The Man Made of Smoke

Johnson’s account resembles what Rose told Gill: Johnson was also drugged and abducted and brought to a clearing in the woods, where he was made to watch a murder. Johnson recalls that the trees around the clearing were festooned in fairy lights. He identifies the murdered man as Field, with whom he used to hang out at the service station all those years ago. According to Johnson, the masked man who kidnapped him is none other than the boy with the Pied Piper. Like Dan, Johnson always knew that the boy wasn’t Robbie Garforth because he recalled him being different from the child in the photograph.

Dan asks Johnson to report the incident to the police, but Johnson refuses. Johnson thinks that the killer wants to punish everyone at the service station either way: Those who tell are killed, and those who don’t are consumed by the guilt of their silence. Johnson would rather fall into the latter category. Sarah and Dan leave.

Sarah wonders if Johnson’s silence means that the chain of murders will stop. Dan is unsure since he thinks that the killer has become too fond of killing to stick to his own rules. He remembers the visual of the killer mocking him, telling Dan that he knows nothing about him. Without conscious thought, Dan heads to the service station to place himself in the killer’s head.

Although the parking lot and the service station look similar on the outside, the interiors have been revamped and modernized. Everything is well lit and appears smaller than it appeared to Dan’s eyes as a child. However, the toilet stalls are creepily similar to their past version. As Sarah waits outside, Dan closes his eyes, concentrates, and tries to recreate the whistling and the skinny boy in baggy clothing. The boy appears and asks Dan for help, but Dan apologizes and says that he can’t help him. The boy grows angry with Dan, hitting himself in rage. He tells Dan that he wants to punish everyone at the service station. He wonders what Dan can do in response. Dan replies that he’ll do what he should have done all those years ago: Find the boy.

The narrative switches to John’s perspective. The news item that he found four years ago reported the death by deliberate overdose of Abigail Palmer on August 28, 1998. Abigail’s mental health worsened after she lost her son James in an accident a few weeks ago. Abigail and James were on vacation when she took an afternoon nap. When Abigail woke up, James was nowhere to be found. She searched around the shore and saw his shorts lying neatly folded on a rock. Abigail had called the police, who found James’s abandoned stuffed lion in the water. It was presumed that James drowned at sea. The report contained a picture of James; John immediately noted that the picture was uncannily similar to the sketch based on Dan’s memory. He knew then that the unknown boy was none other than James Palmer.

John visited Abigail’s grave the weekend after he discovered the report. A family with a young boy emerged from a camper van ahead of him, and the boy and the van seemed like a sign that John’s hunch was correct. John considered sharing his investigation with the police, but in the end, he decided that for Dan’s sake, it was best to leave the Pied Piper case behind. Since then, John has visited the graveyard twice a year, on Abigail’s and James’s birthdays. Now, John visits Abigail’s grave again. On his way back, he gets a call from an unknown man.

Back in the present, Dan shares with Sarah his theory that all the people on the killer’s list are in trouble, even those like Michael Johnson, who chose to remain silent.

Back home, Dan tries his father’s method of working the punching bag to clear his thoughts. Although he never told John, Dan joined his university’s boxing club shortly after leaving home. Dan knew that John would be hurt if he found out because Dan had always resisted John’s training, believing that John wasn’t a skilled boxer. Suddenly, Dan thinks back to the day his father fainted and asked about Robbie. What if John was wondering aloud if Robbie and the unknown boy at the service station were the same person? This would mean that John was equally troubled about the boy’s identity. Knowing John’s dogged investigative style, Dan feels that it’s possible that he made headway in determining the boy’s identity. Dan turns in his father’s case files about the Pied Piper.

Dan finds the news report on Abigail Palmer and its photo of James, recognizing him as the boy at the service station. Dan heads to the police station with all his evidence. When Fleming, who has been stalking Dan and Sarah, refuses to entertain him, Dan shows him a picture of Field and asks him whether he’s the same man whom the police fished out of the sea. If Dan isn’t wrong, then the man was murdered, his body bearing marks of torture. Realizing that Dan has useful information, Fleming agrees to listen to him.

As Dan shares his findings with Fleming, he’s careful to mollify Fleming’s ego, letting him figure out a few connections himself. Dan confesses to Fleming that he still hasn’t figured out how James survived all these years without being discovered. Even as Dan speaks the words, he’s struck by the flimsiness of the evidence linking James with the killer. He mentally asks John if James is truly the one behind the murders. Although James was traumatized by the Pied Piper for three years, trauma alone isn’t enough to turn anyone into a murderer. Dan has always believed this. He recalls James’s fear-filled face in the service station that day.

The night they return from the service station, the man doesn’t lock the door to James’s room. James believes that it’s because the man is sure that he won’t bother running away now that he has seen the indifference of people to him. At dawn, the man will initiate James into his life, making him kill the boy in the pen. However, James doesn’t behave according to the man’s plan. He gets up in the middle of the night and carefully walks through the corridors and down the stairs to the living room. When he hears the man snoring in a chair in the living room, James nearly loses his nerve. However, he refuses to let fear take over. If James turns back now, he’ll become a killer in the morning and lose the last surviving fragment of himself.

As quietly as he can, James crosses the living room and goes down to the cellar where the man keeps his keys. Retrieving the keys, James comes back up, unlocks the main door, and heads outside to the pens. The small boy, chained to a post, is awake. James opens his padlocks and tells him that it’s time to go home. The child smiles in relief. Just then, all the lights in the compound come on. James sees the man standing on the deck of the house, a knife in his hand. There was never a chance for escape; the man has been testing James all along, and James has failed the test.

In his father’s house, Dan can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that James isn’t the person behind the killings. He holds a conversation with John. John tells him that he never suggested to Dan that James was the killer; Dan is right, however, that the murderer has a deep connection with the Pied Piper case. The phone jolts Dan out of his reverie. When he answers, a man’s voice tells him that he’s the one Dan has been looking for. The man then makes someone else speak to Dan: a terrified-sounding Sarah crying for help.

The narrative changes to John’s perspective. The call that he receives is supposedly from Michael Johnson, requesting John to meet him at an isolated spot on the Reach. John recognizes the name from the coverage of the Pied Piper case and drives up to the designated spot, even though he has a feeling that the call is from someone else: the shadowy figure who has been manipulating him all along, right since the figure placed the body of Rose for John to find and led John to Field. In any case, John is ready to deal with whatever comes his way. He gets out of his car and waits. The suicide note that John wrote earlier is in his glove compartment. Earlier, he erased most of his browsing history and changed his password, leaving only an oblique trail of breadcrumbs for Dan to follow in the event of John’s death or disappearance. This way, John gives Dan the choice to stay away from the case. If Dan doesn’t probe much, he’ll be safe.

Craig Aspinall appears near John’s car, asking if he is fine. Though Aspinall is a nice guy, John is too preoccupied to entertain him. He tries to get Aspinall to leave, but Aspinall starts up a conversation and offers John coffee from his thermos, as he always does. As Aspinall asks John about Dan, John starts feeling woozy. He then notices that Aspinall isn’t drinking the coffee. John asks Aspinall if he has children. Aspinall replies that he did, once. Something hits the side of John’s head, and he falls.