Page 102 of The Man Made of Smoke

“You know I didn’t see the body,” I said. “But I’m betting I’m right. Does this man look familiar to you?”

Fleming hesitated, still performing a few final mental calculations about what to do next, and whether that involved trying to hurt me. But he understood deep down that might not go well for him, and I thought I’d also done just about enough to pique his interest and offer him an exit ramp.

He took the sheet of paper off me and looked down at it.

I waited.

“Maybe,” he said.

But it was obvious he recognized the face on the printout. And yet there was no satisfaction in being right. Unless you counted our encounter at the rest area, I had never met Darren Field, but it was still upsetting to have it confirmed what had happened to him. I thought about his wife—how she clearly loved him, and was probably still waiting for him to come home even now—and the old guilt began to rise up, threatening to break the surface. There were so many chains of cause and effect at play here, but the truth was that, if I had been better all those years ago, he would still be alive.

“All right,” Fleming said. “Who is this guy?”

I shook my head. “That’s going to take some explaining.”

“So explain.”

“I’m going to. But to do that, I need to start at the beginning.”

I picked another sheet of paper from the file.

And then I took a deep breath.

“I need to start with a boy named James Palmer.”

Twenty-Nine

Hours passed.

Whatever other qualities Fleming might have lacked as a man, he was predictably ambitious. I imagined he was as bored and frustrated with police work on the island as my father had been. Perhaps he liked to think of himself as a king here, but he must have known that his court was a small one. The case I laid carefully out for him was bigger than anything he’d ever encountered. Big enough for him to make a name for himself.

If I had arrived at the station without any evidence then I had no doubt he’d have given me short shrift. Instead, I had provided him with a name for the body found yesterday, and as I walked him through the rest of the case, he became increasingly engaged. I could see it in his eyes. The potential glory of solving the investigation was enough for him to forget how much he hated me.

I explained who James Palmer had been, showing him the photograph and the sketch. I showed him the picture that had been delivered to my father, and explained how it had led me first to Darren Field, and from there to Rose Saunders and the other victims. All the people who had failed to save James that day.

I made sure to flatter him by allowing him to make a few of the connections himself rather than spelling them out. And at the same time,I didn’t give him everything. He didn’t need to know about Sarah’s involvement for the moment, or about our visit to Michael Johnson’s flat today. The former would only inflame him. The latter still wasn’t my decision to make. If the investigation led Fleming to discover either thing then I would deal with it then.

He worked at the computer the whole time, looking up details to corroborate what I was telling him, and even making a couple of calls to departments on the mainland. I waited patiently through those, attempting to glean information from the one side of the conversation I could hear. He wasn’t being told anything that contradicted the theory I was presenting him with, and he was listening to at least a few details that confirmed it.

Finally, I showed him the last item in the file.

He looked at it and frowned. “What’s this?”

“It’s a photograph,” I said. “Of me. It was taken three days ago, in my father’s garden, on the night I came back to the island. I had no idea anyone was there. Whoever took it delivered it to the house yesterday. They wanted me to find it.”

It surprised me how calm my voice sounded. The truth was that it took all my resolve to sit there across from Fleming as he stared down at a picture of me at my most exposed and vulnerable. My emotions on display. But it was necessary for him to see it, I thought. Not only was it part of the story, if I hadn’t already convinced him then I imagined being this open in front of him would help to clinch it.

He studied the photo for a time then leaned back.

“So,” he said. “What’s your theory?”

“My theory?”

“Well, you’re the serial killer expert.” He gestured around the office, as though it was a stage and he was giving me a rare chance to audition. “What do you imagine is going through this guy’s head? What makes him tick?”

“Well—”

“Off the record, of course.”

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