Page 89 of The Man Made of Smoke

I remembered what I’d imagined the killer saying to me on the ferry.

The truth is you have no idea what I’m doing.

You’ve spent your whole life avoiding thinking about me. Pretending you could just leave what you did to me behind. Protecting yourself.

I looked ahead at the motorway and realized where we were.

“No,” I said again quietly. “Not yet.”

And then, without thinking about it, I signaled.

Sarah looked to the side, confused.

“Where are we going?”

I didn’t answer. But as I drove down the exit off the motorway, I saw her settle back nervously in her seat beside me, and I knew that she didn’t need me to.

“Have you been back here since?” Sarah said.

There were so many parking spaces that it was difficult to be exact, but I tried to park in roughly the same spot my father had on that afternoon all those years ago.

“No,” I said. “You?”

“Of course not. Why would I? I can get an out-of-date cheese sandwich and a packet of crisps anywhere.”

She peered out through the window.

“And this is just… a place.”

“Maybe,” I said.

It was a place that hadn’t changed much. The motel remained to one side: a different chain now, but no different apart from the signage on the front. The tiled slope ahead that led into the main building was exactly as I remembered it.Just a place.That was true on one level. But looking around, I found it easy to picture a figure smoking against the wall of the motel, and a van selling flowers to one side of the entrance. For a brief moment, I even sensed the shadow of a vehicle parked beside us, its dirty metal sides patterned with small handprints beneath a rusty grille over the window.

“Why are we here, Dan?” Sarah said.

“Because I need to talk to him. The man who’s doing this.”

“What—you think he’s here?”

“No. I mean in my mind.”

She hesitated.

“You know that sounds really weird, right?”

“Probably,” I said. “I’ve been trying to put myself in his head for a couple of days now, and it’s not working, but maybe I spent so long not thinking about him that it’s hard to do it properly now. Perhaps if I want to understand him, I need to start from first principles.”

I took a deep breath.

“And that means being here.”

I opened the car door. I wasn’t sure if Sarah was going to follow me, but after a moment, she did.

We walked across the car park together.

And then inside.

Ithadchanged in here. The amusement arcade was gone now, replaced by a sprawl of beige tables and chairs. What had once been the burger counter was now a currency exchange window in the wall. And while the shop remained in the same place I remembered, the layout was entirely different. Everything seemed brighter and more open than I recalled it being.

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