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

She swallowed hard. If she’d looked stressed yesterday, she now appeared utterly at the end of her tether, her eyes bloodshot from crying, the smell of whisky on her breath.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no one else here.”

I nodded. “Then I’d better call DCI Tallis and pass on my suspicion that you and your partner have been involved in a plot to undermine Darrel Everwood. That this may have led to his increasing sense of persecution and paranoia. That you might have falsified your credentials in order to gain the position as his personal assistant. That, given the ongoing murder investigation that began to centre around Darrel, your continuing failure to divulge this little conspiracy could be regarded as highly suspicious. Of course, the police would use all endeavours to keep any non-relevant facts from the press, but as you know very well, such things have a way of leaking out.” I called through the gap. “Dr Gillespie, don’t you think it’s time we spoke?”

A hollow voice, quite unlike that of the smooth public speaker, answered, “Let him in, Deepal. For Christ’s sake.”

The door swung open and I limped up the final step. Much more modest than Everwood’s extravagant model, his PA’s trailer was still at the luxurious end of the market. I watched as Deepal went to sit on the leather sofa beside Gillespie, folding his hands into hers.

“It isn’t us,” she said, as I eased myself into the seat opposite. “You have to believe me. We only wanted—”

“I’m a humanitarian,” Gillespie insisted. “I would never harm a fellow creature.”

His oddly lineless face suddenly appeared very old and tired.

“But your humanitarianism only seems to extend to those who agree with you,” I said. “The others, like Darrel Everwood and Genevieve Bell? They’re fair game, aren’t they? For ridicule and humiliation. That was the purpose of this undercover mission of yours, wasn’t it? To dig up some solid dirt on Britain’s most famous psychic and then to expose him to the world?”

The doctor shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I think you began to realise that, as clever as you are, it was impossible to compete with the allure of these people. What Darrel and his kind offer might well be fool’s gold, but it glitters nonetheless. The cold, hard reality you tried to sell the public was a truth they didn’t want to buy into. But if you could plant a spy in his camp and she could bring you irrefutable evidence of fraud, then it wouldn’t just be Everwood’s reputation destroyed. As the most celebrated of them, he would stand and fall as a totem for all psychics.”

“How did you know?” Deepal asked.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about names tonight,” I said. “How they’re used, how we interpret them. Doctor, in your TV interview before you came to Purley, you insisted that the interviewer call you Joseph, saying only your mother and your partner called you Joe. You did the same with me when we met. Yet when Deepal interrupted your rally in circumstances where you might easily have rebuked her, she called you Joe and you never said a word.” I turned to the PA. “You were his PhD student? The one he had a relationship with?” She nodded. “Your disgust for the doctor also felt overplayed at times. Describing him as a vulture picking over the bones of the dead. For an abused employee who didn’t even seem to like her employer all that much, your contempt for Everwood’s enemy struck me as insincere. Like someone trying to ensure that no one would suspect her loyalties.”

“Stupid.” She shot Gillespie an apologetic glance and he wrapped his arm around her.

“Do you remember what you said to me when I suggested Darrel might do anything to get out of the Halloween event, even murder? You said, ‘He’s a complete egomaniac but not even we think he’d go that far.’ Because Nick was with you, he assumed that ‘we’ included him. In fact, you were talking about a view of Darrel you shared with your partner. You both thought he was a ruthless fraud but didn’t believe he was dangerous to that degree.”

Gillespie inclined his head in acknowledgement.

“But I think the most suggestive thing was how you provided each other with an alibi on the night of the murder,” I continued. “Without me even asking, Deepal, you volunteered the idea that you’d been contacted by a mysterious journalist who wanted to get Everwood’s take on Dr Gillespie’s press stunt. You went to meet this person, but he didn’t show up. However, this apparently put you in a position to witness the doctor leave the area at exactly eight-twenty, a time that conveniently coincided with an alarm on your phone to check in on Darrel’s social media platforms.

“I’d suggest that even the most committed PA doesn’t vet her client’s online presence every twenty minutes. But guess what? When I questioned Dr Gillespie about his movements, he confirmed your story. When I then asked him why he’d hung around after the press conference, he couldn’t give me an answer. Because I think it was to meet with you for a debrief. Later, when you discovered the time window for the murder from your bribed police contact, you agreed on a story that would give the doctor his alibi. Why? Because the ritualistic slaughter of a medium might just implicate an obsessive academic who had, on more than one occasion, said he would stop at nothing to eradicate belief in the supernatural.”

“It was just talk.” Gillespie sighed. “A bit of hyperbole to get some press attention.”

“And then there was your detailed knowledge of the murder,” I went on. “Information that must have been fed to you by Deepal after she learned it from her police contact.”

“I got the job easily enough,” Deepal said. “You’re right, we faked my CV and references. I don’t even think Darrel’s agent checked them. He ran through personal assistants at the rate of one a