Page 19

Seventeen

The island is still stuck far enough in the past to have a handful of working public telephone boxes, and this one is close to the end of the pier. John has chosen to use it over the past few days partly for convenience, but mostly because he knows that, despite its handy location, it exists in a CCTV black spot. In the event that anyone traces the calls and searches for evidence, there will be no proof that it was him who made them.

Not that you’re doing anything wrong , he thinks.

But he doesn’t believe that.

It feels more likely that he’s done everything wrong.

He glances around the street, and then steps into the booth and closes the door. It’s cramped and grubby inside, and when he picks up the handset it feels slightly greasy in his hand. Claustrophobic. Dirty. Difficult to get a grip on. That all seems fitting. It’s how his whole world has felt since he talked to Brian Gill on the barge and confirmed what had happened to Rose Saunders.

He feeds coins into the slot and dials a number from memory. Then he leans against the side of the box, staring out through the plastic at a gray smear of sea and hoping to God that it will be a man’s voice that answers his call this time.

It rings for a while .

When someone eventually picks up, they say nothing.

John waits. There’s an obvious presence in the silence on the other end of the line, and he can tell that they sense him here too. The two of them are stuck at an impasse right now, and, for their own very different reasons, neither of them is prepared to break it. This is the third day in a row that he has dialed this number, the first being immediately after returning from that visit to the barge.

Darren Field’s wife had spoken to him that time.

No, I’m sorry , she said.

Darren’s not here right now.

That’s fine , he told her. I’ll try again tomorrow. Not a problem.

After hanging up, he’d done his best to convince himself that what he’d just said to her was true. That there was not necessarily any kind of problem at all. When he’d spoken to Gill, he’d taken the initiative a little: second-guessing what Rose’s account of events might have been. The fact that he had been right, and that it echoed what Darren Field had told him so closely, could hardly be a coincidence. However outlandish the stories might have been individually, they corroborated each other.

But that didn’t mean anything had happened to Field since. Even accepting the stories at face value— even if every word of them was true —Field had done what the killer told him, hadn’t he? There was no way in which Rose deserved what had happened to her, but she had broken the rules and gone to the police. Whereas the only person Field had spoken to about what had happened was John.

And he isn’t police anymore.

But he had begun to wonder about that. Whoever was responsible for this had not only taken a photograph of John in the woods with the woman’s body, but had hand-delivered it to the house afterward. The killer knew that much about John. And even if he was aware that John was no longer police, perhaps to him that was a distinction without a difference.

John had tried the number again yesterday, and Field’s wife had answered the call again. This time, she had sounded more frightened, and he had heard the desperation in the hello she’d offered, followed immediately by the frustration when John had asked her if Darren was home. It was obvious she had been hoping the call would have been from someone else.

No, he isn’t , she’d said. I don’t know where Darren is.

Who is—?

John had hung up.

He waits now, the silence heavy in his ear. There’s no point in asking the question. Darren Field isn’t there. He can sense the same feeling of desperation as yesterday, and realizes he doesn’t want to take the hope away from her by speaking and revealing himself once again. Because deep down, whatever he tries to tell himself, he is certain that he has already done enough damage to this family.

The silence stretches out for a few more seconds.

“Darren?” Field’s wife whispers.

John says nothing.

“Is that you, baby?”

She starts crying.

“Please come home. I’m sorry. I’ll do anything, I—”

John hangs up.

What have you done?

His vision stars over suddenly, and he places a hand against the dirty plastic of the phone box to steady himself. Then lowers his head and takes a series of deep breaths.

Minutes pass.

And then, finally, he looks up and nods to himself.

What have you done?

That question stays with him all the way home. It feels like some variation of it has been with him his whole life. The self-hatred and worthlessness have been inside him since childhood, like a well of lava that erupts occasionally, shattering the crust. The last few years might have been peaceful on the surface, but the feelings have always been there, only ever hidden slightly underneath. And they emerge with ferocity now.

You’re worthless .

You’re stupid and small.

A failure. A fool.

As always, it doesn’t matter whether these things are true, only that it feels like they are. Before now, he’s always been able to deal with them, the shame and disgust like pieces of food stuck in his throat that just need to be fought down and swallowed. But this time the consequences of his failure are too much. By the time he gets home, they’re choking him.

He locks the front door and heads up to his room.

