Silencing the Dead

by Will Harker

  I summarised these facts in my head from the various reports. They were so thin, that from my experience of working such cases, I guessed something highly unusual had taken place at Cedar Gables. Unique details would be kept back as an investigative tool and to weed out false confessions. DNA analysis for identification was suggestive, however. Not a cheap nor a quick tool when easier methods were at hand. The fact it had been resorted to in order to establish beyond doubt the identity of the victim must mean that the killer had—

  “Scott, I need you down by the forest road.” My dad swarmed towards me. It was the only appropriate verb. At moments of crisis, he seemed to grow in stature, dominating the situation. “Gillespie’s arrived and is kicking up trouble with the press. Everwood’s on his way and— Ah balls. There he is.”

  A bulky black Bentley that looked something like a presidential protection vehicle came hurtling along the forest road, scattering punters in its wake. Some hurled insults, others dug out their phones to take video. I could see the hashtags already: #RoadRageDaz #DarrelEverwanker. A smaller, dark blue Volvo swept in behind the Bentley, containing, so I assumed, the assistant, Deepal, who’d just been speaking to Nick. Without slowing, both cars blazed through the carpark and made for the production trailers set up beside the rectory.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked Dad. “The main road’s public land, I can’t make him leave.”

  “But the forest road isn’t,” the old man grunted. “Just make sure he stays where he is.”

  As I valued human life a little more than Darrel Everwood, I decided not to take my Merc on a slalom chase down the avenue of trees. Instead, I jogged towards the main road. Halfway there, I could already make out the lights of a camera crew and a small but noisy crowd gathered around a man standing on a platform. Even from the back, I recognised that preening posture.

  I came up alongside the mob—mostly Gillespie fanboys and girls with superior expressions and badges in their lapels with slogans like Thank God He Doesn’t Exist and Born Again Atheist. Which was ironic, for they were looking up at the doctor with all the rapt attention of true disciples. Basking in their adoration, as well as the news cameras’ glare, Gillespie was in full flow.

  “… the pathetic sideshow that is going to take place here on Halloween is just another example of gullibility being exploited. Darrel Everwood and his kind are like a brain cancer growing on the collective intellect. They must be burned away, cut out, destroyed utterly. Only then can we—”

  “What about Genevieve Bell?” someone shrieked from outside the cordon of admirers. “Don’t you feel any sympathy for her?”

  Gillespie adjusted his cuffs in that self-conscious way of his. “I’ve already said that what happened to Miss Bell was a tragedy. As a humanist, I mourn the loss of any life, even one that was wasted on the trite nonsense of spiritualism. But Everwood is a different matter.” I’d come around to the front of the platform and so could see the contemptuous curl of his lip. “He deserves to be pilloried for the falsehoods he spreads. For playing the fool and allowing—”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Joe.”

  Another interruption, this time from a woman in a bright red puffer jacket. Her arms were folded across her chest and she was giving Gillespie the kind of look a parent might bestow upon a child that refuses to stop picking at a scab. She had a no-nonsense beauty about her, high cheekbones and full lips, dark eyes full of disdain. I recognised her voice at once. So Everwood’s assistant hadn’t gone up to the house with him but had been dropped off here in order to deal with this unfolding shitshow. Despite the protests of his supporters, she barged through the mob and joined him on the platform. For once, Gillespie’s façade cracked. He seemed at a loss as the enemy took command and addressed the news crews.

  “On behalf of Darrel Everwood, I’d like to assure everyone at home that Dr Gillespie’s bizarre accusations are entirely false. Darrel not only possesses a rare and powerful gift, it remains his greatest joy to share it with the world. Instead of frightening people with talk of a godless, uncaring universe, Darrel has comforted thousands with the truth.” Her tone altered to just the right side of saccharine. “You will see your loved ones again. They are still with you. And if you tune into Ghost Seekers this Halloween night, Darrel Everwood will prove it.”

  Shouts from the Gillespie mob, a scattering of applause elsewhere. The doctor himself tried to wrest back control by addressing the cameras again, but one by one, the bright lights began to blink off.

