Page 10 of The Man Made of Smoke

“My father’s house,” I said.

Fleming insisted on walking me back to reception.

“So anyway,” he said. “How’s life working out for you? Married? Kids?”

I pictured my sparse one-bedroom flat. I had been alone there for a year, give or take, ever since Laura left. My last relationship had followed a predictable pattern. I never seemed to have much trouble meeting women, but offering them enough reasons to stay was a different matter.

“No,” I said. “You?”

“No kids—not yet anyway. Partnered up, though. You remember Sarah from your year?”

I made sure not to miss a step.

The mention of her name was like a bruise I’d forgotten about: not pressed on for years now, and any real pain long dulled, but still surprisingly tender to the touch. After Sarah and I left for separate universities, we’d drifted apart, the way that people do, and I hadn’t thought about her in a while. The last I remembered hearing, she’d been working on the mainland, having escaped from the island the way I knew she’d always dreamed of. But obviously something must have fallen through and she’d found herself back here.

It occurred to me that my father must have known that, and yet for some reason, he’d never mentioned it.

“I remember,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah, it’s a good life. Nice job. Respect. Steady as she goes.”

We reached the door to the reception.

“Seriously, though,” Fleming said. “How do you do it?”

I waited.

“Those people you have locked up,” he said. “Yourpatients, if you want to call them that. They’ve done the worst things a person can do.”

“Yes.”

“How can you bring yourself to talk to them like they’re human beings?”

I thought about that.

It was a question that people asked me a lot, and I had sympathy with it. Richard Barber, for example, was a man who would never be released from prison, and I was sure many people thought he deserved to spend the rest of his days suffering for the damage he’d done. And it was difficult to argue with that. There were times when the details of my patients’ crimes made me want to cry. Days when it felt like they crept home with me at night, and I could imagine them standing at the end of my bed in the darkness, whistling to themselves.

But however horrific their crimes might be, theywereonly human beings. It was important to remember that.

I pushed open the door.

“Because there’s no such thing as monsters,” I said.

Three

After leaving the police station, I followed the seafront around awhile, and then headed up the steep cobbled hill and along the country lanes that led farther inland. The smell of wild garlic hung in the air above the hedgerows, and the quiet was interrupted only occasionally by one of the few cars that traveled this back road.

Eventually I reached a cul-de-sac that ran a short distance into the woods. There were seven detached properties spread out along it. Three on one side; three on the other. The property at the far end was a wide, two-story log cabin, facing down the road with its back to the woods behind.

My father’s house.

I stopped at the end of the driveway and looked up at the peaked roof of the converted attic. That had been my bedroom as a child, and I still slept there on my occasional trips to the island. The last time had been a few months ago, in May, because however much I hated returning here, I always made an effort to see my father on his birthday.

As usual, I had bought him a book as a present. In his older age, my father had become an avid reader. Mysteries and crime thrillers; he loved those. Not because they reminded him of his career in the police, but because they deviated from it. The stories were exciting and full of incident,the bad guy got caught at the end and justice was served. Real life was rarely that eventful. When it was, almost never so simple and satisfying.

The first thing I did when I was inside was make my way up to the attic, turning a few lights on as I went. I put my bag down on the single bed and looked around. The room had clearly been made up since my last visit, presumably in expectation of my return at some point.

Which forced the question:

---