by Alex North
“We did everything we could,” Amanda told the room. “We didn’t find Neil Spencer in time. But make no mistake, we are going to find the person that did this to him.”
And Pete could tell that she believed what she was saying just as passionately as he had all those years ago. Because you had to. Something awful had happened on your watch, and the only way to ease the pain was to do everything you could to put it right. To catch whoever was responsible before they hurt anybody else. Or at least try.
We are going to find the person that did this.
He hoped that was true.
Twenty-four
It was astonishing how quickly life could revert to normal when it had to.
After the police left, I decided there was no point in either Jake or me trying to go back to sleep, and as a result, by half past eight, I felt half dead on my feet. I went through the motions of preparing him breakfast and getting him ready for school. After what had happened, it seemed ridiculous, but I had no excuse for keeping him home. In fact, given his performance in front of the officers earlier on, a horrible part of me wanted not to be around him right now.
While he ate cereal, still refusing to speak to me, I stood in the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, and downed it in one. I didn’t really know what to do or how to feel. With just a handful of hours’ distance, the events of the night seemed distant and surreal. Could I be sure I’d seen what I’d seen? Perhaps it had been my imagination. But no, I had seen it. A better father—an average one, even—would have convinced the police to take him seriously. A better father would have a son who talked to him, not undermined him. Who could see that I was just scared for him and trying to protect him.
My hand tightened around the glass.
You’re not your father, Tom.
Rebecca’s quiet voice in my head.
Never forget that.
I looked down at the empty glass in my hand. My grip was too tight on it. That awful memory came back to me—shattering glass; my mother screaming—and I put it down on the counter quickly, before I could start to fail in an altogether worse way.
* * *
At quarter to nine, Jake and I walked to school together, him trailing along to the side of me, still resisting any attempts at conversation. It was only when we reached the gates that he finally spoke to me.
“Who’s Neil Spencer, Daddy?”
“I don’t know.” Despite the subject matter, I was relieved that he was talking to me. “A boy from Featherbank. I think he went missing earlier this year; I remember reading something about it. Nobody knows what happened to him.”
“Owen said he was dead.”
“Owen sounds like a charming little boy.”
It was clear that Jake was thinking about adding something to that, but then he changed his mind.
“He said I was sitting in Neil’s chair.”
“That’s stupid. You didn’t get a place in the school because this Neil kid went missing. Someone else moved to a new house like we did.” I frowned. “And anyway, they’d have all been in a different classroom last year, wouldn’t they?”
Jake looked at me curiously.
“Twenty-eight,” he said.
“Twenty-eight what?”
“Twenty-eight children,” he said. “Plus me is twenty-nine.”
“Exactly.” I had no idea if that was true, but I went with it. “They have classes of thirty here. So wherever Neil is, his chair is waiting for him.”
“Do you think he will come home?”
We stepped into the playground.
“I don’t know, mate.”
“Can I have a hug, Daddy?”
I looked down at him. From the expression on his face now, last night and this morning might as well not have happened at all. But then, he was seven. Arguments were always resolved in his time and on his terms. In this instance, I was too tired not to accept that.
“Of course you can.”
“Because even when we argue—”
“We still love each other. Very much.”
I knelt down, and the tight embrace felt like it was powering me back up a little. That a hug like this, every so often, would keep me running. And then he ambled inside past Mrs. Shelley without giving me even a backward glance. I walked back out through the gate, hoping he didn’t get into any more trouble today.
But if he did …
Well, he did.
Just let him be him.
“Hello, there.”
I turned to find Karen slightly behind me, walking just fast enough to catch up.
“Hey,” I said. “How are you?”
“Looking forward to a few hours’ peace and quiet.” She fell into step beside me. “How did Jake do yesterday?”
“He went up to yellow,” I said.
“I have no idea what that means.”
I explained the traffic light system. The gravity and supposed seriousness of it seemed so meaningless after the events of the night that I almost laughed at the end.
“That sounds fucking abominable,” she said.
“That’s what I thought.”
I wondered if there was some nominal moment when playground parents decided to drop a certain level of pretense and swear like normal people. If there was, I was glad to have passed it.
“In some ways it’s a badge of honor, though,” she said. “He’ll be the envy of his classmates. Adam said they didn’t have much of a chance to play together.”
“Jake said Adam was nice,” I lied.
“He also said Jake talked to himself a bit.”
“Yes, he does do that sometimes. Imaginary friends.”
“Right,” Karen said. “I sympathize with him completely. Some of my best friends are imaginary. I’m joking, obviously. But Adam went through that, and I’m sure I did too when I was a kid. You probably did as well.”
I frowned. A memory suddenly came back to me.
“Mister Night,” I said.
“Sorry?”
