The Whisper Man

“Lots of things fade,” Pete said. “Notoriety, for one.”

“Not in here.”

“In the outside world, though. People have forgotten all about you.”

“Oh, I’m certain that’s not true.”

“You’ve not been in the papers for a while, you know. Yesterday’s man. Barely even that, actually—this little boy went missing a couple of months ago, like you say, and you know how many of the news reports mentioned you?”

“I don’t know, Peter. Why don’t you tell me?”

“None of them.”

“Huh. Maybe I should start granting the interviews all those academics and journalists keep asking for? I might do that.”

He smirked, and the futility of the situation hit Pete. He was putting himself through this for nothing; Carter didn’t know anything. And it would end the same as it always did. He knew full well how he would be afterward—the way that talking to Carter brought everything back. Later, the pull of the kitchen cabinet would be stronger than ever.

“Yes, maybe you should.” He stood up, turned his back on Carter, and walked away. “Goodbye, Frank.”

“They might be interested in the whispers.”

Pete stopped, one hand on the door. A shiver ran up his back, then spread down his arms.

The whispers.

Neil Spencer had told his mother about a monster whispering outside his window, but that aspect of the boy’s disappearance had never been made public or found its way into the news. It could still be fishing, of course. Except that Carter had played it more triumphantly than that, like a trump card.

Pete turned around slowly.

Carter was still reclining nonchalantly in his chair, but there was a smug look on his face now. Just enough bait added to the hook to keep his fish from swimming off. And Pete was suddenly sure that the reference to whispers hadn’t been guesswork at all.

Somehow, the bastard knew.

But how?

Right now, more than ever before, he had to remain calm. Carter would feed on any sense of need he detected in the man across from him, and he already had enough of that to play with.

They might be interested in the whispers.

“What do you mean by that, Frank?”

“Well—the little boy saw a monster at his window, didn’t he? One that was talking to him.” Carter leaned forward again. “Talking. Very. Quietly.”

Pete tried to fight down the frustration, but it was beginning to whirl inside him. Carter knew something, and a little boy was missing. They needed to find him.

“How do you know about the whispers?” he said.

“Ah! That would be telling.”

“So tell me.”

Carter smiled. The expression of a man who had nothing to lose or gain beyond the pain and frustration of others.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “but first you have to give me something I want.”

“And what would that be?”

Carter leaned back, the amusement suddenly gone from his face now. For a moment his eyes were blank, but then the hate flared there, as visible as two pinpricks of fire.

“Bring my family to me,” he said.

“Your family?”

“That bitch and that little cunt. Bring them here and give me five minutes alone with them.”

Pete stared at him. For a second he was overwhelmed by the anger and madness blazing across the table from him. Then Carter threw back his head, rattled the chains at his wrists, and the silence in the room was broken as he laughed and laughed and laughed.

Sixteen

“Give him five minutes alone with his old family?” Amanda thought about it. ““Could we conceivably do that?”

But then she saw the look on Pete’s face.

“I’m joking, by the way.”

“I’m aware of that.”

He slumped down in the chair on the other side of her desk and closed his eyes.

Amanda watched him for a moment. He looked drained and diminished compared to their first meeting after Neil Spencer went missing. She didn’t know him well, of course, and their interactions over the past two months had hardly been extensive, but he’d struck her as … well, what? A man in control of his emotions. Excellent shape for a guy his age, obviously. Calm and capable. He’d barely wasted a word talking her through the old case, and had even been implacable and detached when he was showing her the photographs taken inside Frank Carter’s extension—scenes of horror that he’d witnessed firsthand. It had actually been quite intimidating. It had made her worry about how she was bearing up so far, never mind how she’d cope if it came to the worst.

It won’t.

The sensible coppers let it go. DCI Lyons was like that, she was sure, because that was the only way to climb—with as little weight holding you down as possible. Before Neil Spencer went missing, she’d imagined she would be the same, but she was no longer quite so sure. And if she’d initially thought Pete Willis was calm and detached, then looking at him now made her reevaluate that first impression. He was just good at keeping the world at a distance, she thought, and Frank Carter was a man who could get closer to him than most.

Not so surprising, given the history they shared, and the fact that one of Carter’s victims had never been found—a kid who had effectively gone missing on Pete’s watch. She glanced at her computer screen and saw the familiar photo of Neil Spencer in his football jersey. His absence was an actual physical ache inside her, and no matter how much she tried not to think about it, the feeling of failure worsened every day. She couldn’t imagine how bad it might feel after twenty years. She didn’t want to end up like the man across from her now.

It won’t come to that.

“Talk me through the accomplice theory again,” she said.

“There’s very little there, really.” Pete opened his eyes. “There’s a witness report of an older man with gray hair talking to Tony Smith that doesn’t match Carter. And then there are some overlaps on the abduction windows.”

“Pretty thin stuff.”

“I know. Sometimes people want things to be more complicated than they really are.”

“It’s possible for him to have committed these crimes entirely alone. Occam’s razor states that—”

“I know what Occam’s razor states.” Pete ran his hand through his hair. “Do not multiply entities unnecessarily. The simplest solution that fits all the facts is the one you go with.”

“Exactly.”

“And that’s what we do here, isn’t it? We get our guy, and we prove he’s done it, and that’s enough for us. So we tie a bow around the investigation, stick it in the filing cabinet, and move on. Case closed, job done. On to the next.”

She thought about Lyons again. About climbing.

“Because that’s what we have to do,” she said.

“But sometimes it’s not good enough.” Pete shook his head. “Sometimes things that look simple turn out to be much more complicated, and the extra stuff ends up being missed.”

“And the extra stuff in this case,” she said, “could include someone getting away with murder?”

“Who knows? I’ve tried not to think about it over the years.”