Pete watched the man’s huge chest rising and falling as he breathed slowly, taking in the details before him.
“Tell me about this man, Peter,” Carter said.
“I’m more interested in what you know.”
Pete waited him out. Eventually Carter looked up, then tapped the photograph gently with one huge finger.
“This man is a bit smarter than the others, isn’t he? He used a false name to visit, but he had the paperwork to back it up. You’ve looked into it, and you know it wasn’t real.”
That was true. The man had provided identification at the time of his visits: his name was Liam Adams, he was twenty-nine years old, and he lived with his parents, thirty miles away from Featherbank. Officers had arrived at the property first thing that morning, only to be met with blank incomprehension—and then horror—on the faces of Liam’s parents.
Because their son had died over a decade ago.
“Go on,” Pete told Carter.
“Do you know how easy it is to buy a new identity, Peter? Much simpler than you imagine. And like I said, he’s clever, this one. If you want to send a message to someone these days, you have to be, don’t you? This right here.” Carter lowered his voice. “This is a man who takes care.”
“Tell me more about him, Frank.”
But instead of answering, Carter stared down at the photograph again for a few more seconds, studying it. It was as though he were looking at someone he’d heard a great deal about and was now curious to see him finally. But then he sniffed loudly, suddenly uninterested in whatever he saw, and pushed the photo back across the table.
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“And like I said, that’s always been your problem.”
Carter smiled at him, but his eyes had gone blank now.
“You just don’t listen, Peter.”
* * *
Pete didn’t let his frustration out until he was back at the car, where Amanda was waiting for him. He clambered into the passenger seat and slammed the door, the photographs he was carrying spilling from his hand onto the floor mat.
“Shit.”
He leaned over and gathered them together, even though only one was important. After he’d rammed the others back into the envelope, he kept that picture out, resting it on top of his knees. A man with a dead teenager’s name, with black glasses and brown hair that could easily be a disguise, or have been changed by now. The man could be almost any age. He could be almost anyone.
“I am guessing,” Amanda said, “that Carter was not forthcoming?”
“He was his usual charming self.”
Pete ran a hand through his hair, angry with himself. The last time, yes, and he had survived it. But as always, he had come out of the conversation with nothing, even though Carter knew something.
“Fucker,” he said.
“Tell me,” Amanda said.
He took a moment to compose himself, and then ran through the conversation in detail. The idea that he didn’t listen to Carter was rubbish; of course he listened to him. Every conversation with Carter seeped into him. The words were the opposite of sweat, soaking in and leaving him clammy on the inside.
When he was done, Amanda considered it.
“You think Carter knows who this man is?”
“I’m not sure.” Pete looked down at the photograph. “Maybe. He certainly knows something about him. Or perhaps he doesn’t, and he’s just enjoying seeing me scrabble around, trying to make sense of his every fucking word.”
“You’re swearing more than usual, Pete.”
“I’m angry.”
You just don’t listen.
“Run through it again,” Amanda said patiently. “Not this visit. The last one. That’s what he said you hadn’t been listening to, right?”
Pete hesitated, then thought back.
“It always ends where it starts,” he said. “It started at the waste ground, so that’s where Neil Spencer was always going to be returned to. Except Carter said that wasn’t what he’d meant.”
“So what did he mean?”
“Who knows?” Pete wanted to throw up his hands. “Then there was the dream about Tony Smith. But that wasn’t real. He just made that up to taunt me.”
Amanda was silent for a few seconds.
“But if so,” she said, “he made it up a certain way. And you said it yourself—that’s why you visit him. You’ve always hoped he’d give something away without meaning to.”
Pete was ready to protest, but she was right. If the dream hadn’t been real, then Carter must have conjured it up himself, choosing to describe it in the way he had. And it was possible some truth had slipped out through the gaps there.
He ran through it in his mind now.
“He wasn’t sure it was Tony.”
“In the dream?”
“Yes.” Pete nodded. “The boy’s T-shirt was pulled up over his face, so he couldn’t see it properly. He said that was the way he liked it.”
“Just like Neil Spencer.”
“Yes.”
“None of which was ever made public.” Amanda shook her head in frustration. “And Carter was a sadist. Why wouldn’t he want to see the faces of his victims?”
Pete had no answer to that. Carter had always refused to discuss his motivations. But while there had never been any apparent sexual element to the murders, Amanda was right: he had hurt those children badly, and it was clear he was a sadist. As to why he covered their faces, there were countless possible explanations for that. If you asked five different profilers—and they had at the time—you got five different answers. Perhaps it was to make the victims physically easier to control. Or to muffle sound. To disorientate them. To scare them. To stop them from seeing him. To stop him from seeing them. One of the reasons profiling was such bullshit was that different offenders almost always had massively different reasons for the exact same behavior, and …
Pete hesitated.
“All these bastards are the same,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“That’s what Carter told me.” He frowned. “Something like that, anyway. When he was talking about which of the children it was in the dream. All these bastards are the same. Any one will do.”
“Go on.”
But he fell silent again, trying to think through the implications and feeling that some kind of understanding was suddenly within reach. It hadn’t mattered to Carter who he had been hurting. More than that, he hadn’t wanted to see the victims’ faces at all.
But why?
To stop him from seeing them.
Was that perhaps because he had wanted to imagine someone else in their place? Pete stared down at the photograph again—at the man who could be anyone—and recalled the strange look on Carter’s face. Despite himself, he had been curious about the man in the photo. Once again, it had been as though he were seeing someone he had been interested in for a long time but was only finally laying eyes on. It made Pete think of something else. How he had fought so hard not to think of Tom over the years, and yet had found it impossible not to evaluate him when they had met. How even though traces remained of the boy, the man was so different from the little boy he remembered.