Dark Lies Read online

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but it doesn’t seem likely.’

  He nods his acceptance, returning his attention to the room, wondering if he should check the drawers or behind the curtains but, at the same time, knowing there will be no need. The clue will be obvious, like the beans and sausage on toast, like the birthmark at the top of the thigh, like the words that had brought them to this place. He turns and brushes past Katie. She doesn’t say a word, just follows close behind as he enters the next doorway along the hall, into the room that belonged to his brother.

  The room is brighter than his, with white walls, colourful pop music posters, blue sheets and curtains and a thick white carpet that has somehow remained spotless despite the dust. The furniture in the room is all arranged in the exact same way as his own, but Nathan finds he’s far more comfortable considering the differences. He runs his fingertips along the unbroken spines of a number of difficult literary novels, and turns to find Katie holding one of Christian’s trophies.

  ‘Christian was into golf then?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says tentatively, knowing there must be meaning in her question. ‘He likes less aggressive sports. He wasn’t like me. He isn’t like me.’ Every time he says it he knows he sounds less certain, but he has to keep saying it until all hope is gone.

  ‘Sarah Cleve was twisted into the pose of a golf swing,’ says Katie. ‘Holding the same knife that had…’

  Nathan looks away; she doesn’t need to finish.

  The last time he stood in the centre of this room the whole world seemed to be vibrating with the possibilities the future presented. He was off to RADA, and his brother had a place to study law at Cambridge. Both were so overwhelmed, bouncing around like young boys again, turning their music up loud because their dad was out of the house. Those weeks for Nathan were the best of his life, the cresting of a wave he didn’t even know he was riding. At last, he and his brother knew who they were, and where they were heading.

  Katie puts the trophy down and moves towards the door, and Nathan reluctantly follows. Out in the hall, shifting his weight from side to side, to try and compensate for the way the whole world seems to be moving, he becomes aware of the other police officers continuing with their work; doors being opened and closed and the occasional thump as they lower themselves to the floor to peer under a bed. He remembers the flutter of excitement he would get knowing that his thoughts, his insights, his curse, had brought his team to the verge of making an arrest. He also remembers the sense of hypocrisy he felt when they celebrated taking another ‘sick bastard’ off the streets. The truth is, he’d always felt closer to the criminals, perhaps even from the days when he would play the robber and his brother the policeman. Always the policeman.

  At the end of the corridor is another staircase, smaller, narrower, leading up to the third floor. Nathan could never sleep while his parents were downstairs, always waiting to hear his mother creeping by. He recalls the times he would sneak upstairs in the middle of the night, whispering for his mum to come out of the bedroom. Somehow she always managed to hear him, like she’d been lying there, waiting. They’d sit on the top step and talk quietly about his latest nightmare. Christian was never troubled by such things; always smiling, always happy and joking about. In their teenage years he started calling Nathan ‘big bro’, not because he was older but because he’d always seemed so aged by all those dark thoughts.

  Nathan finally steps over the threshold of his parents’ bedroom. He breathes in deeply and is convinced he can smell his mum’s perfume, but he knows there’s nothing left here but memories and dust. The beds are made tightly, the way his dad had liked it, and pushed close together. Nathan realises his mum must have done this in the days leading up to their dad’s death. On the final day she had telephoned both boys to share the news, told them she loved them and to take care getting home. She’d then tidied the house from top to bottom, scrubbed every surface till it was gleaming. She’d prepared a meal, not for her, but dished up on two plates and placed on the kitchen table. It was the boys’ favourite, a comfort food from when they were children: a tin of beans and sausage on toast. By the time Nathan got home, and he was the first home, travelling from central London rather than Cambridge, the food was stone cold. Their mum was not, but she was well on the way, sitting at the kitchen table with a half-empty bottle of wine and an entirely empty bottle of sleeping pills.

  Standing in the middle of his parents’ bedroom, Nathan’s eyes are locked on those same two things tucked away at the back of his mum’s dresser. He might have missed them had he not so vividly remembered the room from the last time he was here, having travelled home to see his bedridden dad and to hold the hand that no longer had the strength to smack him. Nathan has always had a remarkable ability to take in his surroundings, to notice the details that others miss. Many times, like that last day spent with his dad, he’s wished he didn’t have that gift, but it’s served him well in previous cases and it’s serving him well now. He approaches slowly, not quite believing his eyes, looking back over his shoulder and half-expecting to see his dad’s twisted, pale body stretched out on the bed, a scene he had never actually witnessed but that he’s imagined a thousand times. When he does finally touch the surface of the wine bottle he strikes it so hard, half-expecting his fingers to pass straight through, that he nearly knocks it over. It rocks and then straightens, his body following a similar path. He reaches out again but Katie grabs his shoulder.

  ‘If you think it’s something, then don’t!’ she says sharply. ‘Not without gloves.’

  ‘Prints.’ He says the word out loud while looking down at his fingertips, at the one part of his body that isn’t identical to his brother.