For a moment, he stands looking up at the shelves of box files above the desk. The cold cases he’s investigated over the years. All that research; all those scribbled notes. Playing policeman. If so, it had always seemed like a game without stakes: a harmless hobby for an old man to fill his time with. What damage could it do to investigate them? And people might laugh, but nobody really knew what he might end up achieving.

Because people underestimated him.

His very first box file is still open on the desk, all the old paperwork from the beginning of his investigation into the Pied Piper strewn around it. His original cold case, begun all those years ago. His and Daniel’s.

He leans on the desk, staring down at it.

Remembering.

In the first year that Daniel was away at university, it took John a while to get used to being in the house by himself. Even though he and his son had lived almost separate lives for the past few years, he felt Daniel’s absence keenly. The door to the attic might have always been closed, but it was different knowing there was no longer anyone behind it. That if he worked up the courage to go up those stairs and knock, there was nobody there to answer.

So he threw himself into his new project.

After coming home from work every day, he dedicated his evenings to his research. Over the course of that first year, he read every article he could find on the Pied Piper. He accessed all the available information on the police investigation, ordered copies of old newspapers, joined online forums, and made pages and pages of notes. He became gripped by the idea that in solving the mysteries at the heart of the case, he might come to understand his son and heal the damage that had been done to them both.

If I do this, everything will be okay.

And the year had passed.

By the end, his research was an all-consuming mission, but one increasingly driven by a sense of panic: the feeling that time was running out. At the start, he had dared to hope he might find something that everyone else had missed, but all that year proved to him was how thorough the official investigation had been, and how ill-equipped he was to add anything to it.

There was no obvious way forward in identifying the Pied Piper. And if the boy at the rest area had not been Robbie Garforth then he was an enigma: a boy who appeared to have left no discernible trace on the world at all, either before that day or after it.

When Daniel returned for the summer holiday, there was no reconciliation between them. They spent that handful of weeks together much as they had in previous years: retreating to their separate spaces; closing their doors. Only now, it wasn’t a lack of courage that kept John from going up the stairs and knocking, but shame.

He had hoped that by identifying the boy Daniel had seen at the rest area that day he might be able to bridge the distance between himself and his son. And he had failed.

Worthless. Stupid. Old man.

At the end of the holiday, Daniel headed off back to university.

John, hungover, had given him an awkward hug at the dock, and noticed that Daniel seemed broader and stronger than he remembered. Away from home (and it was impossible for John to shake the thought: away from him ), his son had begun to flourish. A part of him had understood that Daniel was leaving the island behind him in more ways than one.

At that point, John had turned his attention to other cases. Just as a hobby. He began to expand his collection of box files, focusing on one cold case after another, flitting between them whenever some new development offered a fresh angle. They were distractions; he never held out real hope of solving any of them. Perhaps that was even part of the appeal. They were like stories in which he could just study chapters over and over, losing himself in the detail, never worrying about reaching the end. They didn’t matter to him. They weren’t personal.

But he always left that original box file apart from the others, with space beside it on the shelf. It was as though a part of him knew he wasn’t done with it just yet. That his worst crime after that first year hadn’t been failing during it, but giving up at the end.

Because that was not who he was. He was not a man who gave up.

He was a man who kept going.

What have you done?

John looks through the paperwork from that first file again now.

He remembers how it felt the other night as he was searching for the connection that was eluding him. But the butterflies in his stomach are long gone now. There is only guilt and self-disgust. What on earth had he been thinking? Had he really expected that he might be able to deal with this himself?

He puts the paperwork away and slides the box file back into place on the shelf. There is no gap beside it now. Over the years, that space has been taken up by the seven others he’s filled since, and as he stares at those, a different question occurs to him.

Not what he’s done.

But what he didn’t.

That brings another sharp stab of guilt, and he blinks quickly and turns away to face the punch bag. Worthless. Stupid. Whenever his emotions have erupted, he has taken them out on that, but the ones inside him right now are too huge, too damning. He might have caused Darren Field’s death, and that’s a weight and pain he can’t bear.

The sight of the bag reminds him that he was hitting it when he realized what his connection to Field might be. At the time, he’d been wondering what the best thing to do was.

The emotions inside him now provide an answer to that question.

He sits down at the desk, picturing the Reach, the place that has called to him so often over the years. In the past, he’s always resisted. But a voice in his head now demands: how much better would the world be if you hadn’t?

He takes out a fresh sheet of paper.

Notify my son , he writes.