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

and become boneless in my hand, like a stunned fish on the deck. In the end, it was this same force that sent the bag flying from his fingers. Cloade’s entire body had surrendered to my attack so that the momentum twisted him back around to face the river where, released, the bag tripped lightly across the parapet and dropped into the swell.

I let go of Cloade, who fell moaning to the pavement, and I leaned over the wall. The yellow glow from a nearby lamppost helped me locate the sodden pulp of the bag, already disintegrating under fists of water. But this wasn’t the sight that held me. Thrown clear of the bag, its contents were drifting like sinuous eels in the sweep of the current, snaking together before finally being pulled apart and separated forever. Black, gleaming, gone: the long lace gloves given to Genevieve Bell by Tilda Urnshaw.

Bloodstained, if those marks on the bag were anything to go by.

I turned back to Cloade.

“She left them for me,” he wept. “She haunts me, you know.”

Pulling out my phone, I called Tallis.

“I’ve spoken to our marine unit,” the DCI said. “The divers are going to give it a go in the morning when the level’s down, but they don’t hold out much hope. This is a tidal river and it flows fast back up to the Wash. Even before it reaches the sea, there are a hundred different arteries and tributaries and whatever else.”

“Needle in a haystack.” I nodded and winced.

The paramedic glueing my head back together at the roadside told me not to be a baby. When he was done, I stepped down from the ambulance and wandered with Tallis over to the parapet. There, we looked into the boiling rush.

“There won’t be any forensic evidence left anyway,” I said. “Probably not worth the public expense.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“What has Cloade said about it?” I asked.

The preacher had been taken to hospital before being formally interviewed, just to be on the safe side. Despite what I’d initially thought, it appeared his arm remained fully intact. I wasn’t sure whether I was glad about that or not.

“Not much. Just that he believes the ghost of Genevieve Bell left her gloves for him in a blood-stained bag on his altar. He’s convinced they were hers, by the way. Said he recognised them from his visit to Cedar Gables.”

“But why does he think she’d leave them?” I asked.

“‘To torment him,’ he says. ‘Like the demonic witch she is.’” The chief inspector took a pebble from the parapet and sent it skipping across the river. He looked more boyish than ever. “But why would the killer leave them for Cloade in the first place? Unless he is the killer, of course.”

“He’s got the conviction but not the brains,” I said, shaking my head. “It seems to me there are three options here. The killer is playing with Cloade, someone is trying very clumsily to frame him, or else he’s working with the killer.

“In the first two scenarios, the murderer must have been at the chapel tonight, disguised as one of the homeless worshippers. It was dark in the street, so I wouldn’t necessarily have recognised anyone if they’d put some effort into their disguise. If it’s an attempt to frame him, it was a ridiculous one—they had no guarantee he’d be discovered with the gloves. So that leaves the third scenario, that he might be an accomplice, perhaps helping to divert suspicion.

“Despite what he believes about his ministry, Christopher Cloade is a follower, not a leader. If he could be convinced that his salvation depended on it, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do.”

“I agree.” Tallis nodded. “By the way, what do you feel about pressing charges against him for the assault?”

I shook my head. “I’d rather have him out and about. He might lead us to something.”

“Or he might end up killing someone.”

“Even if you arrested him, he’d be out on bail soon enough. It’s not worth the effort.”

“All right. But I’ll still need an official statement from you. Feel up to coming back to the station with me now? I can drop you back to your car later.”

I agreed and we made our way over to Tallis’ gleaming Volkswagen Golf. Through the passenger window, I could see an interior as forensically spotless as the car’s unblemished bodywork. I even felt guilty about smearing the door handle with my fingerprints. I was about to ask if he was sure he wanted to risk my slightly bloodied trench coat on his upholstery when I caught sight of Haz.

He was coming out of an Italian restaurant across the street. Smiling that warm, open Haz smile as a young man in a dark overcoat helped him on with his jacket. I watched as he turned to thank the man, his hand resting against the stranger’s arm. An intimate, trusting gesture. Good-looking, well-built with wavy blond hair and kind eyes, the man then said something and Haz laughed. I hadn’t seen him laugh like that in weeks.

“Scott?” Tallis frowned. “Everything all right?”

I nodded and opened the passenger door. “Just laying to rest a few ghosts of my own.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

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

I woke with only the fragments of a dream. Haz’s words and the fading image of him standing with a stranger, the road that divided us expanding and liquifying until it ran like a river. A torrent littered with bloodied gloves and tarot cards and the bloated corpses of the chattering dead. Toothless mouths agape, calling to me with ringing voices…

My eyes snapped open. Without thinking, I rolled across the bed and pulled my phone from its charger. I didn’t even glance at the caller ID before thumbing the screen.

“Huh-ello?”

“Scott, I hope I find you well and ready to talk at last?”

I sat bolt upright. “No, Peter. You don’t.”

Garris sighed. “I happened to call your father last