The Whisper Man (ARC)

by Alex North

  But then he remembered the things Daddy had written.

  They had talked about that, though, hadn’t they? Just like things in books, it wasn’t real. And besides, Daddy had been so sad recently, and this was something that might help with that. It was important. Jake needed to let Daddy be Daddy, so that he could be him for Jake again too.

  He had to be brave.

  A moment later, the little girl rested her head on his shoulder, her hair stiff and unyielding against his neck.

  “I’m so scared,” she said softly. “Don’t let him go, Jake.”

  He was about to say something else, but then he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, and the little girl was gone.

  Forty-seven

  When we got back downstairs, Jake was still sitting on the floor by his picture, pencil in hand. But he’d stopped drawing now and was staring off into space. In fact, he looked as if he were about to cry. I walked over and crouched down beside him.

  “You okay, mate?”

  He nodded, but I didn’t believe him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hmmm.” I frowned. “Not sure I believe you on that one. Are you worried about tonight?”

  He hesitated.

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Well, that’s understandable. But you’ll be fine. To be honest, I’d have thought you’d be looking forward to spending time with someone else for a change.”

  He looked at me at that, and while he still seemed so small and fragile, I didn’t think I’d ever seen such an old expression on his face before now.

  “Do you think I don’t want to be with you?” he said.

  “Oh, Jake. Come here.”

  I adjusted my position so that he could sit on my knee for a cuddle. He perched on me, and then pressed his small body against mine.

  “I don’t think that at all. That wasn’t what I meant.”

  Except, it had been. Kind of, anyway. One of my biggest fears since Rebecca’s death was that I couldn’t connect with him. That we were strangers to each other. And a part of me did feel he might be better off without me and my fumbling attempts at fatherhood—that when he walked into school without a backward glance, it was how he felt all of the time.

  It made me wonder if he thought the same about me. Maybe my going out this evening had made him feel I didn’t want to be with him. That I’d booked him into the 567 Club because I wanted to be rid of him. While I did need my own time and space, nothing could have been further from the truth.

  How sad that was, I thought. Both of us feeling the same. Both of us trying to meet in the middle but somehow always missing each other.

  “And I want to be with you too,” I said. “I won’t be out for long, I promise.”

  He tightened his grip on me slightly.

  “Do you have to go?”

  I took a deep breath.

  The answer, I supposed, was no, I didn’t have to, and I was reluctant to leave if it was going to upset him badly.

  “I don’t have to,” I said. “But it will be fine, I promise. You’ll go to bed soon, fall asleep, and when you wake up I’ll be home again.”

  He was silent, thinking over what I’d just told him. But the whole time, his anxiety seemed to be creeping into me as well. Apprehension. Dread, almost—the sudden fear that something bad was going to happen. It was silly, and there was no reason to think that. Even so, I could stay home, and I was about to tell him just that, but he nodded before I had the chance.

  “Okay.”

  “Right,” I said. “Good. I love you, Jake.”

  “I love you too, Daddy.”

  He disentangled himself from me, and I stood up. My father had been waiting by the door the whole time and I walked over to him.

  “Jake okay?”

  “Yes. He’ll be fine. But any problems at all, you’ve got my mobile number.”

  “I have. But it’ll be fine. Just strange for him, I guess.” He raised his voice a little. “But we’ll get along grand, Jake. You’re going to be good for me, right?”

  Jake, who was drawing again now, nodded in reply.

  I watched him for a moment, crouched down and concentrating on his picture, and I felt an indescribable burst of love for him. But it was one that hardened into determination. We were going to get back on track, the two of us. Everything was going to be okay. I wanted to be with him, and he wanted to be with me, and somehow, between us, we would figure out a way to make that work.

  “A couple of hours,” I told my father again. “That’s all it will be.”

  Forty-eight

  “We’re nearly there,” DS Dyson said.

  “I know,” Amanda told him.

  She’d made Dyson drive, if only to keep him off his phone for an hour. They were fifty miles away from Featherbank now, heading along one edge of a large university campus. A corner took them into what was obviously the student heartland of the city, the houses all redbrick and cramped together on thin streets. Each was at least three or four stories high: buildings where five or six people could live together in groups, or landlords could rent single rooms off, creating collections of random strangers who remained strangers. A square mile of disparate people. A place it was cheap and easy to disappear into.

  And this was where David Parker, previously known as Francis Carter, had chosen to make his home.

  The ID was a solid one—right age, and a close visual match for the build of Victor Tyler’s prison visitor. They’d found him an hour before Pete had been due to leave, which had worried her at first, as she had been concerned he might overturn whatever arrangement he’d made earlier and insist on being involved. And she could tell that he had wanted to. But instead, he had watched quietly as Amanda made arrangements with the local force to visit the address, and when it had been time for him to leave, he had done so without complaint—just wished her luck and asked her to keep him informed on any developments. With the decision already made, she thought he might even have been relieved.