“God, I haven’t thought about that in years.” I ran my hand through my hair. How had I forgotten about it? “Yeah, I did have an imaginary friend. When I was younger, I used to tell my mother that someone came into my room at night and hugged me. Mister Night. That’s what I called him.”
“Yeah … that’s pretty creepy. But then, kids say scary stuff all the time. There are whole websites devoted to it. You should write that down and submit it.”
“Maybe I will.” But it reminded me of something else. “Jake’s been saying other weird things recently. If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken. Have you ever heard that?”
“Hmmm.” Karen thought about it. “It does ring a bell; I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before. It’s one of those rhymes kids say in the playground, I think.”
“Right. Maybe that’s where he heard it, then.”
Except not in this playground, of course, because Jake had said it the night before his first day. Maybe it was some common kid thing that I didn’t know about—something from one of those television shows I put on for him and then zoned out without paying attention to.
I sighed.
“I just hope he has a better day. I worry about him.”
“That’s natural. What does your wife say?”
“She died last year,” I said. “I’m not sure how well he’s coping with that. Understandably, I suppose.”
Karen was silent for a moment.
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks. I’m not sure how well I’m coping either, to be honest. I’m never sure whether I’m being a good father or not. Whether I’m doing the best I can for him.”
“That’s also natural. I’m sure you are.”
“Maybe it’s whether my best is good enough that’s the real question.”
“And again, I’m sure it is.”
She stopped and put her hands in her pockets. We’d come to a junction, and it was obvious from our mutual body lan
guage that she was heading on straight here while I was turning right.
“But whatever,” she said, “it sounds like both of you have had a rough time of it. So I think—not that you asked for my opinion, I realize, but fuck it—that maybe you should stop being so hard on yourself?”
“Maybe.”
“Just a little, at least?”
“Maybe.”
“Easier said than done, I know.” She gathered herself together, her whole body suddenly like a sigh. “Anyway. Catch you later on. Have a good one.”
“You too.”
I thought about that the rest of the way home. Maybe you should stop being so hard on yourself. There was probably some truth in that, because, after all, I was just fumbling through life the same as everyone else, wasn’t I? Trying to do my best. But back home, I still paced around the downstairs of the house, unsure what to do with myself. Earlier on, I’d been thinking it would be good to have some time without Jake. Now, with the house empty and silent around me, I felt an urge to have him as close as possible.
Because I needed to keep him safe.
And I hadn’t imagined what had happened last night.
That brought on a flash of panic. If the police weren’t going to help us, that meant that I had to. Walking through the empty rooms, I felt a sense of desperation—an urgent need to do something, even though I had no idea what. I ended up in my office. The laptop had been left on standby overnight. I nudged the trackpad and the screen came to life, revealing the words there.
Rebecca …
She would know what to do right now; she always had. I pictured her sitting cross-legged on the floor with Jake, playing enthusiastically with whatever toys were between them. And curled up on our old couch, reading to him, his head underneath her chin and their two bodies so close that they looked like a single person. Whenever he’d called out in the night, Rebecca would have already been padding through to him as I was still waking up. And it had always been her he called for.
I deleted the words I’d written yesterday and then typed three new sentences.
I miss you. I feel like I’m failing our son and I don’t know what to do.
I’m sorry.
I stared at the screen for a moment.
Enough.
Enough wallowing. As difficult as everything might be, it was my job to look after my son, and if my best wasn’t sufficient, then I’d have to get better.
I walked back to the front door. It had a lock and a chain, but that clearly wasn’t good enough. So I would install a bolt as well, too high for Jake to reach on his own. Motion detectors at the bottom of the stairs. It could all be done. None of this was insurmountable, whatever my self-doubt was telling me.
But there was something else I could do first, and so I turned my attention to the pile of mail on the stairs behind me. There had been another two letters for Dominic Barnett, both of them debt collection notices. I took them to my office, closed down Word on the laptop, and opened the Web browser instead.
Let’s see who you are, Dominic Barnett.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to discover about him online. A Facebook page, perhaps—something with a photo that would tell me whether he was the man who’d called around yesterday—or if not that, maybe a forwarding address of some kind that I could follow up in the real world. Anything that might help me to protect Jake and work out what the hell was going on with my house.
I found a photograph on the very first search. Dominic Barnett was not my mysterious visitor. He was younger, with a full head of jet-black hair. But the picture wasn’t on a social media site.
Instead, it was beside a news item at the top of the search page:
POLICE TREAT DEATH OF LOCAL MAN AS MURDER
The room receded around me. I stared at the words until they began to lose their meaning. The house had gone silent, and all I could hear was the thud of my heartbeat.
And then—
Creak.
I glanced at the ceiling. That noise again, the same as before, as though someone had taken a single step in Jake’s bedroom. My skin tingled as I remembered what had happened last night—the figure I’d imagined standing at the base of my bed, its hair splayed out like the little girl that Jake had drawn. The sensation of my foot being shaken.
