The Whisper Man

“Could that have been Jake?” The officer looked at my son. Jake was still curled up next to me, staring off into space as though he were the only person in the entire world. “Sometimes children talk to themselves.”

Not something I wanted to get into.

“No,” I said. “There was definitely somebody there. I saw this man’s fingers holding the mail slot open. I heard him. The voice was older. He was trying to persuade Jake to open the door—and he was going to as well. God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t woken up in time.”

The reality of the situation crashed down on me then. In my mind’s eye I saw the scene again, and realized how close it had all been. If I hadn’t been there, then Jake would be gone now. I imagined him missing, with the police seated across from me for a different reason, and felt helpless. Despite my frustration with his behavior, I wanted to wrap my arms around him—to protect him and hold him close. But I knew that I couldn’t. That he wouldn’t let me, or even want me to right now.

“How did Jake get the keys?”

“I left them in my office across the hall.” I shook my head. “That’s not a mistake I’ll be making again.”

“That’s probably wise.”

“And what about you, Jake?” The female officer leaned forward, smiling kindly. “Can you tell us anything at all about what happened?”

Jake shook his head.

“You can’t? Why were you at the door, sweetheart?”

He shrugged almost imperceptibly, and then seemed to move a little farther away from me. The woman leaned back, still looking at Jake, her head tilted slightly to one side. Evaluating him.

“There was another man,” I said quickly. “He came by the house yesterday. He was hanging around the garage, acting strangely. When I confronted him, he said he’d grown up here and wanted to look around.”

The male officer looked interested in that.

“How did you confront him?”

“He came to the door.”

“Oh, I see.” He made a note on his pad. “Can you describe him?”

I did, and he scribbled away. But it was clear that the man actively knocking on the door had made the development significantly less interesting to him. Plus, it was difficult to convey how uneasy the man had made me feel. There had been nothing physically threatening about him, and yet he had still seemed dangerous on some level.

“Neil Spencer,” I remembered.

The male officer stopped writing.

“I’m sorry?”

“I think that was his name. We’ve only just moved here. But another little boy went missing, didn’t he? Earlier this summer?”

The two officers exchanged a glance.

“What do you know about Neil Spencer?” the man asked me.

“Nothing. Jake’s teacher just mentioned him. I was going to look it up online, but it was a … busy night.” And again, I didn’t want to go into the argument Jake and I had had. “I was working.”

But, of course, that was the wrong thing to say as well, because work was writing, and Jake had read what I’d done. I felt him shrink slightly beside me.

Frustration got the better of me.

“It’s just that I’d have thought this would be more worrying to you than it seems to be,” I said.

“Mr. Kennedy—”

“It feels like you don’t believe me.”

The man smiled. But it was a careful smile.

“It’s not a case of not believing you, Mr. Kennedy. But we can only work with what we have.” He looked at me for a moment, considering me in much the same way his partner was still evaluating my son. “We take everything seriously. We’ll log a record of this, but based on what you’ve told us, there’s not a vast amount we can do right now. As I said, I recommend you keep your keys out of your son’s way. Observe basic home security. Keep an eye out. And don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you see anyone else around your property who shouldn’t be here.”

I shook my head. Given what had happened—given that someone had tried to take my son—this response wasn’t remotely good enough. I was angry at myself, and I couldn’t help being angry at Jake as well. I was trying to help him! And in a minute the police would be gone, and it would just be me and him again. Alone. Neither of us up to the job of living with the other.

“Mr. Kennedy?” the female officer said gently. “Is it just you and Jake here? Does his mother live elsewhere?”

“His mother is dead.”

I said it too bluntly, a trace of the anger I was feeling escaping. She seemed taken aback.

“Oh. I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“I’m just … it’s hard. And what just happened tonight, it scared me.”

And that was the point when Jake came back to life, perhaps animated by anger of his own. What I’d written. The fact I’d just said his mother was dead so brazenly. He uncurled and slowly sat up straight, finally looking at me, his face expressionless. When he spoke, it was with a raspy, unearthly voice that sounded far too old for his years.

“I want to scare you,” he said.

Twenty-three

When the alarm went off, Pete lay very still for a moment, letting it ring on the bedside table. Something was wrong and he needed to prepare himself. Then there was a burst of panic as he remembered the events of yesterday evening. The sight of Neil Spencer’s body on the waste ground. The almost frantic race to get home afterward. And the reassuring weight of the bottle in his hand.

The clicks as he’d broken the seal.

And then …

Finally, he opened his eyes. The early morning sun was already strong, streaming through the thin blue curtains and falling in a wedge over the covers bunched up over his knees. Sometime in the night, sweating with heat, he must have thrown them off his upper body, and the tangle of material felt ridiculously heavy now, wrapped tightly around his knees.

He turned his head and looked at the bedside table.

The bottle was there. The seal was broken.

But the contents remained, full to the top.

He remembered how long he’d deliberated last night, battling the urge again and again as it came back at him from different angles, both he and the voice refusing to relent or retreat. He’d even brought the bottle and a tumbler up here to bed with him. Still fighting, even then.

And in the end, he had won.

Relief rushed through him. He glanced at the tumbler now. Before going to sleep, he had put the photograph of Sally on top of it. Even after everything that had happened—the horrors of the evening—that photograph and those memories had still been enough to keep him clean.

He tried not to think about the day ahead of him or the evenings to come.

Enough for now.

* * *

He showered and ate breakfast. Even without drinking, he felt so worn down that he contemplated not going to the gym. A briefing had been scheduled for first thing, and he needed to be prepared for it, to be filled in on the case. But he already felt soaked to the skin in it. As dispassionate as he’d tried to be when viewing Neil Spencer’s body, it was like pointing a camera without looking through the viewfinder; your mind took the photograph regardless. If anything, if he was going to be competent and professional in a couple of hours, he needed to empty some of that horror out.