by Will Harker
SILENCING THE DEAD
A Scott Jericho Thriller
WILL HARKER
End House Publishing
Copyright © 2021 by Will Harker
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published by End House Publishing
For Nick, Josh and George
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
EPILOGUE
Scott Jericho will return
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
GLOSSARY OF TRAVELLER SLANG
CHAPTER ONE
The only corpse I found in the killer’s attic was a skeletal mouse, its papery bones encased in webs and buried under piles of old clothes. Looking down at the tiny body, I allowed myself a wry smile. I was pretty sure this rodent had died of natural causes.
I turned off my phone light and started back through the open hatchway. The foldaway steps creaked under my weight as I descended to the landing. Having grown up in a Traveller’s trailer, I’d never developed that traditional childhood dread of attics. Instead, my nightmares had concentrated on the shadowy space beneath our home—a cramped, oily gap into which hideous monsters might crawl and lie, breathlessly listening to my heartbeat above.
I hadn’t known then that all monsters possess a human face.
One of the blandest and most inconspicuous of faces now stared up at me from the back garden. I remained at the landing window for a moment, returning his gaze. Impassive as ever, Peter Garris, retired detective chief inspector and dormant serial killer, raised his hand and waved. He was dressed in gardening gear, cut-off Wellington boots, mud-stained corduroys, a checked shirt, and a ridiculous straw hat to keep the hard October sun out of his eyes. No sign of the paisley tie his late wife had insisted he wear every day to work.
That fashion atrocity, as well as the fiction of Harriet Garris herself, had all been part of his act. A carefully calibrated performance to divert attention from the hollow shell that, like those monsters under our trailer, lay patiently concealed. The house in which I stood was yet another layer of that performance. From the outside, it appeared to be the residence of any other middle-class, middle-aged widower. A neat two-up, two-down in an unremarkable suburban street, its patch of front lawn dutifully mowed, its curtains drawn at 8:30 every morning, just the hanging baskets outside the door in need of a little watering. But such oversights were to be expected. Poor Mr Garris was, after all, still in the first stages of grief.
Except he wasn’t. Like love and regret and compassion, grief was unknown to him. And anyway, Harriet had never existed. I wondered if Garris’ neighbours, delivering their sympathy cards and hearty casseroles, might have recoiled a little had they ever stepped over this threshold. Not because there was anything obviously disturbing here. Garris didn’t display trophies from his victims on the mantelpiece nor make lampshades out of their hides. No, it was the emptiness that would have unnerved them. Not a single family photograph adorned these walls, not one cherished keepsake to relieve the clinical tidiness. It was a home as vacant as the killer who occupied it.
I turned away from the window.
Heading downstairs, I wondered not for the first time, could there be a storage unit somewhere? A garage lockup perhaps, anonymous and paid for by the year? And does he visit this place, like an old man recalling the glory days of his youth, running hands nostalgically over humming freezers and specimen jars cloudy with formaldehyde? That last night in Bradbury End, he’d confessed to taking tokens from the victims of his early kills, all the while promising that those savage appetites had left him for good.
If such a place existed, and I could find it, then all this futile watching and searching might be over. I could lay proof before the police that even DCI Garris’ reputation could not withstand. Because without corroborative evidence it was impossible to move against him. The twisted murders he’d committed four months ago, all in an effort to save me from my own self-destruction, could not be traced back to him. He had slaughtered five people without leaving behind a scrap of DNA. But those early kills, before he’d joined the force and had no knowledge of forensic procedure, if there were traces of those and I could get at them?
I stepped off the last stair. There was, of course, a more immediate solution to all this. I could make an anonymous call, suggesting the police take a look in the eastern corner of Garris’ back garden. Moving through his immaculate kitchen, with its sparkling pans and glinting knives hanging from their hooks, I stopped at the patio door. He was standing there, right beside the burial plot. If the police dug beneath those fast-growing marigolds, they would find the shattered corpse of a child-killer. But in discovering Lenny Kerrigan they would also unearth other secrets. Ones that could endanger the person I loved most in this world.
Before stepping outside, I caught my reflection in the glass of the door. Harry had been going on at me for weeks about needing a haircut. He was right. A mess of blue-black curls were currently spilling over my ears. Otherwise, I looked better than I had in years. A combination of Haz’s homecooked meals and the hard labour of working on my dad’s fair had recut muscle I’d lost during my time in prison. Still, there was something I didn’t like about the winter-grey eyes of this figure. A hunger, a restlessness, a kind of yearning.
I gripped the handle and slid back the door.
Garris straightened up from where he’d been pruning the marigolds. His gaze, lifeless as it seemed to me now, flicked across my face.
