Lyons stared at him for a moment, perhaps evaluating that as a criticism.
“I live close to there,” Pete added.
But then, Lyons lived in the area as well, and he hadn’t been out there trawling the streets that night. A second later, though, the DCI nodded to himself. He knew that Pete had his own reasons to be interested in missing children.
“You’re aware of developments since?”
I’m aware of the lack of them. But that would come across as a rebuke to Beck, and she didn’t deserve that. From the little he’d seen, she’d handled the investigation well and done everything she could. More to the point, she’d been the one to direct her officers not to criticize the parents, and he liked that.
“I’m aware that Neil hasn’t been found,” he said. “Despite extensive searches and inquiries.”
“What would your theory be?”
“I haven’t followed the investigation closely enough to have one.”
“You haven’t?” Lyons looked surprised at that. “I thought you said that you were out searching on the first night.”
“That was when I thought he’d be found.”
“So you don’t think he will be now?”
“I don’t know. I hope he will.”
“I’d have thought you would have followed the case, given your history?”
The first mention there. The first hint.
“Maybe my history gives me a reason not to.”
“Yes, I can understand that. It was a difficult time for all of us.”
Lyons sounded sympathetic, but Pete knew this was another source of resentment between them. Pete was the one who’d closed the area’s biggest case in the last fifty years, and yet Lyons was the one who’d ended up in charge. In different ways, the investigation they were circling was uncomfortable for both of them.
Lyons was the one to bring that spiral to its point.
“I also understand you’re the only one Frank Carter will ever talk to?”
And there it was.
It had been a while since Pete had heard the name out loud, and so perhaps it should have delivered a jolt. But all it did was bring the crawling sensation inside him to the surface. Frank Carter. The man who had kidnapped and murdered five young boys in Featherbank twenty years ago. The man whom Pete had eventually caught. The name alone conjured up such horror for him that it always felt like it should never be spoken out loud—as though it were some kind of curse that would summon a monster behind you. Worse still was what the papers had called him. The Whisper Man. That was based on the idea that Carter had befriended his victims—vulnerable and neglected children—before taking them away. He would talk quietly to them at night outside their windows. It was a nickname that Pete had never allowed himself to use.
He had to fight down the urge to leave the room.
You’re the only one he’ll talk to.
“Yes.”
“Why do you think that is?” Lyons said.
“He enjoys taunting me.”
“About what?”
“The things he did back then. The things I never found out.”
“But he never tells you?”
“No.”
“Why bother speaking to him, then?”
Pete hesitated. It was a question he had asked himself numerous times over the years. He dreaded the encounters, and always had to suppress the shivers he felt as he sat in the private interview room at the prison, anticipating Carter’s approach. He would feel broken afterward, sometimes for weeks. There would be days when he would shake uncontrollably, and evenings when the bottle would be harder to resist. At night, Carter found him in dreams—a hulking, malevolent shadow that would bring him screaming out of sleep. Every meeting with the man damaged Pete a little more.
And yet still he went.
“I suppose I’m hoping that one day he’ll slip up,” he answered carefully. “That maybe he’ll reveal something important by accident.”
“Something about where he dumped the Smith boy?”
“Yes.”
“And about his accomplice?”
Pete didn’t reply.
Because, again, there it was.
Twenty years ago, the remains of four of the missing boys had been found in Frank Carter’s house, but the body of his final victim, Tony Smith, had never been recovered. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Carter was responsible for all five murders, and he himself had never denied it. But it was also true that there were certain inconsistencies within the case. Nothing that could have exonerated the man: just little strands that left the investigation frayed and untidy. One of the abductions was estimated to have occurred within a certain time period, but Carter had an alibi for most of it, which didn’t make it impossible for him to have taken the boy,