Page 107 of The Man Made of Smoke

I resisted the urge to point out that he’d been doing a good enough job of keeping an eye on the house already. I also didn’t like the idea of one of his officers making an unplanned appearance. If I heard a noise in the middle of the night, then I wanted to be alert and on point, not wondering if it might be Fleming or one of his men stumbling around in my father’s garden.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Just catch him.”

“We will.”

I walked down through the streets to the promenade. By now, the moon was low and bright in the night sky. I stood with my back to the sea for a while, shivering a little, the water lapping gently against the stone behind me.

I watched the people walking past.

Nobody was paying me any attention.

But the doubt I’d felt back in the police station wouldn’t go away.I tried to tell myself that talking to Fleming had been the right thing to do, but I also couldn’t shake the idea that, without realizing it, I had made a mistake.

Did I do the right thing, Dad?

I imagined my father leaning against the railing beside me. Arms folded. One foot crossed in front of the other. Head down and deep in thought.

I don’t know, my son. What do you think?

That I haven’t thought things through carefully enough. That there’s something I’m missing.

My father didn’t reply. I shifted my weight a little.

What if we’re wrong? I asked him.

About what?

About it being James Palmer who’s behind this.

I imagined him coughing gently.I just want to be clear that I never suggested that myself.

Fine, I thought. But it has to be someone connected to that case, doesn’t it? So it was natural enough to make that assumption.

And James was the obvious suspect.

Yes, I thought.

But now I wonder if I was jumping to the wrong conclusion—if I wasn’t thinking carefully enough. James would have had so many of the markers I expect to find in my patients, but that’s not enough to turn someone into a killer. He was just a little boy. When I saw him, it was almost like looking into a mirror. He wasdesperatefor help. He wanted to be saved. The most likely explanation is the same as it was all along—that he ended up being another of the Pied Piper’s victims.

My father nodded.

That’s true, he said.But you’re also right that whoever’s doing this has to besomeonewith a connection to the case. Someone who cares deeply enough about what happened to James for them to take their self-hatred out on the people who were there that day.

Yes, I thought. But who could that be?

Someoneelsewho feels guilty, my father said.

I glanced to my right. There was nobody there, of course, but for a moment I could almost see my father, and his words echoed in my mind for a second. The doubt I was feeling had become a coil of dread. Ihadmissed something—I was sure of it. I had made a mistake. And as I leaned away from the railing, I felt a vibration in my pocket.

My phone was ringing.

I took it out. The number on the screen showed up as unidentified, and that coil of dread inside me grew tighter. I accepted the call and held the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

For a moment, there was no reply. Just static on the line.

And then a man’s voice.

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