Page 61 of The Man Made of Smoke

I stopped as I reached the lock.

Finish the thought, my son.

You knew because you’d already heard the same story from Darren Field, I thought. Hadn’t you, Dad? Field told you that he watched someone being killed—let’s assume it was Rose—and that he’d been given the same instruction afterward.

A moment of silence.

Maybe so, my father said quietly.

That sounds plausible, doesn’t it?

My subconscious had given my father different tones of voice overthe past two days, but I was struck now by how sad he sounded. For a moment, that didn’t make sense; the revelation felt like a breakthrough. But then I realized what the implications of it might be. If Rose Saunders had been taken, it was because she had gone to the police of her own accord. But if Darren Field had chosen not to—if the police, in the form of my father, had come to his door instead—then it might have been my father’s visit that had caused his abductor to return a second time.

Which made his death my father’s fault.

It would have been inadvertent. Worse than that, my father would effectively have been tricked into doing so. But I still found it easy to imagine the effect that would have had on him. The guilt it would have caused. He had always been a man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Like Rose, he had been someone who felt things very deeply indeed.

Dad, I thought—

But then quiet music broke the silence, and the spell along with it. I felt a vibration against my side. My phone ringing. I took it out of my jacket pocket and looked at the screen.

[island—police]

The same number that Fleming had originally called me from.

I took a deep breath now and accepted the call.

“Yes?”

“Is this Daniel Garvie?”

A man’s voice. Not one I recognized, and certainly not Fleming. But I imagined that after our encounter last night, he would be more than happy to palm off the task of updating me to one of his subordinates. But that didn’t change the fact that if someone was calling me then there must have been a development of some kind.

I braced myself.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “What’s happened?”

There was a faint crackle of static in the background. I imagined the officer reading whatever he was about to tell me from a computer screen,or possibly even just a hastily written note. To his credit, he at least managed to sound sympathetic when he spoke next.

“It’s your father, Dr. Garvie.”

“Yes.”

“I’m very sorry to have to tell you this,” he said. “But his body has been found.”

Seventeen

The island is still stuck far enough in the past to have a handful of working public telephone boxes, and this one is close to the end of the pier. John has chosen to use it over the past few days partly for convenience, but mostly because he knows that, despite its handy location, it exists in a CCTV black spot. In the event that anyone traces the calls and searches for evidence, there will be no proof that it was him who made them.

Not that you’re doing anything wrong, he thinks.

But he doesn’t believe that.

It feels more likely that he’s doneeverythingwrong.

He glances around the street, and then steps into the booth and closes the door. It’s cramped and grubby inside, and when he picks up the handset it feels slightly greasy in his hand. Claustrophobic. Dirty. Difficult to get a grip on. That all seems fitting. It’s how his whole world has felt since he talked to Brian Gill on the barge and confirmed what had happened to Rose Saunders.

He feeds coins into the slot and dials a number from memory. Then he leans against the side of the box, staring out through the plastic at a gray smear of sea and hoping to God that it will be a man’s voice that answers his call this time.

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