The Whisper Man

The phone rang and rang now.

He still wasn’t picking up.

“Fuck.”

I canceled the call as we reached the bottom of my street. Maybe he’d dialed by accident, or changed his mind about needing to talk to me. But I remembered how deferential he’d been earlier on, and how quietly pleased he’d seemed to be allowed to look after Jake and be allowed into our lives, in however small a way. He wouldn’t have called me unless he could have helped it. Not unless it had been important.

The field to the right was thick with the evening gloom. There seemed to be nobody out there right now, but it was already too dark to see to the far side. I started to walk even more quickly, aware that I was probably coming across as an absolute lunatic to Karen. But I was beginning to panic now, however irrational it was, and that mattered more.

Jake …

I reached the driveway.

The front door was open, a block of light slanted out across the path.

If you leave a door half open …

And then I really did start running.

“Tom—”

I reached the door, but then stopped at the threshold. There were smears of bloody footprints all over the wood at the bottom of the stairs.

“Jake?” I shouted inside.

The house was silent. I stepped carefully inside, my heart pounding fast and hard in my ears.

Karen had reached me now.

“What—oh, God.”

I looked to my right, into the living room, and the sight that awaited me there made no sense whatsoever. My father was lying on his side with his back to me, curled up on the floor by the window, almost as though he’d gone to sleep there. But he was surrounded by blood. I shook my head. There was blood all over the side of his body. Farther up, it was pooling around his head. He was completely still. And for a moment, unable to process what I was seeing, so was I.

Beside me, Karen took a sharp, shocked intake of breath. I turned slightly and saw that she’d gone pale. Her eyes were wide and she was holding her hand over her mouth.

Jake, I thought.

“Tom—”

But I didn’t hear anything after that, because the thought of my son had brought me back to life, galvanizing me into action. I moved past her, around her, then headed straight up the stairs as quickly as I could. Praying. Thinking, Please.

“Jake!”

There was blood on the upstairs landing too: pressed into the carpet by the shoes of whoever had committed the atrocity downstairs. Someone had attacked my father, and then they’d come up here, up here to …

My son’s room.

I stepped in. The bedsheet had been folded neatly back. Jake was not here. Nobody was here. I stood for a few seconds frozen in place, dread itching at my skin.

Downstairs, Karen was on her phone, talking frantically. Ambulance. Police. Urgent. A jumble of words that made no sense to me right then. It felt like my mind was going to shut down—as though my skull had suddenly opened up and was exposed to a vast, incomprehensible kaleidoscope of horror.

I walked across to the bed.

Jake was gone, but that wasn’t possible, because Jake couldn’t be gone.

This wasn’t happening.

The Packet of Special Things was lying on the floor by the bed. It was when I picked that up, knowing that he would never have gone anywhere willingly without it, that reality hit me full force. The Packet was here and Jake wasn’t. This wasn’t a nightmare. It was actually happening.

My son was gone.

That was when I tried to scream.

Part Five

Fifty-three

The first forty-eight hours after a child disappears are the most crucial.

When Neil Spencer disappeared, the first two hours of that period had been wasted, because nobody had realized he was gone. With Jake Kennedy, the investigation began within minutes of his father and his friend arriving home. At that point, Amanda had been with Dyson in a police department fifty miles away. They had driven back as quickly as possible.

Outside Tom Kennedy’s house now, she checked her watch. Just after ten o’clock at night. All the machinery that rolled out when a child went missing was already in motion. The odd-looking house beside her was brightly lit and busy with activity, shadows moving across the curtains, while up and down the street officers were standing at porches, interviewing neighbors. Flashlights moved over the field across the road. Statements were being taken; CCTV was being gathered; people were out searching.

Under different circumstances, Pete himself would have been out with the search teams. But not tonight, of course. Trying to keep calm, Amanda took out her phone and called the hospital for an update, then listened as dispassionately as she could to the news. Pete remained unconscious and in critical condition. Christ. She remembered how formidable he had been for a man his age, but it appeared to have counted for little this evening. Perhaps he hadn’t been concentrating, for some reason, and had been taken unawares; he had received few defensive wounds, but had been stabbed several times in the side, neck, and head. The attack had been unnecessarily frenzied—clearly attempted murder, and the hours ahead would reveal whether that attempt had been successful. She was told that it was touch-and-go as to whether he would survive the night. She could only hope that his fitness would serve him now where it had failed him before.

You can do it, Pete, she thought.

He would pull through. He had to.

She put the phone down and then quickly checked the online case file for updates. No developments as yet. Officers had already taken statements from Tom Kennedy and the woman he had been out with, Karen Shaw. Amanda recognized the name; Shaw was a local crime reporter. According to their accounts, they’d simply met up for a drink as friends. Their children were in the same year at school, so maybe that was all it was, but Amanda hoped for everyone’s sake that Shaw was more trustworthy than most in her profession. Especially now.

Because she still didn’t know why Pete had been here.

She remembered how alive he’d seemed this afternoon, reading the message he’d received and then making his arrangements. At the time, she’d suspected a date of some kind. In reality, it must have been this—and whatever this turned out to be, the fact remained that Pete was involved in the case and shouldn’t have been here off duty. It was a breach of professionalism.

And what bothered her more was the knowledge that she’d effectively pushed him into it. She’d wanted him to be happy. If she hadn’t pressed him, he would still be alive.

He is still alive.

She had to cling to that. More than anything else, she needed to be professional and focused right now. She couldn’t afford to let her emotions out. Guilt. Fear. Anger. Once loose, any one of them would charge off, dragging the others along like dogs chained in a pack. And that was no good at all.

Pete was still alive.

Jake Kennedy was still alive.

She was not going to lose either of them. But there was only one that she could do anything about right now, and so finally she shut down the case file and got out of the car.

Inside the house, she stepped gingerly over the dance of dried blood at the bottom of the stairs, then walked cautiously into the living room, preparing herself for the sight she knew awaited her.

Several CSIs were at work in here, measuring, analyzing, and taking photographs, but she tuned them out, focusing instead on the overturned coffee table and, inevitably, the blood smeared and pooled on the floor. There was enough of it that she could smell it in the air. Her career had brought her face-to-face with worse than this, but knowing it had been Pete attacked in here meant what she was seeing now was impossible to accept.