The Whisper Man (ARC)

by Alex North

  “Have you talked to any of the others?” she said.

  “No.” I was about to repeat my father’s line about not knowing anything, but that would have been a pointless lie under the circumstances. “The rest of them left early on. There have been a few phone calls on the landline, but I’ve just ignored those.”

  “Irritating.”

  “I never answer the phone anyway.”

  “No, I don’t like phones much either.”

  “It’s more that nobody ever calls me.”

  Not really a joke, but she smiled. And that was okay, I thought. The conversation had grown quieter the longer we’d been speaking, and some of the tension in the room had dissipated now. It was almost a surprise to me how much of a relief that was.

  “Are they likely to keep trying?” I said.

  “It depends on what happens. From experience, if they won’t leave you alone, then it might be worth talking to one of them.” She held her hand up. “Not necessarily me. In fact, as much as it kills me to say this, a part of me would probably prefer it wasn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re friends, Tom, and that makes it harder to be objective. Like I said, I was kicking myself yesterday. You do realize that I didn’t take you for a coffee because I sniffed a story, right? It was a total surprise, what you told me. How could I possibly have known? But the point is, if you get an account out there once, there’ll be less interest. See what happens, though.”

  I thought about it.

  “But I could talk to you?”

  “Yes, you could. And you know what? All that aside, it’d be nice to go for a coffee again at some point, wouldn’t it?”

  “Maybe I could get some dirt on you.”

  She smiled. “Yeah. Maybe you could.”

  I thought about it.

  “Sure you can’t stay for a drink?”

  “Sadly, yes—I wasn’t just saving face before. I really do need to get back.” She was about to head out of the room, but then something occurred to her. “What about tonight? I could probably get my mother to babysit Adam. We could grab a drink or something?”

  Her mother to babysit. Not a husband or partner. I supposed I’d been assuming she was single, and I wasn’t sure now whether the confirmation was deliberate or accidental. Regardless, I very much wanted to say yes. Jesus, how astonishing would it be to go out for a drink with a woman? I couldn’t remember the last time. But even more than that, I realized that I very much wanted to go for a drink with her. That I’d spent the morning feeling hurt and foolish for a fairly obvious reason.

  But, of course, it wasn’t possible.

  “I’d probably struggle with a babysitter,” I said.

  “Right. I get you. Hang on a second.” She reached into her coat and produced a card. “I realized you hadn’t got my details. All my contact stuff is on there. If you want it, I mean.”

  Yes, I wanted it.

  “Thanks.” I took the card. “I’ve not got one of my own.”

  “Duh. Just text me so I’ve got your number.”

  “Obviously. Duh indeed.”

  She paused at the front door.

  “How’s Jake today?”

  “Miraculously well,” I said. “I really have no idea how.”

  “I do. Like I said, you’re too hard on yourself.”

  And then she headed off down the path. I watched her go for a moment, then looked down at the card in my hand. Thinking. It was the second card I’d received today, and both were complicated in their different ways. But, God, a drink out with Karen would be good. It felt like something people did, and that it should really be possible for me to do it as well.

  Once I was back in the living room, I took out my phone and thought about the situation a whole lot more. Hesitating. Unsure.

  Just text me so I’ve got your number.

  In the end, it wasn’t the first message I sent.

  Forty-four

  Back at the department, the operations room was alive with activity. While most of the officers were continuing with their existing actions, a small number were now focused on the key task of tracking down Frank Carter’s son, Francis, and that knowledge had galvanized everyone. The renewed energy in the room was tangible. After two months of moving in circles and following fruitless leads, it felt like a new path had opened up for them.

  Not that it would necessarily go anywhere, Amanda reminded herself. It was always best not to get your hopes up.

  But always so hard not to.

  “No,” Pete said.

  He added another sheet of paper to the pile on the desk between them.

  “No,” she replied, adding one of her own.

  After Frank Carter’s trial and conviction, Francis and his mother had moved away, and because of the infamy of the case, they had been given new identities—an opportunity to begin fresh lives, without the shadow of the monster they had lived with hanging over them. Jane Carter had become Jane Parker; Francis had become David. After that, the pair of them had effectively disappeared. They were common, anonymous names, which was presumably one reason why they had been chosen. The task facing Amanda and Pete now was to find the correct David Parker out of the thousands living in the country.

  Next sheet. This David Parker was forty-five years old. The one they were looking for would be twenty-seven.

  “No,” she said.

  And so it went.

  They worked through the names mostly in silence. Pete was intent on the pages before him, and she presumed that his focus was a way of distracting himself. The conversation he’d had with Frank Carter must have shaken him as much as all the others, but there was an added tension now. Pete had met Carter’s son when Francis was a child. He had effectively saved the boy. Knowing Pete as she was beginning to, it was easy to imagine what was going through his head right now. He would be asking hard questions of himself. What if Pete’s actions back then had planted a seed that had grown into this fresh horror? What if, despite his best intentions, this was all somehow his fault?

