The Whisper Man

He drove to the department and went to the gym.

Afterward, feeling calmer, he went upstairs. For a moment, he stared at the blissful piles of safe, innocuous paperwork in his office, then found the old, malignant bundle of notes he was going to need and headed to the operations room one floor above.

His calm faded slightly as he opened the door. It was still ten minutes before the briefing was due to begin, but the room was already heaving with officers. Nobody was talking; every face he could see looked somber. Most of these men and women would have worked this case from the beginning, and whatever the odds, each of them would have clung on to hope. By now they all knew what had been found last night. Before today, a child had been missing. Now a child was dead.

He leaned against a wall at the back of the room, aware as he did that gazes were falling on him. It was understandable. While his initial involvement in the case had come to nothing, all of them must know that his presence here now was not a coincidence. He spotted DCI Lyons sitting near the front, looking back at him. Pete met his eyes for a moment, trying to read the expression on the man’s face. Like last night at the waste ground, it was blank, which only left Pete free to imagine. Was the man feeling an odd sense of triumph? It seemed unfair to contemplate such an idea, but it was certainly possible. Despite the disparity in their career trajectories since, Pete knew that Lyons had always resented him on some level for being the one to catch Frank Carter. This recent development meant the case never really had been closed. And here was Lyons, presiding over what might turn out to be the endgame, with Pete reduced now to the status of a pawn.

He folded his arms, stared at the floor, and waited.

Amanda arrived a minute later, stalking quickly through the assembled throng toward the front of the room. Even from the brief side view he got of her, it was obvious she was harried and tired. Same clothes as last night, he noticed. She’d slept in one of the overnight suites or, more likely, hadn’t slept at all. As she took to the small stage, there was a subdued, defeated look about her.

“Right, everyone,” she said. “You’ve all heard the news. Yesterday evening we had a report that a child’s body had been found on the waste ground off Gair Lane. Officers attended and secured the scene. The identity of the victim has yet to be confirmed, but we believe this to be Neil Spencer.”

They had all known it already, but still: Pete watched the slump travel around the room. The emotional temperature of the room dropped. The silence among the assembled officers, already absolute, somehow seemed to intensify.

“We also believe it to be a case of third-party involvement. There are significant injuries to the body.”

Amanda’s voice almost broke at that and he saw her wince slightly. Too hard on herself. Under different circumstances, it might have been perceived as weakness, but Pete didn’t think it would be in this room right now. He watched as she gathered herself.

“Details of which are obviously not going to be released to the press at this time. We have a cordon in place, but the media know we’ve found a body. That is all they are going to know until we get a handle on what’s happening here.”

A woman by the wall was nodding to herself. Pete recognized it as the kind of action he had made in the deepest throes of his addiction, pining for a drink and riding out the pain.

“The body has been removed from the scene and a postmortem will take place this morning. We have an estimated time of death somewhere between three and five P.M. yesterday. Assuming this is Neil Spencer, he was found in roughly the same place he went missing, which may be significant. We also believe Neil was killed at a different location, presumably wherever he had been held. Fingers crossed that forensics will give us some clue as to where that might be. In the meantime, we’ll be going over all the CCTV in the area. We’ll be knocking on every door in the vicinity. Because I am simply not having this monster wandering around Featherbank undetected. I’m not having it.”

She looked up. Despite the obvious tiredness and upset, there was fire in her eyes now.

“All of us here—we’ve all worked on this investigation. And even if we’d steeled ourselves, this is not the result any of us were hoping for. So let me be absolutely clear. It will not be allowed to stand. Do we agree?”

Pete glanced around again. A few nods here and there; the room coming back to life. He admired the sentiment and acknowledged the need for it right now, but he also remembered giving equally angry speeches twenty years ago, and while he had believed them at the time, he knew now that things not only stood whether you wanted them to or not, but that sometimes they followed you forever.

“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.”