Silencing the Dead by Will Harker (ereader ebook .txt) 📕

of refreshment himself, he’d retired to his own trailer and fallen asleep while watching a match on the box. I for one prayed he’d have the wisdom to pack up his things and leave the fair that night. His safety among the Travellers could not now be guaranteed.

But this also made me think about how the killer must have watched and waited for their moment. Perhaps they’d even visited Jericho Fairs before and learned of Tilda’s routine with her sign. That showed foresight and planning, or else they knew the fortune teller and her habits of old. In any case, it had been a brutally efficient execution. The timing meant a window of approximately forty-five minutes between the chap’s departure and me finding the body at around nine.

Just before my phone was taken, I had thought of calling Haz. Despite their last encounter when she had upset him by seeming to speak about his dead father, he’d always had a soft spot for Aunt Tils. Hell, Harry had a soft spot for just about everyone. My thumb had hovered over his contact but something held me back. Perhaps the shame of my imagining his involvement, perhaps the fear that he would hear that doubt in my voice.

The minutes crawled by, and I was about to go and ask what was keeping him when the DCI stepped into the tent. He was probably only a year or two older than me, which meant he was smarter than he looked. No one reached the rank of chief inspector by their mid-thirties without having both brains and a knack for office politics. He came forward with a broad, apologetic smile and grasped my hand in both of his. It seemed at once an act of submission and assertion, his handshake overly firm but his expression contrite.

“Inspector Tallis. I’m so sorry I’ve kept you waiting.” Falling into the folding seat opposite, he took out his notebook and flicked through the pages before looking up. “Mr Jericho.”

He hadn’t needed to consult his notes. He knew my name. I wondered if it was all part of the same performance that extended to that bit of bumfluff on his upper lip. An almost adolescent attempt to grow a moustache. He was youthful-looking anyway, tousle-headed, wide-eyed, all teeth, a man who’d look more at home in a school blazer than that almost creaseless suit. A man easy to underestimate, which was surely his intent.

“I’d like to start by saying how sorry I am for your loss. Miss Urnshaw was your aunt, I understand?”

“Aunt in the Traveller sense,” I answered. “Not a blood relative, but all the old-timers here are known as aunts and uncles.”

He made a note. “I see. Well, Scott, if I may call you that? I see from my sergeant’s notes that you’ve made some interesting observations about the crime scene. Didn’t touch anything, didn’t try to see if your aunt was still alive, just took it all in, didn’t you?”

There wasn’t anything accusatory in his tone. There wasn’t much of a tone at all.

“She’d been hit on the back of the head,” I said evenly. “Her face had been smashed in, all her teeth removed, and her left hand almost severed. I thought it was safe to assume she was dead.”

He smoothed down the open page and didn’t take his eyes from me. Despite the questioning, I think I made up my mind right then that I liked DCI Tallis.

“Still, not the usual reaction of a civilian,” he said. “I mean you didn’t disturb the body but nor did you run for help. You stayed at the scene until we arrived and then provided a catalogue of insights—victim attacked from behind, perhaps indicating he was known to her; some kind of point being made by the splattering of blood on the tarot card; indentations on the ground outside where he knelt to fasten the ties.”

“I never said ‘him,’” I corrected. “A reasonably fit woman would’ve been capable of any of this.”

“Another good point. And I understand you didn’t report the doll to the police when it first appeared. May I ask why not?”

I shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t do anything about it.”

“Did you? But still, you were troubled?”

I looked down at my hands. Willed them not to tremble as I remembered discouraging my dad from reporting the doll.

“It seemed… carefully malicious, if you know what I mean?” I said. “No fingerprints, and then the pins, the bible quotation, the hexafoil. All of it thought out. Maybe even overdone.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Yet.”

“But you were worried that there might be something more to come?”

I shuffled in my seat. “The doll is like the murder itself. Overkill, if you like. Almost too many little touches. The teeth, presumably taken as trophies as there’s no doubt about the identity of the victim. But still, it’s unusual for a killer even with a dental fetish to take all the teeth. And then there’s the fact that, although it was very elaborate—the planning of it, sending the doll, waiting for the right time to strike, performing each mutilation—there’s also a sense of half-heartedness. A rush to complete everything. The fact the hands weren’t taken.”

Tallis scratched his eyebrow. “It was a public place. Maybe he was fearful of discovery.”

“Maybe. But these kinds of ritualistic killers are usually obsessive about their signatures. They take their time, even if it endangers them.”

“So what does that tell you?”

“It tells me I don’t know the full story.”

The inspector cleared his throat. “You see, Mr Jericho, all this—your sense of calm, your knowledge, observations, it’s suggestive.”

“Is it?”

“Unusual name, Jericho,” he mused. “Reminds me of a case I heard about a couple of years ago. Smart young detective. Brilliant, in fact. Rising star in CID. Just my sort of officer. But he throws away his career after losing his temper with the prime suspect in a murder case. Case then collapses and our golden boy is sent straight to jail. Do not