by Will Harker
I had a vague idea of someone shouting my name before I hugged the tarpaulin around her. That was when I felt Genevieve’s body collapse and the fire catch at my own clothes. My injured knee twisted as we fell together, a jolt of internal pain vying for my attention against the searing kiss of the flames. My head must have struck something, perhaps the lip of the revolve, and almost at once my vision tunnelled. I thought I could make out a hand lying against my chest. Crabbed, unmoving, blemished from birth, wreathed in fire, the flesh sloughing from it like the wax of a melted candle.
Then, darkness.
Except not quite. Nothing came to haunt my dreams—not the faces of the victims from Bradbury End, not the demonic form of Peter Garris, no poppet dolls or slaughtered fortune tellers, no bloodied tarot cards or burning witches, not even the shattered corpse of Lenny Kerrigan clawing its way from beneath the marigolds. Instead, a simple white candle fluttered in the void.
It faded only as the light of the hospital ward broke in upon me.
“Take it easy, Scott. Here, have a sip of water.”
I blinked up at Thomas Tallis as he held the plastic cup to my lips. He looked as youthful and unruffled as ever, just a black smudge marking his chin. I wondered if it might be some atomised remnant of Genevieve Bell. The water was warm and yet to my parched throat it felt like heaven. Adjusting to the glare, my gaze played around the curtained-off cubicle, taking in my bandaged left leg that poked from under the bedsheet, a bulge the size of a tangerine at my kneecap.
“You’ve been having adventures before last night,” Tallis said, replacing the cup on the bedside cabinet and folding his arms. “Care to tell me about them…? No? Well, never mind. The doctors say that, with a little physio, that knee should heal up just fine. Your hand and neck, however?”
My eyes drifted to my bandaged right hand. I didn’t feel any pain, but then I imagined there was a drip somewhere feeding the good stuff into my veins.
“Some scarring, I’m afraid,” Tallis murmured.
I shrugged, then pushed with my right leg, raising myself up the bed while the inspector rearranged my pillows.
“Genevieve?” I croaked.
He stood back and refolded his arms. “She didn’t make it.”
I swallowed. “She’d had her entire existence torn away from her. The person she’d been was a lie and the one she became afterwards had only one purpose, to destroy every trace of that old life. When that was accomplished?” I locked eyes with Tallis. “She never thought she’d get away with it.”
“I don’t think she wanted to. She had no idea how to build a new life for herself.” He gripped the back of the plastic chair that stood beside the bed. “Her mother’s being looked after, by the way. I suppose she’ll end up in some kind of care home.”
“Just as Evangeline suggested.”
“Thank you for the call, Scott,” he said. “You made the right choice in the end. Course, I would have preferred you to contact me with the full details of your theory so that we could’ve brought her in for an interview, but I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies. When you’re up to it, I’ll need you down at the station to make a statement. Maybe we should talk beforehand, just to get our stories straight? As I remember it, a disturbed Genevieve Bell sought you out to make a personal confession because she was overwhelmed by the guilt of killing your aunt? Sound about right?”
“Thank you, Tom.” I nodded.
He was about to pull aside the curtain when he looked back. “I met your boyfriend, by the way. Harry? He’s been here ever since you were brought in last night. We got to chatting in the waiting room. I understand you’ve been going through a bit of a bumpy patch. Just so you know, I didn’t say anything about that drink. I’m not sure you really meant it, and anyway, the fact is, I don’t swing your way. I actually don’t swing any way, if you catch my drift. Relationships, romance, dating?” He made a face. “Not really my thing. Ah, and here he is.”
Tallis pulled the curtain aside and Haz stepped into the cubicle.
“I’ll leave you to it,” the inspector said. “Goodbye, for now, Scott Jericho.”
Haz stood there for a moment, those big jade eyes looking everywhere except at me. His long, nervous fingers twined together as a single tear tracked down the side of his face. He rubbed at it with the back of his hand, smiled a little, then came and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Haz,” I whispered. “Look at me.”
At last, he did, and laughing and crying, brushed back my curls. “You bloody idiot. Will you stop trying to get yourself killed?”
I took his hand and kissed the bowl of his palm. “I’m ready to talk now, if you are?”
“Do you know what’s been happening with me?” he asked.
I glanced at the sleeve of his canary-coloured coat, finding the ghostly mark of spilled wax on the sleeve. “You’ve been lighting candles?” I said softly, remembering something Miss Rowell had said about the white prayer candles she’d found in the cellar of the rectory. “In memory of your dad?”
His fingertips brushed the pale traces. “I’d kept the memory of what I did at bay. Pushed it away for ten long years. If I didn’t acknowledge it then it wasn’t real. But then this person comes back into my life.” He leaned forward and kissed my brow. “This clever, infuriating, moody, messed-up, big-hearted idiot, and with him comes all these memories. The good and the bad. And suddenly I’m facing the thing that ripped us apart all those years ago, and it feels fresh and raw and terrible.”
“Harry, you saved him so much pain.”