  Katie pulls on her gloves and carefully lifts the bottle, revealing a label that Nathan instantly recognises. It was one of his dad’s favourites, a case he would select from when they were celebrating: the last time being the evening the boys had got their places at Cambridge and RADA. He’d looked proud, smiled even, but they could never have known what was going on inside his body. Nathan turns and looks at a box of tissues on the bedside table and remembers his dad hacking away so loudly he’d woken them downstairs, wondering when was the first time he felt that strange metallic taste.

  Nathan turns back to the bottle, wishing he could take a swig, but he can see from the light streaming in through a gap in the curtains that it’s empty of wine. Instead, there appears to be a white square of paper curled up in the neck. Katie has spotted it, too, because she’s started to stick a single finger inside to try and draw it out. It’s a slow process, but somehow Nathan knows it’ll be the same squared paper he found in the toaster at the Brooks’ house, with the same thick ink soaking through. He also knows what will be written on it, the words carefully shaped on his lips, just as they had been during his phone call with Christian. So sorry to have left you alone.

  Eighteen

  ‘What do you think it means?’ Katie asks, moving the paper closer to Nathan’s face, hoping to break his glazed expression.

  Nathan slumps to the floor, grabbing a handful of the thick rug beneath them.

  ‘Is there another body here?’ she asks, urgently.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, eventually. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  She can’t help but notice the two sides of the bed don’t match. One is a pale pink, the other white. It looks like they’ve been pushed together at some point; a sign, perhaps, of marital issues. She sits down on the floor next to Nathan and lightly places a hand on his arm.

  ‘Is it his handwriting?’ she says. ‘Have they all been his handwriting?’

  He shakes his head, but she can see the truth in the way he’s sitting, part folded over, every slow breath seeming to squeeze a little more life out of him. She’s trying to think of something she can do when he suddenly sits up straight and pushes back his shoulders. She can’t help but be impressed by this act of strength, one final fight against the truth. But then she feels som
ething else building inside. She’s thinking of school photos in a narrow corridor; she’s thinking of a boy’s little shoe; she’s thinking of an anniversary and of a kitchen that cannot be entered; she’s thinking of a house that has not been used for a very long time. She’s also thinking of what Nathan intends to do in less than two days’ time.

  ‘It’s the anniversary of the death of your mother.’ She speaks quietly so she can’t be overheard by the other policeman on the landing outside.

  He shoots her a look, a mix of surprise and anger.

  ‘Might that explain your brother’s choice of victims?’

  There’s no reaction, this time, beyond a slow exhalation; a pressure finally released.

  ‘Give us a few minutes,’ she calls out to the men by the door. ‘Maybe check the other floors again. And again, if you find anything, or anyone, don’t play the hero.’

  When they’ve gone, she turns back to Nathan. He seems, as she had feared, to be drifting away, but he squeezes his eyes shut and forces the words out.

  ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘You’re the least stupid person I’ve ever known.’

  ‘And yet I might have missed this.’ A sweep of the arms seems an attempt to take in everything, as if everything is what he’s missed. Then he lifts his cuffed hands in front of his face. ‘I could see it in myself, but not in him. He even told me on the phone yesterday that we were the same, and that was how he knew I wasn’t living the life I wanted to. I thought he meant…’ His head sinks further into his chest, and his words become muffled. ‘I don’t know what he meant.’

  ‘You think he was trying to confess to you?’

  Nathan pauses before replying. ‘It hadn’t sounded like a confession. Maybe he was trying to recruit me?’

  ‘Then he is stupid.’ She reaches out and takes his arm, holding it just firm enough to stop him retreating. She can feel his heartbeat jumping under his skin. ‘I may not know this.’ She nods towards the room. ‘But I know you. I know what you are and aren’t capable of…’ She hesitates, remembering the doubts.

  He pulls his hand away. ‘Family,’ he says, ‘family shows you what you can’t see on your own.’ He glances across at the empty pot of pills on the dresser, and presses his back into the pink side of the bed. ‘I thought it was just me that had these awful thoughts, for such a long time, right up until…’ He reaches out to the carpet with both hands and with his two forefingers starts to draw circles in the rug, spiralling inwards towards the centre.

  ‘You knew when you saw the second victim?’

  ‘No,’ he says, his voice growing distant again. ‘I knew from the moment I saw my mum’s book.’

  Katie stares at his spiralling fingers, feeling almost hypnotised by the movement until something finally clicks at the back of her mind, a connection that could only have been made sitting here, in this expensive house with a dark story. Flawed police, likeable villains, unthinkable crimes committed by both. It’s all there in the case they’re working now, and in the dark imagination of the man sitting next to her.

  ‘Jesus!’ she says, far too loud, before lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘Your mum was J.M. Priest?’

  He doesn’t answer; he doesn’t need to. Just like in those gruesome books she would so hungrily read, she can see a story opening up in front of her that both horrifies and fascinates in equal part.

  ‘How did your mum die?’ she asks, more bluntly than her training would have allowed. ‘It’s important,’ she adds, as if to reassure herself and justify the coldness.

