The Whisper Man

I didn’t reply. The silence between us was tingling now. As much as it was possible to tell in this half-light, Willis looked as though he wished he hadn’t spoken. But then he explained himself.

“I saw your books in the house.”

“You didn’t know before?”

He shook his head.

“I’d have thought you might have been interested,” I said. “Maybe looked me up or something.”

“Did you look me up?”

“No, but that’s different.”

As soon as I said it, I hated myself for it, because it acknowledged that power balance again—the idea that it was his job to look for me, to be concerned about me, to care about me, rather than the other way around. I didn’t want him to imagine that was true. It wasn’t. He was nothing to me.

“A long time ago,” he said, “I decided it would be best for me to keep out of your life. Your mother and I decided between us.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“I suppose so. It’s my way of putting it. And I’ve honored that. It’s not always been easy. I’ve often wondered. But it’s been for the best…”

He trailed off, suddenly looking weaker than ever.

Spare me the self-pity.

But I didn’t say it. Whatever my father had done in the past, he’d obviously moved on since. He didn’t look or smell like an alcoholic now. He was in good shape. And despite the weariness, there was an air of calm to him. I reminded myself again that this man and I were strangers to each other. We weren’t father and son. We weren’t enemies.

We were nothing.

He was looking off toward the window, toward the day slowly dying outside.

“Sally—your mother, I mean. What happened to her?”

Glass smashing.

My mother screaming.

I thought of everything that had followed. The way she did her best for me in spite of all the difficulties she faced as a single mother. The pain and ignominy of her death. Like Rebecca, taken far too young, long before either she or I deserved such a loss.

“She’s dead,” I told him.

He was silent. For a moment he even seemed broken. But then he gathered himself.

“When?”

“That’s none of your business.”

The anger in my voice surprised me—but apparently not my father. He stood there, absorbing the force of the blow.

“No,” he said quietly. “I suppose not.”

And then he started walking down the stairs to the front door. I watched him go. When he was halfway down I spoke again, just loud enough for him to hear.

“I remember that last night, you know. The night before you were gone. The last time you ever saw me. I remember how drunk you were. How red in the face you were. What you did. Throwing that glass at her. The way she screamed.”

He stopped on the stairs and stood completely still.

“I remember it all,” I said. “So how dare you ask about her now?”

He didn’t reply.

And then he continued silently down the stairs, leaving me with nothing but the sick and angry thud of my heartbeat.

Thirty-five

After leaving the safe house, Pete drove too fast along empty roads, heading straight home. The kitchen cabinet was calling to him, and he was going to surrender to it. Now that the decision was made, the urge was stronger than ever, and it felt like his whole life depended on getting there as quickly as possible.

Back home, he locked the door and drew the curtains. The house around him was still and silent, and it seemed as empty with him standing in it as it must have been before his arrival. Because, after all, what did he add to it? He looked around at the spartan furnishings in the living room. It was the same throughout the house—every space just as ascetic and carefully organized. The truth was that he had lived in an empty house for years. The meager debris of a life barely lived, a real life avoided, was no less sad because it was tidy and clean.

Empty. Pointless.

Worthless.

The voice was gleeful in its victory. He stood there, breathing slowly, aware of his heart pounding. But he’d been here many times before, and this was the way it always worked. When the compulsion to drink was at its strongest, everything bolstered it. Any event or observation, good or bad, could be turned around and made to fit.

But it was all a lie.

You’ve been here before.

You can do this.

The urge fell silent for a moment, but then began to howl inside his head, conscious of the trick he was attempting to pull. He’d let it drive him home on autopilot, allowed it to believe that he was giving in, but now he was taking the wheel again.

The pain circled in his chest, swirling and unbearable.

You’ve been here before.

You can do this.

The table. The bottle and the photograph.

Tonight, he added a glass, and after a moment’s hesitation, he opened the bottle and poured two fingers of vodka. Because why not? Either he would drink or he wouldn’t. It wasn’t how far down the road he went; it was whether he arrived at the end.

His phone buzzed. He picked it up to find a message from Amanda, filling him in on her interview with Norman Collins. They had Collins on the murder of Dominic Barnett, it seemed, but the situation with Neil Spencer was hazier, and Collins had decided to lawyer up.

You think the man you’ve arrested killed Neil Spencer?

Possibly, he’d told Tom—and it was clear that Collins was involved somehow. But if it wasn’t him who had abducted and murdered Neil, that meant the actual killer was still out there. Any relief he’d felt after arresting Collins evaporated entirely at that thought, just as surely as it had twenty years ago when he’d seen Miranda and Alan Smith in the department’s reception and realized the nightmare was far from over.

It shouldn’t be his problem now. Tom was his son, albeit long estranged, and that conflict of interest meant he should talk to Amanda tomorrow and recuse himself from the investigation. He supposed it would bring relief of its own to be free from this pressure. And yet, having been dragged in this deep—having been forced to confront Carter again, and to look at Neil Spencer’s body on the waste ground last night—he wanted to see this through, however damaging it might be.

He put the phone to one side, then stared at the glass, trying to analyze how he felt about seeing Tom again after so many years. The encounter should have shaken him to the core, he supposed, and yet he felt oddly calm. Over the years, he had grown numb to the fact of his fatherhood, as though it were something he had learned at school that no longer had any bearing on his life. Memories of Sally were on the right side of the pain threshold for him to bear, but his failure toward Tom had been absolute, and Pete had done his best never to think about that. It was better to have nothing to do with his son’s life, and whenever he had found himself imagining what kind of man Tom might have become, he had quickly shoved those thoughts away. They were too hot to touch.

But now he knew.

He had no right to think of himself as a father, but it was impossible not to evaluate the man he had met that afternoon. A writer. That made sense, of course. Tom had always been creative as a little boy—always making up stories Pete couldn’t follow, or playing out elaborate scenarios with his toys. Jake appeared to be a lot like Tom had been at that age: a sensitive and clever child. From the little Pete had learned, it was obvious Tom had suffered hardship and tragedy throughout his life, and yet he was capably raising Jake alone. There could be little doubt that his son had grown into a good man.