  “Quite a performance,” I said as the woman descended the platform. Shouldering the Gillespieites aside, I made a path for her. She glanced at me suspiciously as I walked with her along the forest road. “Scott Jericho,” I said. “Son of George. Also an old friend of Nick Holloway.”

  “Ah.” Her brow cleared. “Yes. I’m Deepal Chandra, Darrel’s PA. Nick’s mentioned you. He’s a good man.”

  “He is. So I was wondering—”

  Her phone chirruped and Deepal held up a finger. “Sorry. The boss.”

  A voice, certainly Everwood’s but without the mockney accent, came through the loudspeaker. “Deepal, you fuck! Has anyone seen them? Those sad-eyed bastards are turning up everywhere I go—the house, TV studios, even my bloody local. Now Nick tells me they’re here, lurking around the gaff like a pair of gloomy-faced fucks, and all because I said their daughter was dead. Well, it’s been six months, hasn’t it, so where the fuck is she? I’ll tell you this, you can bet your sweet arse it was them two weirdos that killed her, and now they’re stalking me to divert suspicion. In fact, I bet they’re all in it together—them and Gillespie, conspiring to make me look mad. You better sort this out, Deepal, or you’re fucking fired!’

  Deepal rolled her eyes and tucked the phone into her pocket.

  “Slightly paranoid?” I suggested.

  “Perhaps,” she said diplomatically.

  “He’s talking about the Chambers, isn’t he? They were here earlier. Nick had to show them off the ground.”

  She looked at me. “So maybe not paranoid? The truth is, they have been making a nuisance of themselves for a while now. I know, I know.” She held up her hand to an objection I hadn’t voiced. “They’ve lost their daughter. Allowances should be made. But Darrel has actually been pretty patient with them.”

  “And it wouldn’t look good if he took out a restraining order?” I said.

  “That too,” she conceded.

  Coming towards us down the road, I spotted Miss Rowell. The housekeeper of Purley gave me a sharp nod of acknowledgement before hurrying on her way with a clipped, “Late for my bus.” She looked more than usually dishevelled tonight, tweed jacket buttoned awry, muddy splashes at the knee of her skirt. Glancing back, I caught sight of her running a finger inside that elastic band she wore around her wrist. She seemed more focussed on it than where she was going and ended up almost colliding with a group coming the other way.

  I wanted to question Deepal more about Everwood, but arriving at the carpark, her phone rang again and she hustled off in the direction of the house. In any case, I had to report to my dad. I eventually found him fixing a loose caster on one of the Waltzer carriages. When I said I didn’t think we’d have any more trouble from Gillespie tonight, he nodded and told me to go grab some food.

  Queuing up at Lyla Jafford’s catering truck, it struck me that I hadn’t checked for any messages from Haz. Not since my run-in with Christopher Cloade. It shamed me to admit it, but the human drama of the night—all those seemingly random connections—had fed the puzzle addict within me, so that even Haz had been driven from my thoughts. Instead, I’d wondered about the paedophile preacher, with his religious antipathy to superstition that so strangely mirrored Dr Gillespie’s rational convictions. And then Miss Rowell’s uncharacteristically hurried flight down the road, as keen to be away from Purley and the fairground as the Chambers were to remain. The housekeeper and the grieving parents unknowingly united in their contempt for Darrel Everwood. Eve
rwood, who may have known Genevieve Bell, a woman murdered so brutally as to be unrecognisable…

  My head snapped around, towards the side ground and the distant shape of the fortune teller’s tent. In the next instant, I was running, no longer the graceful showman sidestepping punters, now shoving them out of my path. I ignored their startled cries. All I could hear was the drum of my heart and the slap of my boots in the wet earth. Closer, closer, the red-and-white canvas of the tent. The doorway flaps, sealed but unguarded. No sign of the chap my dad had sent to keep watch. It would be all right, I told myself. There was no reason to be afraid. And yet, in my mind’s eye, I pictured again that little wax poppet with its caved-in skull.

