‘Okay,’ she said, not looking convinced. ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
Tomek pulled her in for another hug, squeezed her tightly, then let her go. ‘If you ever have any questions about what happened to Michał and all the rest of it, then you just ask, all right? And…’ He inhaled deeply, composing himself for the next part. ‘If you ever see anything suspicious or something you think I should know about, you let me know. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
With that, Tomek opened the letter and began reading.
Dearest Tomek,
I hope you will see that my spelling has significantly improoved since last time. Some of the people hear try to help me with my spelling but I tell them I would like to learn on my own. I have all the time in the world and I would like to do something for myself at least once in my life. Sometimes I think about the things I’ve done and what I might be doing if I didn’t kill your brother. Do you ever do that? Have you ever thought about what you might do if you stopped being a police officer? I think I’d like to be a painter or decorator, do something with my hands. We have a lot of woodwork and craft classes hear to keep us entertayned. They are some of my favorit. The other day I built a small birdhouse. The man who taught me how to do it said he was really impressed and was going to put it in a garden centre and see if anyone wants to buy it. If they do, then the man said I can get some of the money for it. I told him to make sure that it goes into a garden centre near you in Essex, but I don’t know if he will. I really like my hobbies. Do you have any? The warden has to make sure there are loads of guards around becos sometimes we have hammers and other tools. Some of the other inmates in here have tried to start fights with them, but I stay away. It’s all very silly.
Tomorrow… But it might have already gone by the time you get this, I don’t think the post here is very fast, and maybe it isn’t very reliaball either. But anyway tomorrow they are coming again and this time they are teeching me how to build something out of iron. I dunno what it’s called, but if you’re interested, I can send it to your home address. The guards round hear don’t normally let things that size go out, but I think they’ll make an acception for me.
Anyway, thinking of you.
Nathan
PS - I still haven’t heard from you yet on either of my mobile numbers. I’ve written them again for you on the back just in case. Please do not lose it.
PPS - I have written Michał’s names on the bottom of the bird house I made, in case you wanted to go into a garden centre and look for it.
PPPS - I only learnt about this PS stuff the other day. It’s cool isn’t it!
‘What does it say?’
The voice sounded distant, like it was coming from outside, and pulled him away from his thoughts.
‘Dad, what does the letter say?’
‘Nonsense,’ he said absent-mindedly.
‘What?’
‘Nonsense. He’s… he’s just talking about a birdhouse he made.’
A birdhouse with his brother’s name on it.
Tomek didn’t know why, but all he could think about was that wooden birdhouse. It was probably four pieces of wood glued together with a large circle cut out on one of the walls. It was probably made from a kit: all the pieces coming together in a box and all Nathan had to do was stick them together with some PVA glue. There was no craftsmanship involved, no real skill required. And yet Tomek wanted it.
I have written Michał’s name on the bottom.
Tomek handed her the letter. She took it from him carefully and began reading. He watched her eyes move from side to side as she started a new line, her brow furrowing, face contorting.
‘He’s given you his mobile number again?’ she said.
‘He’s keen for me to have it.’
‘Have you messaged him?’
Tomek told her he hadn’t.
‘Are you going to?’
To that, he didn’t have an answer. The thought had crossed his mind several times. But he hadn’t acted on it.
Yet.
After she’d apologised to him again for going through his belongings, Tomek made them dinner. Oven pizzas. Pepperoni for himself. Ham and pineapple for her. While the food was cooking, Tomek snuck away to his bedroom. Under the guise of getting changed out of his work clothes and into something more comfortable, he perched on the end of the bed, holding the letter in one hand and his phone in the other.
He prodded the screen with his thumb and it awoke, revealing his wallpaper: a stock image of Earth. The Face ID setting did its job and unlocked the device. All he needed to do now was swipe up, which he did. Then, cautiously, he moved towards the Contacts app on his phone and hovered his finger above the small plus in the top corner of the screen. Held it there. Thinking, contemplating, deliberating.
And then he did it.
He pressed the button and added both the mobile numbers Nathan had given him to his address book. Before he could do anything with them, the buzzer from the oven sounded, signalling the pizzas were ready.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The birds are all I can hear. Dozens, hundreds, if not thousands, of them singing their chorus, communicating to one another up in the sky. I can hear them over the sounds of the cars, of the wind, of the kids on the opposite side of the street. I’m too scared to look up, but I imagine they’re all flying above me, watching me run towards the park. Maybe they’re trying to communicate with me. Screaming at me to stop. Screaming at me to hurry. Trying to tell me that Michał’s already dead, that there’s nothing I can do.
Maybe they’re the voices of the dead that he’s about to join.
When I finally enter the park, the noises disappear, silence everywhere, save for the sound of a single bird flying into a nearby tree. I glance at it, but in the darkness it is invisible, vanished. And then I look down a few degrees and see Nathan Burrows standing there. He’s forty years old again, dressed in jeans and a thin burgundy sweatshirt. He looks normal, as though he was just about to go out for a meal with friends, and not like he was serving a life sentence for murder.
My initial reaction is that he’s been released, that he’s been watching my every move somehow, but that’s not possible. I know it can’t be.
He’s standing there at the back of the field with his arms behind his back. I move towards him, slowly removing my backpack as I go. I drop it to the ground, onto the mud and grass. Until I come to a stop a few metres away from him, my dead brother lying in the middle between us, his body perfectly still.
Before anything happens, I look down at my hands. They’re big, muscular, veiny, covered in hair. These aren’t the hands of a ten-year-old boy; they’re the hands of a forty-year-old man. My hands. Two adults, two fully grown men revisiting a thirty-year-old crime scene. It’s the first time the two of us have met like this before. I should want to leap across Michał and wrap my hands around Nathan’s throat. I should want to leap across my dead brother’s heavily mutilated body and punch the fucking shit out of him, beat him to death. But I can’t. I can’t move. In fact, I don’t want to move. Something’s stopping me, something’s holding me back.
