Page 94 of The Man Made of Smoke

But the vehicle was the same make and model as the one he remembered from the rest area, and he couldn’t help seeing its arrival right then as a sign. A small nod of acknowledgment from the universe that he was right.

That this was the place.

That James Palmer was the boy his son saw that day.

That through sheer force of will, after a decade and a half of bloody-minded searching, John had done what nobody else could.

The weeks afterward were ones of careful consideration. It felt like he should report what he had discovered. And yet for some reason, he found himself hesitating.

What would it achieve, he wondered?

Justice.

That was the obvious answer. Except what didjusticeamount to in this case? The Pied Piper was long dead, and surely so was James Palmer. There were no grieving relatives or friends awaiting a resolution. The world had forgotten Abigail and James almost before they were gone. And knowing the boy’s name would not bring the police any closer to identifying who the Pied Piper had been, or where the bodies of his missing victims might be buried.

Validation, then.

For some people, that would have been reason enough to come forward. Assuming John was right, he knew that what he had found would make a mark on the world. He would become known as the police officer who had refused to give up, who had gone the extra mile, who had pulled off what others might have considered impossible. He would get the recognition that had eluded him all his life.

The idea was appealing, but it also left him feeling strangely empty. If you took the bad on the chin without flinching then the same shouldbe true of the good. Whatever anyone else thinks of you, it should be enough for you to know that you’re enough.

The final reason, then.

His son.

And in the end, it was Daniel who made the decision for him. It was a few years ago, not long after John identified James Palmer, and Daniel had returned home for a visit. They were sharing a drink outside one evening, and John mentioned his hobby—the research he did into cold cases to keep him occupied—and Daniel asked what he thought he could contribute to the investigations.

John had stared down the garden for a time.

“Brute force,” he said.

Daniel had made a joke about it—you just want to be like the characters in the books you read—and there had been a moment when John had felt an urge to shake his head and tell his son everything. Tojustifyhimself.

To make Daniel proud of him.

But he had begun his investigation in the hope of healing his boy and bringing the two of them closer together, and that all seemed so long ago now. Theywerecloser. The boy his son had been back then was gone. Daniel was a grown man now, accomplished and impressive. What possible good could it do for him to learn that he had been right all those years ago? The ground had settled, and the idea of John turning that soil over now and unearthing the past seemed selfish and wrong.

So he had forced himself to laugh gently.

The conversation had moved on.

And he had told nobody what he had found.

There was just those twice-yearly visits since, once on Abigail’s birthday in March, and once again on James’s in July. The very first time he went, he had brought a book with him. His son’s tattered old copy ofThe Man Made of Smoke—or his own now, he supposed—and he had left it on the grave with the flowers.

Let that be the end of it, he thought.

Because he had never believed that any of it could possibly matter.

John stares at the cluster of trees now.

There is nobody there, of course, but he can almost see Abigail Palmer’s ghost standing among them. On past occasions, he has imagined James there too. Even if he doesn’t believe in an afterlife, he has always liked to believe that, if the boy’s ghost were capable of finding its way anywhere, it would have been back to his mother’s side.

Because he assumed James was dead.

He can’t sense James there today, but it does feel like other ghosts have joined Abigail in the trees. Oliver Hunter and Graham Lloyd; Rose Saunders and Darren Field. He hasn’t been able to track down Michael Johnson, but perhaps he is there too. Regardless, the mingled voices John hears in his head are loud enough already.

We might be alive if it wasn’t for you.

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