Page 50 of The Man Made of Smoke

That fuckingbook, for one thing.

When he first found Daniel reading it, John followed his instincts and threw it out. Then he sat his son down and tried to talk to him. Obsessing like that wasn’t healthy, he told him. It wouldn’t help anyone or change anything. It wasn’t hisfault. A part of John knew that he was talking to himself too, because out of everyone present that day, surelyheshould have noticed something? But he took those thoughts out on the punch bag, along with the rest of his failures. He didn’t dwell on it the way that Daniel did.

Days passed.

Then the book reappeared—the same copy; his son had retrieved it from the bin outside—and John was furious. Daniel wouldn’t talk to him about what had happened; he wouldn’t talk to a therapist; he wouldn’t work his feelings out on the bag the way John encouraged him to. He just tortured himself by going over the crimes, again and again. It made John furious. Why wasn’t his son listening to him? But all his anger and frustration did was close doors between them: metaphorically at first, and then literally as time passed. John’s failure to help his son became yet another weight for him to bear. One more source of pain to take out on the punch bag.

The day that Daniel left for university, John went up to the attic.

As he looked around his son’s empty bedroom, he began to cry. Hedidn’t realize he was doing so at first, and it shocked and then shamed him when he did. He prided himself on bearing up to things: taking the disappointments of life on the chin without flinching or folding. The harder the world tried to beat you down, the more resolute you needed to be; whatever happened, you had tokeep going. But Daniel’s bedroom was so strange and unfamiliar to him right then that it might have belonged in a different house. John had the terrible feeling that he had lost something that could never be recovered, and he was crying like a child.

He walked across to Daniel’s desk and opened the drawer.

The book was there.

He had long since stopped telling Daniel not to read it, just as he had given up attempting to understand the young man his son had grown into. John picked it up now, noting the tattered cover and well-thumbed pages as he flicked through it.

Were there answers in here to the question of who Daniel had become? There must be, he thought; it felt like the book had raised his son more than he had. Perhaps there were clues as to what had gone wrong between them. Maybe even—the faintest of hopes, this—some hint as to how that damage might be repaired and begin to heal.

John stared down at the book for a long time. There was a lot within its pages that he had no desire to face up to: a lot of history that was best left undisturbed. But that was what he did, wasn’t it? And so after he had pulled himself together, he closed the drawer, left the room, and took the book downstairs with him.

He read it from beginning to end that same day. The first reading was a guilty one, as though he was observing his son surreptitiously from a distance. It also brought an ache of sadness. How could Daniel have immersed himself in this, and how much must it have hurt him to do so? John wanted to step backward in time and do more. Wrap him up. Save him in some way.

Days passed.

Daniel didn’t call.

John read the book over and over. In one sense, the story inside itwas complete. It had ended when the Pied Piper had been found dead by the roadside. Even if the man remained unidentified, his crimes were over, and he couldn’t hurt anyone now. And yet John found himself returning to the section in the book that discussed his son’s sighting of Robbie Garforth at the rest area and the photograph that had been left behind.

He remembered how adamant Daniel had been when the police interviewed him back then: absolutely certain that the boy he saw had not been Robbie Garforth. He had been determined to make the police believe that, and John had sat there watching him, proud of the way his son stuck to his convictions in the face of that pressure.Keep going, he had thought.Don’t give in.And when Daniel had looked at him for support, John had done his best to reassure him.

Just tell them the truth, Daniel.

But the expression on his son’s face had changed at that, and John had realized he’d managed to say the wrong thing yet again—even if, as was so often the case, he couldn’t understand how. And Daniel had changed his story and agreed with the officers.

But then… surely ithadto have been Robbie Garforth?

Robbie had been abducted a week before the encounter at the rest area. No other child matching his description had been reported missing, and nobody had come forward when Daniel’s sketch was circulated. If it really had been a different boy there that day, then it was as though they had never really been alive at all, or only ever existed in that short window of time. Which was impossible.

But John still found himself thinking:What if…?

Days passed.

His son didn’t call.

John started making notes. If he was going to work the case (and he barely allowed himself to think of it that way, at least to begin with), it felt important to have his own casework to refer to. He was tentative at first, but his efforts accelerated slightly every evening. By the end of the first week, the paperwork he’d accumulated was scattered chaotically across the desk.

Daniel phoned that evening.

His son said sorry for not being in touch before, but apparently there was only one pay phone in the hall of residence, and there was often a queue. He was settling in well though. Getting on well with his flatmates so far, and already enjoying the introductory lectures in his psychology degree. John had to put his hand over his other ear to make out what Daniel was saying. People were talking in the background, and there was music playing, and it was difficult to hear his son properly.

“What did you say?”

Daniel raised his voice a little. “I asked howyouwere, Dad.”

John looked over at the mess of papers.

“I’m good,” he said.

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