place where they know no one. ‘I love you,’ he says, then heads for the door with one last glance back, trying not to think it might be the last time he sees her alive.
He arrives at the yellow house in half an hour, his legs almost giving under him the moment he starts to slow. He thumps a sweaty fist against the front door, relieved to see the Saab is there and desperately hoping that its owner is, too. It takes what seems like forever before the door is opened and a slightly stooped, balding man who looks to be well into his seventies hurries forward at the sight of Nathan about to collapse through his doorway.
‘Are you okay?’ he says.
Nathan is so short of breath he can barely answer, but he forces the words out with a rasp. ‘You have to come with me. Please.’ He expects to be asked more questions, for more time to be wasted, but the old man simply nods and reaches for a set of car keys.
‘Food poisoning, most likely,’ says the man Nathan now knows to be Dr Richard Evans, rising slowly from where Katie is curled on the floor of the bathroom.
‘More likely a rejection to eating the same food over and over,’ she groans.
‘So it’s nothing to do with…?’ Nathan nods towards the obvious scar on Katie’s side. The doctor had said nothing when he’d prized away her hands and lifted her top, gently pressing his fingers against her skin.
‘I think not,’ he says. ‘What she needs is rest and plenty of fluids. If you want a second opinion, then I can drive you to the hospital. It’s only—’
‘No.’ Nathan cuts him off sharply before covering his tone with a smile. ‘I mean, no thank you, doctor. And thank you for coming out here. You must know why we don’t want too much attention.’ He turns his face away from the doctor, although he’s certain he must already have been recognised.
‘You’d be amazed at what I don’t know,’ says Richard, matching his smile. ‘And what I don’t want to know. All that’s important to me is that your friend here,’ he gestures towards Katie, ‘is okay. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to pop back for another look tomorrow. I’m guessing you don’t have much in the way of medicines?’ He glances briefly back at the nearly bare rooms he’d rushed through to get to the bathroom. ‘I’ll bring you a few things.’
Katie laughs so hard a small wave of the wine in her glass sloshes over the edge and drops to the decking. Looking down at the stain, she gasps, as she’s reminded of the last time she saw a pool of red on the floor like that, and her hand moves automatically to her stomach. When she looks up, she sees that Nathan and the doctor have also stopped laughing and are staring with concern.
‘Are you all right?’ asks Nathan.
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ asks Katie, more sharply than she’d intended.
‘Sorry, it’s just, after…’
She follows his eyes down to her stomach and pulls her hand away. ‘I’d forgotten about the poisoning,’ she says, although that’s not what she’d been thinking of.
Nathan looks down at the wrist where a watch would once have been. ‘I guess it must have been a good month ago now.’
‘A very good month,’ says Katie, ‘thanks to Richard.’ She raises her glass and takes a large enough swig that there’s little chance of her spilling any more. ‘You saved me.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ says the old doctor, sipping his own wine. ‘It was just something you ate.’
Katie reaches out and scoops up a wedge of rich cheese. ‘And thanks to you, I’ve been eating far better ever since.’
‘We both have,’ says Nathan, through a mouth half-filled with delicious cold meats, delivered by Richard that morning.
‘It’s been nice to have the company,’ says Richard. ‘I was getting a little lonely in my yellow house. People forget about us oldies.’
The smile on Katie’s face slips again as she thinks back to the fleeting conversations she had with her dad in the care home before he died. His Alzheimer’s had robbed him of the ability to understand what she was saying when she visited, and all she had really wanted to let him know was how sorry she was that they didn’t talk more when they’d had the chance; sorry for having been so wrapped up in her police career.
‘They’re fools,’ says Katie. ‘To miss out on all that life experience.’
‘They’re lucky,’ it’s Richard’s turn to look uncomfortable, ‘not to have lived it.’
Katie sees the sadness in the old man that only occasionally breaks to the surface of his kind, wrinkled face. ‘Maybe it’s our turn to try and help you. If you’re ready to share?’
‘After all, we’ve already shared our story,’ says Nathan. ‘Or rather, the papers have.’
‘Actually, I wasn’t joking when I said I didn’t read the papers,’ says Richard. ‘And I barely watch the television. I read fiction, mostly, and of late I also talk to you.’
‘So you genuinely don’t know who we are?’ asks Katie.
‘I know exactly who you are from our conversations. And okay, yes.’ He sighs. ‘The outside world is almost impossible to avoid, no matter how hard I try, and so once or twice I might have heard mention of people who sound very much like you when the news comes on the radio.’
