The Whisper Man(77)

Oh, God.

Slowly, she moved the beam upward.

Close to the ceiling, an angry sun stared back at her with black eyes.





Forty-nine


Your daddy liked these books when he was younger.

Pete almost said that as he knelt down beside Jake’s bed and picked up the book. The light in the bedroom was so soft, and Jake looked so small, lying there beneath the blankets, that he was momentarily transported back to a different time. He remembered reading to Tom when he had been a little boy. The Diana Wynne Jones books had been one of his son’s favorites.

Power of Three. He couldn’t recall the contents, but the cover was immediately familiar, and his fingertips tingled as he touched it. It was a very old edition. The covers were frayed at the edges, and the spine was so worn that the title was lost in the string of creases. Was this the actual copy he himself had read so many years ago? It was, he thought. Tom had kept it and was now reading it to his own son. Not just a story passed down through time, from father to son, but the exact same pages containing it.

Pete felt a sense of wonder at that.

Your daddy liked these books when he was younger.

But he caught himself before saying it. Not only did Jake not know of Pete’s relationship to him, it was not Pete’s place to reveal it, and it never would be. That was fine. If he wanted to claim he had changed over the years and was no longer the terrible father from Tom’s worst memories, he could hardly lay claim to any of the better ones either.

If that man was gone, all of him had to be.

With a new man in his place.

“Well, then.”

The light in the room made his voice quiet and gentle.

“Where are we up to?”



* * *



Afterward, he sat downstairs in silence, the book he had brought untouched for the moment. The warmth he’d felt upstairs had carried down with him, and he wanted to absorb it for a while.

For so long now, he’d buried himself in distractions: used books and food and television—ritual in general—as a way of clicking fingers to one side of his own mind and keeping it from glancing in more dangerous directions. But he didn’t feel that now. The voices were silent. The urge to drink was not alive tonight. He could still sense it there, in the same way that a stubbed-out candle smokes a little, but the fire and the brightness of it were gone.

It had been so lovely to read to Jake. The boy had been quiet and attentive, and then, after a page or two, he had wanted to take over. Although his delivery was faltering, it was obvious that his vocabulary was impressive. And it had been impossible not to feel the peace of the room. However much Pete had messed up Tom’s own childhood, his son hadn’t passed that on.

Pete checked on Jake fifteen minutes later and found the boy already fast asleep. He stood there for a moment, marveling at how tranquil Jake appeared.

Look at what you lose by drinking.

He’d told himself that so many times while looking at the photograph of Sally, his mind skirting the memories of the life he’d lost. Most of the time it had been enough, but sometimes it hadn’t, and these past months had been the toughest of tests. Somehow he had resisted. Looking down at Jake now, he was monumentally glad about that, as though he had somehow dodged a bullet he hadn’t known was coming. Although the future was uncertain, at least it was there.

Look what you gain by stopping.

That thought was so much better. It was the difference between regret and relief, between a cold hearth full of dead, gray ash and a fire that was still alight. He hadn’t lost this. He might not have found it fully yet either. But he hadn’t lost it.

Back downstairs, he did read for a little while, but he was distracted by thoughts of the investigation, and kept checking his phone for updates. There were none. It felt like Amanda should have been there by now, and that Francis Carter should be either in custody or being questioned, and he hoped that was the case. Too busy to update him was too busy in the right direction.

Francis Carter.

He remembered the boy clearly—although of course Francis Carter was an entirely different person now: a grown man, formed from that boy but distinct from him. Pete had only interacted with the child on a handful of occasions twenty years ago, as the majority of the interviews had needed to be handled carefully by specially trained officers. Francis had been small and pale and haunted, staring down at the table with hooded eyes, giving one-word answers at most. The extent of the trauma he must have suffered living with his father had been obvious. He was a vulnerable child who had been through hell.

Carter’s words came back to him now.

His top is all pulled up over his face so I can’t see it properly, which is the way I like it.

The children had all been the same to him; any one would do. And he hadn’t wanted to see their faces. But why? Could it possibly be, Pete wondered, because Carter had wanted to imagine the victims were his own son? A boy he couldn’t touch without being caught, so the hatred he felt had to be acted out on other children instead?

Pete sat very still for a moment.

If that were the case, how might a child feel in response to that? That he was worthless and deserved to die too, perhaps. Guilt over the lives lost in his place. A heartfelt desire to make amends. An urge to help children like him, because by doing so he could somehow begin to heal himself.

This is a man who takes care.