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

it on purpose—pushing him away as brutally as I could so that he’d never see the real me. Not in its raging, mindless totality anyway. He had someone and I was glad. Well, if not glad, in some sense relieved that at least I knew and now I could concentrate on what I did best.

So I ignored my hollow heart and sat watching the chapel door. It was dark and bitterly cold in the winding medieval streets of Aumbry. The little cathedral city on its hill dominated the flat, rolling fenland for miles around, the spire of its great church standing like a ship mast amid a sea of glinting dykes and waterways. Most pilgrims would head straight for that soaring beacon but my focus this evening was a meaner, less traditional house of God. Attached to the door of the derelict schoolhouse was a sign proclaiming: THE CHURCH OF CHRIST THE REDEEMER: Enter, sinner, and beg forgiveness.

I’d already poked my head inside an hour ago, and I had to hand it to Christopher Cloade, you couldn’t accuse his poster of false advertising. The building in which his ministry was almost certainly squatting had been about a quarter full, twenty lost souls grovelling before his altar. The spectacle reminded me a little of Dr Gillespie and his disciples, except most of Cloade’s congregation had the excuse that they were either tanked up on lager or sky-high on meth. Possibly both. I listened to a vivid description of the agonies of hell and then headed back to my bench on the other side of the street.

Before leaving the fair this afternoon, I’d strolled over to the Ghost Seekers production trailers in the hope I might bump into Everwood. Still reeling from what had happened with Haz, I knew I had to control my emotions. The rawness inside me could easily switch to anger if I tried to force an encounter that was rebuffed. If I was then reported to the police, that might be the end of my cosy relationship with Tallis.

On the driveway near the house, I’d caught sight of Nick replacing a tyre on that presidential Bentley. He glanced up when my shadow fell across him. He looked brighter today, his pale skin smoother, his pupils no longer those worrying fixed points. A smudge of grease had marked that freckled snub of a nose and the old cigarette burn in his palm was almost obliterated by dirt.

“All right there, Scott,” he said. “How’re things?”

I almost told him then, everything that had just happened between me and Haz. I’ve no idea why. Although a word of comfort from a man who’d known me in my darkest moments might have been welcome. Perhaps I had wanted that from him. Perhaps more.

“I’m fine,” I said. “What’s happened here?”

Balanced on his haunches, Nick held up a long iron nail. “Must have hit it on the journey over last night. Just another thing to put the boss in a bad mood.”

I’d nodded, remembering that Everwood had mentioned the puncture in his self-pitying rant. “Can I see?”

I took the nail from Nick and rolled it in my palm. It was a masonry nail, exactly the same kind as the dozen or so that had been hammered into Tilda’s corpse.

“When exactly do you think this happened?” I asked.

Nick shrugged. “Could’ve hit it at any time.”

“But the head is relatively clean.” I showed it to him. “And the forest road is filthy from days of rain and from our trucks and the punters’ cars. So you must have run over it pretty close to where you eventually stopped.” Which either meant that the killer had dropped it as he passed over the drive heading towards the fair or else… I shook my head. It was a common masonry nail, the kind used by Travellers every day to repair their rides and stalls. It might mean nothing at all. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m daydreaming. Have you had any luck getting me a face-to-face with Darrel?”

He straightened up, and taking a rag from his back pocket, started cleaning his hands. “I’m really sorry, Scott. Especially as I know it might be important in finding the scumbag who did this to your aunt, but even the police can’t get access to Darrel. His manager has got involved and the old guy’s like a bulldog protecting his pup. If I even mention you wanting an interview, that’ll be my arse kicked to the kerb, and I need this job.”

“I don’t want to put you under any pressure, Nick,” I assured him. “I’ll see if I can find another way.”

I’d started towards the forest road when he called out: “Are you sure everything’s all right? If you need to talk, you know where I am.”

“I do. Thanks.”

Now, as I watched the doors of the old schoolhouse swing open and Cloade’s bedraggled congregation swarm out into the dark, I thought back to those nights Nick and I had shared together. Apart from that one time when he’d revealed the secret of his scar and the abusive father who’d inflicted it, we hadn’t talked much about our personal lives. And that seemed to have suited us. The sex alone had been enough of a diversion from the ugly world we inhabited. Perhaps that kind of relationship, shallow and functionary, was what I was best suited for.

I crossed the street and was ready to catch the door when the last worshipper exited. The man, shivering and practically toothless, grinned at me as he popped a biscuit into his mouth and worked it busily around his gums.

“S’all over,” he garbled. “You’re too late to be saved, matey.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said, and pressed a tenner into his hand. “So what do you think of the preacher here?”

He winked, pocketed the money, and running his finger under his lip to make sure he’d got the last of the biscuit, said, “He’s a fucking loon, but then most of them are. Long as you play