“So, are you satisfied that I’ve been behaving myself, Detective?” When I didn’t answer he bent again, and plucking a faded petal, popped it into his mouth. “Calendula officinalis. Give ’em a patch of blue sky and a drop of sunlight, these beauties will flower whatever the month. Perfectly edible too.” He nudged his boot against a clump of dirt. “Of course, the right kind of nourishment in the soil helps tremendously.”
I looked down at the marmalade hue of the flowers. The fascist murderer Lenny Kerrigan had died horribly, limbs snapped and twisted into strange new formations, yet some remorseless part of me still resented the beauty of his grave.
“Come now, Scott,” Garris said. “Petulance doesn’t suit you. If I’m going to continue to permit these unannounced spot-checks, the least you can do is to
be civil.”
Clasped in the pockets of my trench coat, my fists twitched. “You’ll permit them,” I said. “Whether I’m civil or not.”
He chuckled. In the old days, before I’d discovered his true nature, Garris had rarely laughed. “I’ve seen you watching the house, you know? Hunkered down in a different car each time, keeping your weary vigil. Random days of the week, all in an effort to catch me out. I assume you borrow the cars from your fellow Travellers? I must admit, I miss my visits to the fair, nattering away to your father and all the old showpeople. Perhaps one day—”
“You ever set foot on any of our grounds, I’ll bury you neck-deep in that flowerbed,” I said. “And let the fiercest of our juks have at your face.”
“But not my pal Webster, eh?” he replied evenly. “How is that good boy?”
He smiled a self-satisfied smile. But there were limits to even my old mentor’s cleverness. He thought I’d been clumsy in my efforts to surveil him. He ought to have known better. If I’d used my own car to keep watch on his movements, he’d have known straight away something was amiss. By taking the apparent precaution of different vehicles on different nights, I’d allowed him the satisfaction that he’d seen through my plan. A smugness that had, in turn, lulled him into a false sense of security. It was stretching my income to breaking point, but the private detectives who monitored Garris in my absence provided the reassurance I needed. He rarely went out and received no visitors. I was as certain as I could be that his urge to kill had not been reawakened by his recent activities. But it was a temporary solution. I couldn’t go on paying the detectives forever.
“You’re very uncommunicative these days, my boy.” He sighed. “Remember those chats of ours in the Three Crowns when you’d dazzle me with your insights? And it wasn’t all business, was it? After the third or fourth pint, you would confide in me as a friend. I really did value your confidences, you know.”
I almost laughed. “So much so you used them against me.”
He blinked. “Not against you. To help you. I can’t understand why you still refuse to see that.”
“Of course you can’t. Because you’re a monster. You killed five people because you thought it would save me. And do you want to know the worst part? It did save me.” I turned my face to the cold blue sky. “And now I have to live with those deaths on my conscience. I know you’ll never wrap your head around what that means, but you should know that barely a night goes by when I don’t wake up screaming. That’s the life you’ve given me.”
He nodded, wiping his palms down the front of his shirt. “That sounds unpleasant. But even the worst nightmares fade in time. And really, what was the alternative? I remember one of those boozy midnight chats, after all of our cases had been put to bed and we’d moved on to more philosophical subjects. We agreed, did we not, that this is it?” Creaking to his haunches he picked up a morsel of dirt and crumbled it between his fingers. “Earth to earth, and not a hope of heaven. You have a dual soul, Scott. The romantic who loves his books and stories and the realist who sees life as it truly is. Like me, you’ve witnessed people die. Watched as the light goes out of their eyes. Have you ever detected even a hint of something beyond?” He chuckled again and dusted off his palms. “If I hadn’t set you the puzzle of the Jericho freaks then all you’d be right now is a name on a gravestone.”
He was right. This was my philosophy. Even the ghosts of the Malanowski children had been nothing more than echoes of my guilt. Spectres now supplanted in my mind by new figures. But in the real world, there were no lost souls crying out for vengeance and no justice except that which we make for ourselves.
“How are you, Scott?” he asked, straightening up again. “Seriously, I remain concerned for your welfare. There’s a certain look in your eye that worries me. Because you’re bored, aren’t you? And in your case, boredom leads to uneasy thoughts.”
He tipped the brim of that absurd straw hat, and with his eyes, followed a smoky contrail across the sky.
“I really think it’s time you found another puzzle.”
CHAPTER TWO
I’d felt like killing him then. Because he was right. For a few months, I’d thought that Garris’ terrible sacrifice on my behalf had truly reawakened me to the world, and that in finding Harry again, I had also discovered an anchor that would keep me tethered to it. From now on I could do without puzzles. Could do without the lure of injustice and violence that demanded the wicked be punished and the innocent saved. Because Haz’s love for me was a brighter, saner star to guide my life by.
But slowly, surely, it had begun to gnaw inside me again—the hunger for a problem and the desire to make bad men pay for their brutality. Perhaps I’d never be rid of that need. Perhaps it was hardwired into me.
