Silencing the Dead

by Will Harker

  “You think that preacher had anything to do with it?” Dad asked. “The one I mentioned hanging around with his pamphlets?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “He was at the fair tonight.”

  Big Sam started to pull himself upright. “If he knows anything, I’ll go beat it out of him.”

  “You’ll stay put,” Dad said, and after a short battle of wills, his old friend sank dutifully back into the chair. “That fucking chap. If only he’d stayed put too.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “The murderer would have found their opportunity at some point. The chap isn’t to blame. Look, there are people I need to see, questions I need to ask. I’m sorry, but—”

  “Go,” Sam muttered. “You find the bastard who did this. You find him, Scott, and then we’ll do what needs doing.”

  My dad didn’t say anything but watched carefully as Sal followed me to the door. At the bottom of the steps, we found Webster fast asleep, his body draped protectively across his master’s threshold. I moved to step over the juk and Sal caught my hand.

  “You gonna be all right?”

  “I am,” I assured her. “This is what I’m best at. What have you told Jodie, by the way?”

  She squeezed her eyes tight shut. “Nothing yet. Thought I’d let her get a proper night’s sleep and tell her in the morning. Say Aunt Tils had an accident or something, I don’t know. I just hope the older chavvies don’t let on... That dear old woman, Scott. Remember how she’d peel us apples and sing us songs when we was little kids?”

  “I do,” I said, rubbing her arm.

  She gave me one of her searching looks, the kind that had wheedled out my secrets ever since childhood. “Once you’ve got hold of this bastard, you hand him over to the gavvers. Do you understand? Whatever Sam and the others might say, I don’t want you to find him if it means losing yourself along the way.”

  I left her without the reassurance she needed, and buttoning my trench coat against the night air, set off towards the rectory. I’d barely walked a few steps when my phone pinged with a message: Sal phoned me an hour ago. Scott, I’ve been trying to call. I’m so, so sorry. How has this happened? I wanted to come back onto the fair to see you, but the police at the gate won’t let me through. If you don’t feel like calling, please just message me. I love you, Haz.

  I couldn’t help being struck by the irony. Ever since he’d left last night, I’d been praying that he’d reach out and make contact. Now I turned off my phone and started again towards the house. For his own sake, I needed Haz to stay far, far away from me. Until this killer was caught, I wouldn’t be the man he knew.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “What the holy fuck is going on, Deepal? I’ve barely been here five minutes and it’s like all the plagues of Egypt have descended on the place. First, the bloody Bentley hits a nail or something, then that Chambers bastard and his sad-sack wife show up, next we’ve got Dr I’m-So-Smart-My-Shit-Don’t-Stink Gillespie badmouthing me to the local news, and now it’s like CSI Hicksville out there. The only bright side is they’ve shut down that noisy-arse fair for the night. But do either of you have a clue what’s happening? No! So what am I paying you for?”

  I could hear every word of Everwood’s rant from outside his trailer. However, I had to step virtually up to the window to hear Deepal’s response.

  “I’m sorry it’s taken me a while to get any intel on this, Darrel—”

  “A while? It’s been hours. What have you been doing, eh? Looking up cheap nose jobs on the internet again?”

  “Boss, take it easy.” Nick’s voice, smooth, placating.

  “Eeeezayyy, Nicholharse? Is that ’ow ah should take et?” Darrel said, mocking those broad Yorkshire inflections. “Why don’t thee fook off down’t pit and let Deepal speak for her’sen?”

  “It’s all right, Nick,” Deepal said. “I do have an answer, though it cost me a bit to get it. I had to bribe one of the officers for the full story.”

  “Cost you a bit?” Everwood practically cackled. “I doubt it’ll be coming out your wages, sweetheart. Well, as I’ve paid for it, I better hear it.”

  I wondered then if even the most loyal fan of this so-called medium might not have asked, But Darrel, surely you know already. Haven’t the spirits told you yet?

