by Will Harker
“But you didn’t?”
“Course not. She was dead or dying by then, wasn’t she?”
“But you didn’t know that. It was roughly another hour before the police arrived. You could’ve got Nick to walk you over to the tent.”
“Had second thoughts, didn’t I?” he sniffed. “It was bloody cold out.”
“Why did you come here so early?” I asked. “The rest of the production team aren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow morning, are they?”
“I always show up before the rabble descends,” he said. “All the noise and confusion and radio signals from the crew interfere with my psychic frequencies. I like to attune myself to the haunting before the show goes live.”
I didn’t detect any obvious play-acting on Everwood’s part. I wondered, hammy as his onscreen persona was, did he actually believe all this? Just because Dr Gillespie was convinced that, unlike Genevieve, Darrel was a conscious fraud, that didn’t mean his assessment was accurate. It may have started that way, but as Evangeline had described in her sister’s case, a psychic’s idea of themselves can change over time. It might even be psychologically necessary to protect their sense of self-worth.
“Going back to your reaction to Tilda’s death,” I said. “You certainly looked very distraught.”
“I was.” He said it in a wondering sort of tone, as if he couldn’t quite believe the reaction himself. “I don’t know. Someone killing her after she was part of the same story that made me what I am. It felt personal.”
An echo of what Tilda had said about the poppet resounded in my head. To her it felt haunted, “But not by spirits. By a living person’s spite and wickedness. It feels… personal.” That intimate thread, perhaps, connecting the life of Genevieve Bell to the fates of those she’d touched.
“Did you ever meet Gennie?” I asked.
“Who?” He shook his head. “Sorry, I’ve never heard her called that. Stupid of me. No, I… I didn’t get the chance. I’d have done anything to, of course. I mean, her powers when she was a kid were off the scale—mediumship, telekinesis, precognition, apportation, automatic writing, telepathy—almost the entire paranormal set.”
“But she didn’t believe in those gifts herself,” I said. “Not in the end.”
Everwood’s expression soured. “That bastard Gillespie wormed his way into her thinking. That man’s like a cancer, you know. He eats away at all that’s pure and good.”
“Great minds,” I said. “He recently described you as a cancer too.” I sat forward on the couch. “Tell me, why were you afraid to come to Purley Rectory?”
He jerked away as if I’d threatened to strike him. “Who told you that?”
“Are you afraid?” I pressed. “Maybe you’ve received some kind of threat you haven’t told Deepal or Nick about? Something personal you wouldn’t want leaking to the press, especially with everything going on with your ex.”
He licked his lips. “Why should I trust you?”
“I’m Tilda Urnshaw’s family,” I said. “I want this killer caught.”
His eyes darted to the trailer door. “You know what they think, don’t you? My manager and the producers. That I can’t stand the pressure anymore and that I’ll say anything to get the event called off.”
“And would you?”
“Maybe I would have. I was frightened that I’d crack up live on-air and that my career would be over. That would have killed me, sure as anything. But then I had my eyes opened to the truth. An incredible truth.” He looked down at his hands and smiled. “But I’m not going to say anything. Not until the time’s right. Then the world is going to know exactly what’s been going on here, and all the doubters will see just how wrong they’ve been. Trust me, Mr Jericho.” His smile became almost dreadful. “It’s going to be the media event of the century.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The door burst open and Nick and Deepal stormed inside.
“That’s it,” the PA ordered. “We’re done here.”
I glanced at Everwood and saw immediately that I’d get no help from that quarter. It was as if he’d taken a handful of those sleeping pills that had knocked me out the night before. His eyes had an unfocused, foggy look and he gazed back at me as if I was a complete stranger. During my short interview with him, I’d noticed how his attention would wander, sudden flares of intensity lapsing into virtual incomprehension. Whatever substance issues he might have, he seemed to be in the grip of a genuine persecution disorder. One in which he now believed he was about to turn the tables on his enemies and prove to them, once and for all, that his powers were real. I wondered who’d implanted such an idea in his head and why?
