Page 97 of The Man Made of Smoke

I moved my fingers from the burning hot cup.

“Maybe,” I repeated, finally sipping the coffee. “But I need to think.”

Sarah had a shift at the bar in a couple of hours, and we agreed that I’d meet her there later. In the meantime, I drove back to my father’s house.

After parking, I stood by the side of the car and looked around. There was no sign of movement on the sun-dappled lane. Even so, I stood there for a few seconds, not just to make sure the street was clear but, if I was being watched right then, to send a signal to whoever was out there that I wasn’t afraid.

Then I unlocked the door.

Just as I had done at Sarah’s house, I did a thorough search of the property, checking every door and window. There were no signs of disturbance; the building was secure. Whatever else the man might have been doing today, he hadn’t attempted to force entry here. That was reassuring on one level, but it was unnerving not to know what he had been doing instead.

I went upstairs to my father’s room.

His old leather boxing gloves were still on the floor by the punch bag. I picked them up and turned them over in my hands, looking down at the map of cracked texture that the endless blows had worn into the fabric. It was strange to remember how huge they had seemed to me when I was young. So large that it had been hard to believe my hands would ever be big enough to fill them. When I slipped them on now, they fit me perfectly.

I turned to the bag.

Then started off with left jabs, slow and steady.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

One of the first things I’d done when I left the island and arrived at university was join the boxing club there. I never told my father. To begin with, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. I kept remembering how he’d tried to encourage me, and how I’d pushed back against it because that washisway of handling life, not mine. It seemed stupid all these years later, but at the time it had felt important not to admit that he might have had anything to teach me at all.

After I’d warmed up with the jabs, I moved onto combinations, gradually increasing the strength of the blows.

Thud.

Thud, thud.

Thud.

Thud, thud, thud.

But I had soon found a different reason not to discuss training with my father. It had quickly become obvious that, despite him trying to teach me to box when I was younger, he had never had any real idea how. He hit the bag every day, but that was all he was doing. The bag was a stand-in for all the frustrations and disappointments of his life, and he spent his evenings pounding it as hard as he could, lashing out withbrute forcerather than skill or technique. My father knew how to punch, but not how to box, and in a fight he would always be taking as many blows as he landed.

When I had understood that, I had felt sorry for him.

That was one the first times that I saw him not simply asmy fatherbut as a man in his own right: one who was struggling to deal with the challenges of life in his own complicated way. There were occasions when I returned to the island afterward that I considered slipping on the gloves and showing him what I could do. But I never did. I understood enough by then to know it would mean showing him yet another thing that he could not.

Thud.

Thud, thud, thud.

Thud, thud.

As I worked the bag now, I found myself slipping into a kind of gentle trance. I was often at my most relaxed at times like this, with my body performing movements that ticked thoughtlessly, like clockwork, leaving my mind free to wander.

There were things I thought I knew about the killer.

He was organized and intelligent, and even if he was escalating and beginning to change the rules of the game he’d set up, deep down he would still be motivated by the same underlying mission: to ease theguilt and pain and self-disgust inside him. But that was all interior. How would he present to the world on the outside? The nature of the murders suggested that he was physically capable and socially adroit. He had the time to research and plan. He traveled freely, where and when he pleased, without attracting attention. Despite the deep-rooted psychological instability inside him, he had managed to integrate into the world and maintain a veneer of acceptability.

How had the boy I had seen back then become this man now?

There were obvious practicalities to consider. He had been roughly my age, perhaps a little older, when I met him at the rest area, and the Pied Piper had died only a couple of weeks later. At that point, he would effectively have been free.

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