So why not start with this bad man? It would be simple to end him—my forearm around his throat, hard as granite as I dragged him into the house. Garris’ was a sheltered back garden, the neighbours’ windows discreetly angled so that no one could possibly have seen him burying Kerrigan’s broken body. No one to see now if I hauled the killer back through the patio door. No one to hear his muffled cry before I cut off his airway. I had never killed before, but during my thug-for-hire years, between leaving uni and joining the force, I had come close. More than once, if truth be told. I knew I had it in me. Garris knew it too.
“But you won’t,” he said as if reading my mind. “Because that really would be the end of you. And anyway, I still have the recording I took in The Three Crowns, as well as a few other bits and pieces that would inevitably lead to Harry Moorhouse’s arrest on the charge of murdering his father. I know, I know,” he said, waving aside an objection I hadn’t raised. “The poor man was desperately ill, in agony, it was a mercy killing. But you know as well as I, that if it went to trial, there’d be no guarantee of clemency. Well then, if anything untoward should happen to me, I’ve arranged for the proof of his guilt to be released.”
Rage scratched behind my eyes. I did my best to tamp it down.
“Honestly though, Scott, all this conflict is unnecessary,” Garris went on. “If you won’t take my word that I have no desire to kill again, then I’m perfectly happy for you to continue monitoring my activities. In fact, I welcome these catch-ups. I was never much of a people person, as you know, but that mind of yours? It still fascinates me.”
Leaning in, he tapped his forefinger against my temple. In that instant, as I cut my gaze towards him, I saw something in the dead marble of his eyes. Just a flicker of emotion, the stunned realisation that he’d gone too far.
“Don’t,” I said.
And he recoiled as if I’d struck him.
I left Garris standing beside Lenny Kerrigan’s grave, the stamp of some newfound fear on his haggard features.
Back behind the wheel of my ancient Mercedes, I clenched my fists until my knuckles cracked. Then I let go of a long breath, turned the key in the ignition, and headed out of the estate, finding a dual carriageway, the motorway, and finally a string of country lanes that led towards home.
As ever for a Traveller, ‘home’ was a constantly shifting location. Currently, it meant a muddy field on the outskirts of the tiny Fen city of Aumbry. More specifically, a forest clearing where we’d been booked for a special event due to take place in four days’ time.
I barely noticed the passing miles. Instead, I ran through the possibilities, as I had a thousand times since discovering Garris’ true nature. And just like all those other times, I came to the same conclusion: there was no way out of this nightmare. Even if I found evidence of his past murders, I couldn’t expose him without also exposing Harry’s secret. I might kill him and happily accept the consequences for myself, but that again put Haz at risk. No matter how much I worried at it, a solution refused to present itself.
All I knew as Aumbry’s cathedral spire appeared on the horizon was that my former mentor was right. I needed the diversion of a new puzzle. The sooner the better.
Pat
ches of the vast medieval woodland that once blanketed much of this landscape flashed past my window. Reaching the signpost for “Purley Rectory”—now adorned with half a dozen flashier signs announcing both the fair and the special event—I turned right onto the forest road. It had recently been re-tarmacked, the bracken bordering it cut back to the treeline. I toed the brake. Traveller chavvies had taken to playing in these woods and their chase games were apt to spill into the road without warning. Predictably, there had already been noise complaints from the few neighbouring farms.
Away to my left, I spotted a child-sized skeleton as it raced between the trees, and all at once, I was thrown back to a long-forgotten October afternoon. Like little Joey Urnshaw, I too had insisted on wearing my costume every day leading up to Halloween. I think we must have been open in Hampstead back then because I remember my mother guiding me across the heath towards the posh houses that sat in the vale. As we walked hand-in-hand, she’d told me all the spine-tingling tales she could remember from her favourite ghost story writers—classics by the likes of Algernon Blackwood and MR James. I’d hung on her every word until we reached the attractive Victorian villas that abutted the heath. There I’d dashed from house to house, ringing doorbells and shouting ‘trick or treat!’
Hardly a door was opened to us and traipsing homeward, my plastic cauldron had rattled with only a scatter of sweets. My mother said nothing, though I can still picture the look on her face. A pinched fury that made her lips pale. Traveller chavvies never did well at Halloween, not compared to the local kids, but this was a new low. We’d stopped at a shop just outside the fairground where she purchased enough pick-and-mix to fill a dozen novelty cauldrons. Then, brushing back my curls, she’d said, “Don’t mention this to your dad. It’ll only make him wild.”
Even then I’d wondered if it wasn’t her own anger that worried her. I have very few memories of my mother losing her temper, but when she did it was always a sight to behold. Everyone avoided her during those times, even my father. Now, caught up in this memory I hadn’t thought of in years, I wondered if perhaps the rage that so often coiled under my own skin might have deeper roots than I’d realised.