Silencing the Dead

by Will Harker

  Chemically inflated with steroids, the kid tried to front up to me. I cuffed the back of his head and pushed him towards the kitchen.

  “I was promised tea. Milk, one sugar. If you spit in it, I’ll know and I’ll kick your arse up and down the railway tracks.”

  Moving into the back sitting room, I picked up the local paper from the sideboard and collapsed into Noonan’s favourite armchair.

  “All right, Scott?” muttered a man-mountain sitting on the other side of the electric fire. “Been keeping your nose clean?”

  “Clean as a daisy,” I said, before turning my attention to the paper. “Nice to see a face from the old days, Charlie. That busted elbow still giving you trouble?”

  Time crept by. I drank my tea, read the Herald, ignored the occasional buzz from my phone, reminisced with Charlie—who, at the grand old age of thirty-six, was one of the more senior husbands. Charlie left on an errand at around midday, and by one-thirty, I was ready to call it quits. Just over six hours until the broadcast and a three-hour drive ahead of me, if I didn’t hit any substantial traffic on the M25. I wanted to know what Nick had seen, but every instinct told me that I needed to be back at Purley when the cameras started rolling. According to Everwood, the media event of the century was at hand.

  I’d just started to rise when the door swung open and Noonan came bouncing into the room. He looked twenty years older than the last time I’d seen him, the toll of his fentanyl addiction showing in the loose grey flesh that hung from his face.

  “Scottster! I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. I hear young Timmo here has been supplying you with tea and biscuits. Isn’t he a peach!” The fifty-year-old gangster play-wrestled the kid against the wall. Meanwhile, six other young men watched on, their faces gripped with the tightest of smiles. A little breathless, Mark turned back to me. “Now, here’s the thing, Scott, you’ve presented me with a bit of a dilemma today. I’ve been talking about you for years, you see? How you betrayed me by joining the other side and what I’d do if our paths ever crossed again.”

  I settled back into the armchair. There was no way I was getting through that door, not with seven hard bodies and Noonan’s pudgy frame blocking it. I’d just have to see how things played out.

  “Well,” the mobster went on, stroking a forefinger under Timmo’s jaw. “I can’t let my boys think I’m a weak old man, now can I? These youngsters smell blood in the water, they’ll tear me to pieces. Won’t you, gorgeous?”

  Sweat starting on his brow, Timmo vehemently denied he would ever do such a thing. Noonan just chuckled, and reaching into the holster under his designer tracksuit jacket, pulled out a Beretta and pointed it at my head.

  “So I gotta make an example of you, Scottster,” he sighed. “But I don’t want you to worry about a thing. We’ll box you up nice and pretty when it’s done, and get you sent straight back to the fair.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The cold muzzle of the semi-automatic grazed a path around my kneecap, its touch as tender as a lover’s kiss. Bending a little to his task, Noonan then shot me a sly wink before smashing the butt of the magazine repeatedly against the bone. The sound, a hard, hollow clacking, mimicked the bright tick of Nana Noonan’s cuckoo clock on the wall. I gripped the arms of the chair as my leg spasmed in response. Set my jaw, breathed through my nose, ignored the jackal laughter of the husbands. The gun mouth was back, moving on, zigzagging up the inner thigh of my jeans, pressing under the bulge of my balls before resting against my groin. Noonan licked his lips. He glanced over his shoulder, eager for the jittery support of his boys, as he thumbed back the Beretta’s hammer.

  “Better not chamber a full round, eh, loves? When this thing goes off it won’t stop until the mag’s empty. Don’t want to cut the poor sod in half, do we?” He turned back to me, that saggy grey skin flopping from his jaws like elephant hide. “Just a single shot to make my point.”

  I stayed perfectly still. Let him have his fun.

  Beyond the patio doors behind me, I could hear the sound of kids kicking a ball in a neighbouring street, a couple’s muffled argument, a lawnmower chuntering into life, the summery chimes of an ice cream van, incongruous in the autumn dank. Life rolling on, oblivious to the psychopath currently threatening to emasculate me in his late grandmother’s armchair.

