Silencing the Dead by Will Harker (ready to read books .TXT) 📗

was a scrap of paper with ‘Ex 22:18’ shakily inscribed in pencil and below this, a sort of floral design encompassed by a circle.

While I took in these details, I sensed Haz beside me on his phone. He stiffened, and leaning in, whispered: ‘It’s a Biblical citation. The Book of Exodus, chapter twenty-two, verse eighteen. In the King James version, it says—”

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” Tilda croaked, hobbling back to her chair. Haz went to kneel beside the old woman, folding her arthritically twisted hands between his.

Meanwhile, I followed Haz’s example and Googled the six-petal flower motif drawn below the citation. It was a relatively obscure symbol, but I found it eventually.

“It’s called a hexafoil,” I said, turning to Big Sam and my dad. “Designed after the lily to represent purity. Apparently, they often used it in Gothic architecture as a sign of protection.”

Tilda stirred. “Also known as a witch mark, used by some of the old religions to guard against witchcraft and the evil eye. And then there’s the poppet.” She hovered her hand just above the needles that forested the doll. “Folk magic used to cause harm to whoever the doll is meant to represent. All makes a pretty pattern with the Bible passage, doesn’t it?” She looked at Haz and winked. “Someone doesn’t like me much.”

“When was it left here?” I asked.

Big Sam answered. “Sam Junior and a few of the chaps set up auntie’s tent an hour ago. She came to inspect it and found that nasty thing on the table.”

My gaze roamed around the interior. The tent had been securely anchored down on the outside, no one could have got under it. “Were the flaps tied up when you came to do your inspection, Auntie?”

She shook her head.

“The boys forgot both the ties and the padlocks.” Big Sam grunted. “I’ll have their guts for bloody garters.”

Approaching the table, I knelt and examined the effigy from every angle before picking it up. “Anyone touched it?”

My dad came over. “Tilda says not.”

“No fingerprints,” I murmured, turning it over carefully in my hand. “Must’ve used gloves of some kind to mould it.”

“Does that worry you?”

“I’m not sure. It shows a certain premeditation. As if it isn’t intended to be a single act. As if there could be a sequel. Is there any CCTV running here?”

“Nothing much worth nicking in this corner of the fair,” Dad said. “So no. But look, don’t you think it’s probably just some stupid game? Maybe the local farm kids getting their own back. They’ve been rucking with our chavvies ever since we got here.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe they thought they’d give one of us a good scare as payback.”

“They’d have to do better than that,” Tilda snapped.

I smiled. I was pretty sure that most of Madam Tilda’s gift was down to her sharp ears, listening into the hopes, dreams, and anxieties of her punters as they queued outside her tent. But when I looked again at the effigy, my smile died.

“I don’t know, Dad. This? It seems consciously ritualistic. Perhaps even overdone to a certain extent—the Bible quote mixed up with the poppet doll and the hexafoil. A jumble of ideas from different sources. But still, there’s nothing rushed or playful or giddy in it, like some kid’s revenge. I mean, would a bunch of children even know what a hexafoil was?”

“So what do we do?” Dad asked. “Call in the gavvers?”

“There’s nothing the police could do,” I said, flashing back to my days in uniform and the standard procedure for investigating things like poison pen letters and threatening messages. “The tent was left open, nothing’s been taken. It might sound strange, but this wouldn’t even constitute harassment because it’s a first event and not part of a pattern of behaviour. There are no fingerprints in the wax so I doubt there would be any DNA, even if the gavvers could justify actioning a forensic analysis. Which they couldn’t. Honestly, there isn’t a crime here anyone could be charged with.”

Big Sam was saying something, bellowing in his empty way, asking what we paid taxes for if not to protect our pensioners. My dad was reassuring Tilda that I’d get to the bottom of it all. Haz was still kneeling beside her, whispering comfort while the old mystic herself didn’t appear to be listening to any of them. Her moist eyes were fixed on mine, a question there I couldn’t read. Unable to meet her gaze, I felt myself drawn to one of the tarot cards adorning the walls.

From his perch, the Devil glowered down at us, bat wings spread wide, his brow emblazoned with a pentagram, a look of sullen mischief on that bestial face. I felt an involuntary shiver.

“Will you excuse me a moment?” I said. “I have to make a call.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Has he moved from the house today?”

The phone crackled and I heard an asthmatic gasp as the man repositioned himself slightly in the driver’s seat. In my mind’s eye, I could picture the private detective, Gary Treadaway, shift a family-sized bag of crisps out of his lap and brush the crumbs from his stomach.

“After you left, he came outside to water them sorry-looking hanging baskets and there hasn’t been a peep out of him since. In fact, lemme see.” Another wheeze and shuffle. “Yep, I can see him right now through me binoculars watching the telly in the front room. He’s been there a good hour or more.”

I nodded. It was at least a fifty-minute drive from Garris’ house to the forest clearing in Aumbry. I had just needed to confirm in my own mind that my old mentor hadn’t set me another of his puzzles.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

I was about disconnect when Treadaway piped up. “Boss says your next payment’s due on Friday, by the way. Just a friendly reminder.”

I cancelled the call. Then, while the murmurs continued in the tent behind me, I stared at the phone in