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

down their cashboxes, old aunts tottering behind in fingerless gloves, clucking their tongues, and handing out flasks of tea. I spotted my dad talking to Big Sam Urnshaw and chucked them both wave.

“All right, son,” my dad grunted.

“How’s the fella?” Sam called out.

“Haz is fine,” I shot back. “Says he’ll find you a hook-up on Grindr when he gets a minute.”

“Cheeky joskin!” Sam laughed.

Dad shook his head while his oldest mate slapped him on the back. I couldn’t help but smile. It’s amazing what familiarity could achieve. Just a few months ago, I would never have dared make a joke like that on the fair. Half-convinced the community had never really accepted my sexuality, I suppose I’d harboured a lot of grudging resentment. And truth be told, I thought prejudice still existed in the hearts of some of them. It was, after all, a tough, hardscrabble sort of existence, built largely around stereotypes of masculinity. So it was ironic that an outsider like Harry had been the one to break down many of those barriers, just by being his warm, open, generous self.

After what had happened in Bradbury End, he’d found a kind of refuge with me at the fair. The only reason he’d been in the town at all was because Garris had blackmailed him into playing a role. Another piece on that blood-soaked chessboard. But when the game was done, we had both wanted to put the town and its horrors far behind us. The easiest exit route was to hand the keys to Haz’s rented bungalow back to the estate agent, and in effect, run away with the circus. After all, that’s the beauty of communities like mine—if you’re willing to work hard, you can make yourself a new life from scratch. You can be happy. That’s what we told ourselves anyway, and we were.

For a time at least.

I moved away from the main strip and into the side ground where the novelty games and less showy attractions were stationed. These didn’t require the same safety checks as the big rides and so their owners were not yet stirring. I was debating whether to check on mine and Harry’s new ride or to head back to our trailer when I suddenly realised I was being followed.

The creak of a duckboard behind me, the flick of a shadow out of the tail of my eye. You might think, so what? Over two hundred souls called this fairground their home. But Travellers are a chatty, boisterous breed. To see someone up ahead and not call out a greeting would be considered the height of rudeness, even if you’ve spoken to them only a moment before. And then there was that low, threatening grumble emanating from behind the side ground where the trailers were set up. In my mind’s eye, I could picture the juks starting out of their boxes, Webster among them, straining now at their leads, nostrils flared, black lips pulled back over vicious teeth. A stranger had entered their world and they were eager to make his acquaintance.

I willed them not to startle him. Not yet.

I wanted words with him first.

CHAPTER FOUR

I welcomed it at once. The chance to unleash those brutal instincts that I’d denied myself for four long months. I wanted this man who pursued me to be my enemy. The implications of this, I could fret about later. For now, I focused on the opportunity to indulge my rage. If he intended me harm then he would pay, not only for his sins but my own—my inability to save the victims of Peter Garris, my complicity in the murder of Kerrigan, my faltering relationship with Harry.

All of it.

I flexed my fingers, remade my fists. But who was he? Approaching the warped mirrors that fronted Tommy Radlett’s funhouse, I chanced a sideways glance. There a figure rippled in the glass, half a dozen paces behind me. Allowing for the distortion of the mirror, I made out a broad-shouldered man, slim at the waist, long limbs, a build not unlike my own. Black jeans, a cap of some kind shadowing his features, dark T-shirt straining to accommodate pale biceps ribboned with veins. Lightly dressed, but not a hint in those smooth, fluid movements that he was bothered by the cold. Maybe it was the adrenalin coursing through him, maybe some other less natural substance. Whatever, this was no cringing roid-head like Lenny Kerrigan. I could see I was going to have my work cut out.

My mind blazed through possibilities as we approached the end of the side ground. My friend was patient, purposeful, a practised hand. I could tell from the noiseless way he moved that, like me, he’d once been trained in the art of the shock takedown. No tension in his body language to alert his target, nothing threatening at all apart from the sheer size of the man. But I knew even without looking that he’d also possess the innocent, open face of a gentle giant. The kind you could take home to tea with your granny. The kind that wouldn’t betray itself, even when the beating started.

I knew because his face was my face.

Only one real possibility then. They’d caught up with me at last. Not some knuckle-dragging follower of Lenny Kerrigan, come to seek answers about his leader’s disappearance—though I had briefly considered the idea. No, my friend was a professional. A foot soldier of one of the big gangland bosses I’d worked for and then ‘betrayed’, simply by joining the force. Despite the fact I’d never revealed any of their dirty secrets, a few had promised they’d deal with me nonetheless. Once you’re in you’re never truly out, you see? In that way, organised crime isn’t all that different from being a showman.

I made a sudden turn, off the duckboards and across the sucking mire of the side ground. Nimble as he was, my shadow couldn’t levitate and I could hear the slurp of his