  If only she could say the same—a part of her wished it were Pete with her right now. Because while everything they’d talked about back at the department remained true—they had no concrete evidence that Francis Carter was involved in the case at all, and this was going to be a routine visit in the first instance—she could feel it all the same. A tingle in her stomach, halfway between fear and excitement. It was telling her that she was close. That something was going to happen, and that she needed to be on guard and ready for it when it did.

  Dyson turned down a steep hill. Each house here was lower than the one before it, so the roofs formed a black saw-blade pattern against the darkening sky. Francis Carter—or David Parker—was renting a one-bedroom apartment in the basement of a large shared house. Did that fit? It worked for her in some ways, but not in others. If Parker was their man, he would certainly want his own place for privacy. But at the same time, could he really have kept a child here for two months without anyone seeing or hearing? Or had Neil been kept elsewhere?

  The car slowed.

  You’re about to find out.

  Dyson parked under a streetlight that seemed to bleach the world of color, and they both got out of the car. The house was four stories high and seemed squeezed in by the properties beside it. No lights on at the front. There was a low brick wall with a rusted iron gate, which Amanda opened quietly before stepping onto the path. To her left was a messy garden, too small and wretched to have been tended by anyone, and then steep steps led up to the front door. But just past the garden, a second set of steps led down below ground level into an area barely wide enough for a single person to stand. From the top, Amanda could see a front window. The door to Parker’s apartment was presumably directly underneath the main door above, obscured from view right now.

  She led the way down, the garden rising up to her left, replaced by the brick wall containing it, and the air was much colder here. It felt like descending into a grave. The window was a
dirty square of black, with cobwebs in the corners. Parker’s front door was barely visible in the shadows.

  She knocked hard and called out.

  “Mr. Parker? David Parker?”

  No reply.

  She gave it a few seconds more, then knocked again.

  “David?” she said. “Are you in there?”

  Again she was met by nothing but silence. Beside her, Dyson had his hands over his eyes, staring in through the window as best he could.

  “Can’t see a thing.” He leaned away. “What do we do now?”

  Amanda tried the door handle—and was almost surprised when it turned with a creak. The door opened slightly. Immediately the thick, heavy stink of mold wafted out from the apartment.

  “Not safe, that, in this neighborhood,” Dyson said.

  Because he wasn’t close enough to smell what she could. Not safe at all, she thought, but perhaps not in the way he was meaning. The room within was pitch-black, and the tingling sensation in her stomach was stronger than ever. It was telling her that something dangerous was waiting in there.

  “Stay alert,” she told Dyson.

  Then she pulled out a flashlight and stepped carefully inside, one coat sleeve held protectively over her nose and mouth, the other playing the beam slowly over the room before her. The air was so dusty that it looked like sand was swirling in the light. She moved the beam around and caught flashes of detritus: tattered gray furniture; tangles of old clothes strewn on the wiry carpet; paperwork scattered on the surface of a rickety wooden table. The walls and ceiling were mottled with damp. There was a kitchen area along the wall to the right, and as she ran the light steadily along the filthy plates and bowls there, she saw things moving, casting oversized shadows as they scuttled away out of sight.

  “Francis?” she called.

  But it was obvious that nobody lived here anymore. The place had been abandoned. Someone had walked out of here, closed the front door without bothering to lock it behind them, and never returned. She clicked the light switch beside her up and down. Nothing. The rent had been paid a year in advance, but apparently not the utilities.

  Dyson stopped beside her.

  “Jesus.”

  “Wait here,” she said.

  Then she stepped gingerly through the debris scattered around the room. There were two doors at the back. She opened one and found the bathroom, moving the flashlight back and forth and resisting the urge to gag. It stank far worse in here than it did in the living room. The sink at the far end was half full of dank water, with sodden towels lying knotted on the floor, their surfaces speckled with rot.

  She closed the door and moved over to the second. This one had to lead to the bedroom. Bracing herself for what she might find, she turned the handle, pushed it open, and shone the flashlight inside.

  “Anything?”

  She ignored the question and stepped carefully over the threshold.

  There was dust in the air here too, but it was clear that this room had not been neglected and uncared-for like the rest of the property. The carpet was soft, and looked newer than the rest of the furnishings. While there was no furniture in here, she could see imprints in the carpet where items had rested: a large flattened rectangle formed under what might have been a chest of drawers; a single square that she could only guess at; four small squares spaced out far enough that they might have been a long table against one wall. The latter were deep too—the table must have had something heavy stored on top of it.

  No obvious marks from a bed, though.

  But then she noticed something, and quickly moved the flashlight back to the far wall. She could tell that it had been painted more recently than the rest of the apartment, but it had also been amended. Around the base, someone had added careful drawings. Blades of grass seemed to grow out of the floor, with simple flowers dotted here and there and bees and butterflies hovering above.

  She remembered the photographs she’d seen of the inside of Frank Carter’s extension.

  Oh, God.

  Slowly, she moved the beam upward.

