Page 7 of The Man Made of Smoke

It was important to remember that.

I leaned forward again, about to continue typing, but then the phone on my desk rang. I looked away from the screen, irritated by the distraction. The light for reception was blinking on the handset.

I picked it up.

“Dr. Daniel Garvie,” I said.

“Hi Dan—Myra here. I have a call for you. Gentleman on the line who says it’s urgent. He’s been trying your mobile but hasn’t been able to reach you.”

“Thanks, Myra,” I said. “Can you put him through?”

“No problem.”

She disappeared from the line.

“Dr. Daniel Garvie?”

The man’s voice was gruff but familiar.

“Yes.” I switched hands with the phone. “Who is this, please?”

“It’s Detective Liam Fleming.”

For a brief moment, the lights seemed to flicker.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news about your father,” he said.

Two

I stood outside on the passenger deck of the ferry.

The sea ahead was gray, the water ridged like mud, the ferry was churning white froth steadily out to the sides, as though plowing a field. The wind was as cold as ice, but I leaned on the railing and forced myself to endure it. The enormous hum of the engines vibrated in the air, a sound and a feeling all at once.

You are detached, I thought.

You are calm.

Ever since the phone call yesterday, while I made the necessary arrangements, I’d been trying to keep my thoughts and emotions under control. But it was harder now. The half-hour ferry trip back to the island offered far too much empty time in which to think.

The coastline appeared at the horizon, and I leaned back from the railing, as though by doing so I could stop it approaching. The stretch of land was as thin as hair at first, but quickly grew larger, the island like a monster crawling through an ever-widening crack.

The main village was postcard-perfect in the afternoon sun. But most ports look pretty from the sea, and as the ferry juddered inexorably toward the terminal, my gaze found the peeling paint on the walls of the shopfronts. The closed stores and boarded-up windows. The day drinkersgathered together by the war memorial in the square. If the island looked nice from a distance, it was only because that was the best place to see it from.

There was always a sense of dread when I came back here. Any good memories of this place were tainted by bad ones, and at this point on the journey it always felt like I was returning not just to a place but also a time.

And today, that feeling was much worse than usual.

I have some bad news about your father.

As we arrived, I headed inside into the cheap lounge and queued up for the rickety metal stairs. The stone ground beneath the body of the ferry was stained with oil and strewn with coils of dirty rope. The air stank of petrol, but that smell faded as I stepped out into the cold afternoon air and followed the other passengers through the maze of railings. Gulls wheeled overhead and the water lapped insistently against the mossy wooden posts lining the dock.

A short walk through the cobbled streets to the police station.

I stopped outside, momentarily reluctant to open the door. That would be when all this became real. Instead, I took a few seconds to stare at the building. The sandstone walls; the peaked roof; the old blue lantern by the door. It was all exactly as I remembered. Easy to imagine that, if I were to turn and look at the low wall across the road behind me, I might see a shade of my younger self sitting there, kicking his heels after school and waiting for his father to leave work.

I pushed the heavy door open.

The layout of the foyer had barely changed. There was a seating area to the right, basic, a little grubby, and—because crime on the island was scarce—as empty right now as I remembered it usually being. Some of the informational flyers on the wall looked so old that they might have been relics from back then.

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