Page 47 of The Man Made of Smoke

I waited.

And then I heard the soft creaks on the stairs as he went back down.

I stood there for a moment longer, until I heard his door close on the floor below and the sound of thudding return. Then I went back to my bed and lay down with the book again.

But it was an interest that Robbie would not be allowed to grow old enough to grow out of.

I flipped through to the photographs in the center of the book.

Past the portrait shots of Sean Loughlin, Paul Deacon, and Charlie French—the other victims of the Pied Piper—to the sheets dedicated to Robbie Garforth.

To the picture that had been taken at his school.

To the sketch that I had helped the police to draw.

And then, bracing myself, to the photograph reproduced below.

Standing in my father’s room now, I scrolled down to the bottom of the web page he’d left open and read the headline of the section there.

The Sighting at Rampton Rest Area

The infamous photograph of Robbie Garforth was posted to the side.

It was a low-resolution, black-and-white image—perhaps even scanned from O’Hare’s book—but it still had the power to shock, because anyone who saw it knew that it had been taken by Robbie’s killer.It showed a close-up of the boy’s face, as he turned his head to one side to look back over his shoulder. The image had been captured in a moment of motion that smeared almost everything apart from the fear in his eyes.

The picture had been cropped, but it was still desperately upsetting to look at. And of course, I was the one who had found the original photograph at the rest area that day. The picture here might have been gray and faded, but I had seen the full image in color—vivid and real—and as I looked at the image again now, my mind filled in the details that were hidden outside the edges of the frame. The floor where a section of boards had been removed to create a pit; the hammers and screwdrivers and lengths of cable arranged around the sides, surrounding the terrified little boy.

And for a moment, I was back there. I could smell the stale air of the toilets. Hear the nasal hum of the flickering green lights. See my hands shaking as I stared down at the photograph I was holding and realized what it showed.

I looked away, at the text on the screen, reading this section of the website more closely than I had the ones above.

The photograph (R) of this little boy was found by 12-year-old Daniel Garvie and his father, John. The image was left in the bathroom at Rampton rest area and the boy has been identified as Robbie Garforth, the final victim of the Pied Piper.

Seeing my name there made my heart beat a little faster.

The cropped version of the photograph had featured heavily in the media at the time, along with the details of my encounter with the killer and the boy. I had seen my father’s name mentioned in print occasionally, but I supposed that was understandable: he was a policeman, after all, even if he had never been involved in the investigation itself. There was a lengthy section in O’Hare’s book describing the incident. But this was the first time I had ever seen my own name published in the public domain.

A feeling of unease crept through me. Once again, there was the unsettling sensation that I had left a door unlocked and something had snuck in without me realizing.

I forced myself to read on.

Daniel Garvie encountered the killer and Robbie Garforth in the rest area toilets that day. He was probably lucky to escape with his life!

My heart rate went up again, this time because reading even a bland description threatened to take me back there again. Back into that toilet, with its flickering lights and alien atmosphere, and the man standing outside the flimsy door of the cubicle as I cowered inside. I felt faint, my mind momentarily unable to differentiate between the past and present.

I focused on the screen.

The words there.

Daniel Garvie encountered the killer and Robbie Garforth in the rest area toilets that day.

I remembered being interviewed by the police at the time. They had been careful with me at first, and then become a little more belligerent as the days passed. They were always professional, but it was obvious that their impatience with me was growing with every meeting. Because there was no doubt that the boy in the photograph was Robbie Garforth. And almost all the witnesses who had seen the boy at the rest area that day were sure it had been him.

All of them except for me.

On the very first day, the police showed me the same school photograph of Robbie that would eventually be printed in O’Hare’s book.

This is Robbie Garforth, they told me. He was abducted from the woodland last week. Is this the boy you saw in the toilets?

---