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

of pensioners—men and women of impeccable reputation who had never so much as received a parking ticket. Noonan’s ‘husbands’ helped to maintain the properties and were always delighted to carry out any small chore that was asked of them. People wandering down Sanford Crescent might wonder at so many attentive grandsons and the fact there seemed to be no one here aged between forty and sixty, but the charm of the place would soon overwhelm their misgivings.

It was the perfect camouflage for organised crime. All that was asked of the residents was that they keep their eyes peeled and their mouths shut. That was why I knew I couldn’t risk bringing in backup. A worried call from an old dear about strangers congregating in her street would only end in the Travellers’ arrest. And so, under that keen surveillance, I turned and knocked at the smartly painted front door.

There was no nana at Nana’s house. Noonan’s grandmother, who had brought him up in this modest Edwardian terrace, had died some years ago. Still, the beloved matriarch was memorialised on every wall. As the door swung open, I saw her puggish features grinning down at me from half a dozen different angles. I didn’t recognise the kid in the doorway, but he was wearing one of those tacky diamonds on his ring finger, so it was safe to assume he was a husband.

“You’re a new one,” I said, pushing my way inside. “So where is he?”

“Mark’s been called away on urgent business,” he squeaked. “Says to offer you his apologies. He’ll be back in an hour or two.”

Chemically inflated with steroids, the kid tried to front up to me. I cuffed the back of his head and pushed him towards the kitchen.

“I was promised tea. Milk, one sugar. If you spit in it, I’ll know and I’ll kick your arse up and down the railway tracks.”

Moving into the back sitting room, I picked up the local paper from the sideboard and collapsed into Noonan’s favourite armchair.

“All right, Scott?” muttered a man-mountain sitting on the other side of the electric fire. “Been keeping your nose clean?”

“Clean as a daisy,” I said, before turning my attention to the paper. “Nice to see a face from the old days, Charlie. That busted elbow still giving you trouble?”

Time crept by. I drank my tea, read the Herald, ignored the occasional buzz from my phone, reminisced with Charlie—who, at the grand old age of thirty-six, was one of the more senior husbands. Charlie left on an errand at around midday, and by one-thirty, I was ready to call it quits. Just over six hours until the broadcast and a three-hour drive ahead of me, if I didn’t hit any substantial traffic on the M25. I wanted to know what Nick had seen, but every instinct told me that I needed to be back at Purley when the cameras started rolling. According to Everwood, the media event of the century was at hand.

I’d just started to rise when the door swung open and Noonan came bouncing into the room. He looked twenty years older than the last time I’d seen him, the toll of his fentanyl addiction showing in the loose grey flesh that hung from his face.

“Scottster! I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. I hear young Timmo here has been supplying you with tea and biscuits. Isn’t he a peach!” The fifty-year-old gangster play-wrestled the kid against the wall. Meanwhile, six other young men watched on, their faces gripped with the tightest of smiles. A little breathless, Mark turned back to me. “Now, here’s the thing, Scott, you’ve presented me with a bit of a dilemma today. I’ve been talking about you for years, you see? How you betrayed me by joining the other side and what I’d do if our paths ever crossed again.”

I settled back into the armchair. There was no way I was getting through that door, not with seven hard bodies and Noonan’s pudgy frame blocking it. I’d just have to see how things played out.

“Well,” the mobster went on, stroking a forefinger under Timmo’s jaw. “I can’t let my boys think I’m a weak old man, now can I? These youngsters smell blood in the water, they’ll tear me to pieces. Won’t you, gorgeous?”

Sweat starting on his brow, Timmo vehemently denied he would ever do such a thing. Noonan just chuckled, and reaching into the holster under his designer tracksuit jacket, pulled out a Beretta and pointed it at my head.

“So I gotta make an example of you, Scottster,” he sighed. “But I don’t want you to worry about a thing. We’ll box you up nice and pretty when it’s done, and get you sent straight back to the fair.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The cold muzzle of the semi-automatic grazed a path around my kneecap, its touch as tender as a lover’s kiss. Bending a little to his task, Noonan then shot me a sly wink before smashing the butt of the magazine repeatedly against the bone. The sound, a hard, hollow clacking, mimicked the bright tick of Nana Noonan’s cuckoo clock on the wall. I gripped the arms of the chair as my leg spasmed in response. Set my jaw, breathed through my nose, ignored the jackal laughter of the husbands. The gun mouth was back, moving on, zigzagging up the inner thigh of my jeans, pressing under the bulge of my balls before resting against my groin. Noonan licked his lips. He glanced over his shoulder, eager for the jittery support of his boys, as he thumbed back the Beretta’s hammer.

“Better not chamber a full round, eh, loves? When this thing goes off it won’t stop until the mag’s empty. Don’t want to cut the poor sod in half, do we?” He turned back to me, that saggy grey skin flopping from his jaws like elephant hide. “Just a single shot to make my point.”

I stayed perfectly still. Let him have his fun.

Beyond the patio