The Whisper Man

“Why?”

“He was an unsavory sort. Poor personal hygiene.” Collins tapped his head. “Not entirely all there. People used to make fun of him, but they were all frightened of him, really. The house too. It’s a strange-looking place, don’t you think? I remember children used to dare each other to go into the garden. They’d take photographs of each other there. Even before then—back when I was a child—people thought of it as the local scary house.”

Amanda glanced at Pete again. His face was inscrutable, but she could imagine what he must be thinking. Julian Simpson’s name had never come up in the case at the time. The police had known nothing of the man or his scary-looking house. And that was entirely understandable. There were people like Simpson in every community, their reputations among the young not necessarily based on anything real, and certainly not to the extent that adults would think anything of them.

But regardless, she knew Pete would blame himself for this.

“What happened next?” she asked Collins.

“I went to the house on Garholt Street,” he said. “After paying more money to Simpson, I was made to wait in a downstairs room. After a time, he returned with a sealed cardboard box. He cut it open carefully. And there … there he was.”

“For the record, Norman…?”

“Tony Smith.”

Amanda could hardly bring herself to ask the question.

“And what did you do with Tony’s remains?”

“Do with them?” Collins sounded genuinely shocked. “I didn’t do anything with them. I’m not a monster—not like some of the others. And I wouldn’t have wanted to damage an exhibit like that even if it had been allowed. No, I simply stood there. Paying my respects. Imbibing the atmosphere. You may find this hard to understand, but it was one of the most powerful hours of my life.”

Jesus, Amanda thought. He looked like a man remembering some lost love.

Of all the scenarios she had been imagining taking place, his answer was simultaneously the most banal and the most horrifying. The time spent with a murdered little boy’s body had clearly bordered on a religious experience for him, and imagining him standing there, believing he had some special connection with the sad remains in a box at his feet, was as awful in its own way as anything she could have thought of.

Beside her, Pete leaned forward slowly.

Not like some of the others. Whatever toll the account was taking on him, he just sounded weary right now—tired all the way down to his soul. “Who were the others, Norman? And what did they do?”

Collins swallowed.

“This was after Dominic Barnett took over—after Julian died. I think the two of them were friends, but Barnett didn’t have the same level of respect. Things deteriorated under his care.”

“Is that why you killed him?” Amanda said.

“Barnett wouldn’t grant me access anymore—not after the last time. I had to protect the exhibit! Tony needed to be kept safe.”

“Tell us about the others, Norman,” Pete said patiently.

“This was after Barnett took over.” Collins hesitated. “I’d visited several times over the years, but for me it was always the same. I was paying my respects, and I wanted to be on my own with Tony. But once Barnett was in charge, there started to be others there too. And they were not as respectful as me.”

“What did they do?”

“I didn’t see anything,” Collins said. “I left—I was disgusted. And Barnett refused to refund me. He even sneered at me. But what could I do?”

“Why were you so disgusted?” Pete said.

“The last night I went, there were five or six other people there. All fascinated by the case. A mixture of types—you’d be surprised, honestly—and I got the impression that some of them had traveled a great distance. But it wasn’t like the other times. They started … touching the bones. It was completely unacceptable. I tried to intervene, but Barnett just laughed at me. He didn’t care at all.”

Collins swallowed.

“So you left?” Amanda asked.

“Yes. I couldn’t bear it. When I’d visited in the past, it was like being in a church. It was quiet and reverential. I felt the presence of God. But with those people there. Not respecting Tony. Not respecting Frank’s work…”

He trailed off again.

“Norman?”

Finally, he looked up.

“It was like standing in hell.”

* * *

“Do you believe him?” Amanda said.

They were back in the incident room. Pete was leaning on his desk, staring intently down at the CCTV photographs of the people who had visited Victor Tyler in prison over the years. Her own gaze moved across them. There were men and women here. The young and the old. A mixture of types, Collins had told them. You’d be surprised, honestly.

“I believe Collins didn’t kill Neil Spencer.” Pete waved his hand over the photographs. “But as to this…”

And then he fell silent, expressing the same disbelief that she was feeling herself. In the course of her career, she had witnessed enough horror that people’s capacity for cruelty was no longer shocking. She had stood at crime scenes and accidents and watched the crowds gather or the passing vehicles slow down for a glimpse of the carnage. She understood the pull of death. But not this.

“Do you know why they called him the Whisper Man?” Pete said quietly.

“Because of Roger Hill.”

“That’s right.” He nodded slowly. “Roger was Carter’s first victim. The family home was being renovated at the time, and Roger told his parents he’d heard someone whispering outside his window before he was abducted. Carter owned the scaffolding firm that was working on the place. That was what first brought him to our attention.”

“Grooming his victim.”

“Yes. Carter had the opportunity there, but the strange thing is, the parents of the other boys all claimed their children heard whispers too. There was no obvious connection to Carter, but they heard it all the same.”

“Maybe they did.”

“Maybe so. Or perhaps it’s just that the name was in the newspaper by then, and it planted ideas in people’s heads. Who knows? Whatever, it stuck. The Whisper Man. I’ve always hated that name.”

She waited.

“Because I wanted him to be forgotten, you see? I didn’t want him to have a title. But right now it seems to fit him perfectly. Because the whole time he’s been whispering. And people—these people—have been listening.” He spread the photographs out with his hand. “And I think one of them more closely than the others.”

Amanda looked at the photographs again. He was right, she thought. From everything Collins had said, it was clear that many of the individuals in front of her now had walked a fair distance down a path toward outright evil. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that one of them—drawn ever onward by Frank Carter’s whispers—had walked further down that path than others. The best of these people were evil sycophants, but one of them was something worse.

A student.

Somewhere among these people, she thought, they would find Neil Spencer’s killer.