The Whisper Man (ARC) by Alex North

Author:Alex North [North, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250317995
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty-four

The police presence at the house had intensified in my absence. We arrived to find two cars and a van parked outside, with officers and crime scene investigators working in the taped-off driveway. The focus of the activity appeared to be the garage, but two police officers were stationed on the pavement to secure the whole property. My front door was open too—an incongruous sight to return home to, and one that felt invasive and wrong.

I pulled up after the other vehicles. My father’s car drove past, then parked in front of me.

Not my father, I reminded myself.

DI Pete Willis.

There was no need to acknowledge him as anything else, was there? And with the exception of the way he’d knelt down and looked at Jake, there was no sign he wanted to acknowledge it either. That was a situation I was more than happy to go along with.

The shock had subsided a little now, but only in the way I imagined there might be a few beats of silence after an earthquake hit before the screaming started. I could still remember how it had felt like at the police station, my father standing there, looking back at me, seeing me. My mind had immediately leaped back to the long-ago time when I’d last seen him, and I’d felt small and powerless. I had been transported. The fear and anxiety. The desire to diminish myself so that he might not notice me. But then the anger had come. He had no fucking right to talk to my son. And then the resentment. The fact that he got to be involved in my life—in a position of power over me, even—seemed so deeply unfair that I almost couldn’t bear it.

“Are you all right, Daddy?”

“I’m fine, mate.”

I was staring at the car in front of me. At the man in the driver’s seat.

His name is DI Pete Willis, I reminded myself, and he means nothing to you.

Nothing at all.

Not if I didn’t let him.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

He met us at the cordon, showed his identification to the officers there, and then led us into the house without saying anything. The resentment flowered again. I needed his permission to enter my own fucking home. It felt humiliating to follow him inside like a boy who had to do what he was told. And it was made worse by the fact that he seemed so indifferent to it all.

He had a clipboard and pen.

“I need to know what’s yours, and what was here when you moved in that you haven’t touched.”

“Everything in the house is mine,” I said. “Mrs. Shearing cleared all the older stuff out to the garage.”

“We’ll check with her, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

We went from room to room, gathering some basic things together. Toiletries. Clothes for Jake and me. A few toys from his room. It burned me so hard that I had to ask my father each time, but he just nodded and noted them down, and in the end I stopped asking.

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