“I’ve just got off the phone with Sebastian Thorn,” Deepal said, more to me than to Everwood. “He says that, unless Mr Jericho leaves immediately, the Ghost Seekers’ legal team will seek full damages against Jericho Fairs for breach of contract. It was stipulated in the deal with EverThorn Media that there should be no direct contact between any employee of Jericho Fairs and Mr Everwood.”
While Deepal had been reading me the riot act, I’d discreetly claimed Darrel’s copy of Hearing the Dead. More necessary for a private detective than keen eyes and brilliant deductions was a coat with capacious pockets. Now I held up innocent hands and moved with Nick to the door.
“No harm done,” I assured her. “Thank you for your time, Mr Everwood, and good luck with the show.”
He blinked and grinned after me. “Be sure you tune in from the start. You wouldn’t want you to miss the big reveal.”
“The media event of the century, so I hear.”
He laughed and clapped his hands, a little like Christoper Cloade had done a few moments before he’d tried to impale my left eye. “That’s right. Who told you?”
Back outside with the door closed behind us, I turned to Nick. “What the hell are they thinking?”
He shrugged, feigning ignorance. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on.” I gestured towards the trailer. “He’s barely holding it together. Look, what Everwood did to the Chambers proves that he’s a self-obsessed piece of garbage, but he’s also very clearly not well. They can’t seriously be thinking of putting him on live television tomorrow night?”
Nick made a hushing gesture, and planting his palm in the small of my back, directed me to the rear of the rectory. Here the hibernating forest bustled up against the house, its naked fingers dreamily caressing the stone and glass of Purley. In the failing light, Nick clasped and unclasped his hands, the burn his father had branded him with appearing and vanishing like a marked card in a conjurer’s deck.
“Darrel’s losing it, I know,” he said in a fretful whisper. “We all know. But what do you think any of us can do about it? When he isn’t throwing espressos down his throat, one after the other, it’s the booze or the uppers or the downers. Our old pal Mark Noonan would’ve made a fortune off him. Anyway, I overheard Deepal talking to Thorn. The plan is to get him shipped off to some kind of detox retreat as soon as the broadcast is over. But they’ve all got too much riding on this to let him pull out now. They’ve sold the advertising space, spent fortunes on marketing and publicity. He just has to get through it.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Nick blew out his cheeks. “Then he’s fucked. And Deepal’s fucked, and I’m fucked, and anyone who works for him is fucked.”
“At least he isn’t afraid anymore,” I said. “He even seems to be looking forward to it. When did that happen?”
“Sometime last night.” Nick scratched the nape of his neck. “It was weird. Up until then, he kept saying the same stuff about how coming to Purley was going to be the end of him.”
I nodded. “It fitted in with the paranoia he’d built up following his fiancée’s attacks and Gillespie’s campaign against him. His whole professional and personal existence is on the line. His reputation, his wealth, his own idea of himself. If he fails here, that life—the only lif
e he sees any value in—could be over. A reality so terrifying he might even have considered cancelling the event. But suddenly it’s like he’s got an ace up his sleeve. Some huge revelation that will redeem him in the eyes of the public, perhaps even convince mockers like Gillespie.”
“All I know is, he got a call just before midnight,” Nick said. “Unidentified number on his personal mobile. I only caught the beginning of the conversation. At first, Darrel acted like it was a prank. ‘That’s some sick shit you’re talking,’ he said. ‘How dare you even pretend to be…’ And then his mouth clamped shut. Honestly, Scott, the look on his face—it was like someone had reached down that phone and shown him that every nightmare and every dream he’d ever known was real. He couldn’t get me out of the trailer fast enough.”
“Did you tell Deepal and Thorn?”
“Darrel swore me to secrecy,” Nick said. “Promised I’d get a raise if I kept my mouth shut.”
“And that’s all you know about the call?”
