Page 20 of The Man Made of Smoke

The dead woman in the woods.

Sarah’s words from last night, coming back to me now.

My father had been the one to find her. The body still hadn’t been identified, Sarah said, but it didn’t appear to be anyone from the island. Whoever the woman was, she had been murdered elsewhere, and then her remains brought here to the woods. The police still had no idea as to the killer’s identity, or what the motive might have been for him to kill her.

And if what your father found bothered him… he didn’t show it.

After my second cup of coffee, I headed upstairs to his office.

It felt strange, walking in, to find it the same as yesterday. How could it be otherwise, of course? Nobody had been in here since. And yet a part of me still expected to find some evidence of activity, because it was equally difficult to believe that he was gone.

I walked over to the desk and picked up the photograph I’d found.

My father. Standing out in woodland.

As I’d thought yesterday, the expression on his face was difficult to make out, but it was recognizably him. He was wearing his long green coat, which had been a birthday present to himself this year. I remembered that when we’d sat outside together on the deck during my last visit, he’d put it on when it got colder.

I peered more closely at the image.

What was that, lying at his feet?

There was something in the undergrowth there, but the poor resolution of the image made it impossible to see clearly. All I could really make out were unnatural patches of brown and black and red among the blurry swirls of grass. But even if I couldn’t be certain of what I was seeing, it disturbed me.

I put the photograph on the desk and leaned down on either side of it.

The resolution of the photograph was evidence in itself. No camera was this bad at close range. The quality suggested to me that the picture had been taken from a distance, and then zoomed in on and cropped. And while my father was looking vaguely in the direction of the camera it didn’t seem like he was conscious of it. That made me think that it had been taken surreptitiously, catching him in this particular moment without him being aware of a photograph being taken.

Which disturbed me more.

Detached, I reminded myself.

Calm.

My work had taught me that it was important to keep to the facts and not go off on wild flights of fancy. Even so, assuming that I was looking at what I thought I might be—my father in the moment he had found the woman’s body—I couldn’t think of any other explanation than that the photographer had been the person responsible for leaving it there.

I rubbed my jaw.

There was a sense of threat to the image now. Despite the fact my father was ostensibly alone in the shot, he seemed vulnerable, like prey targeted in a scope, and I wanted to reach into the photograph to protect him.

Where had the photo come from?

I was so used to storing my pictures digitally that it was strange to see one printed out on paper. As far as I knew, my father had not been in the habit of doing so, but it was possible that he had. Perhaps the picture had been emailed to him. If so, the image file might be on his computer somewhere, and there might be some clue in the metadata as to who sent it.

I clicked the power button on the desktop.

The screen flickered into life. My father’s screensaver was a generic image of countryside, and there was a password prompt. My fingers hovered over the keys, but I had no idea what his password might be and couldn’t even begin to guess. I felt frustrated, but put the emotion away; it wouldn’t help right now.

I powered the device down again.

Regardless of how my father had received the image, how would he have reacted when he saw it? Sarah had told me he hadn’t been affected by finding the body, but I was sure he would have felt a responsibility toward the murdered woman, even if he had hidden it. That was the kind of man he had always been.

This photograph was a clue to getting justice to her, but it didn’t seem like he had reported it to the police. He must have had a reason for that, even if I couldn’t fathom what it might be. But equally, he would not have ignored it. He would have felt a burning need to dosomething.I tried to put myself in my father’s place, based on everything I knew about him. A dogged and determined man. Beaten down by life but never allowing himself to buckle. A man who felt things deeply. Even if he hadn’t pursued this through official channels, he would definitely have chased it somehow.

I studied the photograph again.

It had been a long time since I’d walked the trails myself, but Sarah and I had been out there all the time as kids, and the maps we made in our heads were often surprisingly strong. One of the branches of a birch tree on the edge of the photograph looked familiar. It poked out at an angle and then stretched down into the undergrowth, like a pale, skeletal leg that the tree had stuck out in an attempt to trip you. I thought I recognized that.

Or at least, that I would if I was there.

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