  The doll, like Genevieve Bell, without a face.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The sign hooked onto one of the door ties, I knew from my earliest childhood. The wood, chipped and weathered, the letters repainted a hundred times: MADAM TILDA’S ON HER TEA BREAK. BE BACK SOON! Next to that faded inscription, a scatter of bright red flecks. I pulled my hand into my sleeve, and unhooking the sign, laid it as carefully as I could on the ground. I was then forced to use my bare hands to pull apart each of the tightly knotted ties until the canvas doorway fell open. Already knowing what I’d find—wanting more than anything to be wrong—I stepped inside the tent.

  It was an abattoir.

  That was how it struck me right away. The copper tang of freshly spilled blood. Pints and pints of it, pooled in the divots of the groundsheet that covered the uneven floor. Little rivers still finding channels down which to run. A glimpse of hell, fragranced with incense and illuminated by the soft light of veiled lamps. And there, collapsed face-up to the right of the circular table, the source of it all—a small, round-shouldered woman whose hair had only just been turning grey in her seventy-third year.

  I say face-up.

  There was no face.

  I had attended hundreds of murders, suicides, road traffic collisions in my career on the force. I’d seen death in all its tortuous spectrum. Still, I had to turn away for a moment, to hold down my stomach and hold back my tears. Later, I could let this nightmare haunt me. Later, I could give way to grief and fury. Now, I owed it to Tilda to take in the scene as completely as I could. To pick out whatever clues might lead me to her killer.

  I slipped my hands into my pockets, that bit of crime scene preservation training coming back to me. Free hands are apt to wander and leave traces. Tucked safely away, they curled naturally into fists. Then I closed my eyes for a moment, took a breath through my mouth, and let my gaze fall first on the table. Like a mockery of Tilda’s corpse, the wax doll was there, laying beside the crystal ball. It too was featureless. It too had been punctured over a dozen times. My eyes slipped back to the body for a second and to the long masonry nails that been driven through Tilda’s clothes and into her torso. A small comfort here—there appeared to be very little blood around those wounds, indicating they’d been inflicted after death.

  “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” I murmured to myself.

  A quotation I had heard just that morning, mangled by Darrel Everwood during his appearance on breakfast TV. Did that signify anything? I shook my head. There was something else about the phrase that niggled at me—something Tilda herself had once said. Not recently, but years ago. Again, I pictured her with my mother, sitting on their trailer steps, entertaining me with some gruesome tale.

  I could worry at the memory later. Now I had to make the most of what time I had alone here. Returning my attention to the doll, I confirmed that all the wounds inflicted on Tilda had been foretold by the effigy. All except one, perhaps. The crystal ball was laying off-centre, the damask cloth pulled askew. No reason for the killer to do such a thing. And so Tilda must have grasped at the cloth as she fell, not onto her back as she was now positioned, but forwards. The stick she always carried in her right hand lay beside her. She would have been clutching it when attacked and so, if struck face-on, wouldn’t have been able to snatch at the cloth at all. That meant she had used her left hand and so must have been hit from behind.

  Trying to move my feet as little as possible, I dropped to my haunches and craned my neck until I could make out the wound. The edge of it was just visible—a catastrophic shattering at the back of her skull. I let out a sigh and straightened up. In this hell, I would take that small comfort—she’d been struck hard, had in all likelihood felt little pain, and had died not long after hitting the floor. I could tell that from the relative lack of smearing in the blood around her. No last death rattle, no thrashing.

  My guess was a hammer. Some blunt implement that had afterwards been used on her face before it was put to work driving the nails home. But this was not the only tool the killer had brought with them. After death, Tilda’s left hand had been almost severed at the wrist. Short, biting cuts by the look of the flesh, probably a hacksaw. Despite the precaution of hanging the sign outside, and most likely securing the ties as well, I wondered if the killer had grown anxious about being discovered and given up on this final piece of desecration. One thing they had made sure of, however, was to remove every tooth in Tilda’s head.

  This was what I had guessed must also have happened to Genevieve Bell. The quickest and simplest method of identification of a badly mutilated corpse was to check dental records. The fact the police had been forced to resort to DNA analysis, probably from comparison with the follicle roots of stray hairs found on brushes and pillows at the victim’s property, meant that the murderer must have taken her teeth. In terms of trophies collected by serial killers, teeth were a classic. But was there more to it than that? Something tied into the ritualistic nature of these murders? My eyes strayed back to the doll and the biblical quotation affixed to its leg.

