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

end of a long drive pebbled with bright red stones, and getting out, took a breath of crisp morning air.

I’d barely got any sleep last night. Returning to the trailer, I had sat on the edge of the bed for a time, staring into space. Memories came and went, mostly happy fragments from my childhood in which Tilda had featured. Birthdays, Christmases, end of season parties, Tilda and my mother dancing on tables, dragging me up beside them as we roared along to old-time songs. Shy and bookish, even as a kid I’d felt like an outsider, but Aunt Tilda had tried her best to make me part of the community.

Another good soul gone. Another link to my mother severed.

After punching a hole in the wardrobe door, then picking the bloody splinters out of my knuckles, I’d finally settled down to some online research. First, Christopher Cloade. He’d grown up the wealthy and spoiled son of a hedge fund manager, indulged in every way, until four years ago when the twelve-year-old daughter of the Cloades’ live-in maid had been found in their pool house with internal injuries so severe it was a miracle she’d survived. There was no doubt as to the identity of her attacker. Clear DNA evidence linked twenty-five-year-old Christopher to the assault. But strings appeared to have been pulled on his behalf and he’d ended up only serving two years. While inside, he had come under the influence of his cellmate, an evangelical who took the Bible so literally even the apostles might have told him to relax. Assured that a piece of human garbage such as he might still be saved, Christopher had become fanatical for Christ and the rest was history. He now operated a kind of roaming ministry that currently had its base in Aumbry.

Next up, Darrel Everwood. Most of his life was public knowledge, or at least appeared to be. The rough-and-tumble childhood on the estate in Peckham, the discarnate voices he’d heard since the age of five, the alcoholic mother who’d died before his eighteenth birthday. Some details had recently been disputed by his former fiancée. Her allegation that his early years weren’t as grim as he portrayed; that he’d actually started out as a kids’ party magician before meeting his manager, Sebastian Thorn, and forming EverThorn Media; that the whole psychic sideshow they’d created together was a scam. Old friends concurred, telling the press they’d never heard Darrel so much as mention the supernatural when they had known him.

Dr Joseph Gillespie’s academic background checked out. A serious scientist until he’d become obsessed with his crusade against the paranormal—and the accompanying publicity and adoration of his followers, so some of the doctor’s former colleagues drily quipped. There seemed to have been a scandal a year or two back concerning inappropriate relations with a PhD student under his tutelage, but the details were scant. Anyway, he was now the darling of the sceptics’ lecture circuit, demanding huge fees for his after-dinner speeches.

Of the Chambers, there were only the bare facts that I already knew from the news reports of the time. An accountant and a midwife, devastated by the abduction of their daughter from the front garden of their house on a bright April afternoon. Then, Mrs Chambers’ attempted suicide following the public announcement by Darrel Everwood that her child was most certainly dead.

Unusually, for a human being living in the twenty-first century, Angela Rowell appeared to have no online footprint at all. The only thing I could find was a photograph on Lord Denver’s property website under the ‘Meet Our Staff’ banner. Although it had probably been taken a decade ago, I wasn’t surprised to see the housekeeper wearing the same tweed jacket.

Could I really believe that any of these people had killed Genevieve Bell and Tilda Urnshaw? I knew it was a foolish question. If my recent experience in Bradbury End had taught me anything, it was that the unlikeliest of suspects sometimes turn out to be the most depraved killers.

As if on cue my phone rang. I’d received another half-dozen texts from Haz overnight, his tone increasingly concerned. In the end, I’d relented and messaged back, saying that I was fine but that I needed some time to myself. This prompted another stream of worried texts. Although he’d never asked about the details, he had seen me at work during my last investigation, and what he’d seen clearly concerned him. Scott, I don’t know what’s happening. Sal’s told me a little, but I know she’s holding things back. I need to see that you’re OK. And we need to talk. About everything. Take care and call me when you can.

But the call right now wasn’t from Haz. It was Garris. He must have seen the morning news reports concerning a murder taking place at a travelling fair. Rejecting the call, I turned off my phone and headed down the scarlet-pebbled drive towards Cedar Gables.

I’d pulled together a rough history of Genevieve Bell from a few online newspaper and magazine archives. Following the early death of their father from a heart attack, Genevieve and her sister Evangeline, two years her senior, had been left almost destitute. Together with their mother, Patricia, they had been forced to seek the help of a distant cousin—a widow with a strong interest in the supernatural. This relative had invited the Bells to come live with her. It seemed that soon after the move, Genevieve had started hearing the voice of her deceased father. Other odd occurrences followed—objects moving of their own accord, ectoplasmic emanations glimpsed by the residents of the house—all seemingly focused on the eight-year-old.

By the early 90s, word of Genevieve’s gift had spread beyond her aunt’s small circle of clairvoyant enthusiasts and into the forums of a burgeoning online paranormal community. This led to reporters picking up the story and a growing public interest in the child who spoke to the dead. Genevieve had spent a little under five years in the spotlight