  “There appears to have been a murder,” Deepal said. “An elderly woman was attacked on the fairground. The constable I bribed hadn’t seen the body himself, but he told me there were rumours that the corpse had been very badly mutilated. Some kind of maniac, they’re thinking.”

  “Who was it?” Darrel asked. “The victim?”

  All the snark and bile had gone out of his voice. He suddenly sounded very frightened.

  “They didn’t give me a name. I believe she was a fortune teller.”

  A long pause. I thought I could hear the creak of footsteps, the chink of glass, running water. Then Everwood again, screaming, “Out! Get out! Leave me alone!”

  The door burst open and Deepal and Nick came hurrying down the steps. Before it swung back on its hinges, I caught my first proper glimpse of the celebrity psychic. Gone was the brash swagger of the breakfast studio sofa. Darrel looked like a little boy lost, hunched over in his chair, a glass tumbler cradled in his shaking hands. A sheen of sweat glistened across his brow and his mascara had run, painting uneven bars along his face.

  Seeing me, both Nick and Deepal came to a halt. Despite the midnight chill, Nick was again dressed in a thin white T-shirt that strained to accommodate his bulk. Though just a sliver of moon illuminated the clearing, his pupils remained fixed and tiny. I wondered when he’d last taken a dose of those prescription pain meds. Meanwhile, Deepal appeared to be taking her frustration out on her hair, yanking it back and twisting it into a severe bun.

  “Scott.” “Mr Jericho.” They said almost in unison.

  “What are you doing here?” Nick asked.

  I didn’t answer but motioned them away from the trailer and towards the iron railing that ran around the desolate rectory garden. I thought the best tactic was to be direct. I had no official capacity to ask them questions, but perhaps I might shock an answer or two out of them.

  “I heard you talking about the old woman murdered tonight,” I said to Deepal. “That was my aunt. I found her body myself and had to wait with it until the police arrived. The constable you mentioned was right, by the way. By the time he was finished, the killer had made her pretty much unrecognisable.”

  Deepal covered her mouth with her hand while Nick came forward. “Scott.” He touched the side of my face. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Do you know what happened?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “Your boss seemed quite upset when you told him the news.”

  Deepal blinked. For a few seconds there, she had looked very far away. “Oh, that? I wouldn’t take much notice. Epic emotional swings are an hourly event. Half-hourly on a bad day.” I noticed her attention stray to the bulge of the phone in her trouser pocket. “I suppose he might be worried about how this could affect the show.”

  “Nothing to do with his reluctance to come here in the first place, then?” I said. Nick retreated a step and shot a glance at the PA. “You told me he thought there was something bad waiting for him in Purley. That he might die here. What was that fear based on?”

  “It was just one of his feelings,” Deepal said. “You’ve seen what he’s like. A total drama queen. He has these meltdowns before every major event, like a kind of extreme stage fright. You have to understand, Darrel built his entire career from nothing. He’s come a long way since that council estate in Peckham, achieved incredible things, but that’s also engendered a deep anxiety that it could all be taken away from him. And now, what with the bad press he’s been getting from his ex and the added pressure from the Chambers and Dr Gillespie, that anxiety has kicked into overdrive. He knows this event has to work to get him back on track. At the same time, the burden of that knowledge means he’d do almost anyth
ing to get out of it…” She stopped herself mid-flow.

  “Anything?”

  “I didn’t mean that.” She flushed. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a complete egomaniac but not even we think he’d go that far.”

  “That’s right,” Nick put in. “Anyway, after we got here tonight, I stayed with Darrel in the trailer, going through security plans for the broadcast. Then I read my book while he played a game on his phone. That was until the police showed up and everything started kicking off outside.”

  “You didn’t leave him at all?” I asked.

  “Well.” He scratched the nape of his neck. “Only for about half an hour or so. He started getting antsy again around eight o’clock and asked me to do a scout of the forest and the fair. Said he’d lock himself inside while I was gone. I told him I’d seen Mr and Mrs Chambers off the site earlier and that Deepal had dealt with Dr Gillespie, but he insisted.”