  Noonan moved the gun up and down my groin before tutting at himself. “I just can’t bring myself to do it.” He sighed. “I’ve heard such wonderful things, it would be like desecrating a work of art. But perhaps a bullet to the gut would satisfy me?” He jabbed the barrel into my navel and hissed between his teeth. “Such a bad way to go. Takes a fucking age for them to die. I’m not sure I’d want him rolling around on the floor, squealing like a stuck pig for the rest of the afternoon. What about we just cut to the chase and finish this thing?”

  He played the pistol around my jaw, over my left cheek, and into the tumble of curls that curtained my forehead. I felt the muzzle find that hot, throbbing wound Christopher Cloade had inflicted, and at its slightest touch, stars exploded before my eyes.

  “I can see you’ve been pissing off other people behind my back,” Noonan pouted. “And I thought we were exclusive.”

  “What can I say?” I grunted back at him. “I’m too much of a pain in the arse for just one crazy motherfucker.”

  “You know your problem, Scott?” he seethed.

  “I’m acutely aware of about half a dozen. Look, Mark, if there’s a choice between being psychoanalysed by a certified sociopath in a tracksuit that does nothing for him, and having my brains blown out, please hurry up and feed me the fucking bullet already.”

  “Well, isn’t she a sassy princess?” The mobster straightened up and raked the gun hard across my forehead, splitting the surgical glue, reopening the wound, and making me roar. “Maybe her fairy godfather should make her wish come true.”

  The pain burned under my skin, ran like liquid fire down my spine, made my fists clench, and my toes curl. I felt the warm cascade of blood flow down my face. I wanted to wipe the spill from my chin, but it was important to let Noonan have his moment. He had to make enough of an example of me to save face and to keep the husbands in check. I might have made it easier for myself just now by not running my mouth off—but hey, nice to meet you, I’m Scott Jericho.

  Finally, he pushed the weapon between my eyes and pulled the trigger.

  A single, impotent click.

  “Ha!” he cried ecstatically. “Oh, poor Scottster. Didn’t you know I was only fucking with you?”

  He flicked the gun away, and returning it to his holster, spun on tiptoes to face his crew. The husbands all burst into competitive applause, as if Noonan had just pulled the crown jewels out of his arse. After a moment or two, he seemed satisfied and ordered Timmo to go to the bathroom and fetch clean towels and the first aid box. While I thumbed blood from my eyes, the middle-aged mobster came and sat on the arm of the chair, his diamond-encrusted sausage fingers massaging my shoulder.

  “You know that was nothing personal, don’t you?” he whispered. “It’s just the way things have always been done. And I think you’ll agree that I let you off quite lightly. No hard feelings?”

  “Never where you’re concerned, Mark,” I assured him. “And I knew you wouldn’t dishonour Nana’s memory by killing me in her favourite chair. I remembered her rule—no severe beatings in the sitting room.”

  We both looked up at the portrait of the long-dead gargoyle, leering down at us from her spot above the mantelpiece. In her final years, Nana Noonan had sported the kind of moustache a nineteenth-century strongman might have envied, but a loving eye is very forgiving. Mark patted my hand almost affectionately.

  “Wasn’t she a handsome old lady? Always had a soft spot for you, you know.”

  I was saved from inventing any fond feelings for Nana by the arrival of Timmo and the towels. Mark asked for the room to be cleared while he personally cleaned and bandaged my wound. His personality had flipp
ed again, switching from Old Testament tyrant—thou shalt not worship any gang boss but me—to forgiving mobster messiah. The husbands looked relieved to be dismissed and the door clicked shut behind them. While Noonan fussed, sterilised, and bandaged, I tried to return us to the topic in hand.

  “Now you’ve had your fun, can we talk about Nick?”

  “Stop squirming or you’ll open this cut right back up again,” he chided. “And we’ll get to Nicholas in a moment. First, you still owe me a favour for the way you went off with the filth. This little production today doesn’t even begin to balance out the scales between us.”

  “Mark,” I sighed. “There’s no way I’m coming back to work for you. Not even for a one-off job.”