  “We can’t be sure that Francis is involved,” she said.

  “No.”

  Pete added another sheet of paper to the pile.

  Amanda sighed to herself, frustrated by the knowledge that nothing she could say right now was going to rescue Pete from his thoughts. But what she had said was true. As terrible an upbringing as Francis Carter might have suffered, she had seen plenty of people emerge from horrific, abusive childhoods and grow into decent adults. There were as many paths out of hell as there were people, and the vast majority of them ascended.

  She was also familiar enough with the original investigation to know that Pete had done nothing wrong—that he had worked the case as well as anybody could, even going above and beyond in his dogged pursuit of Jane Carter. He had followed his gut instinct, focused on Frank Carter, and eventually brought the man down. While he hadn’t been able to save Tony Smith in time, it was impossible to save everyone. There would always be mistakes you never saw in time.

  And thinking about Neil Spencer, she knew she needed to cling to that herself. She didn’t want to believe that the things you missed—the things you never even had the opportunity to hit—could weigh you down so much that they threatened to drown you.

  She turned her attention back to the paperwork, working her way steadily through the list of David Parkers.

  “No.”

  The papers piling up.

  “No.”

  The words formed a predictable pattern. No. No. No. It was only when she’d done three in a row without a response that she noticed Pete had been silent for longer than he should have been. She looked up at him hopefully, but then realized he had stopped paying attention to the forms on the table. Instead, he had his cell phone in his hands, and was staring at that.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  And yet it clearly wasn’t. In fact, she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. Because Pete appeared to be sm
iling. Could that actually be the case? It was the smallest of expressions, but she realized she’d never seen even that before. He’d always been so stern and serious—so dark, like a house in which the owner stubbornly refused to turn on any lights. Right now, though, a single room seemed to be illuminated. A text message, she guessed. Maybe it was a woman? Or a man, of course; after all, she knew next to nothing about his private life. Regardless, she liked seeing this unfamiliar expression on his face. It was a welcome break from the intensity she had become used to, and which made her worry about him.

  She wanted this new light to stay.

  “What?” She asked it more teasingly this time.

  “Just someone asking if I’m free for something this evening.” He put the phone on the table, the smile disappearing. “Which obviously I’m not.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Pete looked at her.

  “I’m serious,” she told him. “Technically speaking, this is my case, not yours. I’ll stay as long as I have to, but listen, you are going home at the end of the day.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. And you can do whatever you want when you get there. I’ll keep you up to date with any developments.”

  “It should be me.”

  “It absolutely should not. Even if we find the right David Parker, we have no idea how or even if he’s involved. It’s just a conversation. And I think it would be better for him and for you if someone else handles that. I know how much this case means to you, but you can’t live in the past, Pete. Other things matter too.” She nodded at his phone. “Sometimes you’ve got to leave it at the door at the end of the day. Do you know what I mean?”

  He was silent for a moment, and she thought he was about to protest again. But then he nodded.

  “You can’t live in the past,” he repeated. “You’re right about that. More right than you know.”

  “Oh, I know how right I am. Believe me.”

  He smiled. “All right, then.”

  Then he picked up his phone again, and began tapping a reply a little awkwardly, as though he didn’t get many texts and wasn’t used to sending ones in return. Or maybe he was just nervous about this one in particular. Regardless, she was pleased for him. There was that slight smile on his face again, and it was good to see. To know it was possible.

  Alive, she realized, watching him. That was what it was.

  After everything he’d been through, he seemed like a man who was finally looking forward to something.

  Forty-five

  I’d arranged with my father for him to arrive at seven o’clock that evening, and he was so prompt in his timing that I wondered whether he’d arrived early and been sitting outside until the designated time. Perhaps out of respect for me—the idea that if he was being allowed into my and Jake’s life then it had to be precisely on my terms—but actually, I thought he was most likely the same with everyone. A man for whom discipline was important.

  He was dressed neatly in suit trousers and shirt, as though he’d come straight from work, but he looked fresh and his hair was damp, so it was obvious he’d showered and changed first. He smelled clean too. As he followed me inside, I realized I’d checked that subconsciously. If he still drank, he would have started by now, and it wasn’t too late for me to pull this whole event.

  Jake was kneeling on the floor of the living room, hunched over a drawing.

  “Pete’s here,” I told him.

  “Hi, Pete.”

  “Could you at least pretend to look up?”

  Jake sighed to himself, but put down the colored pencil he’d been using.

  “Hi, Pete,” he said again.

  My father smiled.

  “Good evening, Jake. Thank you for allowing me to look after you for a bit tonight.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “We both appreciate it,” I said. “It should only be a couple of hours at most.”

  “However long you need. I brought a book.”

