The Whisper Man

“Yes, it is. You know it is.”

He shook his head. It was important to be sensible and grown up about this, because Daddy was relying on him to be a good boy. So he continued to work on his picture, as though she wasn’t really there. Which, of course, she wasn’t.

Even so, he could sense her exasperation.

“You don’t want him to meet her,” she said.

Jake kept drawing.

“You don’t want your mummy replaced, do you?”

Jake stopped drawing.

No, of course he didn’t want that. And that wasn’t going to happen, was it? But he couldn’t deny there had been something a little strange about Daddy’s behavior when he was talking about what was going to happen tonight. Again, the feeling wasn’t precise enough to put a name to, but everything did seem a little off-balance and wrong, like there was something he wasn’t being told. But nobody was going to replace Mummy. And Daddy didn’t want that either.

But then he remembered the things Daddy had written.

They had talked about that, though, hadn’t they? Just like things in books, it wasn’t real. And besides, Daddy had been so sad recently, and this was something that might help with that. It was important. Jake needed to let Daddy be Daddy, so that he could be him for Jake again too.

He had to be brave.

A moment later, the little girl rested her head on his shoulder, her hair stiff and unyielding against his neck.

“I’m so scared,” she said softly. “Don’t let him go, Jake.”

He was about to say something else, but then he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, and the little girl was gone.

Forty-seven

When we got back downstairs, Jake was still sitting on the floor by his picture, pencil in hand. But he’d stopped drawing now and was staring off into space. In fact, he looked as if he were about to cry. I walked over and crouched down beside him.

“You okay, mate?”

He nodded, but I didn’t believe him.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Hmmm.” I frowned. “Not sure I believe you on that one. Are you worried about tonight?”

He hesitated.

“Maybe a little.”

“Well, that’s understandable. But you’ll be fine. To be honest, I’d have thought you’d be looking forward to spending time with someone else for a change.”

He looked at me at that, and while he still seemed so small and fragile, I didn’t think I’d ever seen such an old expression on his face before now.

“Do you think I don’t want to be with you?” he said.

“Oh, Jake. Come here.”

I adjusted my position so that he could sit on my knee for a cuddle. He perched on me, and then pressed his small body against mine.

“I don’t think that at all. That wasn’t what I meant.”

Except, it had been. Kind of, anyway. One of my biggest fears since Rebecca’s death was that I couldn’t connect with him. That we were strangers to each other. And a part of me did feel he might be better off without me and my fumbling attempts at fatherhood—that when he walked into school without a backward glance, it was how he felt all of the time.

It made me wonder if he thought the same about me. Maybe my going out this evening had made him feel I didn’t want to be with him. That I’d booked him into the 567 Club because I wanted to be rid of him. While I did need my own time and space, nothing could have been further from the truth.

How sad that was, I thought. Both of us feeling the same. Both of us trying to meet in the middle but somehow always missing each other.

“And I want to be with you too,” I said. “I won’t be out for long, I promise.”

He tightened his grip on me slightly.

“Do you have to go?”

I took a deep breath.

The answer, I supposed, was no, I didn’t have to, and I was reluctant to leave if it was going to upset him badly.

“I don’t have to,” I said. “But it will be fine, I promise. You’ll go to bed soon, fall asleep, and when you wake up I’ll be home again.”

He was silent, thinking over what I’d just told him. But the whole time, his anxiety seemed to be creeping into me as well. Apprehension. Dread, almost—the sudden fear that something bad was going to happen. It was silly, and there was no reason to think that. Even so, I could stay home, and I was about to tell him just that, but he nodded before I had the chance.

“Okay.”

“Right,” I said. “Good. I love you, Jake.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

He disentangled himself from me, and I stood up. My father had been waiting by the door the whole time and I walked over to him.

“Jake okay?”

“Yes. He’ll be fine. But any problems at all, you’ve got my cell number.”

“I have it. But everything will be fine. Just strange for him, I guess.” He raised his voice a little. “But we’ll get along grand, Jake. You’re going to be good for me, right?”

Jake, who was drawing again now, nodded in reply.

I watched him for a moment, crouched down and concentrating on his picture, and I felt an indescribable burst of love for him. But it was one that hardened into determination. We were going to get back on track, the two of us. Everything was going to be okay. I wanted to be with him, and he wanted to be with me, and somehow, between us, we would figure out a way to make that work.

“A couple of hours,” I told my father again. “That’s all it will be.”

Forty-eight

“We’re nearly there,” DS Dyson said.

“I know,” Amanda told him.

She’d made Dyson drive, if only to keep him off his phone for an hour. They were fifty miles away from Featherbank now, heading along one edge of a large university campus. A corner took them into what was obviously the student heartland of the city, the houses all redbrick and cramped together on thin streets. Each was at least three or four stories high: buildings where five or six people could live together in groups, or landlords could rent single rooms out, creating collections of random strangers who remained strangers. A square mile of disparate people. A place it was cheap and easy to disappear into.

And this was where David Parker, previously known as Francis Carter, had chosen to make his home.

The ID was a solid one—right age, and a close visual match for the build of Victor Tyler’s prison visitor. They’d found him an hour before Pete had been due to leave, which had worried her at first, as she had been concerned he might overturn whatever arrangement he’d made earlier and insist on being involved. And she could tell that he had wanted to. But instead, he had watched quietly as Amanda made arrangements with the local force to visit the address, and when it had been time for him to leave, he had done so without complaint—just wished her luck and asked her to keep him informed on any developments. With the decision already made, she thought he might even have been relieved.

If only she could say the same—a part of her wished it were Pete with her right now. Because while everything they’d talked about back at the department remained true—they had no concrete evidence that Francis Carter was involved in the case at all, and this was going to be a routine visit in the first instance—she could feel it all the same. A tingle in her stomach, halfway between fear and excitement. It was telling her that she was close. That something was going to happen, and that she needed to be on guard and ready for it when it did.