  “All right, you great virtuous saint,” he said lightly. “It isn’t anything that will compromise all these new-found morals of yours. I’ll fill you in on the details once this business you’re involved with up north is done and dusted.” For Noonan, anywhere beyond the end of the Piccadilly Line was classified as ‘up north.’ “I just need you to look into a family matter for me.”

  “And if I say yes, you’ll tell me about Nick?”

  “If you say yes, I won’t cut off your balls and feed them to Doris’ cat over the road.”

  I admitted defeat as he secured the last bandage and patted my curls back into place. “Fine.” Standing up, I checked my reflection in the mirror next to Nana’s portrait. I had to hand it to Noonan, thirty years of digging out bullets and patching up husbands had made him a pretty skilled first-aider. “Just promise me this favour won’t get me arrested.”

  “Can anyone guarantee such a thing with Scott Jericho?”

  I shrugged. He had a point. “I’ve said I’ll do it. Now, what has Nick told you about last night?”

  Mark settled himself in the chair I’d just vacated while I went and leaned against the wall. He kicked his legs up onto the arm in a way he clearly imagined was coquettish, and which certainly would have earned him a slap from a certain moustachioed grandmother.

  “He turned up here at about four in the morning,” Mark said, picking at a piece of fluff around his groin. “I must admit, I wasn’t fabulously excited to hear from him. You’re aware that I offered Nicky the chance to become one of my very special beloveds? He threw it back in my face. Never trust the young ones, Scottster, they always disappoint you in the end. But you know what a pushover I am. Last night, he begged me to come back. Literally got down on his knees and begged.”

  “And I bet you didn’t enjoy that one bit, did you, Mark?”

  “Such a big brain,” Noonan purred. “But you’re not always on the money. Fact is, I wasn’t even here. I was spending the night with some friends in Vauxhall. Timmo got me on the phone and told me this adorable redhead had shown up and was pleading for my protection. Our Nicky was well and truly tripping off his tits by that stage. Timmo put him on the blower, and from what I could make out, Nick had stumbled into something he wasn’t supposed to see.”

  “The murder of Seb Thorn.”

  “The telly producer?” Mark whistled. “I didn’t know that. All Nicky said was that he’d seen someone rubbed out and would I help him to disappear for a while. Not being the purest lamb in the flock, he reckoned the filth would think he was involved.”

  “But what exactly did he see?”

  Noonan rolled his eyes. “Christ Almighty. You know I could never understand half of what that gorgeous boy was saying, even when he wasn’t off his head on pills and slurring his words. Why don’t they teach these Northerners how to speak the Queen’s English? It’s like they’re jabbering away in a foreign language half the time. Anyway, from what I could make out, Nicky had been asked to check in on this old man who wasn’t picking up his calls. He arrives at the house around two in the morning to find the front door open and the old fella’s brains splashed across the staircase. He says he froze. Couldn’t move a muscle. Panic attack. Said he had flashbacks to some of the stuff he’d done for me in the past. I never asked him to murder anyone, so I don’t know what he’s on about there. Anyway, according to our boy, he just stands there like a statue while the killers run straight past him.”

  I stared at the gangster. “Killers? He told you there was more than one?”

  “Two, from the sound of it,” Noonan confirmed. “After I said I’d take him back and look after him, he asked me to phone you. The fear was on him by then, and he thought if he contacted you himself, the cops would be able to track him from the call.”

  I pushed off from the wall and went to stand in front of Noonan.

  “Tell me exactly what he said.”

  He sighed and examined his fingernails, as if the effort was beneath him.

  “‘Both, Mark,’” Noonan said. “‘Tell Scott, I saw both of them.’”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Both of them.

  A parade of conspirators ran through my mind, each striking me as either unlikely or absurd: Dr Gillespie and one of his worshipping disciples, Evangeline Bell and her dementia-afflicted mother, Darrel Everwood and Deepal Chandra, Christopher Cloade and a member of his homeless congregation, John and Anne Chambers, Miss Rowell acting in concert with someone as yet unsuspected. Like partnered cards in a tarot reading, I tried to deal them in as many combinations as possible, yet none seemed to fit.

