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

a pale mist through which headlights glanced like passing phantoms. I knew I wasn’t getting back to Purley by eight. Instead, once my tank had been replenished, I drove on for another thirty miles before pulling into a huge service station complex.

My phone buzzed as I limped across the carpark and into the vast food court. Every taste catered for here, so long as that taste ran to bland and oversalted. I glanced at the caller ID: Haz. I was tempted to answer, to put myself out of my misery, but at that moment I was cold, wet, hungry, in pain, and trying to make sense of a clue that wouldn’t fit. I didn’t have the energy for a breakup too. I let it go to voice mail.

Grabbing a powdery coffee and a listless burger from one of the outlets, I shuffled my way around the eating area until I found a clean table. I ate mechanically, drank the coffee, and stretched out my injured knee. A bulge of swollen flesh bloomed at the joint. I knew that when I finally peeled off my jeans, it wasn’t going to be a pretty sight.

“You’re telling it wrong! It’s, ‘Why are there no aspirin in the jungle? Because the parrots-eat-em-all.’ Not, ‘Why are there no paracetamol in the jungle?’ If you start it that way, the joke doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, that’s how Mark told me at school.”

Two kids arguing at the next table. The younger looked about Jodie’s age, his brother perhaps twelve or thirteen.

“Well, you’re probably not remembering exactly what he said.” Big Brother sighed in a teacherly tone. “People never repeat what they’ve been told. Not word for word.”

“I s’pose,” the smaller kid agreed. “Maybe they put things into their own words instead?”

The mother, a long-suffering parent with the look of someone who’d already endured many hours of backseat bickering, caught my eye. “Sorry, are they disturbing you? Please, turn down the volume, boys.”

“People never repeat what they’ve been told,” I echoed. “Not word for word.”

Taking in my bandaged head and the dried bloodstains on my shirt, the mother seemed to decide that making small talk had probably been a mistake. The quarrelling brothers were quickly ushered to a table on the far side of the food court. Meanwhile, I sat and stared into space. Both, Mark. Tell Scott, I saw both of them. But as the little geniuses had just said, we very rarely repeat back precisely what we’ve been told. Instead, we interpret what we believe was the meaning behind the words and then rephrase them. And of course, there was the fact that Noonan had always had trouble interpreting Nick’s broad Yorkshire inflections.

The breath caught in my throat.

That was the moment the truth hit me, in all its horrific inevitability.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered. “But that’s impossible.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I was reaching for my phone to call Tallis when the big screens mounted around the food court snagged my attention. The broadcast from Purley had begun.

As Everwood had promised, the intro to the Ghost Seekers Halloween special was spectacular—an aerial drone shot of the clearing, the blaze of the fair glowing in the dark bowl of the forest like embers in a witch’s pyre. The shot swept on, zooming around the track of the rollercoaster as punters screamed from their carriages, zipping to the heights of the Ferris wheel, and then down to take in the mannequin monsters stationed outside Tommy Radlett’s ghost train. As the show’s misty logo appeared onscreen, so Purley Rectory came into view. I had to admit, with the low-angled spotlights enhancing its aloof and chaotic façade, the house looked suitably spectral.

There was a small stir in the food court. At a table nearby, a young woman with dyed purple hair and an impish face grabbed her friend’s hand.

“Oh my God, it’s that Darrel Everwood thing!” she cried, pointing up at the screen. “I totally forgot this was on. My mum loves him, but I reckon he’s a complete nutcase. Aw, I’d like to have watched it, though. Steph at work said he’s going to actually summon a real ghost or something. I wonder if we can get them to put the sound on?”

Every screen was currently muted.

“Billy’s got his tablet,” her friend said, looking over at the third occupant of their table. “Be a love and put it on for us.”

Clearly not the biggest Ghost Seekers fan, Billy groaned and started rifling through the backpack on the seat next to him. Meanwhile, I staggered to my feet and hobbled over to their table.

“Excuse me, I happened to overhear your conversation and I wondered if I could join you for a moment?” All three looked up at me with expressions of concern similar to that of the longsuffering mother. “I’m supposed to be there tonight,” I said, gesturing towards the screens where Everwood had just appeared. “My name’s Scott Jericho and I—”

“Oh. My. Freaking. God!” the impish girl squealed. “That was the name of the fair! My mum told me, and it stuck in my head because it sounded so pretty and unusual. So you’re, like, the owner?”

“Son of,” I smiled.

Billy glanced up from his tablet. “Then why aren’t you there?”

“I had a car accident,” I said, eliciting sympathetic pouts from the girls. “My family’s been working on this with Everwood for months, so I’m really gutted I won’t be able to make it back. I would try watching it on my phone, but for some reason the volume doesn’t work on my media player.” This, at least, was true. “Do you think—?”

“Of course!” the impish girl said, grabbing Billy’s bag and dumping it on the floor so that I could sit. “This is so exciting. You’ll have to tell us what he’s really like. I mean, is it true what his ex has been saying? That he can’t really speak to dead people? That he makes it all up?”

“I guess we’re going to find out,” I said.

Billy perched the tablet