The Whisper Man

The local scary house.

The kids would dare each other to go near it.

Take photographs and things.

That was why the house had leaped out at Jake when he had seen it. Because he’d seen it before, with his mother standing in front of it.

And then I looked properly at Rebecca in the photograph. She appeared to be about seven or eight years old, and was wearing a blue-and-white-checked dress with a hem high enough that you could see a graze on her knee. And it must have been a breezy day when it was taken, because her hair was swept out to one side.

She was the same girl Jake had drawn in the window with him in his picture.

I fought back tears as I finally understood.

As ridiculous as it was, I’d almost begun to believe there was more to my son’s invisible friend than his imagination alone. And I supposed that there was. Except he wasn’t seeing ghosts or spirits. His imaginary friend was simply the mother he missed so much, conjured up as a little girl his own age. Someone who would play with him the way she always used to. Someone who could help him through the terrible new world he’d found himself in.

I turned the photograph over.

June 1, 1991, it said. Being brave.

I remembered how, when we’d first moved in, he had been running from room to room as though looking for someone, and my heart broke for him. I’d let him down so badly. It would have been hard for him regardless, but I could and should have done more to help him through it. Been more attentive, more present, less wrapped up in my own suffering. But I hadn’t. And so he’d been forced to find solace with a memory instead.

I put the photograph down.

I’m so sorry, Jake.

And then, for what it was even worth, I searched through the rest of the material he’d kept. Each piece hurt to look at. Because I was certain now that I had lost my son forever, and that this was as close as I would ever be to him again, for whatever was left of my life.

But then I unfolded the last piece of paper he’d kept, and when I saw what was there, I went still again. It took a moment to understand what I was seeing and what it meant.

And then I grabbed my phone, already on my way to the front door.

Fifty-nine

“Slow down,” Amanda said. “What have you found?”

She had been working nonstop through the night, and now—approaching nine o’clock in the morning—she could feel every minute of it. Her body was beyond weary. Her bones were aching and her thoughts were skittish and distracted. The last thing she really needed was Tom Kennedy gabbling down the phone at her, especially when he sounded as disjointed and out of it as she felt.

“I told you,” he said. “A picture.”

“A picture of a butterfly.”

“Yes.”

“Can you please slow down and explain to me what that means?”

“It was in Jake’s Packet of Special Things.”

“His what?”

“He collects things—keeps them. Things that have some kind of meaning for him. This picture was in there. It’s one of the butterflies that were in the garage.”

“Okay.”

Amanda looked around the heaving operations room. It seemed as chaotic right now as the contents of her head. Focus. There was a picture of a butterfly. It clearly meant something to Tom Kennedy, but she still had no idea why.

“Jake drew this picture?”

“No! That’s the point. It’s too elaborate. It looks like something that a grown-up’s done. He was drawing them, though, the evening after his first day at school. I think someone gave it to him to copy. Because how could he have seen them otherwise? They were in the garage, right?”

“The garage.”

“So he had to have seen them somewhere else. And this must be where. Someone drew it for him. Someone who had seen them.”

“Someone who’d been in your garage?”

“Or the house. That’s what you said, isn’t it—that there were more people like Norman Collins who knew the body was there? That the man you think took Jake is one of these people?”

Amanda was silent for a moment, considering that. Yes, that was what they were thinking. And while Kennedy’s discovery probably meant nothing, the night hadn’t brought much else to go on either.

“Who drew the picture?” she said.

“I don’t know. It looks recent, so I think maybe it was someone at the school. It’s on that thick paper they use at school. Jake brought it home after his first day, and that’s why he was copying it.”

The school.

In the days following Neil Spencer’s disappearance, they’d talked to everyone who’d had any degree of regular contact with the boy, and that had included the teaching staff for the whole school. But there had been nothing suspicious about any of them. And, of course, Jake had only been at the school for a few days. This picture, assuming it had any relevance at all, could have come from anywhere.

“But you’re not sure?”

“No,” Tom said. “But there’s something else too. That evening, Jake was talking to someone who wasn’t there. He does that, right? He has imaginary friends. Only this time he said it was the boy in the floor. So how can he have known about that, along with the butterflies, unless someone talked to him about it?”

“I don’t know.”

She resisted the urge to point out that it could simply be a coincidence, and that even if it wasn’t, there was still no reason to focus on the school. Instead, she turned to what seemed to her a far more fucking pertinent issue right now.

“You didn’t think to mention this before?”

The phone went silent. Maybe it was a low blow to have delivered: the man’s son was missing, after all, and some things only made sense in hindsight. Pictures and imaginary friends. Monsters whispering outside windows. Adults didn’t always listen hard enough to children. But if Tom Kennedy had told them about this earlier, and if she had listened to him, then things might be different right now. She wouldn’t be sitting here exhausted, with Pete in hospital and Jake Kennedy missing. It was impossible to keep the accusation out of her voice.

“Tom? Why?”

“I didn’t know what it meant,” he said.

“Well, maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but … oh, for fuck’s sake, hang on a second.”

An alert had come through on her screen. Amanda opened the message. Sharon Bamber, the family liaison officer, had arrived at Karen Shaw’s home but nobody was answering the door. Amanda frowned and pushed the phone against her ear. Now that Tom had stopped talking, she could hear traffic in the background.

“Where are you?” she asked him.

“I’m on my way to the school.”

Christ. She leaned forward urgently.

“Don’t do that, please.”

“But—”

“But nothing. It won’t help.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. What the hell was he thinking? Except, of course, his son was missing and so he wasn’t thinking properly at all.

“Listen to me,” she said. “Listen right now. I need you to go back to Karen Shaw’s house. There’s an officer—Sergeant Bamber—waiting for you there. I’m going to ask her to bring you to the department. We can discuss this picture then. Okay?”