Page 31

Twenty-Eight

Two hours later, I arrived at the police station.

What I had found shouldn’t have surprised me. For all his faults, my father had always been tenacious. A man who, once he started something, kept going.

Brute force.

Having worked through his files, I knew that my father hadn’t just gone one step further than everyone else involved in the Pied Piper investigation, he had walked a whole marathon more. Stubborn; persistent; refusing to stop. It was difficult for me to imagine what had compelled him to research the case the way that he had. He had always been so adamant that I forget about it. It had been his disapproval that had led me to accept it was Robbie Garforth I’d seen that day—or at least, that was how it had seemed at the time. But whatever his motivation for pursuing it, his efforts had brought him a name.

And a face.

The shock I’d felt when I’d seen the photograph of James Palmer remained with me now. The boy might have been a few years younger in the image than he’d been when I saw him in the rest area, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was him. He matched the sketch I’d co ntributed to almost perfectly. More importantly, he fit with my memory. As I’d stared at the photograph, I might as well have been looking back in time.

Why didn’t you tell everyone you’d found him, Dad? I thought.

Maybe because I didn’t need to.

The voice my subconscious gave him now was stronger than before.

What would it have achieved if I’d gone to the police? he asked me. I assumed James Palmer was dead. And there was no family left to care about him. I didn’t think it would make any difference.

People would have known how much work you put in, I thought.

Maybe so. But what would it have done to you, my son?

I stared across the darkening street. That made sense, didn’t it? How would I have reacted, having moved on from everything, to being told that I’d actually been right all those years ago, and that I’d let James Palmer down not once but twice?

Perhaps I wanted to protect you, my father said.

Perhaps that’s all I ever really wanted.

I crossed the road.

Inside the police station, it was the same officer behind the desk as on my first visit. He had been polite enough that time, but his face fell when he looked up and saw me approaching him now.

“Dr. Garvie,” he said slowly. “What can I do for you?”

I wasn’t Fleming’s favorite person on the island, and the officer had the air of a man who took his lead from people he considered more important than him. If something of the school bully remained in Fleming, then this man reminded me of the boys who had stood behind him back then laughing.

“I need to speak to Liam,” I said.

He bristled slightly. “You mean Detective Fleming ?”

“Obviously that’s who I mean. You don’t have a bunch of other Liams hiding back there, do you? I need to speak to him.”

“Detective Fleming is very busy.”

“He’s about to get a lot busier. ”

The officer took a deep breath.

“Everybody is working very hard, Dr. Garvie. But there haven’t been any developments in the search for your father and—”

“You’re wrong.” I leaned down on the desk. “There have been. There have also been developments about the body that was recovered from the rocks yesterday. You just don’t know about them yet.”

Because none of you are as good police as my father was.

I held up the sheaf of paperwork I’d brought with me.

“Trust me,” I said. “Liam really wants to see me right now.”

That was very far from true, of course.

As I was shown into Fleming’s office, it was immediately apparent that the only reasons he might want to see me were ones that neither of us was going to enjoy. After the door closed, and it was just the two of us, he stood up and walked round from behind his desk, stopping a distance away from me that was clearly meant to be intimidating.

“You’ve got a fucking nerve coming here,” he said.

I held my ground.

“Why?” I said.

“Because I know what you’ve been up to.” His face reddened. “I saw your car parked outside Sarah’s house yesterday evening. And then a little bird told me the two of you were both at your father’s house this morning.”

Despite myself, I took a step back now, more out of disbelief than anything else. Given the circumstances of our altercation the other night, I supposed that what he had just said shouldn’t surprise me, but it did.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’ve been following us?”

“I do what I have to.”

The anger in him was obvious. The indignation . There would almost have been a childishness to him—like a little boy who’d had a toy taken away—except that he was very much a grown man now. I was aware of both his physical presence and the fact that we were alone together in his office right now.

You are detached , I told myself .

You are calm.

“Sarah’s my friend,” I said. “Like I told you the other night. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you?”

“Liam—”

“I ought to beat the living shit out of you.”

And at that, he bunched his right hand into a fist down by his side. But if it was meant to scare me, it did the opposite. It was such a clumsy tell that I relaxed the moment I saw him doing it. He wasn’t going to be able to put a hand on me.

I imagined my father standing behind me, watching all this unfold.

What would you do right now, Dad? I thought.

Nothing too silly, my son.

Just give a good account of yourself.

“We’re not teenagers anymore, Liam,” I said. “Why don’t you try?”

Fleming looked to one side and snorted quietly. And then, not even deigning to look back, he reached out to grab the front of my shirt. I stepped to the side, turning at the waist so that he grasped at air, and while he was off-balance and still reaching I tapped him with the knuckles of my free hand—once, twice—first in the solar plexus and then up on the chin. I pulled the shots, but made sure there was enough speed and force there for him to understand that it had been my choice not to land them harder.

Before he could react, I stepped past him and slapped the file of paperwork down loudly on the desk.

He turned slightly, staring at me in shock.

“What the fuck? You just assaulted a—”

“No,” I said. “I just defended myself very gently against an attempted assault. But I can imagine what you’re thinking. Your word against mine, right?”

I gestured around the office.

“But the thing is, Liam, I look at my professional record, and then I look at yours, and I’m happy to take my chances. So if you want to try doing that again, then by all means go for it. But if I were you, I’d make a call to your guy out front first. Because trust me, you’re not going to manage it by yourself.”

Fleming rubbed his chin. I’d barely made contact, but the real damage had been done to his ego, and it was touch and go right now as to what he was going to do.

I tapped the file on the desk to focus his attention.

“ Or we could talk about this ,” I said. “Which is much more important.”

He looked at the file. Then back up at me.

After a couple of seconds, his curiosity got the better of him.

“What’s that?” he said.

“Let’s start with Darren Field.”

“Who the fuck is Darren Field?”

“I think he’s the man you fished out of the sea yesterday,” I said. “He didn’t drown, did he? He’d been badly hurt. He was murdered before his body was dumped in the water.”

“How do you—?”

“I don’t ,” I said. “I don’t know for sure. But here. Look.”

I opened the file and picked out the top sheet—a photograph I’d printed from one of Field’s social media accounts—and held it out to Fleming.

“You know I didn’t see the body,” I said. “But I’m betting I’m right. Does this man look familiar to you?”

Fleming hesitated, still performing a few final mental calculations about what to do next, and whether that involved trying to hurt me. But he understood deep down that might not go well for him, and I thought I’d also done just about enough to pique his interest and offer him an exit ramp.

He took the sheet of paper off me and looked down at it.

I waited.

“Maybe,” he said.

But it was obvious he recognized the face on the printout. And yet there was no satisfaction in being right. Unless you counted our encounter at the rest area, I had never met Darren Field, but it was still upsetting to have it confirmed what had happened to him. I thought about his wife —how she clearly loved him, and was probably still waiting for him to come home even now—and the old guilt began to rise up, threatening to break the surface. There were so many chains of cause and effect at play here, but the truth was that, if I had been better all those years ago, he would still be alive.

“All right,” Fleming said. “Who is this guy?”

I shook my head. “That’s going to take some explaining.”

“So explain.”

“I’m going to. But to do that, I need to start at the beginning.”

I picked another sheet of paper from the file.

And then I took a deep breath.

“I need to start with a boy named James Palmer.”