  I glanced at the thick paperback he was holding. I couldn’t see enough of the cover to read the title, but there was a black-and-white photograph of Winston Churchill on the front. It was exactly the kind of worthy, weighty tome that I’d have struggled to force myself through, and it made me feel self-conscious. My father had transformed himself, physically and mentally, into this quietly impressive man. I couldn’t help but feel slightly inadequate in comparison.

  Stupid, though.

  You’re too hard on yourself.

  My father put his book down on the couch.

  “Can you show me around?”

  “You’ve been here before.”

  “In a different capacity,” he said. “This is your home. I’d prefer to hear it from you.”

  “Okay. We’re just going upstairs, Jake.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  He was already drawing again. I led the way upstairs, pointing my father to the bathroom and then Jake’s bedroom.

  “He’d normally have a bath, but just skip that tonight,” I said. “Half an hour or so, he comes up for bed. Pajamas are there on the duvet. His book’s down there. We normally read a chapter together before lights out, and we’re about halfway through that one.”

  My father looked down at it quizzically.

  “Power of Three?”

  “Yeah, Diana Wynne Jones. It’s probably a bit old for him, but he likes it.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “And like I said, I won’t be out for long.”

  “Are you doing anything nice?”

  I hesitated.

  “Just grabbing a drink with a friend.”

  I didn’t want to go into any more detail than that. For one thing, it made me feel curiously teenage to admit I was going on something that might be considered a date. Of course, my father and I had skipped that whole awkward period of my growing up, so perhaps it was natural to feel it a little now. We’d never had the chance to develop the language to talk about it, or not to.

  “I’m sure that will be nice,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  I thought it would be too, and that brought another teenage sensation: butterflies in my stomach. Not that it was a date, of course. It would be foolish to go into the evening thinking of it as one. That way disappointment lay. And both Karen and I had kids at our respective homes anyway, so it wasn’t like anything could really happen. How the hell did people manage that anyway? I really had no idea. I hadn’t dated in so long that I might as well have been a teenager.

  Butterflies.

  Which reminded me that I hadn’t locked the front door after letting my father in. It was ridiculous, but the excitement was immediately replaced by a small flush of fear.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s head back down.”

  Forty-six

  The ceiling was creaking as Daddy and Pete moved around upstairs. They were talking, Jake could tell, but he couldn’t make out the exact words. It was going to be about him, though, obviously—instructions about how to put him to bed, and things like that. That was okay. He wanted go to bed as soon as possible.

  Because he very much wanted this day to be over with.

  That was the thing about going to sleep. It kind of scrubbed things. Arguments, worries, whatever. You could be scared or upset about something, and you might think sleep was impossible, but at some point it happened, and when you woke up in the morning the feeling was gone for a while, like a storm that had passed during the night. Or maybe it was like being put to sleep before a big operation. Which happened sometimes, Daddy had told him. The doctors put you to sleep, and you missed all the horrible stuff they had to do and just woke up better again afterward.

  Right now what he wanted was the fear to go away.

  Except fear wasn’t quite the right word for it. When you were afraid, it was of something specific, like being told off, but what he was feeling was more like a bird that didn’t have anywhere to land. Ever since this morning, there had just been the sensation t
hat something bad was going to happen, but he wasn’t sure what. But if Jake was certain of one thing right now, it was that he didn’t want Daddy to go out tonight.

  But the feeling wasn’t real, so the sooner he went to sleep, the better. He would be scared—or whatever the name for this feeling was—but when he woke up in the morning, Daddy would be back home, and everything would be all right again.

  “No, you’re right to be scared.”

  Jake jumped. The little girl was sitting beside him, her legs straight out in front of her. He hadn’t seen her since that first day at school, and yet the hash of scabs on her knee still looked red and raw, and her hair, as ever, was splayed out to one side. He could tell from her face that, once again, she wasn’t in the mood for playing—that she knew something was wrong too. She looked more scared than he was.

  “He shouldn’t go out,” she said.

  Jake looked back down at his drawing. Just like the feeling, he knew that the little girl wasn’t real. Even if she seemed to be. Even if he so desperately wanted her to be.

  “Nothing bad is going to happen,” he whispered.

  “Yes, it is. You know it is.”

  He shook his head. It was important to be sensible and grown up about this, because Daddy was relying on him to be a good boy. So he continued to work on his picture, as though she wasn’t really there. Which, of course, she wasn’t.

  Even so, he could sense her exasperation.

  “You don’t want him to meet her,” she said.

  Jake kept drawing.

  “You don’t want your mummy replaced, do you?”

  Jake stopped drawing.

  No, of course he didn’t want that. And that wasn’t going to happen, was it? But he couldn’t deny there had been something a little strange about Daddy’s behavior when he was talking about what was going to happen tonight. Again, the feeling wasn’t precise enough to put a name to, but everything did seem a little off-balance and wrong, like there was something he wasn’t being told. But nobody was going to replace Mummy. And Daddy didn’t want that either.