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

sold the advertising space, spent fortunes on marketing and publicity. He just has to get through it.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Nick blew out his cheeks. “Then he’s fucked. And Deepal’s fucked, and I’m fucked, and anyone who works for him is fucked.”

“At least he isn’t afraid anymore,” I said. “He even seems to be looking forward to it. When did that happen?”

“Sometime last night.” Nick scratched the nape of his neck. “It was weird. Up until then, he kept saying the same stuff about how coming to Purley was going to be the end of him.”

I nodded. “It fitted in with the paranoia he’d built up following his fiancée’s attacks and Gillespie’s campaign against him. His whole professional and personal existence is on the line. His reputation, his wealth, his own idea of himself. If he fails here, that life—the only life he sees any value in—could be over. A reality so terrifying he might even have considered cancelling the event. But suddenly it’s like he’s got an ace up his sleeve. Some huge revelation that will redeem him in the eyes of the public, perhaps even convince mockers like Gillespie.”

“All I know is, he got a call just before midnight,” Nick said. “Unidentified number on his personal mobile. I only caught the beginning of the conversation. At first, Darrel acted like it was a prank. ‘That’s some sick shit you’re talking,’ he said. ‘How dare you even pretend to be…’ And then his mouth clamped shut. Honestly, Scott, the look on his face—it was like someone had reached down that phone and shown him that every nightmare and every dream he’d ever known was real. He couldn’t get me out of the trailer fast enough.”

“Did you tell Deepal and Thorn?”

“Darrel swore me to secrecy,” Nick said. “Promised I’d get a raise if I kept my mouth shut.”

“And that’s all you know about the call?”

“Pretty much. But from that moment, his attitude towards the whole broadcast changed. I think he actually can’t wait for tomorrow night.”

Movement high up in the house suddenly snagged my attention. Framed like a human spider in the dusty web of an oculus window, Miss Rowell looked down upon us. Whether or not she could have overheard what we’d been discussing, she shrank back when she caught my eye, like a guilty thing startled.

I said goodbye to Nick and traipsed back through the fair to my trailer. Funny how quickly that possessive ‘my’ had slipped back into how I thought about the place—until yesterday it had been ‘our trailer.’ The thought almost winded me but I shoved both it and Haz aside. I had a good few hours of reading ahead of me and I needed to stay focused.

After throwing together a quick sandwich and downing a pint of water and two paracetamols, I peeled the beanie from my forehead and examined the wound Cloade had inflicted. It looked red and felt hot to the touch. I’d have to get some antibiotics or something in the morning.

Pulling the book from my coat pocket, I settled myself on the bed and began to read. Despite its fantastical subject matter, Hearing the Dead wasn’t the most absorbing of biographies. The ghostwriter—had that job title ever been more apt?—made plodding work of the early life of Genevieve Bell, repeating the bare facts and figures from her birth certificate, school reports, childhood illnesses, locations and durations of holidays, placings in sports day events, a prize from a local drama competition. It was exhaustive, colourless, and without any emotional detail. My eye started to skim over the pages.

I was disappointed. I had thought some clue might be waiting for me here. A key that would unlock the mystery of why anyone would centre a pathological hatred for psychics on Genevieve Bell. Pretty much all of it I already knew, either from my research or from what Evangeline had told me. Obviously, the reality of the supernatural was never questioned in this account. No suggestion here that it had all begun as a game between the two sisters. Gennie’s powers were demonstrably genuine and had been honed and nurtured by the kindly fortune teller, Tilda Urnshaw. Three mentions in total for Tilda. I wondered if she might still be alive had the ghostwriter left her out of the narrative.

In the end, Hearing the Dead seemed to work just as well as my sleeping pills. After a short, dreamless sleep, I jerked awake not to the roar of the fair but to its silence. Tossing the open book from my chest, I stood up, stretched, and poked my head out of the trailer door. A bracing gust of night air greeted me. Out across the fairground, generators were whirring to a stop as the lights on the rides blinked into darkness. I checked my phone—ten past midnight.

Halloween and the day of the broadcast had arrived.

Away to my left, an engine started and a wash of headlights swept across the forest. Illuminated, I saw a couple of Tallis’ constables near the carpark wave down the driver. It was Nick, pale-faced behind the wheel of the Bentley. I dragged on my coat and hurried over, just in case he needed someone to vouch for him.

Caught by the breeze, I heard his voice as he explained, “Mr Everwood wants me to check on something. I should be back in a couple of hours.”

The officers tapped the roof and the Bentley moved on. Probably just another of the medium’s eccentric whims, I thought.

I finally finished Hearing the Dead just before 3 am. It had taken the story of Genevieve right up to the moment that her fame had reached its pinnacle. I knew from my research that not many months after publication, Gennie had begun her long retreat from the spotlight. Again, I felt frustrated. There was nothing here that could help me identify the killer, nor any future victim. Just a catalogue of names, dates, instances of paranormal phenomena drily recorded…

I stopped dead. I had been flicking