  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” I said slowly. “If thy hand offends thee, cut it off. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

  But these weren’t the only biblical references that might be in play.

  Tilda had died instantly. The gore around her was runoff from the terrible wounds inflicted post-mortem. So why was there blood-splatter across one of the tarot card enlargements hanging on the other side of the tent? Even the hammer blow that had felled her was unlikely to have caused a spray that reached the far wall. And so that red arc must have been made deliberately, the killer perhaps flicking the slick hammerhead against the card. Which meant the choice of card—The Fool—was significant because there were almost half a dozen hanging closer by.

  The card depicted a leaping court jester in harlequin colours, a wand or sceptre in hand, bells dangling from his cockscomb hat.

  “The foolish man built his house upon the sand,” I said, quoting the verse spoken to me not two hours ago by Christopher Cloade.

  But the preacher hadn’t been the only one with a fool on his lips tonight. Dr Gillespie had accused Darrel Everwood of playing the fool. Gillespie, who viewed all believers as hapless buffoons.

  Except wasn’t there something here that made a stranger like the preacher or the doctor seem unlikely? My attention returned to the stick lying beside the corpse. In life, Tilda had suffered almost crippling arthritis. She very rarely rose from her chair, always calling her customers inside with a croaky rasp. Yet she had been attacked from behind, which meant she must have struggled to the door and then turned to hobble back to her chair. She would only have endured this pain if she had wanted to greet her visitor personally, which ruled out someone like Gillespie or Cloade. Unless, of course, they had met before.

  As my mum had once said about her old friend, Tilda Urnshaw was a close woman. Not even her nearest and dearest knew all her secrets. A vital attribute for a mystic.

  But going back to the idea that Tilda had known her killer, there was one psychopath who, until a few months ago, had become a familiar face on the fair. A man who had often visited his disgraced former protégé, and in so doing, had got to know many of the old-timers. I pulled out my phone and video-called Peter Gar
ris, angling the screen so that only my face would be in the shot. Suddenly my hands were shaking and I had to use both to hold the phone steady.

  Those bland, haggard features appeared onscreen. “Scott. What a pleasant surprise. To what do I owe the—?”

  “Move your camera around, let me see the room.”

  The dead eyes narrowed. “Certainly.”

  I was given a sweeping panorama of that clinical kitchen with its gleaming pans and glistening knives. The picture then returned to Garris. He didn’t beat around the bush.

  “What’s happened…? Scott, you clearly wish to know my whereabouts and so obviously someone you care about has been hurt. I promise you, I haven’t moved from the house all day. I trust it isn’t your father? Or Harry?” When I didn’t answer, he sighed and began to move through the hallway and into his soulless lounge. “This is preposterous. You must take a breath, think clearly and dispassionately. You know that I can help you, if you only ask—”

  I ended the call.

  Garris wasn’t involved. That certainty was all I needed. Only, if that was true, then why hadn’t I called the private detective to verify his location?

  I pushed the thought away and returned my attention to the scene. A killer with his rituals, seemingly obsessed with the most extreme biblical commandments. Or perhaps hiding his true loathing for religion and the supernatural by making it appear that he embraced them. A murderer who foretold the fate of his victims by sending them wax dolls. I wondered if Genevieve Bell had also received one? That these two deaths were linked seemed more than probable—a fortune teller and a psychic, both brutally murdered within days of each other, both mutilated, both with their teeth taken as trophies.

  I looked down at my phone. It was almost time. Just one more thing to check. Glancing back through the doorway at the ground immediately outside the tent, I saw two sets of lateral marks in the damp earth, evenly spaced. The impression of kneecaps and toes as the killer had knelt to secure the bottom ties. At first, it made me think about what a risk he had taken, for at least some of his clothing must have been heavily stained. And then I saw the costumes passing by—those ghouls and monsters, all chattering and laughing together. Among them, a figure drenched in blood would hardly be noticed.