Page 9 of The Man Made of Smoke

“You don’t need to worry about being brutal,” I said.

“I just want to be sensitive.”

“I understand,” I said. “You don’t need to do that either. What I want is for you to talk me through the timeline.”

More of an order than a suggestion.

Fleming stared at me for a second.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Sure. We found his car at the Reach.”

The island rose steeply to the northeast, like a shoe turned at an angle. At the heel, it was over a hundred meters down to the sharp rocks and angry sea below, and one section of the cliff there jutted out farther than the rest. That was what gave the Reach its name, even if you would never see it called that in tourist pamphlets.

When we were kids, we used to dare each other to get as close to the edge as possible and, as Fleming spoke, I remembered standing out there.

Shivering.

Scared.

The height making me dizzy.

“It was Craig Aspinall who saw your father,” Fleming told me. “You remember Craig?”

“Vaguely.”

Aspinall was the same age as my father. I knew that he walked the trails a lot, an unofficial caretaker for the island’s beauty spots. Picking up litter. Fixing signs and fences.

“Craig was out there a couple of days ago,” Fleming said. “He recognized your father’s car parked, and then came across him standing out there, close to the edge.”

The two of them had exchanged pleasantries, Fleming told me. The conversation had been casual and Aspinall had had no reason to suspect anything might be wrong. But my father’s car had still been there when Aspinall returned the next day. He had checked the door and found the vehicle unlocked. There was a folded piece of paper in the glove compartment, on which my father had written three words, along with my name and contact details.

Fleming passed me a piece of paper across the desk.

“Is this your father’s handwriting?”

I read the words there—Notify my son—and then handed the paper back.

“Yes.”

Fleming looked off to one side for a second. I knew what was coming.

“Do you have any idea why your father might—?”

“Kill himself?” I said. “No.”

“Any health problems? Money worries?”

“Not that he ever mentioned to me.”

Fleming waited. I matched his silence. The truth was that I wouldn’t have been inclined to answer his questions even if I had been able to. I knew my father had felt isolated and aimless after retiring from the police last year, because it had been his life—as little as he might have felt that amounted to, stuck out here on the island. But that information seemed too personal to share with Fleming; my father would not have wanted me to. And in reality, it was no explanation at all. My father had seemed happy enough. Life had dealt him far harder blows than retirement in the past, and he had always rolled with them before.

“Well,” Fleming said finally. “Like I told you, the coastguard is still searching. As I said, you know what the sea is like round here. His body could wash up on the rocks in the next few days. But it’s also possible he’ll never be found at all.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know that.”

“Where will you be staying? In case we have news.”

I thought about it.

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