The lie—a white one—came automatically. The door wasn’t locked; I didn’t think I’d even hooked up the chain. But Featherbank was a quiet village. And anyway, it was early evening and the lights were all on. Nobody was going to be that blatant.
But Jake looked so frightened that I was suddenly conscious of the distance between the two of us and the front door. The noise of running his bath. If someone had crept in while we were up here, would I have heard it?
“You don’t need to worry about that.” I did my best to sound firm. “I’d never let anything happen to you. Why are you so worried?”
“You have to close doors,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You have to keep them locked.”
“Jake—”
“If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.”
A chill ran through me. Jake looked scared, and the phrase certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he would have come up with by himself.
“What does that mean?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you hear it, then?”
He didn’t answer. But then I realized he didn’t need to.
“The little girl?”
He nodded, and I shook my head, confused. Jake wouldn’t have thought up that rhyme by himself, but equally, he couldn’t have heard it from someone who wasn’t there. So perhaps I’d been wrong at the 567 Club and the little girl was real? Perhaps Jake had just called goodbye without realizing she had gone outside? Except he had been alone at the table when I’d arrived. It must have been one of the other children, then, trying to scare him. From the expression on his face right now, it had worked.
“You’re completely safe, Jake. I promise you.”
“But I’m not in charge of the door!”
“No,” I said. “I am. And so there is nothing for you to worry about. I don’t care what somebody told you. You need to listen to me now. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Ever.”
He was listening, at least, although I wasn’t sure he was convinced.
“I promise you. And do you know why I won’t let anything happen to you? Because I love you. Very much indeed. Even when we argue.”
That brought the slightest of smiles.
“Do you believe me?” I said.
He nodded, looking a little more reassured now.
“Good.” I ruffled his hair and stood up. “Because it’s true. Good night, sweetie.”
“Good night, Daddy.”
“I’ll come up and check on you in five minutes.”
I turned the light off as I left the room, then padded downstairs as quietly as I could. But rather than collapsing on the couch as I wanted to, I stopped at the front door.
If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.
Rubbish, of course, wherever he had heard it. But the words still bothered me. And just as the idea of the little girl trailing us across the country had disturbed me, now I couldn’t shake the image of her sitting next to him, her hair swept out to one side and that strange smile on her face, whispering frightening things in his ear.
I hooked up the chain for the night.
Ten
DI Pete Willis had spent the weekend miles away from Featherbank, walking in the nearby countryside and trailing a stick through random tangles of undergrowth. He checked the hedges he passed. Occasionally, when the fields were empty, he hopped over stiles and trawled through the grass there.
Anyone watching might have mistaken him for a rambler, and to all intents and purposes he supposed that was what he was. These days, in fact, he deliberately thought of such expeditions as walks and outings—as just another way for an old man to fill his time. It had been twenty years now, after all. And yet a part of him remained focused. Rather than absorbing the beauty of the world around him, he was constantly searching the ground for bone fragments and snatches of old fabric.
Blue jogging pants. Little black polo shirt.
For some reason, it was always the clothes that stayed with him.
However much he tried not to think about it, Pete would never forget the day he’d viewed the horrors plastered inside the extension Frank Carter had built on the side of his house. Returning to the department afterward, he had still been reeling from the experience, but as he stepped through the sliding doors there had at least been some sense of relief. Four little boys had been killed. But even though Carter had remained at large for the