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Twenty-One

The website was so old that I doubted Michael Johnson would still be at the same address, but Sarah had done her research. The domain name had been renewed last month. She’d also checked another online directory and found a current listing for him there too.

An hour later, we were on the ferry to the mainland.

I bought a coffee and a sandwich from the onboard shop, and then sat down inside on one of the sculpted plastic chairs, facing the glass doors to the outside deck. For some reason, I didn’t want bracing this morning. Sarah went outside to smoke in the drizzle. Her hair was in a ponytail, and I watched as loose strands of it whipped around in the wind. She seemed oblivious to the elements, just leaning on the railing and staring off toward the horizon as we left the island behind us.

Both of us lost in our own thoughts.

I ate the sandwich slowly, trying to put things together in my head.

Oliver Hunter killed; Graham Lloyd forced to watch.

Graham Lloyd killed; Rose Saunders forced to watch.

Rose Saunders killed; Darren Field forced to watch.

And now Field was missing. If he had been murdered—presumably as a result of talking to my father—then that implied someone else had been abducted and forced to watch him die .

So your father might still be alive.

You might be able to save him.

Perhaps that was what a part of me really had been thinking, but I had to remain calm and detached. Because that line of thought was dangerous. I sipped my coffee now and considered the situation logically. If it had been my father who was abducted and made to watch Field die, why hadn’t he been released and given the choice as to whether to tell his story or not, the way the other victims had?

That didn’t make sense.

And I also knew that my father had felt things strongly. He had been an impulsive, frustrated man, prone to outbursts and to lashing out: a man who struggled to control his emotions. He would have felt an enormous weight of guilt over what happened to Darren Field; I had no doubt about that. All the evidence still suggested that he had jumped from the Reach. Apart from anything else, it was difficult to imagine him being taken by someone without putting up a hell of a fight.

And Michael Johnson was likely to be part of the killer’s chain.

I wondered what we were going to find when we arrived on Johnson’s doorstep. Would he even talk to us? If he did, perhaps it would be a comfort to discover he had no idea what we were talking about. But if he told us a similar story to Rose Saunders’s partner then I wasn’t sure what would happen next. Because if we couldn’t persuade him to talk to the police—which seemed a genuine possibility under the circumstances—then we would be no closer to proving any of it.

The killer had been careful and clever.

I watched the rain dappling the glass.

Okay then , I thought.

And then I braced myself and attempted to conjure up a presence in the air behind me. It was more solid now, and arrived more quickly than it had over the past two days. The man was taking shape in my subconscious. And while I reminded myself that it wasn’t real and couldn’t hurt me, I still felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising.

Who are you? I thought.

You know who I am .

My mind supplied a note of contempt to the voice, because if the man had once been that boy, he would surely hate me for failing to help him as a child. And yet the words themselves weren’t quite true. I didn’t know who he was. Nobody did. All I knew was what he was now.

And what is that?

You’re a serial murderer, I thought. You’re organized and you’re highly intelligent. In terms of what motivates you, your crimes don’t seem to fall into the hedonistic category. It’s possible that you enjoy the control you have over your victims, but I don’t think it’s the power itself that matters. And you don’t seem like a visionary. Which suggests to me that you’re mission-oriented. That would certainly fit with your behavior and victim selection.

You seem very sure of yourself.

No, I thought. It’s impossible to be sure without meeting you.

You’re getting ahead of yourself, doctor. You talk about my behavior. What exactly is it that I’m doing?

You’re playing some kind of sick game.

I’m sure you can do better than that.

All right then, I thought. You force a person to watch someone being murdered. If they tell the police then you kill them next, and you force someone else to watch that. You’ve created a chain of victims, one after the other.

And who do I kill? Not just anyone, right?

No, I thought. That’s part of your mission. You’ve targeted the people who were at the rest area that day. The people who looked the other way. The ones who failed to help you.

The figure laughed.

You’re assuming they’re the only people I’ve killed.

My subconscious sounded like it was mocking me. I felt frustration building up inside me and forced it down.

I am, I thought. Yes. But Occam’s razor tells us not to multiply entities unnecessarily. So right now, I’m working with the facts I have. Perhaps there have been others—it’s possible you’ve hurt a lot of people over the years—but those are the only victims I know you’ve targeted .

The voice was silent for a moment.

When it spoke next, the mockery was gone. It sounded serious now. Angry. Because however clever and careful he was, this was a man built on fragile foundations, and he wouldn’t enjoy being challenged.

How do I kill them?

I sipped my coffee.

I didn’t know the answer to that question for certain, but in two cases I knew enough. Graham Lloyd had been the victim of a brutal, sustained assault; Rose Saunders’s body had been discovered with blade marks on the bones. Whatever the actual cause of death, I had no doubt they had both suffered tremendously.

Violently, I thought.

Horrifically.

And what does that tell you about me?

That you hate your victims, I thought. That you see them as blameworthy. In your mind, they deserve to be punished. They didn’t help you that day, and now you want them to suffer for it.

The answer seemed intuitive.

And yet when the figure spoke again, the voice sounded surprised.

Really? it said. You think it’s as straightforward and obvious as that? I’m disappointed in you, doctor. Did you get your degree from one of those books your father used to love?

I waited.

If I hated them and wanted to hurt them, why wouldn’t I just do it?

Doesn’t what I’m doing suggest something… more?

Again, I didn’t reply.

Because that was true; it did suggest something more. If the man simply wanted to punish the people who had been at the rest area that day, he had the ability and opportunity to do so. But instead, he put them through a terrible ordeal and then gave them a choice. If they did nothing, they would be spared. If they did the right thing, they would be killed next.

And that didn’t fit with hating them for doing nothing in the past. If the motivation was to punish them for failing to do the right thing back then, why reward them for behaving in that same selfish way now?

Behind me, the figure laughed to itself softly.

I looked ahead of me, through the glass doors. Sarah blew smoke off to one side on the deck, and I watched as it was snatched quickly away by the wind. The rain was picking up too. It felt like the ferry was taking us into a storm.

The truth is you have no idea what I’m doing , the figure said.

You’ve spent your whole life avoiding thinking about me. Pretending you could just leave what you did to me behind. Protecting yourself. But you were never safe. I was always there.

I watched as Sarah stubbed out her cigarette. Then she turned around, and just for a second, the rain on the glass changed her face into a smear. In my mind’s eye, I pictured the photograph I’d found at the rest area that day.

I blinked quickly. The figure behind me laughed softly again.

You said it was impossible to be sure without meeting me , it said.

But don’t worry.

You’re going to.