  Deepal jumped in. “I got a call from a journalist saying they wanted to get Darrel’s response to Gillespie’s stunt. I went back down to the main road to keep a lookout because the reporter said he couldn’t find the forest entrance. I saw Gillespie there, getting into his car and driving off just as I arrived.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I can tell you exactly. Eight-twenty.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I have an alert on my phone every twenty minutes to remind me to check Darrel’s social media platforms. His trolls need a lot of policing. Anyway, the alarm went off right at the time I saw Gillespie leave.”

  “What about the journalist?” I asked.

  “No sign of him.” She caught my look. “Nothing suspicious there. He’s an old contact, but still, journos are a faithless lot. My guess is that he got a lead on a better story and couldn’t be bothered to drop me a text.”

  “So you returned to Darrel at about half-past eight?” I said to Nick. “And he was still playing on his phone?”

  “No,” he answered carefully. “Sorry, I forgot. When we first arrived here tonight, I found the trailer’s septic toilet had backed up and couldn’t be used. Darrel was fuming, of course. Anyway, when I came back from scouting out the site, Darrel wasn’t there. He’d nipped into the woods for a pee and came in a couple of minutes after me.”

  “How’d he seem?”

  Nick shrugged. “A bit jumpy, maybe. He hadn’t wanted to go out by himself, but I suppose he couldn’t hold it any longer.”

  “And you didn’t see anything suspicious while patrolling the site?”

  “I didn’t… Wait.” Nick clicked his fingers. “I did see the Chambers again. Or thought I did. I was a bit of a way off, so I can’t be sure, but it was a couple—the man was small and wiry and the woman was wearing a green coat. And, Jesus, yes! They were actually coming out of the fortune teller’s tent. Your aunt’s tent?” I nodded. “OK, but this was early on. Just a few minutes after eight. Do you know when she was killed?”

  “Between eight-fifteen and nine.”

  “Then even if it was them—”

  “They might have come back,” I said.

  “But why on earth would a grieving couple kill your aunt?” Deepal asked.

  “When it’s more likely they might want to kill your employer? Speaking of which, I overheard you and Nick on the phone tonight. You spoke about another recent murder—Genevieve Bell. Nick, you said you thought Darrel might have known her.”

  “He’d mentioned her name, I think,” Nick said.

  “And what about my aunt’s name? Tilda Urnshaw?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Are you suggesting that Darrel could also be a target of this maniac?” Deepal asked. I could almost hear the excitement in her voice as she pulled out her phone. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to touch base with Darrel’s manager. I hate to say it, but if we get in front of this story then it might not be a total disaster. Brave medium forges ahead with show despite death threat. Yes, that could actually work…” She caught my eye. “I’m sorry, Mr Jericho. This job isn’t the best environment for maintaining one’s humanity.”

  Nonetheless, she turned on her heel and marched away, the phone clamped to her ear.

  Nick approached again, and brushing a tangled curl from my brow, he asked, “How are you doing, Scott?”

  “How are you doing, Nick?” I shot back. “On the meds again? Look, I’ve been where you are now, very recently in fact. It’s taken me almost three months to get my shit together and even now, if someone offered me a handful of sleeping pills and benzos, I’m not sure I could resist. They screwed with my mind for a while, made me see things that weren’t there. Sometimes I’d even zone out for a couple of hours and have no idea how much time I’d lost.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, are you sure you saw what you thought you saw tonight? The Chambers coming out of my aunt’s tent? And are you certain about your timings with Darrel? You see, fifteen minutes or so would be a pretty tight window to make him a viable suspect, but forty minutes or even fifty? I’m asking how sure you can be.”

  “Scott,” he said. “You made me a promise.”

  “And I won’t say a word—not about the meds, not about Mark Noonan. But I must speak to Everwood. This was my aunt, Nick. My family. You understand?”

  He nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. But not tonight. He’s just swallowed half a pharmacy, so whatever he says won’t make much sense anyway.”

