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Eleven

Night was beginning to fall as I parked in the driveway outside my father’s house. When I turned off the engine, the car ticked gently in the silence.

I’d spent the journey back from Darren Field’s house going over the conversation I’d had with the man’s wife. The more I thought about what she’d told me, the more they formed a chain that held firm. My father had found the body of a murdered woman, and a photograph had been taken of him at the scene, seemingly designed to point him in the direction of Darren Field. He had gone to Field’s house and spoken to him.

And then Darren Field had disappeared.

I locked the car and entered the house, then headed upstairs to my father’s room. I looked around. The bed, neatly made; the careful filing system in the shelves above his desk.

The computer I couldn’t fucking open.

Finally, my gaze settled on the punch bag, hanging on its chain in the center of the room.

The boxing gloves on the floor there.

When I was fourteen, my father bought me my own pair. This was after I came home with a split lip and the beginnings of a black eye. There had been an incident after school on the recreation ground I walked through on my way home. Liam Fleming and a couple of his friends were picking on a boy in the year below me. They had him pinned to the ground, one arm up high behind his back, and he was shouting out in pain. There had been a moment when he looked directly at me, scared and helpless, and the expression on his face had stopped me from walking past.

And so I got the shit beaten out of me.

Who did this? my father asked.

I didn’t say, of course. That wasn’t how things worked.

Did you start it?

No, I told him. I had been sticking up for someone even less capable of looking after themselves than I was. I didn’t tell him why; maybe I didn’t need to. But maybe I’d at least expected some kind of recognition for it: some kind of approval for having tried to do the right thing. But there had been a blank expression on his face, as though he was disappointed in me.

It was a few days later when he bought me the gloves.

“Here,” he said.

Then he tried to teach me to box. And I tried to learn. Over the days that followed, I punched the bag the way he showed me, this way and that, over and over. Get angry , he told me when he thought I was being too timid. Keep going , he said when I was tired. A part of me wanted to impress him, but all it did was reinforce that feeling of shame—that sense that I was worthless and weak—and his attempts at training me hadn’t lasted long.

But I still remembered the sadness and depression that had filled my father back then. The black moods. The thuds of the punch bag echoing through the house. The closed doors and the silences.

The anger.

I visualized him standing behind me now, and then attempted to get back into his head. I willed my subconscious to give him a voice that might provide me with some answers.

Did you hurt him, Dad?

You know I wouldn’t do that.

Do I?

I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I was only imagining him saying that because it was what I wanted to believe. The truth was that, for years now, I had seen my father a handful of times a year, and spoken to him on the phone only occasionally in between. That wasn’t enough contact to know someone. People can hide things away from you in the spaces between seconds, never mind weeks and months.

When I imagined him speaking again now, he sounded angry.

You know I wouldn’t do what you’re thinking.

So what did happen then, Dad?

A beat of silence.

You’re clever, aren’t you, my son?

I don’t know, I thought. Am I?

Sure you are.

So why don’t you fucking figure it out for yourself?

I turned around quickly. There was such rage in the voice that I half expected to find him standing there, fists clenched at his sides. Even though the room was empty, the air seemed to throb with emotion.

Anger. Resentment. Guilt.

And I realized my own fists were clenched.

You are detached , I told myself.

You are calm.

I breathed in and out slowly for a few seconds and then relaxed my hands.

Then I went downstairs, closing the door to my father’s room behind me. In the kitchen, the fridge was humming quietly. Yesterday, it had felt wrong to cook a meal in here, as though it would be moving on with unseemly speed. But that wasn’t my fault. My father had made his decisions, hadn’t he? Left me to deal with the detritus of them and clean up the mess.

Fuck you, then , I thought.

I opened the fridge and began to gather ingredients.

And then—later—the karaoke bar again.

I wasn’t sure why I went out. Given the events of the day, and the way I was feeling, I had no desire for random socializing. And yet, when I walked in to find Sarah sitting at a table at the back of the room with a bottle of beer in front of her, I was immediately glad to see her. I raised a hand in greeting and she waved back and beckoned me over. I got myself a beer and joined her at the table.

“Hey, stranger,” she said. “How’s tricks?”

“Strange. Tricky.”

“Well, aren’t they always?”

I glanced back toward the bar. “You’re not working tonight?”

“No.” She nodded at her drink. “But this place is like a second home to me these days. And coming here gives me an excuse to sing if I want to. It doesn’t feel right to be belting stuff out alone at home in the kitchen by myself.”

“That would be a waste of your talents, I agree.”

“Very gracious.” She tilted her head. “I thank you.”

“Except that you’re not singing.”

She picked up her bottle. “Right now, I’m drinking, and coming here gives me an excuse to do that too. I refer you back to my reasoning about doing things alone in the kitchen.”

“Got you.”

I picked up my own beer.

It was not lost on me that, whatever the status of Sarah’s relationship with Fleming, her last two answers suggested that at least they weren’t living together. It almost surprised me that I was pleased by that.

“So, you and Liam,” I said. “What is happening there?”

“Why do you want to know? Are you worried he might arrest you for drinking with me?”