  Close to the ceiling, an angry sun stared back at her with black eyes.

  Forty-nine

  Your daddy liked these books when he was younger.

  Pete almost said that as he knelt down beside Jake’s bed and picked up the book. The light in the bedroom was so soft, and Jake looked so small, lying there beneath the blankets, that he was momentarily transported back to a different time. He remembered reading to Tom when he had been a little boy. The Diana Wynne Jones books had been one of his son’s favorites.

  Power of Three. He couldn’t recall the contents, but the cover was immediately familiar, and his fingertips tingled as he touched it. It was a very old edition. The covers were frayed at the edges, and the spine was so worn that the title was lost in the string of creases. Was this the actual copy he himself had read so many years ago? It was, he thought. Tom had kept it and was now reading it to his own son. Not just a story passed down through time, from father to son, but the exact same pages containing it.

  Pete felt a sense of wonder at that.

  Your Daddy liked these books when he was younger.

  But he caught himself before saying it. Not only did Jake not know of Pete’s relationship to him, it was not Pete’s place to reveal it, and it never would be. That was fine. If he wanted to claim he had changed over the years and was no longer the terrible father from Tom’s worst memories, he could hardly lay claim to any of the better ones either.

  If that man was gone, all of him had to be.

  With a new man in his place.

  “Well, then.”

  The light in the room made his voice quiet and gentle.

  “Where are we up to?”

  * * *

  Afterward, he sat downstairs in silence, the book he had brought untouched for the moment. The warmth he’d felt upstairs had carried down with him, and he wanted to absorb it for a while.

  For so long now, he’d buried himself in distractions: used books and food and television—ritual in general—as a way of clicking fingers to one side of his own mind and keeping it from glancing in more dangerous directions. But he didn’t feel that now. The voices were silent. The urge to drink was not alive tonight. He could still sense it there, in the same way that a stubbed-out candle smokes a little, but the fire and the brightness of it were gone.

  It had been so lovely to read to Jake. The boy had been quiet and attentive, and then, after a page or two, he had wanted to take over. Although his delivery was faltering, it was obvious that his vocabulary was impressive. And it had been impossible not to feel the peace of the room. However much Pete had messed up Tom’s own childhood, his son hadn’t passed that on.

  Pete checked on Jake fifteen minutes later and found the boy already fast asleep. He stood there for a moment, marveling at how tranquil Jake appeared.

  Look at what you lose by drinking.

  He’d told himself that so many times while looking at the photograph of Sally, his mind skirting the memories of the life he’d lost. Most of the time it had been enough, but sometimes it hadn’t, and these past months had been the toughest of tests. Somehow he had resisted. Looking down at Jake now, he was monumentally glad about that, as though he had somehow dodged a bullet he hadn’t known was coming. Although the future was uncertain, at least it was there.

  Look what you gain by stopping.

  That thought was so much better. It was the difference between regret and relief, between a cold hearth full of dead, gray ash and a fire that was still alight. He hadn’t lost this. He might not have found it fully yet either. But he hadn’t lost it.

  Back downstairs, he did read for a little while, but he was distracted by thoughts of the investigation, and kept checking his phone for updates. There were none. It felt like Amanda should have been there by now, and that Francis Carter should be either in custody or being questioned, and he hoped that was the case. Too busy to update him was too busy in the right
direction.

  Francis Carter.

  He remembered the boy clearly—although of course Francis Carter was an entirely different person now: a grown man, formed from that boy but distinct from him. Pete had only interacted with the child on a handful of occasions twenty years ago, as the majority of the interviews had needed to be handled carefully by specially trained officers. Francis had been small and pale and haunted, staring down at the table with hooded eyes, giving one-word answers at most. The extent of the trauma he must have suffered living with his father had been obvious. He was a vulnerable child who had been through hell.

  Carter’s words came back to him now.

  His top is all pulled up over his face so I can’t see it properly, which is the way I like it.

  The children had all been the same to him; any one would do. And he hadn’t wanted to see their faces. But why? Could it possibly be, Pete wondered, because Carter had wanted to imagine the victims were his own son? A boy he couldn’t touch without being caught, so the hatred he felt had to be acted out on other children instead?

  Pete sat very still for a moment.

  If that were the case, how might a child feel in response to that? That he was worthless and deserved to die too, perhaps. Guilt over the lives lost in his place. A heartfelt desire to make amends. An urge to help children like him, because by doing so he could somehow begin to heal himself.

  This is a man who takes care.

  Carter, talking about the man in the photograph he’d been shown.

  Smiling at him.

  You just don’t listen, Peter.

  Neil Spencer had been held captive for two months, but had been well looked after the whole time. Someone had taken care of him—until something went wrong, that is, whereupon Neil had been killed and his body dumped at the exact spot of his abduction. Pete remembered what he’d thought on the waste ground that night. That it was like someone had returned a present they no longer wanted. He thought about it differently now.

  Maybe it was more like a failed experiment.

  Upstairs, Jake started screaming.