The Whisper Man(10)

And the ritual, of course.

The bottle and the photograph.

And yet, as he gathered his things together, almost ready to leave, he realized his pulse was racing. Last night, the nightmare had returned for the first time in months: Jane Carter whispering, You have to hurry, down the phone to him. Despite himself, it had been impossible to escape from Neil Spencer completely, which meant the darker thoughts and memories were a little closer to the surface than he preferred to keep them. And so, as he pulled his jacket on, he was not entirely surprised when the phone on his desk began ringing. There was no way of knowing for sure, and yet somehow he already did.

His hand trembled a little as he picked it up.

“Pete,” DCI Colin Lyons said down the line. “Glad to catch you. I was hoping I could have a quick word upstairs.”



* * *



His suspicions were confirmed as soon as he entered Lyons’s office. The DCI had revealed nothing in the call, but DI Amanda Beck was there too, sitting with her back to him on the side of the desk nearest the door. There was only one investigation she was working on right now, which meant there was only one reason his presence could have been requested.

He tried to keep calm as he closed the door. Tried—especially—not to think about the scene that had awaited him twenty years ago when he had finally gained access to the extension Frank Carter had built on his house.

Lyons smiled broadly. The DCI had a smile that could power a room.

“Good of you to come up. Have a seat.”

“Thanks.” Pete sat down beside Beck. “Amanda.”

Beck nodded a greeting, and gave him the flicker of a smile—an exceedingly low-wattage equivalent of Lyons’s that barely even powered her face. Pete didn’t know her well. She was twenty years younger than him, but right now looked much older than her years. Blatantly exhausted—and nervous too, he thought. Maybe she was worried her authority was being undermined and that the case was about to be taken away from her; he’d heard she was ambitious. He could have set her mind at rest on that score. While Lyons was probably ruthless enough to remove her from the investigation if it suited him, he was never going to pass it on to Pete instead.

They were relative contemporaries, he and Lyons, but despite the disparity in their ranks Pete had actually joined the department a year earlier, and in many ways his career had been the more decorated. In a different world, the two of them would have been sitting on opposite sides of the desk right now, and perhaps even should have been. But Lyons had always been ambitious, whereas Pete, aware that promotion brought conflict and drama of its own, had little desire to climb the professional ladder any further than he already had. That had always rankled with Lyons, Pete knew. When you go after something as hard as he had, there were few things as irritating as someone who could have had it more easily but never seemed to want it.

“You’re aware of the investigation into the disappearance of Neil Spencer?” Lyons said.

“Yes. I was involved in the search of the waste ground on the first evening.”

Lyons stared at him for a moment, perhaps evaluating that as a criticism.

“I live close to there,” Pete added.

But then, Lyons lived in the area as well, and he hadn’t been out there trawling the streets that night. A second later, though, the DCI nodded to himself. He knew that Pete had his own reasons to be interested in missing children.

“You’re aware of developments since?”

I’m aware of the lack of them. But that would come across as a rebuke to Beck, and she didn’t deserve that. From the little he’d seen, she’d handled the investigation well and done everything she could. More to the point, she’d been the one to direct her officers not to criticize the parents, and he liked that.

“I’m aware that Neil hasn’t been found,” he said. “Despite extensive searches and inquiries.”

“What would your theory be?”

“I haven’t followed the investigation closely enough to have one.”

“You haven’t?” Lyons looked surprised at that. “I thought you said that you were out searching on the first night.”

“That was when I thought he’d be found.”

“So you don’t think he will be now?”

“I don’t know. I hope he will.”

“I’d have thought you would have followed the case, given your history?”

The first mention there. The first hint.

“Maybe my history gives me a reason not to.”

“Yes, I can understand that. It was a difficult time for all of us.”

Lyons sounded sympathetic, but Pete knew this was another source of resentment between them. Pete was the one who’d closed the area’s biggest case in the last fifty years, and yet Lyons was the one who’d ended up in charge. In different ways, the investigation they were circling was uncomfortable for both of them.

Lyons was the one to bring that spiral to its point.

“I also understand you’re the only one Frank Carter will ever talk to?”

And there it was.

It had been a while since Pete had heard the name out loud, and so perhaps it should have delivered a jolt. But all it did was bring the crawling sensation inside him to the surface. Frank Carter. The man who had kidnapped and murdered five young boys in Featherbank twenty years ago. The man whom Pete had eventually caught. The name alone conjured up such horror for him that it always felt like it should never be spoken out loud—as though it were some kind of curse that would summon a monster behind you. Worse still was what the papers had called him. The Whisper Man. That was based on the idea that Carter had befriended his victims—vulnerable and neglected children—before taking them away. He would talk quietly to them at night outside their windows. It was a nickname that Pete had never allowed himself to use.