“I don’t think he can do that.”

“I’m not so sure he wouldn’t try.” She hesitated, then sighed. “He has his good qualities, like I said, or it would never have happened. We were together for six months or so. It was never a long-term thing to me, but I guess he saw it differently, because he started to get a little bit too possessive for my liking. Not quite as nice as before. So I called it a day a couple of weeks ago.”

I thought back to my conversation with him yesterday .

“Does he know that?” I said.

She laughed. There was no humor in it.

“He knows I need space,” she said. “I’m engaged in what I choose to describe as a very carefully managed extraction . Sometimes you can just end it and everything’s cool. But with some guys, this is just the safest way of managing things. If you tiptoe out a step at a time, they can tell themselves they never really wanted you and it was their decision all along. Not that I expect you to understand, by the way.”

“I understand a little.”

“Oh really? Psycho ex-wife about to burst in through the door?” She frowned and put her drink down. “Actually, I shouldn’t say that. I apologize in advance if it’s possible that might happen.”

“Don’t worry. I never got married. And my exes are all surprisingly lovely.”

She smiled.

“That doesn’t surprise me. How come things never worked out?”

“Apparently I’m too closed off. I don’t let people in.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me either.”

I smiled in return, but only briefly. It was a joke, maybe, but there wasn’t anything funny about it. It made me think of Laura leaving last year, and the way she’d seemed more frustrated than angry. All my relationships had followed a similar pattern. Women were often intrigued by me at first, and maybe they imagined I’d eventually allow them inside. But even when I wanted to, I never could. The panic kicked in. The shutters came down. I watched people walk away, while a voice in my head told me that I was detached and calm , and that everything was fine.

My defense mechanisms had served me well in so many ways, but they had also protected me from so much more than I needed them to. They were like old friends who had kept me safe once, but who kept sabotaging me now. I knew I should let go of them, but I didn’t know how. Perhaps a part of me was even scared of doing so.

I shook my head.

“What I meant before,” I said, “is that I’ve worked with men like that in the past. My patients are on a different level, obviously, and I’m not saying Liam is anywhere near as bad as that. But there’s a scale there in terms of behavior.”

“Any advice you want to offer as a professional?”

“I’m sure that you know what you’re doing.”

She looked at me for a moment, on the verge of saying something else, but then Fiona at the karaoke machine shouted over.

“Sarah—you’re up.”

“On my way.” She looked back at me. “Hey, you want to duet?”

“Maybe later.” The idea of standing up there in front of everyone—exposed like that—filled me with horror. “By which I mean, several drinks later.”

I watched her bound over, and then listened as she belted out a note-perfect rendition of “Rolling in the Deep.” There were so few people in that she might as well have been singing alone in her kitchen, and yet she was totally in her element, the microphone held loosely in her hand, lights flickering on the disco ball rotating above her.

A star on a small stage, perhaps, but a star nonetheless.

After the song finished, she stopped by the bar and brought us both a drink back. We talked more casually then, and before I knew it, it was my round. Then we chatted some more.

She sang another song. Bought more drinks.

For me, the alcohol and conversation helped to loosen the tension of the day, and the bar began to feel like some kind of warm cocoon into which the nagging questions my father had left me with couldn’t reach. But I could still feel them there, waiting for me back home, and I knew I couldn’t avoid them forever. And I could also tell that Sarah was getting very drunk.

“How are you getting home?” I said.

“Walking.”

“Happy to walk you then.”

She looked sad. “No duet?”

“Maybe another time.”

The two of us walked arm in arm. There was nothing openly romantic about the gesture. If anything, I thought she might be a little unsteady on her feet and wanting to hide the fact from me. Was this how she spent all her evenings, I wondered? Not that it was my place to judge. She was a grown adult. And the last thing she probably needed right now was another man trying to tell her what to do.

She hadn’t mentioned where home was, but I figured she’d be in her mother’s old house, and we drifted that way naturally. It wasn’t far, just a little way along a quiet lane on the edge of the village. As we reached the driveway, she unlinked her arm from mine.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m sorry, by the way. I realized I hardly asked about your dad at all.”

“That’s okay. I don’t feel like talking about him anyway.”

“No? How come?”

“I guess I’m pissed off.” I shrugged. “What he did. What he didn’t.”

I put my hands in my pockets, choosing my next words carefully.

“Everything he’s left me to deal with.”

“Oh, Dan.” She put her hand on my arm. “It’s natural to feel that way. But he was a good man. He loved you. You know that deep down.”

“I guess so.”

“Has there been any news?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said softly.

“Maybe. Good night.”

I headed back down the lane.

Now that I was alone, I noticed how quiet it was here. The night breeze seemed much colder than it had a minute ago, and I pulled my jacket around me as I walked, my breath misty in the air beneath the streetlights.

There were bushes toward the end of the street, and I registered the man there a fraction of a second before he stepped out in front of me. I held back a pace out of instinct and raised my hands in a fence: a loose boxing stance, but with my palms open and my demeanor less aggressive. It had come in useful on the wards from time to time, helping to control the space between me and a potential assailant .

