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

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