“I did. But I killed him, too. I took a life, and that is a huge, huge thing, Scott. I needed to find a way to deal with that. To come to terms with it. Then one day, I found myself outside the cathedral in Aumbry and before I knew it, I was at the altar, lighting a candle, writing a prayer card. Just the simplest thing, but it brought me peace.”
A splash of wax, the stub of a pencil dropped absently into his music bag after filling in the prayer card. I squeezed Haz’s hand.
“I didn’t think you’d understand,” he said. “I know all that stuff is just mumbo-jumbo and wishful thinking as far as you’re concerned. But it started to mean something to me. Just those visits every Tuesday and Thursday evening, to light my candle, to write my prayer, to sit in the church and be with my thoughts. To think that maybe part of him had survived and that he could forgive me.”
“Haz…”
“And I couldn’t have you picking at that belief,” he said. “Probing me and questioning me about it the way you do. So I lied about where I was going, what I was doing. Do you understand, Scott?”
I nodded. Something Genevieve had said echoed in my mind, “It can be a dangerous thing, you know, to systematically strip away a person’s certainties. It can leave them with nothing to hold onto.”
“And I need to tell you,” Haz sighed. “I’ve met someone who understands.”
I closed my eyes. I would rather the meds be turned off and feel every scrap of pain from my tortured leg and burned skin than experience this agony. I’d only just found him again, and in my arrogance and stupidity, I’d lost him already.
“I know,” I said. “I saw you together. Haz, I’m really happy that you’ve found someone who—”
“Oh, but you are the biggest idiot!” he said, framing my face with his hands. “Scott, look at me. Look at me. The man you saw me with? That’s David Yarrow. I met him at the cathedral while I was lighting my candle. He was doing the same and we started laughing because we’re both so clumsy and always spill the wax. David lost his wife last year to ovarian cancer. Anyway, we got chatting and it helped, you know. To talk about stuff. He’s a lovely, lovely man, and quite possibly, the straightest person I’ve ever met.” Haz’s expression twisted. “Scott, why would you ever think I’d cheat on you?”
I took a breath. “Because why wouldn’t you? Harry, I’m a mess. Fucked up.”
“Yes, you are.” He prodded my nose with his finger.
“Welcome to the club.”
We sat in silence for a moment, Haz stroking my hair. When at last I thought I could speak without breaking down, I said, “I don’t believe in the things you believe in, my love. At least, I don’t think I do. But I want to support you. I want to try. I’m so sorry.”
He gave a determined nod. “And I want to support you too. You’ve been coping alone with what happened in Bradbury End. So tell me.”
“You’re sure?”
“No. But maybe we can be brave, together.”
“Then I will. But not today. Bradbury End is history and I want to talk about what comes next.” I laughed and threaded my fingers between his. “Do you know the last thing Aunt Tilda ever said to me? She’d read our cards—the Star and the Lovers combined. Faith, hope, rejuvenation.” I pressed my lips to his. “All will be well.”
“She saw a lot, that old lady.” Haz smiled, pulling out his phone and holding it up so that we could both see the screen. “Maybe even further than you think. This started hitting the headlines about an hour before you came round.”
He thumbed the screen and a news clip started to play. A couple was standing outside the entrance to a hospital, tired but euphoric, caught in a blaze of flashbulbs. John and Anne Chambers clutching at each other as if desperate to confirm that this wasn’t a dream.
“It’s a miracle,” Anne said in a strong, measured voice. “A miracle that was promised to us. Debbie, our little girl, has found her way home. She’s being treated here at St Giles’, but it seems that the person who abducted her has treated her well. A woman who couldn’t have children of her own. A poor, lost soul who didn’t know what she was doing. But she kept Debbie safe and hasn’t harmed her.” A babble of questions from the journalists was met by Anne’s raised hand. “We won’t be making any further comments today. We just want to get back to our little girl—there are lots of cuddles we need to catch up on. But I want to say one last thing. Thank you to the late Tilda Urnshaw. You told us Debbie would come back to us on All Hallows’ Day and she has.”
The screen switched to a reporter standing at a rural roadside, behind him, the glowing sign of a small petrol station.
“It was here, at six o’clock this morning that little Debbie stumbled into the kiosk of this family-owned business. She was tired, soaking wet from the rain, and scratched from her dazed walk through the surrounding woodland. The owners immediately called the police, ending what had been a six-month nightmare for the Chambers family. People in the area are—”
“Pause it, please,” I said.
Haz touched the screen. Behind the reporter, the red neon sign had started to flicker: PARKER’S SERVICES. Every letter but one had phased out. I suddenly remembered what Anne had said about Tilda’s prediction—that Debbie would “find her way back to us, through water and wood until the red eye guided her home.” Now I stared at that static scarlet ‘I’.
“How did she know?” I wondered.
Haz smiled. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Scott Jericho.”
EPILOGUE
Before he left, Haz retrieved my phone from the bedside cabinet and laid it beside me.
