The Whisper Man

“You have to close doors,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You have to keep them locked.”

“Jake—”

“If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.”

A chill ran through me. Jake looked scared, and the phrase certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he would have come up with by himself.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“Where did you hear it, then?”

He didn’t answer. But then I realized he didn’t need to.

“The little girl?”

He nodded, and I shook my head, confused. Jake wouldn’t have thought up that rhyme by himself, but equally, he couldn’t have heard it from someone who wasn’t there. So perhaps I’d been wrong at the 567 Club and the little girl was real? Perhaps Jake had just called goodbye without realizing she had gone outside? Except he had been alone at the table when I’d arrived. It must have been one of the other children, then, trying to scare him. From the expression on his face right now, it had worked.

“You’re completely safe, Jake. I promise you.”

“But I’m not in charge of the door!”

“No,” I said. “I am. And so there is nothing for you to worry about. I don’t care what somebody told you. You need to listen to me now. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Ever.”

He was listening, at least, although I wasn’t sure he was convinced.

“I promise you. And do you know why I won’t let anything happen to you? Because I love you. Very much indeed. Even when we argue.”

That brought the slightest of smiles.

“Do you believe me?” I said.

He nodded, looking a little more reassured now.

“Good.” I ruffled his hair and stood up. “Because it’s true. Good night, sweetie.”

“Good night, Daddy.”

“I’ll come up and check on you in five minutes.”

I turned the light off as I left the room, then padded downstairs as quietly as I could. But rather than collapsing on the couch as I wanted to, I stopped at the front door.

If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.

Rubbish, of course, wherever he had heard it. But the words still bothered me. And just as the idea of the little girl trailing us across the country had disturbed me, now I couldn’t shake the image of her sitting next to him, her hair swept out to one side and that strange smile on her face, whispering frightening things in his ear.

I hooked up the chain for the night.

Ten

DI Pete Willis had spent the weekend miles away from Featherbank, walking in the nearby countryside and trailing a stick through random tangles of undergrowth. He checked the hedges he passed. Occasionally, when the fields were empty, he hopped over stiles and trawled through the grass there.

Anyone watching might have mistaken him for a rambler, and to all intents and purposes he supposed that was what he was. These days, in fact, he deliberately thought of such expeditions as walks and outings—as just another way for an old man to fill his time. It had been twenty years now, after all. And yet a part of him remained focused. Rather than absorbing the beauty of the world around him, he was constantly searching the ground for bone fragments and snatches of old fabric.

Blue jogging pants. Little black polo shirt.

For some reason, it was always the clothes that stayed with him.

However much he tried not to think about it, Pete would never forget the day he’d viewed the horrors plastered inside the extension Frank Carter had built on the side of his house. Returning to the department afterward, he had still been reeling from the experience, but as he stepped through the sliding doors there had at least been some sense of relief. Four little boys had been killed. But even though Carter had remained at large for the moment, the monster finally had a name—a real one, not the one the papers had given him—and four victims would be the end of it.

In that moment, he had believed it was nearly over.

But then he had seen Miranda and Alan Smith sitting in the reception. Even now he could still picture them clearly. Alan had been wearing a suit and sitting bolt upright, staring into space, his hands forming a heart between his knees. Miranda’s hands had been pressed between her thighs, and she had been leaning against her husband, resting her head on his shoulder with her long brown hair trailing down his chest. It was late afternoon, but they had both looked exhausted, like long-distance travelers who were trying and failing to sleep where they sat.

Their son Tony was missing.

And twenty years on from that afternoon, he still was.

Frank Carter had managed a day and a half on the run before he was finally arrested, his van pulled over on a country road nearly a hundred miles from Featherbank. There was forensic evidence that Tony Smith had been held in the back of his van, but no sign of the boy’s body. And while Carter had admitted killing Tony, he refused to reveal where he had discarded his remains.

The weeks that followed had seen extensive searches along the myriad possible routes Carter could have taken, all of them to no avail. Pete had attended several. The number of searchers had dwindled over time until, two decades later, he was the only one still out searching. Even Miranda and Alan Smith had moved on. They lived far away from Featherbank now. If Tony had been alive, he would be twenty-seven years old. Pete knew that Miranda and Alan’s daughter, Claire, born in the tumultuous years that followed, had just turned sixteen. He attached no blame to the Smiths for rebuilding their lives after the murder of their son, but the fact remained that he himself could not let it go.

A little boy was missing.

A little boy needed to be found and brought home.

As he drove back into Featherbank now, the homes he passed looked comfortable. Their windows were illuminated in the darkness, and he could imagine whispers of laughter and conversation drifting out from within.

People together, as people should be.

He felt a degree of loneliness at that, but you could find pleasure where you looked for it, even in as solitary a life as his. The road was lined with enormous trees, their leaves lost in the darkness except for where the streetlights touched them, scattering the street with intricate yellow-green explosions that undulated in the soft breeze. It was so quiet and peaceful in Featherbank that it was almost impossible to believe it had once played host to atrocities as terrible as Frank Carter’s.

A flyer was attached to the lamppost at the end of his street—one of the many MISSING posters that had been put up in the previous weeks by Neil Spencer’s family. There was a photograph of the boy, details of his clothing, and an appeal for witnesses to come forward with information. Both the image and the text had faded under the incessant beat of the summer sun, so that, as he drove past it now, it reminded him of wrinkled flowers left at the scene of an old accident. A little boy who had disappeared was beginning to disappear for a second time.

Nearly two months had passed since Neil Spencer went missing, and despite the resources, heart, and soul that had been poured into the investigation, the police knew little more now than they had on the evening he’d vanished. As far as Pete could tell, Amanda Beck had done everything right. It was a reflection of her efficiency, in fact, that even DCI Lyons, a man with a constant eye on his own reputation, had stood by her and left her in charge of the case. Although the last time Pete had passed Amanda in the corridor, she had looked so worn out that he had wondered if that wasn’t its own kind of punishment.