  “Thank you.”

  I started to move away when he spoke again. “I heard from one of the guys on the fair that you have a boyfriend. I didn’t know that when I made a move on you the other night. I’m sorry, Scott. I hope you didn’t take it the wrong way.”

  I didn’t answer. Just buried the face of Harry Moorhouse deep at the back of my mind and moved on alone, into the darkness.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Located in a wooded valley just outside the pretty village of Marchwood, Cedar Gables was a stunning—if misleadingly named—house. A modernist construction of steel and glass, the home of the late Genevieve Bell was flat-roofed and so possessed no gables, cedar or otherwise. I parked at the end of a long drive pebbled with bright red stones, and getting out, took a breath of crisp morning air.

  I’d barely got any sleep last night. Returning to the trailer, I had sat on the edge of the bed for a time, staring into space. Memories came and went, mostly happy fragments from my childhood in which Tilda had featured. Birthdays, Christmases, end of season parties, Tilda and my mother dancing on tables, dragging me up beside them as we roared along to old-time songs. Shy and bookish, even as a kid I’d felt like an outsider, but Aunt Tilda had tried her best to make me part of the community.

  Another good soul gone. Another link to my mother severed.

  After punching a hole in the wardrobe door, then picking the bloody splinters out of my knuckles, I’d finally settled down to some online research. First, Christopher Cloade. He’d grown up the wealthy and spoiled son of a hedge fund manager, indulged in every way, until four years ago when the twelve-year-old daughter of the Cloades’ live-in maid had been found in their pool house with internal injuries so severe it was a miracle she’d survived. There was no doubt as to the identity of her attacker. Clear DNA evidence linked twenty-five-year-old Christopher to the assault. But strings appeared to have been pulled on his behalf and he’d ended up only serving two years. While inside, he had come under the influence of his cellmate, an evangelical who took the Bible so literally even the apostles might have told him to relax. Assured that a piece of human garbage such as he might still be saved, Christopher had become fanatical for Christ and the rest was history. He now operated a kind of roaming ministry that currently had its base in Aumbry.

  Next up, Darrel Everwood. Most of his life was public knowledge, or at least appeared to be. The rough-and-tumble childhood on the estate in Peckham, the discarnate voices he’d heard since the age of five, the alcoholic mother who’d
died before his eighteenth birthday. Some details had recently been disputed by his former fiancée. Her allegation that his early years weren’t as grim as he portrayed; that he’d actually started out as a kids’ party magician before meeting his manager, Sebastian Thorn, and forming EverThorn Media; that the whole psychic sideshow they’d created together was a scam. Old friends concurred, telling the press they’d never heard Darrel so much as mention the supernatural when they had known him.

  Dr Joseph Gillespie’s academic background checked out. A serious scientist until he’d become obsessed with his crusade against the paranormal—and the accompanying publicity and adoration of his followers, so some of the doctor’s former colleagues drily quipped. There seemed to have been a scandal a year or two back concerning inappropriate relations with a PhD student under his tutelage, but the details were scant. Anyway, he was now the darling of the sceptics’ lecture circuit, demanding huge fees for his after-dinner speeches.

  Of the Chambers, there were only the bare facts that I already knew from the news reports of the time. An accountant and a midwife, devastated by the abduction of their daughter from the front garden of their house on a bright April afternoon. Then, Mrs Chambers’ attempted suicide following the public announcement by Darrel Everwood that her child was most certainly dead.

  Unusually, for a human being living in the twenty-first century, Angela Rowell appeared to have no online footprint at all. The only thing I could find was a photograph on Lord Denver’s property website under the ‘Meet Our Staff’ banner. Although it had probably been taken a decade ago, I wasn’t surprised to see the housekeeper wearing the same tweed jacket.

  Could I really believe that any of these people had killed Genevieve Bell and Tilda Urnshaw? I knew it was a foolish question. If my recent experience in Bradbury End had taught me anything, it was that the unlikeliest of suspects sometimes turn out to be the most depraved killers.