“Pretty much. But from that moment, his attitude towards the whole broadcast changed. I think he actually can’t wait for tomorrow night.”
Movement high up in the house suddenly snagged my attention. Framed like a human spider in the dusty web of an oculus window, Miss Rowell looked down upon us. Whether or not she could have overheard what we’d been discussing, she shrank back when she caught my eye, like a guilty thing startled.
I said goodbye to Nick and traipsed back through the fair to my trailer. Funny how quickly that possessive ‘my’ had slipped back into how I thought about the place—until yesterday it had been ‘our trailer.’ The thought almost winded me but I shoved both it and Haz aside. I had a good few hours of reading ahead of me and I needed to stay focused.
After throwing together a quick sandwich and downing a pint of water and two paracetamols, I peeled the beanie from my forehead and examined the wound Cloade had inflicted. It looked red and felt hot to the touch. I’d have to get some antibiotics or something in the morning.
Pulling the book from my coat pocket, I settled myself on the bed and began to read. Despite its fantastical subject matter, Hearing the Dead wasn’t the most absorbing of biographies. The ghostwriter—had that job title ever been more apt?—made plodding work of the early life of Genevieve Bell, repeating the bare facts and figures from her birth certificate, school reports, childhood illnesses, locations and durations of holidays, placings in sports day events, a prize from a local drama competition. It was exhaustive, colourless, and without any emotional detail. My eye started to skim over the pages.
I was disappointed. I had thought some clue might be waiting for me here. A key that would unlock the mystery of why anyone would centre a pathological hatred for psychics on Genevieve Bell. Pretty much all of it I already knew, either from my research or from what Evangeline had told me. Obviously, the reality of the supernatural was never questioned in this account. No suggestion here that it had all begun as a game between the two sisters. Gennie’s powers were demonstrably genuine and had been honed and nurtured by the kindly fortune teller, Tilda Urnshaw. Three mentions in total for Tilda. I wondered if she might still be alive had the ghostwriter left her out of the narrative.
In the end, Hearing the Dead seemed to work just as well as my sleeping pills. After a short, dreamless sleep, I jerked awake not to the roar of the fair but to its silence. Tossing the open book from my chest, I stood up, stretched, and poked my head out of the trailer door. A bracing gust of night air greeted me. Out across the fairground, generators were whirring to a stop as the lights on the rides blinked into darkness. I checked my phone—ten past midnight.
Halloween and the day of the broadcast had arrived.
Away to my left, an engine started and a wash of headlights swept across the forest. Illuminated, I saw a couple of Tallis’ constables near the carpark wave down the driver. It was Nick, pale-faced behind the wheel of the Bentley. I dragged on my coat and hurried over, just in case he needed someone to vouch for him.
Caught by the breeze, I heard his voice as he explained, “Mr Everwood wants me to check on something. I should be back in a couple of hours.”
The officers tapped the roof and the Bentley moved on. Probably just another of the medium’s eccentric whims, I thought.
I finally finished Hearing the Dead just before 3 am. It had taken the story of Genevieve right up to the moment that her fame had reached its pinnacle. I knew from my research that not many months after publication, Gennie had begun her long retreat from the spotlight. Again, I felt frustrated. There was nothing here that could help me identify the killer, nor any future victim. Just a catalogue of names, dates, instances of paranormal phenomena drily recorded…
I stopped dead. I had been flicking idly through the book when I saw that the title page had become stuck to the inside cover. The paper was brittle, crinkled, and I imagined something sticky must once have been spilled over it. Carefully, I edged a thumbnail between the leaves and began to tease them apart. Most of the page came away undamaged, so that I could make out an inscription scribbled in faded ink beneath the title:
For Darrel, in the hope that I can do the same for you as I did for Genevieve. Here’s to the future, kid! SB.
