The Man Made of Smoke

The narrative switches to John’s perspective. Since meeting Gill, John knows that Rose was the woman who was killed while Field watched. John suspects that he may have jeopardized Field by reaching out to him, though Field didn’t go to the police; the killer manipulated John, an ex-police officer, into making contact with Field. John flagellates himself for playing policeman and messing things up and ending a life only because he wanted to solve a big case by himself and become a hero. He looks at the boxes of unsolved cases that he has collected over the years. The first cold case is that of the Pied Piper, and the mystery that John wanted to solve was the identity of the fifth boy. John always believed Dan’s version that the boy wasn’t Robbie.

After Dan left for university, John dedicated himself to finding the boy. After a while, John gave up on the case and turned to other unsolved crimes. The memory of the first case brings on a fresh wave of guilt. John thinks that he’s worthless and that the only thing for him to do is end matters. He writes a note saying, “Notify my son” (197).

Back in the present, by the time Dan reaches the cordoned-off area on the cliff where his father’s body is to be brought up, a small crowd has gathered near the spot. A helicopter hovers over the water, waiting for the rescue team to emerge with the remains. Dan spots Fleming and Craig Aspinall in the crowd. Aspinall tries to make a gesture to acknowledge Dan but drops his hand, appearing defeated. As Dan watches the helicopter, a memory comes to him. Dan was in his room, back home during his first year of university, when he heard a loud thump from his father’s quarters. Dan discovered his father on the floor, intoxicated. As Dan helped his father into bed, John murmured, “Robbie? […] Was that you?” (202). Startled, Dan told his father that it was just him, his son.

In the present moment, Sarah comes up to Dan, and they wait together for John’s body to be brought up. Finally, the black body bag is brought up to the cliff. As Dan heads in the direction, an officer unzips the bag and swears loudly because of the state of the body. The body isn’t John’s but that of a younger man. From the description of the body, Dan can tell that this is Field.

Sarah takes Dan to her place for a meal and a chat. Sarah confesses to Dan that she, too, is haunted by the memory of the service-station events but tells herself that Robbie Garforth’s death wasn’t her fault or Dan’s. Dan confides in Sarah about his discoveries since arriving at the island; however, Sarah tells Dan that his findings may be coincidental. Perhaps he wants a narrative to connect Field, Rose, and his father in the hope that John is still alive. Dan is more confused than ever by the time he gets home. He finds an envelope on the porch and pulls out a photograph of himself. It was taken the day he wept about his father on the deck in the back garden.

The photograph makes Dan feel sick since it caught him at his most vulnerable moment, as if to mock him. Dan hardly sleeps that night. The next morning, he finds Sarah at his doorstep. Sarah tells Dan that she discovered something last night that made her change her mind about the disappearances being a coincidence. After Dan left, Sarah dug deeper into the eyewitnesses named on the Pied Piper website that John had been browsing. She found that one witness, Oliver Hunter, is missing, while another, Graham Lloyd, was found brutally murdered. Rose also found out the name and address of the person who built the Pied Piper website: It’s Michael Johnson, the teenage boy who has been in charge of the shop. Sarah thinks that she and Dan should try to find Johnson.

On the way to Johnson’s house, Dan pieces together the information collected by Sarah. He hypothesizes that Lloyd was forced to watch Hunter being killed, that Rose was made to watch Lloyd’s murder, and that Field witnessed Rose’s killing. Now that Field and John are missing, it appears that the killer plans to kill Field as John watches. What Dan can’t understand is why the killer didn’t release John, giving him the same choice as Rose and Field.

Dan also considers the killer’s motives. He visualizes the shadowy figure and asks him questions. The murderer kills his victims with brutality, suggesting that he’s filled with rage. He gives them a choice yet punishes those who do the right thing. Dan can make little sense of the killer’s modus operandi. The figure in his head mocks him for knowing so little.

The novel switches back to John’s perspective. He places the note in his car and drives to the police station, intending to disclose what he knows about Field and Rose’s disappearances. Afterward, he plans to end his life. However, he changes his mind about going to the police when he considers that it might endanger Dan, who is also a witness. He returns home because, for Dan’s sake, he wants to leave clues about the unknown child whom the Pied Piper took. John returns to the files he has abandoned.

John recalls that for a long time, he found no clues about another child who went missing in the area in which the Pied Piper operated. Four years ago, he decided to approach the problem from a different “first principle,” which considered the possibility that a missing child might go unreported because no one loved them enough to report them or because the person who could have reported them died. John combed through obituaries and news reports of deaths by suicide and accidental deaths during the relevant period until he found something pertinent, a news item he collected in his files. As he goes through the report now, he apologizes to James, the child whom he had thought was dead.

It’s 2001, and James has been with the man for three years. The man often makes James dig the graves of his victims and forces James to watch as he kills and buries them. He even makes James photograph the victims before he kills them. One day, the man takes James along to a service station, the first time James has been out in the world since he was abducted. In James’s pocket is the photo of the young boy whom the killer brought in recently, waiting for them back at the farm. Though James has never participated in a killing, the man wants the boy at the farm to be James’s first victim tomorrow.

Before they head into the service station, the man tells James that he’ll soon discover that no one sees or cares about what happens to others. The man’s prophecy seems real until they walk to the restroom, where the man shuts himself in one of the stalls. James can run away at this moment, but he feels frozen by fear. This is when the boy of his age discovers James. Unlike the adults, the boy can instantly recognize that James is in a nightmare. For a moment, it seems like he may help James, but the boy hides in a stall when the man emerges. James walks out, defeated, pausing only to drop the photo in his pocket in front of the boy’s stall. He thinks sadly that the boy could have saved him but did not.

Back at the farm, the man shows James the cellar of the house. The cellar is filled with souvenirs from the man’s victims, documents of his many aliases, his killing tools, cans of kerosene, and wads of cash. The killer is showing James all the power he has and how the power can pass to James. No one cares about James, except for the man himself. As he watches the items in the cellar, James realizes that he’s inadvertently whistling the same tune as the killer.