For some reason, I wasn’t remotely surprised to see Liam Fleming standing in front of me now. He seemed a little shocked, though. I imagined he must have stepped out in time to collide with me, and he looked taken aback by the speed of my reaction.

“Whoa.” He raised his own hands slightly. “Calm down there, Dan.”

“I am calm.”

Even so, I didn’t immediately relax my guard. Instead, I tried to evaluate the level of threat he represented. His voice was slurred; he was more than a little drunk. And this encounter was clearly a deliberate one. Neither of us was a teenager anymore, but he was still larger than me. And while he was out of uniform right now, he was police, and there was nobody else around. Anything that happened between us here would be his word against mine.

I lowered my hands a little.

“You startled me, Liam.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Checking on my girl.” He nodded down the lane. “Making sure she got home safe. She doesn’t always make the best decisions when she’s been drinking.”

“Who does?” I said.

A beat of silence.

“Two of you seemed pretty cozy,” he said.

“She’s an old friend. We haven’t seen each other in a long time. It was nice to catch up.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes,” I said. “That is right. And obviously, I also wanted to make sure she got home safely. And so here we both are.”

He didn’t reply.

If something was going to happen, it would be now. His body language was difficult to read, but I could almost see the attack he was thinking of in his posture, just not quite fully formed yet. For a couple of seconds, the situation was balanced on a knife edge, and the tension sang in the air in the short distance between us .

Then I felt him relax a little.

“Here we both are,” he said. “That’s right.”

“And now here you are, because I’m going home. Good night, Liam.”

He was blocking the pavement, and clearly had no intention of moving aside for me. But I allowed him his moment of dominance, stepping into the road, aware of that tension circling around me as I walked past him.

I was about to turn the corner when he called out behind me.

“Just watch yourself, Dan.”

I didn’t turn around. “In what sense should I watch myself?”

“Remember why you’re here. That’s all. You’re very clever . So do what you need to do, and then go back where you went.”

He probably intended his tone to be menacing, but I also detected an undercurrent of resentment to his words. Like so many of the people who grew up on this little island and never left, perhaps in his own way he felt trapped here too.

Do what you need to do, and then go back where you went.

“Yes,” I said. “I will.”

“And you know what? If it had been me there that day at the rest area, I’d have done something.”

I waited.

“I’d have done something to save that poor kid.”

And again, I said nothing. The temptation to turn back was strong, and I didn’t quite trust myself not to give into that if I replied.

So instead I just nodded to myself. And then I walked away.

Despite my jacket I was shivering slightly as I reached my father’s house. The confrontation with Liam had not only dumped adrenaline into my system, it had left me angry. I knew that it was better to walk away, but doing so had brought back that same sense of shame I remembered from childhood.

Which brought my thoughts back to my father.

After locking the front door, I headed straight up to his room.

What Sarah had told me earlier was true. Whatever his faults, my f ather had been a good man. He had loved me. The words I had imagined him speaking in here earlier had come from my subconscious: a reflection of my own thoughts. It had been the grief and anger and frustration that were simmering inside me releasing a bubble to the surface.

I stood in front of the desk, conjuring him up behind me again. Concentrating hard. Until, after a moment, I could almost feel him standing there.

Maybe we should both stay calm, I thought.

That might be a good idea.

What happened, Dad?

Because I need to know so I can figure out what to do next.

You know I can’t tell you that.

His voice sounded sad.

In that case, I asked him, Why did you leave me to deal with this? Even if you didn’t want me to help you at the time, you must have known I’d stumble onto it eventually. You left a note, didn’t you? You told me to come. And you knew I’d find the photograph when I did.

And?

You set me off on a path without giving me any kind of direction at all.

Do you really think I’d do that, my son?

I closed my eyes. He still sounded sad, as though it hurt that I would imagine him doing such a thing. And I knew that part of the anger I was feeling was because he shouldn’t have left me floundering in the dark—that it wasn’t fair of him to have done so. But until now, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might not have done. That it was possible he had left me something else, and that I might simply be missing what it was.

But what? I thought.

You tell me. Think carefully now.

You kept your investigation from the police, I thought. And so any clue you left behind wouldn’t be obvious to them. It would have to be subtle. Something that only I would understand.

He laughed softly.

You’re clever, aren’t you, my son?

They were the same words I’d imagined him saying before, but this time there was no sneer to them, no mockery. Not only did it sound like he genuinely meant them, but also as if they had been delivered with a knowing wink.

I opened my eyes.

What had just occurred to me seemed ridiculous. Even so, I reached down and turned my father’s computer on. Because he had left a message for me, hadn’t he?

Notify my son.

The meaning of those words would appear straightforward and obvious to everyone else. There was only me who might think of his voice speaking them out loud, and hear them a little differently.

The password screen appeared on the computer.

I typed Notify and pressed return.

My father’s desktop loaded.

The computer was old, and it took a few seconds for it to settle. Window after window flicked back open, one at a time. The final one was a browser, showing the website my father had left open before closing the machine down.

A wall of text. The title at the top was in a larger font.

THE PIED PIPER