The Whisper Man

At a nearby table, Francis Carter (whom the narrative still doesn’t name) is listening in on Tom and Karen’s conversation. What he hears confirms his suspicions that Jake is vulnerable and needs saving from his father. Francis knows nothing of Norman Collins but sees his arrest as an opportunity because the attention will be elsewhere.

Pete feels an obligation to attend the autopsy of the body suspected to be Tony Smith. The bones are laid out in the autopsy room, and the medical examiner confirms that the boy was around six when he died and that the decomposition is in line with it being 20 years ago. He shows Pete the clothes that the body was found with—the blue jogging pants and black polo shirt that Tony Smith was wearing when he disappeared.

Pete notices one of the butterflies found with the body and recognizes it as a corpse moth—a type of butterfly (“moth” being a misnomer) that decaying flesh attracts. As he considers this, he gets a message from Amanda: Collins is ready to talk.

In the interview room, Norman Collins is ready to admit to the murder of Dominic Barnett. He denies having anything to do with Neil Spencer’s disappearance but tells Amanda and Pete about his knowledge of the body at Tom Kennedy’s home.

He tells them that his interest in collecting led him to learn that he could view Tony Smith’s body by using the right channels: He visited Victor Tyler in prison, who arranged for Collins to visit Julian Simpson, who was living in the house where Smith’s body was located—the house that Collins, like others, knew as “the local scary house” (208).

Collins visited Simpson, who made him wait while he retrieved the box that contained Smith’s body. Collins visited the body several more times (and became aware of other people who also did so) before Dominic Barnett took over; to Collins, the situation got worse then, as Barnett didn’t respect the body. He claims that the last time he visited, several others were there too, and they began touching the bones. Collins left in disgust, and the incident led to Barnett’s murder.

After the interview, Pete and Amanda look through CCTV photographs of prison visitors again, discussing Frank Carter’s legacy. They realize that his nickname, The Whisper Man, could also mean the way he has been whispering to one of the people in the photographs (literally or not), someone who has been learning from his example.

That night, Tom sits at his laptop, eager to write something to get back to some normalcy. Seeing his wife’s name in the draft he was working on, he writes a note to her about Karen: He knows she would want him to move on, but he’s not ready to let go yet and may not think that he deserves to be happy.

The doorbell interrupts him. At the door is Pete Willis with an update on the case. He tells Tom about Collins’s arrest. Tom offers Pete a drink, and Pete declines, which leads them to talk about the past. Pete says that he drank for several reasons and admits to being a bad husband and father but adds that he’s proud of who Tom has become and that he sees the similarity between Tom and Jake.

Pete then says that Tom’s memory of the last night he saw his father was impossible—Tom wasn’t home that day, and although Pete did throw a glass, it wasn’t at Sally. Tom considers that his memory might be more of an emotion than an event.

Pete wants to tell Tom one more thing: that this wasn’t the last time he saw Tom. If he was sober, he was allowed to see Tom—but only after he was asleep. He would go in at night and lie in bed with Tom: He was the “Mister Night” that Tom thought he’d imagined. Pete tells him that he only wanted to tell him this—and that he’s not looking to make excuses for his behavior—and then leaves.

The next morning, Tom and Jake meet Pete downstairs for a brief talk before heading to the house. Tom is conflicted about his son’s attachment to Pete. Jake notices and, as they head home (with Pete following), asks about it—Tom demurs, saying that Pete is “a policeman, not a friend” (217). When they get to the house, they find a few reporters there, including—to Tom’s surprise—Karen.

Inside, Pete assures them that the reporters don’t want to talk to them, and Jake goes to see what the police search has done to the house. Tom is reeling from having already told a reporter basically everything he knows, but he suppresses that feeling and returns to the details of the case and whether they’re safe back at home. Pete insists that they are: Now that Collins is in custody and the remains have been removed, the house should be of no further interest—even if Collins didn’t kill Neil Spencer.

Tom sees how much of a toll the case has taken on Pete. He decides to tell Pete how his mother, Sally, died, though he lies and says that she didn’t suffer when she was dying of cancer. Pete is glad that Sally got to meet Jake before she died, and he gives Tom his information, stressing that Tom can contact him if he needs anything at all.

As Pete visits Carter again, he hopes that it’s for the last time and comforts himself with that thought while he waits. Carter arrives and notes the envelope on the table between them. Carter gloats that people were interested in him all along despite Pete’s assertion that no one cared for him much anymore.

Pete knows that Carter won’t give anything up intentionally, that he’ll have to read between the lines of Carter’s words as usual. Carter admits to letting Victor Tyler and Julian Spencer make money from the showings of Tony Smith’s body.

Pete then opens the envelope and shows Carter the photographs within—the CCTV stills of visitors. The police are tracking down or interrogating all of them except for one, and Pete pushes this picture forward. Carter takes an almost unconscious interest in the photo, reaching out for it and saying it must be their suspect. However, the man, Liam Adams, turned out to be a dead man. Carter says this “is a man who takes care” (230). Carter looks at the photo a bit longer before losing interest and refusing to talk further.

Back at the car, Pete confers with Amanda. They discuss the meeting, as well as Pete and Carter’s earlier conversation in which Carter relayed his invented dream. This leads Pete to think about the fact that Carter habitually covered the faces of his victims, which Pete thinks is strange given that Carter is a sadist and would likely want to see their suffering. He considers that perhaps the little boys were meant to stand in for someone else. Looking at the photograph, Pete realizes that when Carter, in the previous meeting, asked to see his family, he was likely referring to his son—and that his son is likely the person in the photograph.