‘And you’re not scared?’ says Nathan. ‘You don’t believe what they’ve said about me, about what I must be capable of, because of my twin brother’s crimes?’
‘No,’ says the doctor. ‘Working in London hospitals for so many years I learned not to make judgements about people. I just accepted them as they were and did what I could to help.’
‘And is that all we are?’ asks Katie, setting her wine glass down heavily on the table, hearing the snap in her voice return. ‘More patients for you to try and heal?’
‘Of course not,’ says Richard, his old face tightening as he looks away. ‘You’re friends. My only friends.’ He swallows hard and starts to knead his hands together. ‘My story is nowhere near as dramatic as yours, but the ending…’ He gestures towards the empty landscape outside the window. ‘You’re not the only people who have run away, you know. I’ve seen a lot of terrible things. I still see them, sometimes, at night.’
‘I know what you mean,’ says Nathan, nodding.
‘PTSD,’ Richard says. ‘That’s what I had. Self-diagnosed and self-healed, in part, by coming here and shutting myself away.’
Nathan nods again. ‘How long did it take?’
He looks down at his pale, wrinkled hands. ‘Far too long. Please don’t make the same mistake as me. There’s so much good out there. So many wonderful people to meet. I mean, if you hadn’t been ill, I’d never have met you two.’
‘You’re going back?’ asks Katie.
‘Oh no,’ says Richard, looking to the window again. ‘This is it for me now. I have all I need right here in Wales.’
‘I think we do, too,’ says Nathan, looking across at Katie, who finds she cannot match his smile. ‘I can’t think of anything that could drag us away.’
BLOG: Seeing Red
The anonymous, unfiltered truth about crime and the criminal justice system
OMFG. You will never believe what just dropped into my inbox. I’m not sure I believe it. I know, I know, I’m obsessed with this case, have been writing about it ever since it became news, but you never really expect to be involved. It could be a prank, of course – you’ll have to judge for yourself – but from the brief investigations I’ve just done it seems real enough.
I’m probably not making any sense. Hardly surprising, given the amount I’ve had to drink. I know it’s morning, but I had no choice. I needed something to calm me down. I just can’t get my head around what’s happened. I believe I’ve just received a scanned copy of one of the missing pages from Nathan’s leaked journal. It’s one of his fantasies, one of the crimes he lived out in his head then put to paper. I keep thinking I should go to the police, but you, my loyal readers, are the only people I trust. And so, I’m trusting you with this:
It’s like art. Although not nearly as boring as the classes at school. And the knife doesn’t feel clumsy, like a paintbrush, it feels like it’s meant to be there, like it’s an extension of me, of my true self. I twist it under the light, enjoying the brilliance of the surface I’ve polished for hours in anticipation. Back then I’d imagined this moment over and over, but this is the real thing, the chance to finally make my mark. Ha, I quite like that. I might share it with my victim when he wakes from the blow to the side of the head I gave him.
He’ll struggle, but there’s not much point with the ropes around his wrists and ankles, but he’ll figure it out for himself soon enough. And I need him to use up some of his strength before I push his head down in the bath.
He’d better wake up soon, the water is getting cold. I want it at 37 degrees, the temperature of blood. He’s close. I can tell, because his breathing is quite ragged. I hope I didn’t get carried away too early on. I couldn’t resist peeling some skin off his back in advance, just to see what it felt like. I wonder what it will feel like for him? He’ll tell me anything, of course, even though there’s nothing I want to hear. He’ll think there’s a reason. He’ll think that I’m sane.
I’m not going to hurt him for too long. That’s not why I’m doing it. It’s really all about the ending. And what an ending! How clearly I can picture that last long, single stroke, along the ankle then up the back of the leg, over the buttocks and back and across the now skinless shoulder to the neck. I’d like it to be smooth, but my hand keeps shaking with all the excitement. I can’t wait for all that blood. There might even be a scream, to match the one I’m already hearing in my head.
He’s not coming round. I am. The fantasy is leaving me, along with the urge. But there’s still enough to convince me that I cannot stop what is going to happen. It might be months, it might be years, but this will be more than just words.
More than just words. I reckon it’s one of the crimes Nathan fantasised about, and it certainly sounds like it was written back when he was in his late teens, but I can’t help thinking about the similarities between this and the Steven Fish murder. I mentioned Fish in my last post: he was one of the cases that Katie failed to solve when Nathan had run away to Scotland. He was the reason Nathan ran away to Scotland, because, as he revealed at the inquest, he couldn’t cope with the evil of that crime.
Steven Fish was part-drowned. He had skin peeled from his back. That very piece of skin was discovered at the scene of one of Ch. . .
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