That reminded him.
The other one.
Dawid.
That little fucker, visiting Nathan without telling anyone. What had they discussed? What had Dawid asked Nathan? And why had he kept it from them for all these years? Had he expected nobody would ever find out?
Tomek had the sudden urge to pick up the phone and ask him, to find out the answers to those questions and more. But it was too early, still dark outside. It would have to wait, a conversation for another day.
He looked at the letter again, reading it through once more. He was concerned by three things: one) Dawid’s secret meeting with Nathan Burrows, two) how Nathan had known about Abigail’s promotion when the news had only broken the week before, and three) that he was starting to believe Nathan. He was seriously considering the possibility that there hadn’t been another killer, that he had imagined it that afternoon and in the thirty years since.
He closed his eyes and cast his mind back to the nightmare he’d just had; it had been so vivid, so visceral. It had been one of the clearest nightmares he could ever recall. And yet, had any of it been true? How much had been fact, how much a fiction created by his brain and subconscious? All this time he’d pictured a second killer there. But perhaps there was a reason why he’d never been able to see the face clearly. Perhaps there was a reason the police had never found a second killer or any evidence suggesting someone else had been present. What if Tomek’s fractured and fragile mind had conjured him up, a literal figment of his imagination, an innocuous and generic shape his brain had warped and manipulated into a figure? It was a question he’d wrestled with countless times over the years, and now his latest, his clearest nightmare to date, was pulling him in the other direction. Away from his identity.
And the name, Charlie, the name he’d heard during a nightmare once that had sparked renewed hope – what if that was wrong as well? More recently, that was a question he’d tried to grapple with, one that he had a little less faith in, only because it was the same name as someone who’d been involved in a murder investigation at the time, and he had convinced himself that it had been his subconscious calling out to him. Why, after thirty years, would a name come to him all of a sudden? It didn’t make sense. He knew the brain worked in mysterious ways, but they weren’t that mysterious. There was usually something behind what went on.
He was beginning to think that none of it had been real at all.
As he was about to tear the piece of paper in half, he heard a sound; the living room door creaking open, followed by the sounds of nails scratching on wood. Tomek swivelled on his feet so fast he felt his spine buckle under the pressure.
‘What— What’re you doing awake?’ he asked Abigail, as her head peeked through the gap in the door.
‘I got cold. I couldn’t feel you next to me.’
‘So you woke up?’
‘I didn’t have my snuggle buddy.’
Tomek cringed. ‘I’ll be back in a sec. Just give me a minute.’
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Writing in my diary.’
It wasn’t a complete lie. But it wasn’t exactly the whole truth, either. Right now, he didn’t want her to know. Not because he didn’t trust her with the information, but because he didn’t want her to panic over the fact Nathan Burrows, a murderer serving a life sentence, knew intimate details about her.
‘Did you have another nightmare?’ She cautiously approached and placed a comforting hand on his back.
‘Yeah.’
‘A bad one?’
‘No,’ he lied. ‘But it was more confusing than the others.’
‘You can tell me about it later. For now, you need to go back to bed. You’ve got an early start in the morning.’
CHAPTER SIX
Tomek failed to stifle the yawn as he left the courtroom. The night’s disjointed and fragmented sleep had left him feeling tired and groggy, like he was a teenager again, wanting to stay in bed until lunchtime. It was his third visit to Southend’s Crown Court in the past three days. He had been attending as a witness in relation to the murder of a man on Two Tree Island, a small salt marshland situated in Leigh-on-Sea. The victim, Reece Cartwright, had been bludgeoned in the back of the head and left for dead by the very eyewitness who’d claimed to have found him. According to his confession, which had come shortly after the team had found the murder weapon discarded in the undergrowth nearby, the victim had stopped the killer in the middle of the path and begun harassing him, drunk, and under the influence of something else. When the victim’s advances hadn’t abated, the cyclist had struck him over the head in an attempt to deter him, but had in fact killed him. A simple act of self-defence had now turned into a murder investigation and what was soon to be imprisonment. The question the jury now faced, however, was whether it was murder or manslaughter. Tomek, in all his years of experience, sensed the man would get manslaughter. Not only was there no evidence to suggest that the two had ever come into contact with one another before that fateful moment, but the nature of the killing suggested it had been an accident in some way, a one-punch hit gone wrong. It was an unfortunate end for a man who, according to his friends and family, was going through some of life’s lowest moments.
The beautiful thing about attending court was that it was only thirty seconds away from the office, so within half a minute, he was back in CID headquarters, making his way to the incident room. When he got there, he headed straight for the kitchen and started to make a cup of coffee. DCI Cleaves, the head of the team, had recently managed to find enough money in the budget to purchase a top-of-the-range automatic coffee machine – equipped with digital interface, twenty-litre coffee bean capacity, and sleek finishes – that required a technician from the company they’d bought it from to clean and service it on a fortnightly basis. It was, in short, one of the greatest things Tomek had ever seen, one step removed from the fancy, over-the-top coffee machines you saw in the likes of Starbucks and Caffè Nero. Except better. There was no need to froth the milk or clean the jets of water after every use – the machine did it all for you. Shortly after its arrival, there had been a clamour, a feverish excitement, and queues of his colleagues had formed, each impatiently waiting to use the machine. On a couple of occasions, Tomek had been forced to intervene and separate some of them, wedging himself between them so that he could break up an altercation before it got ugly, and then at the end of it, skip the queue. Despite it being two weeks old, the team’s fascination with the coffee machine hadn’t subsided, and there was still a queue in front of him when he returned. DC Nadia Chakrabarti, the team’s HOLMES inputter and actioner, responsible for managing everyone’s tasks during the various investigations they had going at any one time, was in the middle of placing the mug under the nozzle, when Tomek asked, ‘Need a hand with that, Nads?’
‘I’m pregnant,’ she snapped. ‘Not a fucking invalid.’
Eight months, to be precise. About to burst. Well overdue her maternity leave. Various members of the team, including HR, had suggested she make the most of the time before the baby came, to relax, to settle a little, but she’d said she didn’t want to be bored, that she didn’t want to stay at home doing nothing all day except wait for the moment to come, not when there was still a mountain of work that needed doing. A mountain of work that, despite her intelligence, now included learning how to use the coffee machine properly; Tomek watched her struggle for a few moments as she placed one hand on her stomach while the other searched for the right button to press.
‘You sure you couldn’t do with a hand? Baby brain again?’
She huffed, looked back, and glowered at him.
‘If you mention baby brain one more time, I’ll smash your head in so you have baby brain.’
‘Halfway there, mate. Think my parents and brothers did most of the job for you already.’
Another huff, another glower. Tomek paid it little heed, then slipped past three members of the civilian support staff, apologising with a polite whisper the way British people did, and stopped beside Nadia. Cries and boos came from behind him.
‘She’s pregnant! I’m just helping someone in need.’
‘You’ll be in need if you carry on,’ she said, then looked back at the buttons.
‘Tough decision,’ he said, ‘going for the same one you always have.’
The look on her face suggested she wanted to smack him, but didn’t have the energy. Instead, she let out a long exhale, and eased the tension in her body. ‘Fine. You do it. Hot chocolate, please.’
‘One hot chocolate and flat white coming up!’ he said to another chorus of groans and cries. He turned to face the crowd. ‘Hey! None of you were willing to help this pregnant woman. It’s only fair I get my just rewards.’
‘You’re such a martyr, Tomek,’ Nadia jibed. ‘It’s a wonder you haven’t been given a knighthood or CBE – or one of the other ones.’
Pointing to the crowd behind him, he said, ‘I do it for my fans. I don’t do it for myself.’
