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Fifteen

I went downstairs and got a bottle of good red wine from my father’s cellar, then sat at the oak table in the kitchen. I poured myself a glass. Then after a moment’s hesitation, I got a second glass from the cupboard, poured a measure of wine into that, and placed it carefully on the table across from me.

Then I sat down and stared at the chair opposite until I could almost see my father sitting there.

It was the same technique I’d employed throughout the day, but I made it more deliberate now, more concentrated. As before, there was no magic to it; it wasn’t like conjuring a ghost. Any answers I received would only ever come from inside me. But that in itself could be revealing, because the subconscious often catches its fingertips on textures that the conscious mind skims over.

What’s happening here? I asked my father.

A moment of silence. And then:

That’s a very good question, my son.

Why don’t you talk us both through it? First principles, right?

First principles, I thought. Yes.

What is happening is that you found the remains of a dead woman in the woods. Someone took a photograph of you standing there at that moment and then delivered it to you .

Sure. And we have to assume that was the killer, don’t we?

Yes, I think it has to be.

Tell me about the photograph?

It was taken from a particular vantage point, I thought. You realized that just like I did, and when you went up there you found a wallet belonging to a man named Darren Field.

I did. I imagined my father nodding. It looked like it had been placed there to me. It wasn’t an accident—more like a breadcrumb on a trail. The intention was to lead the person who found it somewhere.

And so you followed that trail?

I did. I went to Darren Field’s address to talk to him, and the two of us had a chat. I mentioned the island, the woman. And then the very next day, he vanished.

And nobody’s seen him since.

That’s right.

I knew better than to ask whether my father had been involved in Darren Field’s disappearance. While it remained possible, I didn’t want to accept that. Equally, there was no point in asking what he and Darren Field had spoken about that day. The island and the woman’s body: I knew that much. I assumed my father would have wanted to know how Field’s wallet had found its way to the campsite, but whatever Field might have told him was beyond the scope of the method I was using right now. My subconscious hadn’t been there. Anything it told me now would only be guesswork.

I looked down at my glass.

And Darren Field was at the rest area that day?

I imagined my father nodding again.

I recognized his name pretty much straightaway. I’m guessing that you probably did too, right?

No, I thought. Actually, I didn’t.

Really?

My father sounded surprised.

I supposed that, given my obsession with the case as a teenager, he might have expected me to be an expert on every little detail. Once upon a time, I had been. But the truth was that I hadn’t thought about the Pied Piper very much at all since I left the island. While I hadn’t been able to bring myself to burn Terrence O’Hare’s book on that last night at the beach, I hadn’t taken it with me to university either, and I hadn’t read it since.

I wasn’t sure if that had been a conscious decision. All I knew was that at some point in my first year at University, detachment and calm had found me, and it had felt safe to be with them. Afterward, my work had helped me as well. However horrendous my patients’ crimes might be, they were only men. There was no such thing as monsters, and no sense in revisiting a time when I had believed differently.

That’s probably a good thing , my father said softly. But I’m sure you would have made the connection eventually. You’ve always been very clever.

I started turning the glass of wine between my hands.

What am I supposed to do now, Dad? Go to the police?

I don’t think that’s a good idea.

But—

Hear me out, my son. Not yet, is what I mean.

A part of me wanted to argue, but I recognized that there was a degree of sense to the answer I had provided him with. What exactly could I tell Fleming right now? And after our little altercation tonight, I was even more reluctant to talk to him than I had been before. Given our personal animosity, I could easily imagine what his reaction would be if I tried to explain any of this. He’d called me clever too, but to Fleming that was probably an insult. I was some kind of mind doctor, not a cop, and I suspected he would take great pleasure in telling me to stop playing at being one.

I kept turning the glass.

What then? I thought. What’s the next step?

Another good question. Maybe it’s not a step you need, so much as a leap.

Meaning?

You’ve found one connection to the Pied Piper. Maybe there’s another.

No. I shook my head. What happened that day is ancient history.

I wish that was true .

He sounded sad.

You can’t just erase history like that, my son. You can look away. You can pretend it’s over and done with. But it’s always there.

I stopped turning the glass.

Then I looked up. The chair across from me was empty, of course, but I still imagined a presence lifting, as though my father were easing himself out of his seat. A moment later, the air in the kitchen seemed to lose weight. But it didn’t feel like he was gone. It was more like he had stood up and left the room, wanting to lead me somewhere.

I picked up the glass of wine and made my way upstairs to his room. The computer had gone into standby in my absence, so I reentered the password and was met by the browser window still open on the website about the Pied Piper.

You can’t just erase history like that, my son.

I opened a new tab and clicked on one of the menus at the top.

It’s always there.

My father’s internet history appeared before me now. There should have been a list of every site he’d visited recently, but aside from the website there was only one. I frowned to myself. Was that really all there was? Or had he manually deleted everything else for some reason? There was no way of knowing.

I clicked on the link to see what was left.

An address search opened on the screen.

Rosemary Saunders

The Blue Flower, Pitch 19, Newland Lock, Rampton

I stared at that for a moment. Rampton was the location of the rest area where I’d encountered the Pied Piper and Robbie Garforth. The address surely couldn’t be a coincidence. And a part of me recognized the woman’s name too, even though it took a few seconds for me to remember where from.

I clicked back to the tab about the Pied Piper and scrolled a little way down .

“I don’t know if he was talking to himself,” Rose Saunders (23) told the police afterward. “But he definitely wasn’t speaking to me. There was something scary about him. So I acted like I was busy, and I was just glad when I looked up and he was gone.”

I read through the rest of the page, searching out the details of the other people who had been present at the rest area that day. Rose Saunders was the only female name I could see listed.

I felt my father’s presence solidifying in the air again.

Like I told you , he said. A leap.

I stared at the address on the screen.

You thought this might be her? I thought. The woman in the woods?

Well, there were already two links to the Pied Piper , he said. And both of them were connected to the remains of a woman who nobody had been able to identify. It made sense to follow up on that, if only to rule out the possibility.

I nodded to myself. It did.

But then I realized what he’d just said.

There were already two links? I thought.

Silence for a moment. The air was ringing.

Dad? I prompted.

Are you sure you want me to answer that, my son? You left all this behind you for a reason. I was glad that you did—and perhaps that’s why I made this trail hard for you to follow. So that you’d have to choose to do it. So you’d know what you were getting yourself into.

Because it might be dangerous.

Tell me, I thought.

He sighed quietly.

Do you remember what I said to Sarah?

The ringing in the air went up in pitch.

And then disappeared. Yes, I remembered. He had told her it was a good thing it had been him who found the woman’s remains in the woods. Better him than a tourist—that had been the rationale.

But thinking about that now… who else could have found her?

Earlier today, I had wondered why the killer would make the effort to carry the body out into the woods, only to leave it where it would be discovered so easily. But my father’s routine in retirement had been predictable. He had walked that same trail through the woods every morning. And anyone familiar enough with him would have known that.

Two connections. Darren Field. My father.

I reached down to the computer and scrolled a little way up the page, back to the photograph of Robbie Garforth that I had found at the rest area that day. And I thought about the boy I had seen there that day. Despite my initial doubts, I had convinced myself that it must have been Robbie too. Because how could it be anyone else? How was it possible that another boy had disappeared without anyone ever noticing or caring?

And then I felt a different presence behind me.

The figure at my back remained opaque for the moment. Still little more than a shade hanging in the air. But when I shifted angles in my subconscious to allow it a voice, it spoke more strongly now than it had this morning on the crag.

You thought I wanted to be seen , it told me. And you were right.

But not just by anyone.

I waited.

I wanted to be seen by you.