  I had pictured this killer throughout as a lone predator and that image wasn’t easy to dislodge. But did the idea of two murderers answer at least one of the questions that had been puzzling me? A committed, ferocious, fixated monster, zealously working to his design of eradicating witches, and a confederate, perhaps less sure of their mission—a moderating voice that had begun to have an effect, toning down the extreme features of their macabre ritual. It was possible, and yet something about the theory didn’t sit right.

  I turned back to Noonan. “You’re absolutely sure that’s what he said? ‘Both, Mark. Tell Scott, I saw both of them.’”

  “That’s how he said it,” Noonan assured me.

  I shook my head. “Maybe if I could speak to him myself?”

  “Oh, no, no, no.” He hauled himself out of the chair and fronted up to me. I had to virtually drop my chin to my chest to return his gaze. “I know you two had something going on back in the day, but he didn’t come to you for protection. He came to me. Nick Holloway is my husband now and no grey-eyed Romeo is going to sweep in and take him from me. I’ve given you his message and that’s all you're getting, understood?”

  I nodded. “Thanks for the tea and biscuits.”

  I turned away from the little man and headed back through the hall and out the door of Number 56. It killed me to think of Nick trapped in this world he had tried so hard to escape, but there was nothing I could do. Armed to the gills and surrounded by his husbands, I couldn’t force Noonan to tell me where he was keeping Nick. Perhaps one day I could devise a plan to rescue him, but for now, I had to focus on the case and get back to Purley before the broadcast.

  “You know why you worked for me all those years, don’t you, Scottster?” Noonan called after me, as I pushed open the gate and stepped into the street. “You had the brains to be whatever you wanted, but you were drawn to me, just like you were drawn to the filth.”

  Timmo and a couple of the other husbands were standing around my Merc, blocking access to the driver’s-side door. I jerked my thumb sideways and they fell back readily enough. There was a smirk on Timmo’s face, however, that I didn’t quite like.

  “You enjoy it,” Noonan laughed. “That’s why. The fear, the violence, the adrenalin. You can’t get enough, can you?”

  I looked back at him. In their neat, ordered gardens, his pensioner tenants stood watching, their comfortable suburban smiles chillingly robotic.

  “Maybe you’re right, Mark,” I said. “And maybe that ought to worry you, just a little. I’ll wait to hear from you about that favour.”

  I dropped into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. Thank God the old Me
rc was an automatic so my left leg wasn’t required all that much. I’d forced myself not to limp to the car, but now the freshly-tenderised nerves in my kneecap started to scream. Leaning over to the cluttered glove compartment, I rooted around before eventually excavating the holy grail of half a box of paracetamol. I swallowed two tablets dry and then pulled out into the road.

  2:36 pm according to the dashboard clock. Still plenty of time to make it back. Leaving Hounslow via the Great West Road, I rolled down the window and took a breath of cold, gritty air. I could smell the promise of rain on the breeze, and within half an hour, a few spots had started to streak my windscreen. The traffic on the M25 was heavy but moving, no trundling lorries hogging the fast lane as I sped the Merc around that dreary London orbital. With the dull ache of my head and the sickening pain in my knee, it was difficult to focus on anything except the road. Each time my thoughts strayed to the case, some bright new agony would make itself felt.

  In the end, I decided to give up trying and turned on the radio.

  “… and so despite the news that has leaked this morning, the Ghost Seekers team is adamant that the broadcast will go ahead as planned?”

  “That’s right, Sinead. I’ve been in touch with the producers and they’re saying that, while Darrel Everwood is naturally devastated by his partner’s death, he knows that Sebastian Thorn would want the show to go on. In fact, Darrel claims that Thorn has already been in touch with him from the ‘other side’ and has urged him not to cancel.”

  “Might be helpful if he also mentioned who murdered him,” I muttered.

  “We have to remember that Darrel has a lot riding on the success of this Halloween special,” the reporter continued. “His celebrity stock has plummeted in recent weeks. The revelations about his personal life, and the challenge of Dr Joseph Gillespie, whose own pre-recorded documentary, Ghost Scammers, will air at the same time on a rival channel.”