Page 8 of The Man Made of Smoke

I rang the buzzer at the desk.

A man emerged from the back half a minute later. He was about my age, which meant we had probably grown up here at roughly the same time. But I didn’t recognize his face or the name on his badge.

“Daniel Garvie,” I told him. “I have an appointment to see Liam Fleming.”

Which was a name I had recognized.

Fleming was a couple of years older than me, and the two of us had had plenty of encounters, in and out of the playground, when we were younger. It hadn’t surprised me when I’d learned he’d gone into the police. Some men—and my father had been one—were drawn to the job because they wanted to do good and make a difference, but the power of the job inevitably attracted its share of bullies too. People could change, of course. But my father had worked with Fleming, and I knew well enough that he hadn’t.

The desk sergeant buzzed me through and then walked me to Fleming’s office. It was a small, cluttered room, with filing cabinets lining the walls and piles of paperwork scattered everywhere. Fleming stood up as I entered. He was much as I recalled him from our teenage altercations: tall and broad, albeit with a bit of a paunch now. He had the kind of build that suggested a visit to the gym every so often, but probably not regularly. His hair was shaved all the way down to the skull. I wondered if it was meant to give him an image of authority or it was simply because it was beginning to desert him.

“Daniel.”

He held out a hand and I took it. Even though his tone of voice was professional and formal, I braced for an overly tight grip—a show of strength—but it didn’t quite come.

“Liam,” I said.

“I’m sorry you’re back here in these circumstances.”

“Yes,” I said. “I am too.”

He gestured. “Please sit down.”

My work had ingrained in me the habit of analyzing people, and so I considered his tone of voice and choice of language.Please sit down.It had been slightly more of an order than a suggestion, and a part of me bristled. But the playground was a long way behind us. I took the seat across the desk from him.

“Not as grand as you’re used to, I’m sure,” Fleming said.

“I’m sorry?”

“The office.” He waved at the mess around us. “I imagine yours must be pretty impressive.”

I pictured the psychiatric ward, with its heavy doors, and the single plexiglass window in my office that faced down one of the three corridors. My office was smaller than this, and not much tidier. It smelled of cleaning product. When I arrived in from the fresh air each morning, it always felt like passing through an air lock between the outside world and the very different worlds of the men confined in the rooms around me.

“I work in a prison,” I said.

“Really?” He looked surprised. “I thought you were aprofiler, or whatever they call it these days. Catching killers with your mind, all that stuff? I imagined there’d be couches. Books everywhere.”

“Not really,” I said. “Most of my job involves looking after my patients. By the time I meet them, they’ve already been caught.”

“Patients?” He gave me a pointed look. “These are killers, right?”

“Some of them.”

“Rapists. Guys who’ve hurt kids.”

“Some of them.”

He whistled to himself.

“It must be hard talking to people who’ve done things like that. Especially after what happened to you all those years ago.”

I held his gaze.

“Not really. And right now, I want to talk about what’s happening here.”

He stiffened a little at that. Then he seemed to shrug to himself, as though he’d attempted to be friendly and just been rebuffed, but it didn’t matter to him much either way.

“The coastguard is still searching,” he said. “The boats are probably out there as we speak. But it’s been two days now. I don’t want to be brutal, but you probably remember what the tide is like around the island.”

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