The Whisper Man(32)

Amanda breathed out slowly.

“The fucker knew,” she said. “Didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So the question then is how did he know?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ve got nothing on that level so far. But there’s still a long list of friends inside to look at.”

She hesitated.

“Do you want to see the body?”

You can have a drink when you get home.

I’ll let you.

“Yes,” he said.

Together, they moved under the canopy to where the boy was lying spread-eagled, close to the old television. His backpack was on the ground beside him. Pete did his best to take in the details as dispassionately as possible. The clothes, obviously: the blue tracksuit pants; the Minecraft T-shirt that had been pulled up over the boy’s face, turning the design on the front inside out.

“That was never made public,” he said.

Another connection to Carter.

“No real blood.” He peered around the body. “Not enough, anyway—not for those injuries. He was killed elsewhere.”

“Looks that way.”

“That’s a difference between our new man and Carter. Carter killed those children where I found them, and he kept them in his house. He never made any attempt to dump the remains.”

“Apart from Tony Smith.”

“That was down to circumstances. And also, this is public.” He gestured around. “Whoever did this, they wanted the body to be found. And not just anywhere either. Back where it started, just like Carter told me.”

You can have a drink when you get home.

“The clothes are the ones he went missing in. The injuries aside, it looks like he’s been reasonably well cared for. Not obviously emaciated.”

“Another difference from Carter,” Amanda said.

“Yes.”

Pete closed his eyes, trying to think this through. Neil Spencer had been held somewhere for two months before he was killed. He had been looked after. And then something had changed. Afterward, he had been returned to the place he’d been abducted from.

Like a present, he thought.

A present someone had been given that they decided they didn’t want anymore.

“The backpack.” He opened his eyes. “Is the water bottle in there?”

“Yes. I’ll show you.”

He followed her closer still, edging around the boy’s body. She used a gloved hand to open the top, and he looked inside. There was the bottle, half full of water. Something else. A blue rabbit—a bedtime toy. That had never been on the list.

“Did he have that with him?”

“We’re trying to find out from the parents.” Amanda scrabbled in her pocket. “But yes. I think he had that with him as well, and they just didn’t know.”

Pete nodded slowly. He knew all about Neil Spencer by now. The boy had been disruptive at school. Aggressive. Already old and toughened beyond his years, the way people get when life bruises them.

But underneath all that, still just six years old.

He forced himself to look at the boy’s body, not caring about the feelings it evoked or the memories it stirred. He could have a drink when he got home.

We’re going to get the person who did this to you.

And then he turned around and stepped away, flicking his flashlight back on as he entered the darkness there.

“I’m going to need you on this, Pete,” Amanda called after him.

“I know.” But he was thinking about that bottle on the dining room table and trying not to break into a run. “And you’re going to have me.”





Twenty


The man stood shivering in the darkness.

Above him, the blue-black sky was clear and speckled with stars, the night a stark, cold contrast to the heat of the day behind him. But it was not the temperature that was making him tremble. Even though he refused to think directly about what he had done that afternoon, the impact of his actions remained with him, just out of sight beneath his skin.

He had never killed before today.

Beforehand, he had imagined he was prepared to do so, and in the moment the rage and hatred he had felt had carried him through. But the act had left him off-kilter afterward, unsure what he was feeling. He had laughed this evening, and he had cried. He had shaken with shame and self-hatred, but also rocked on the bathroom floor in confused elation. It was impossible to describe. Which made sense, he supposed. He had opened a door that could never be closed, and experienced something few others on the planet ever had or would. There was no preparation or guidebook for the journey he had embarked on. No map showing the course through it. The act of killing had left him adrift on an entirely uncharted sea of emotions.

He breathed the cool night air in slowly now, his body still singing. It was so quiet here that all he could hear was the rush of the air, as though the world were murmuring secrets in its sleep. The streetlights in the distance shone brightly, but he was so far from the light here, and standing so motionless, that someone could walk past meters away without seeing him. He would see them, though—or sense them, at least. He felt attuned to the world. And right now, in the early hours of the morning, he could tell that he was totally alone out here.

Waiting.

Full of shivers.