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

  The Goodnight Song

  An absolutely heart-stopping and gripping thriller

  Nick Hollin

  Also by Nick Hollin

  Dark Lies

  The Goodnight Song

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Dark Lies

  Nick’s Email Sign Up

  Also by Nick Hollin

  A Letter from Nick

  Acknowledgments

  For my family

  Prologue

  TWO YEARS AGO

  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.’

  One

  ONE MONTH AGO

  BLOG: Seeing Red

  The anonymous, unfiltered truth about crime and the criminal justice system

  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:

  * * *

  Nathan Radley. The best criminal psychologist the police have ever had. Incredible memory. Remarkable imagination. Nobody gets inside a murderer’s head like he does. But at what cost to his mental health?

  * * *

  Christian Radley. Nathan’s twin. The Cartoonist. The one mind Nathan couldn’t get inside until several people had already been killed. How could Nathan not have known?

  * * *

  Steven Fish. One of Christian’s first victims, and the case that sent Nathan into hiding almost two years ago. He told the inquest it was simply a breakdown, but what was the real reason he ran? Did he see his brother’s work in that crime? Or did he see his own potential to do th
e same?

  * * *

  DI Katie Rhodes. Nathan’s long-time police partner. I’ll leave it to the tabloids to speculate on how much more they might be to each other. She’s the woman who brought him back from hiding and helped him track his brother down. She’s brilliant. Flawed. And now, thanks to Christian’s final act, she has scars down her once-beautiful face. Will she ever recover from what she’s been through?

  * * *

  The journal. Nathan’s darkest fantasies, written as a deeply troubled teenager. Traces of his mother’s literary skills. Traces of his brother’s murderous desires. Its being leaked to the world just after the inquest is the most likely reason that Nathan and Katie felt the need to run off and hide again.

  * * *

  The missing journal pages. Perhaps the thing that intrigues me most. Who took the four pages out of the journal? Was it Christian? Was it Nathan? Nathan says he can’t remember what was on them. Is he lying? What secrets might those pages hide?

  * * *

  The future. Where are Katie and Nathan? How can the press not have tracked them down already? Are they ever coming back?

  Two

  ONE MONTH AGO

  ‘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 wa
nt 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.’