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

He had a point. “I’ve said I’ll do it. Now, what has Nick told you about last night?”

Mark settled himself in the chair I’d just vacated while I went and leaned against the wall. He kicked his legs up onto the arm in a way he clearly imagined was coquettish, and which certainly would have earned him a slap from a certain moustachioed grandmother.

“He turned up here at about four in the morning,” Mark said, picking at a piece of fluff around his groin. “I must admit, I wasn’t fabulously excited to hear from him. You’re aware that I offered Nicky the chance to become one of my very special beloveds? He threw it back in my face. Never trust the young ones, Scottster, they always disappoint you in the end. But you know what a pushover I am. Last night, he begged me to come back. Literally got down on his knees and begged.”

“And I bet you didn’t enjoy that one bit, did you, Mark?”

“Such a big brain,” Noonan purred. “But you’re not always on the money. Fact is, I wasn’t even here. I was spending the night with some friends in Vauxhall. Timmo got me on the phone and told me this adorable redhead had shown up and was pleading for my protection. Our Nicky was well and truly tripping off his tits by that stage. Timmo put him on the blower, and from what I could make out, Nick had stumbled into something he wasn’t supposed to see.”

“The murder of Seb Thorn.”

“The telly producer?” Mark whistled. “I didn’t know that. All Nicky said was that he’d seen someone rubbed out and would I help him to disappear for a while. Not being the purest lamb in the flock, he reckoned the filth would think he was involved.”

“But what exactly did he see?”

Noonan rolled his eyes. “Christ Almighty. You know I could never understand half of what that gorgeous boy was saying, even when he wasn’t off his head on pills and slurring his words. Why don’t they teach these Northerners how to speak the Queen’s English? It’s like they’re jabbering away in a foreign language half the time. Anyway, from what I could make out, Nicky had been asked to check in on this old man who wasn’t picking up his calls. He arrives at the house around two in the morning to find the front door open and the old fella’s brains splashed across the staircase. He says he froze. Couldn’t move a muscle. Panic attack. Said he had flashbacks to some of the stuff he’d done for me in the past. I never asked him to murder anyone, so I don’t know what he’s on about there. Anyway, according to our boy, he just stands there like a statue while the killers run straight past him.”

I stared at the gangster. “Killers? He told you there was more than one?”

“Two, from the sound of it,” Noonan confirmed. “After I said I’d take him back and look after him, he asked me to phone you. The fear was on him by then, and he thought if he contacted you himself, the cops would be able to track him from the call.”

I pushed off from the wall and went to stand in front of Noonan.

“Tell me exactly what he said.”

He sighed and examined his fingernails, as if the effort was beneath him.

“‘Both, Mark,’” Noonan said. “‘Tell Scott, I saw both of them.’”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Both of them.

A parade of conspirators ran through my mind, each striking me as either unlikely or absurd: Dr Gillespie and one of his worshipping disciples, Evangeline Bell and her dementia-afflicted mother, Darrel Everwood and Deepal Chandra, Christopher Cloade and a member of his homeless congregation, John and Anne Chambers, Miss Rowell acting in concert with someone as yet unsuspected. Like partnered cards in a tarot reading, I tried to deal them in as many combinations as possible, yet none seemed to fit.

I had pictured this killer throughout as a lone predator and that image wasn’t easy to dislodge. But did the idea of two murderers answer at least one of the questions that had been puzzling me? A committed, ferocious, fixated monster, zealously working to his design of eradicating witches, and a confederate, perhaps less sure of their mission—a moderating voice that had begun to have an effect, toning down the extreme features of their macabre ritual. It was possible, and yet something about the theory didn’t sit right.

I turned back to Noonan. “You’re absolutely sure that’s what he said? ‘Both, Mark. Tell Scott, I saw both of them.’”

“That’s how he said it,” Noonan assured me.

I shook my head. “Maybe if I could speak to him myself?”

“Oh, no, no, no.” He hauled himself out of the chair and fronted up to me. I had to virtually drop my chin to my chest to return his gaze. “I know you two had something going on back in the day, but he didn’t come to you for protection. He came to me. Nick Holloway is my husband now and no grey-eyed Romeo is going to sweep in and take him from me. I’ve given you his message and that’s all you're getting, understood?”

I nodded. “Thanks for the tea and biscuits.”

I turned away from the little man and headed back through the hall and out the door of Number 56. It killed me to think of Nick trapped in this world he had tried so hard to escape, but there was nothing I could do. Armed to the gills and surrounded by his husbands, I couldn’t force Noonan to tell me where he was keeping Nick. Perhaps one day I could devise a plan to rescue him, but for now, I had to focus on the case and get back to Purley before the broadcast.

“You know why you worked for me all those years, don’t you, Scottster?” Noonan called after me, as I pushed open the gate and stepped into the street. “You