“It’s been ringing pretty non-stop,” he said. “You must have a million voicemails. I didn’t realise you were so popular.”
If it hadn’t been for the dulling effect of the analgesics pumping through my veins, I might have guessed who had been trying so desperately to contact me. As it was, I could already feel my eyelids beginning to droop. I caught clumsily at Haz’s sleeve as he turned away from the bed.
“Still going to love me when they take off these bandages and my neck looks like a boiled chicken?” I asked.
He bent down and brushed his lips against mine. “We’ll see.”
I laid there for a while, drifting in and out of sleep, listening to the muffled conversation of visitors in the next bay, wondering about an old woman and her prophecies. Like me, my mother had possessed a dual soul, caught up in the romance of her stories but infused with a practical hard-headedness. Although sceptical about many things, she’d still believed in her friend Tilda Urnshaw. I remembered a scene not long before she died in which my mother had overheard her cocky seventeen-year-old son scoffing at something Tilda had said.
“Don’t ever let me catch you laughing at your auntie that way again,” she had seethed. “That woman has more wisdom in her little finger than you’ll possess in a lifetime. You might very well need her advice and comfort one day.”
And I had needed it. Tilda was the first person I went to when, a month later, my mother was found dead.
Only half-conscious of what I was doing, I picked up the phone and called my voicemail. “You have seventeen new messages. First message received at 8:30 am on 1st November…”
The somewhat breathless voice of the private detective panted down the line, “Jericho? It’s Gary Treadaway. Look, we’ve had a bit of a balls-up on our end. The boss said not to worry about the last few days’ pay that you owe us. Call it evens, eh? Anyway, this is just to say, we’ve lost him. Not exactly sure when it happened, but the old bastard’s fucked off somewhere all right. I’ve had one of the boys pose as a window cleaner to take a look through the upstairs windows. The house is empty. We’re thinking he might have bunked over the neighbour’s fence, but that’s just guesswork. I knew you must have a good reason for wanting us to keep an eye on him, so I’ll try you again later. I only hope he’s not going to cause you any trouble. I mean…” The detective chuckled uncertainly. “What trouble could he cause?”
I’d been so focused on the call that I hadn’t even acknowledged the doctor who’d stepped inside the curtain to take my blood pressure. Now as the cuff around my arm deflated, a hand reached out and took the phone from me.
“160/80. I think you need to calm down a little, Scott.”
I looked up into the vacant face of Peter Garris.
“Now, now,” he said, as I made a grab for the front of his shirt. “No drama. If you kick up a fuss, I’ll be forced to use this on the first nurse that pokes their head through the curtain.”
A surgeon’s scalpel flashed in his hand and I settled back onto the bed. Meanwhile, Garris moved around the cubicle, finally taking the plastic seat beside me. He laid the blade flat against his thigh and treated me to a paternal smile.
“Been getting yourself into trouble again? I seem to remember saying that you needed a new puzzle. Perhaps next time it can be a less bruising one?”
A flicker of the old rage ignited in my chest. “What do you want?”
He looked at me for a long time, something new in his gaze. A hint of indecision. “To make amends,” he said at last. And reaching into his jacket pocket, he brought out a scuffed and battered digital recorder. “It contains the audio file in which you revealed Harry’s act of mercy. It’s the original. I didn’t make any copies. I’m sorry…” He frowned, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. “I don’t want to hold it over you anymore. What I did to save you in Bradbury End, I did to save you. Not some twisted version of yourself. Back in my garden a few days ago, I realised that you were beginning to frighten me. That the position I had put you in was changing you in some fundamental way. You shouldn’t frighten people, Scott. That’s what men like me do best. I’m the villain of this story—you’re the hero. Always remember that.”
He stood, smiling at the scalpel like an old friend before sliding it into his pocket.
“You won’t be seeing me for a while. Being who I am, I’ve always had plans in place if ever I needed to run. So take a breath, Scott Jericho. Try to be happy. And maybe we’ll see each other again someday.”
He had pulled back the curtain and was about to step through when he clicked his fingers.
“Of course, I almost forgot. I’m such a muddle-head when I’ve got a long journey before me, but I meant to say, I know the murders I committed for your sake have weighed heavily on you. Well, you can stop
torturing your conscience about one thing, at least.”
“Oh, yes?” I almost laughed. “And what’s that?”
In the harsh hospital glare, the dead marble of his eyes appeared to glitter.
“Lenny Kerrigan is alive and well and sends his compliments.”
I stared at Garris. My old mentor shrugged.
“Well, you never actually saw him die, now did you?”
Scott Jericho will return
in
THE WOMAN IN THE WALL
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About the Author
Will Harker is the award-winning author of several novels for adults and children.
As the son of a fairground showman, he has now used his inside knowledge of this still largely hidden community to create a detective unlike any other.
The brilliant but troubled Scott Jericho.
Will lives in an undisclosed location with a fierce fairground juk and a vivid imagination. You can find out more by signing up to his newsletter and by visiting willharker.com for news, reviews and exclusive content.
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