Wake up, Tom.
But unlike the man at the door, that had been my imagination. I’d been half asleep, after all. It had been nothing more than a remnant of a nightmare of the past, shaped by fears from the present.
There was nothing in my house.
Determined to take my mind off the noise, I forced myself to click on the article.
POLICE TREAT DEATH OF LOCAL MAN AS MURDER
Police have revealed that they are treating the death of Dominic Barnett, whose body was found in woodland on Tuesday, as murder.
Barnett, 42, of Garholt Street, Featherbank, was discovered at the edge of a stream by children playing in Hollingbeck Wood. Today, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Lyons revealed to the press that Barnett had died as a result of “significant” head injuries. A number of possible motives for the attack were being explored, but items recovered at the scene suggested that robbery was not among them.
“I would like to take this opportunity to reassure the public at large,” Lyons said. “Mr. Barnett was known to officers, and we believe this to be an isolated incident. However, we have increased patrols in the area, and we encourage anyone with any information to come forward immediately.”
I read it through again, the panic inside me intensifying. From the street name, there was no doubt that this was the right Dominic Barnett. He had lived in this house. Maybe sat exactly where I was right now, or slept in what had become Jake’s bedroom.
And he had been murdered in April this year.
Trying to keep calm, I clicked back and searched for more articles. The facts, such as they were, emerged piecemeal, and many of them from between the lines. Mr. Barnett was known to officers. Careful phrasing, but the implication appeared to be that he’d been involved with drugs in some way, and that this was presumed to be the motive for his murder. Hollingbeck Wood was south of Featherbank, on the other side of the river. Why Barnett had been there was unclear. A murder weapon was recovered a week later, and the reports tailed off shortly afterward. From what I could find online, his killer had never been caught.
Which meant that they were still out there.
The realization brought an awful crawling sensation with it. I didn’t know what to do. Call the police again? What I’d discovered didn’t seem to add much to what I’d already told them. I would call them, I decided, because I had to do something. But I needed more information first.
After some deliberation, and with my hands shaking, I searched through the paperwork I’d kept on the house purchase, found the address I needed, then picked up my keys. The extra security would have to wait, for the moment. There was one person who would be able to tell me more about Dominic Barnett, and I figured it was time to talk to her.
Twenty-five
It always ends where it starts, Amanda thought.
She was looking through the CCTV footage that had been retrieved from the area around the waste ground, and couldn’t help remembering that, two months ago, she’d been examining images of these exact same streets. Back then it had been in the hope of seeing someone taking Neil Spencer away. Now she was searching for someone returning the boy’s body. But so far the result was the same.
Nothing.
Early days, she told herself—but that thought was like ash in her head. It was actually far too fucking late, not least for Neil Spencer himself. Her mind kept flashing back to the sight of his body, even though dwelling on the horrors she’d seen last night—on her failure to find Neil in time—wasn’t going to help. What she needed to do instead was concentrate on the work. One foot in front of the other. One detail at a time. That was the way they’d eventually get the bastard who’d done those things to that little boy.
Another flash.
She shook her head, then looked toward the back of the room, where Pete Willis was working quietly at the desk he’d been allocated. After she’d had the chance to sit down herself, she’d found herself keeping a surreptitious eye on him. Occasionally he picked up the phone and made a call; the rest of the time his attention was totally focused on the photographs and paperwork before him. Frank Carter knew something, and Pete was working through the visits received by the man’s friends and associates in the prison, trying to figure out if one of them might be responsible for passing Carter information from the outside world. But it was Pete himself who fascinated her now.
How could he be so calm?
Except that she knew he was suffering too, below the surface. She remembered how he’d been yesterday, after visiting Frank Carter, and then on the waste ground last night. If he seemed detached now, it was only because he was distracting himself in the exact same way she was trying to. And if he was succeeding, it was simply because he’d had so much more practice.
Amanda wanted to ask him the secret.
Instead, she forced her attention back to the CCTV files, already knowing deep down that it would yield nothing, just like two months ago, when her team had slowly identified and eliminated the individuals caught on the village’s meager selection of cameras. It was frustrating work. The more you accomplished, the worse it felt like you were doing. But it was necessary.
She picked her way through the fuzzy images. Freeze-frames of men, women, and children. All of them would have to be interviewed, even though none of them would have witnessed anything significant. The man they were looking for was too careful for that. And it would be the same with the vehicles. Her conviction during the briefing had been real, and a part of her was still cultivating that now, but she knew deep down the feeling was impotent. The fact remained that it wasn’t difficult to drive around Featherbank and avoid CCTV. Not if you knew what you were doing.
On the pad beside her, she jotted that thought down.
Knowledge of camera position?
But again, she’d made the same note two months earlier. History repeating itself.