What had Darrel said he’d done after reading the book? “I started making notes, following things up, putting out feelers... I signed with a manager, and within a year or two, I’m packing theatres up West…” An ambitious young man, he had wanted to emulate Genevieve Bell, and so of course he would have sought out the publicist who’d made her famous. Sebastian Thorn, now one half of EverThorn Media and co-owner of global TV sensation Ghost Seekers. An experienced promoter and enabler of psychics.
And in the mind of a killer perhaps, a creator of witches.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The face of her sister’s former publicist was before me when Evangeline Bell answered my call. She sounded exhausted. I wasn’t surprised. It was almost four in the morning.
“Yes? Who is this?”
“Miss Bell, I’m sorry to disturb you. I wouldn’t have called if I didn’t think it was important. This is Scott Jericho.”
I heard a rustle of covers, the click of a lamp. Evangeline cleared her throat. “Mr Jericho. Has something happened? Please don’t tell me another—”
“I hope not,” I said. “I’m connecting a couple of dots and I need your help. You told me that, after Gennie started coming to the attention of the press, the family was contacted by a publicist. You said his name was Rose?”
“Oh,” she sighed wearily. “Something like Rose. A smart, smooth-talking, oily sort of man in his forties. My mother said he reminded her of one of those sharp-suited spivs you see in old war movies. He ditched Gennie as a client as soon as she started to withdraw from the big public events. I haven’t thought about him in years.”
“Might his name actually have been Thorn?” I said. “Sebastian Thorn?”
There was indeed a touch of the old-fashioned spiv in the man smiling back at me from my laptop. Thorn’s photo on the EverThorn Media website showed a jowly, hawk-faced sixty-something, receding hair slicked back, a white pencil moustache, teeth almost as luminous as his younger partner’s. But despite the twinkle, there was a hardness in those eyes that made me think of Nick’s description. The old guy’s like a bulldog protecting his pup.
“Thorn, of course,” Evangeline muttered. “A creepy old man, although I suppose back then he wasn’t all that old. Still, anyone over twenty-five is ancient to a pair of teenage girls. He seemed to like getting in between the two of us and wrapping his arms around our waists. ‘A thorn between two roses,’ he’d laugh. I suppose that’s how I got the name mixed up. God, our mother just used to sit there tittering as he did it. She’d never say a word against anyone who brought money into the house.”
I thought of that confused, bedraggled woman emerging from the bushes of Cedar Gables, wittering about her missing scarf and bedsheets and underthings. Whatever the fa
ults of her past, Patricia Bell’s dismantling mind seemed punishment enough.
“How did he first hear about Gennie’s abilities?” I asked.
“Word had started to get out by then,” Evangeline said. “First through our cousin’s spiritualist friends, then the internet chatrooms, then pieces in the local paper that were eventually taken up by the national press. I remember it was around that time I really started to get frightened. Things were getting out of hand, you see? Our silly game had taken on a life of its own. Of course, when he turned up at the house, Thorn denied he’d heard of Gennie through any of those sources. He said her name had been passed to him by his contacts in the spirit world.”
“Wait,” I said. “You mean he claimed to have psychic powers of his own?”
“That’s how he started, I believe,” Evangeline said. “As a medium.”
So not only a creator of witches, I thought, but a witch himself.
“He was furious when Gennie finally said she wanted to stop. As far as he was concerned, she was the goose that laid the golden egg. But, as fragile as she seemed, my sister could be remarkably obstinate when her mind was made up. Not even our mother could move her.”
“And what about you?”
“Truly, Mr Jericho? With all that publicity and press attention, I was just glad that she’d never been found out. She had at least twenty more years of blissful ignorance before Dr Gillespie tore that fantasy away from her.”
“Just one more thing and I’ll let you get some rest,” I said. “Would your sister have kept Sebastian Thorn’s home address?”
“I shouldn’t have thought so, but if you’ll hang on…”
I heard the phone clatter onto a table and then the muffled sound of bare feet on carpet. Then nothing for a long time except the buzz of the line. I’d just started to feel my eyes droop when a shriek cut through the stillness.