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

He nodded. “So anything you can’t touch and observe and evaluate is a lie?”

“Not a lie. There’s no deliberate deception.”

“Even love,” he said quietly, his gaze flicking across the confused tumble of the rectory.

“Look, I think we’re wandering from the point,” I said. “I promise you, I haven’t said a word to anyone about what happened with your father. I would never—”

“But you did,” he countered. “You told him.”

I took a deep breath. “Is that what this is about? Harry, do you want to talk about Garris?” I felt my stomach knot. “About what happened in Bradbury End?”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You just—”

He had started to turn away when, reaching out, I caught the strap of the music bag he still carried over his shoulder. The clasp snapped and the bag fell to the ground. I went to pick it up and at once felt the utter weightlessness of it. Unable to resist, I pulled back the front flap and glanced inside. Nothing. No sheet music, no notebook stuffed with his compositions, not even the old-fashioned tuning fork he always carried because he mistrusted the digital kind. Only the stub of a pencil at the very bottom. For some reason, I dug this out before he snatched the bag away from me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Haz, wait!”

I snatched at the sleeve of his cagoule but the material slipped through my fingers and in the next instant he was running, Webster lolloping at his heels. I stood there, frozen, looking down at the fragment of pencil in my palm. And then I felt something else—a smooth, pliable softness at my fingertips. Some substance that had come loose from Harry’s sleeve as I’d tugged at it. Lifting my hand to the light of the fair, I saw a spot of white wax adhering to my fingernail.

And suddenly, I was picturing myself back in Aunt Tilda’s tent, the faceless wax doll in my hand, the scrap of paper pinned to its leg. “EX 22:18.”

A biblical scrawl done in pencil.

CHAPTER TEN

Did I really believe that this gentle, empathetic man who’d relieved his father’s suffering, who had comforted Aunt Tilda in her distress, who’d shown me more tenderness than anyone I had ever known, had crafted that sick effigy in order to frighten an old woman out of her wits? Of course not. And yet, in the passing horror of the moment, had I pictured him moulding its soft white flesh? All I’ll say is that the mind often paints images that it would shame us to admit.

And after all, there was the fact of the empty bag. If that had merely been a prop used to sustain the alibi of choir practice, then where had Harry been spending his time these past few weeks? Returning to the fair, I ran over those absences in my head. Always a Tuesday and Thursday evening, a couple of hours each time. He had returned flushed and exhilarated, re-energised and somehow more youthful, as if the years of care he’d endured since Oxford had been lifted from him. Since we’d reconnected, he’d never been that way with me.

My thoughts strayed to the inevitable conclusion, and angrily I thrust it away. The idea of Haz cheating was almost as absurd as him sitting in some secret room, carving wax poppets. Still, something was badly wrong between us, and as I returned to the carousel, I could see that Sal thought so too.

“What have you done, you bloody dinlo?” she snapped at me. A few punters cast her looks and she rolled her eyes and spat back. “You don’t even know what a dinlo is, so jog on.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Taken Webster back to your dad’s. Then he says he’s going into Aumbry to find a hotel for the night. I tried to talk him out of it, but he said he needed some space. Scott, don’t.”

She grabbed my shoulder—that spot again where Nick had landed his jab. “I know you’re worried.” Her voice took on an uncharacteristically gentle tone. “I know, but tearing after him tonight will only push him further away. He’ll be up the trailer now packing an overnight bag. Stay here with me and Jodes and work the juvenile. It’ll take your mind off things.”

Jodie had been waiting out of earshot, her fingers twining together just like Haz’s when he was worried. I called her over, told her everything was fine, and the munchkin wrapped her arms around my waist.

“You don’t hate Uncle Haz, do you?”

That caught me like a punch to the gut. “Course not, sweet pea.”

Just an hour ago I would never have believed that anything could drive Aunt Tilda out of my thoughts. Now, while I took their cash and gave every customer the cheery showman’s spiel I’d learned at my father’s knee, I went over those last moments with Haz again and again. What had I done? What had I said? What hadn’t I seen?

It was almost midnight by the time we shut up shop. Chaps were wrangling the last stragglers out of the gate while Sal and I fixed the weatherproofing around the carousel. One of the aunts had come by hours ago and taken Jodie away to bed. Before she left, she’d made me promise that Haz would come home soon.

Ten minutes after shutdown, I was locking the trailer door behind me. Exhausted, I took off my coat and went and crashed on the locker settee, slipping my phone out of my pocket just as a text came through. My hopes that Haz had replied to one of the half-dozen I’d already sent were dashed. It was from Sal, telling me to turn on the TV to some late-night discussion programme I’d never heard of. I hunted out the remote from the sofa cushions and absently flicked the switch.

While the show droned on in the background, I let my gaze play around the trailer. Structurally, it