  Nathan eventually points across at the pot of pills on the dresser. ‘The day cancer took my dad,’ he says weakly, ‘she called us home, and I found her in the kitchen with a note: the same note…’ This time he nods towards the scrap of paper she’s carefully folded up and placed inside an evidence bag. ‘I thought for a long time that she simply couldn’t live without Dad, and I guess in a way I was right, because he had always been there to keep her in line, to keep us all in line.’ He closes his eyes, flinching slightly as the images come to him. ‘Our family solicitor called me into his office not long after they were gone, and I remember the look on his face was like he was the one that had lost his parents. He handed me a book by J.M. Priest, and within its pages, between the words I knew so well, was the will of the woman I suddenly realised I hadn’t known at all.’

  ‘So, you think she was just like…?’

  ‘Yes.’ His answer is far firmer than her tentative question. ‘I may not have known her, but I knew the person that had written those novels, and I knew the darkness that was inside of me. She had the same desires; she knew without Dad beside her that she was going to take a life and, in the end, I guess she only had one choice.’ He’s looking at his wrist, the faintest smile on his lips.

  She reaches out and grabs that wrist, pinching it just below the cuff. ‘You can be different.’

  ‘I started to take comfort in her words,’ he says, as if he hasn’t heard her. ‘“So sorry to have left you alone”. It meant she believed it was she and I that were afflicted, that Christian only looked like me.’ She feels his forearm tense under her grip. ‘That’s why this…’ He tips his head back and lets out a breath so long it could be his last. ‘It doesn’t make sense. I know him. I knew him. He was the one without complications, the one who dealt with everything that had happened and moved on. That’s why I was happy that we were seeing less and less of each other. Why I was delighted when he moved to Cornwall. I thought the distance would keep me from contaminating him.’

  Suddenly Nathan whips his arm away, jumps to his feet and draws back the carefully made sheets on the bed. In the centre of the pink sheet is a small copper key, and it’s in his hand before Katie can say the word ‘gloves’.

  ‘How did you know?’ she finds herself asking again.

  He stares at the key, twisting it slowly in his fingers. ‘When we misbehaved,’ he nods towards the bed, ‘that was where we were told to sit. It was our version of the naughty step.’

  She nods as if it makes sense, but the leap in logic still worries her. ‘But how did you know?’

  The key remains held in front of his face, and she can see it start to shake.

  ‘I just thought about what I would have done.’ She struggles to hear the next whispered words, and doubts she was ever intended to. ‘We are the same.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘The basement,’ he says, looking down at the floor as if he can see straight through it.

  She feels that familiar tightening in her gut, just like she felt when DS Peters had called her yesterday, knowing that they’ll soon be standing over another body. ‘What are we going to find down there?’

  ‘I guess it’s time to stop imagining,’ says Nathan, pushing past her and heading for the door.

  Nineteen

  The door down to the basement is well hidden. Nathan remembers the first time he and his brother had stumbled across it, tucked away behind an old dresser. The key had been in the lock back then, and they’d turned it with a sense of almost unbearable excitement. There’s no excitement this time as the lock pops and the door swings open. Katie drags Nathan back, insisting she go first, but he surges on as they both squeeze into the narrow entrance.

  Katie pushes ahead holding a torch out in front, so he doesn’t bother reaching for the well-hidden switch, imagining how much worse the scene will look if he sees it all at once. He follows Katie down the stone stairs into the darkness, shifting sideways with both cuffed hands on the rickety banister.

  The other policemen are close behind, and he can tell they want him out of the way, but still where they can see him. He’s caught them staring. He wonders how much they’ve been told, perhaps that he’s the twin of a monster, perhaps that he’s the biggest fool on earth. Of course, it’s not so different from before, when they used to look at him as a fraud, a guy who just got lucky on a few cases, or a practitioner of the black arts.

  He follows Katie’s to
rch beam as it pans quickly from left to right. He can see the shelves stocked with his dad’s favourite wine – a bottle of which is clearly missing. On the other side of the room are boxes of old toys piled high, and two little bikes, one black, one white, leaning against each other. Katie is shuffling forward, barking orders for the others to hold back and leave the door open for extra light. Her beam strikes the far wall and finds nothing, drops to the floor and reveals only dirt. When she lifts the torch again, this time to the far-right corner of the room, there’s a flash of white and the beam returns, moving swiftly up and down. A human skeleton floats in mid-air. It’s only as they move tentatively forward that Nathan can see it’s held together by a wire frame.

  ‘Is this what you were expecting?’ asks a breathless Katie.

  Nathan shakes his head before realising he needs to speak. ‘There will be words.’

  Katie finds them instantly, spelt out on the floor at their feet, each letter carefully arranged in baked beans.

  I MARK THEM SO YOU KNOW

  Katie’s beam returns to the skeleton, picking out the skull and following a long trail of brown piped along the jawbone. Katie steps closer, but Nathan doesn’t move. He knows what this is – it’s exactly as he had predicted up in the bedroom – a discovery that at once confirms his suspicions about his brother and solidifies the fears he has about himself. This is not the latest victim. It’s the first. He knows this for a fact. He knows because it’s the very first murder that he would have committed, had he lost control.