Stilled Voices (DCI Murrain Book 4) Read online

  STILLED VOICES

  Alex Walters

  Also by Alex Walters:

  Trust No One

  Nowhere to Hide

  Late Checkout

  Murrain's Truth (short stories)

  Dark Corners

  Snow Fallen

  Candles and Roses

  Death Parts Us

  Their Final Act

  Expiry Date

  Winterman

  Small Mercies

  Lost Hours

  Alex Walters writing as Michael Walters:

  The Shadow Walker

  The Adversary

  The Outcast

  STILLED VOICES

  Copyright © Michael Walters 2020

  Michael Walters has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author's imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes.

  Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions or locales is completely coincidental.

  STILLED VOICES

  Alex Walters

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER ONE

  They always came in the small hours, in the deepest, darkest part of the night. He slept well, mostly, but on those nights he would wake, disturbed by their presence.

  The whispers. The whisperers.

  The voices he could barely hear, but which filled every space in the room. Beneath the bed, in the windows, echoing down the long-unused chimney into the fireplace. The voices that had woken him, and that would remain with him till daybreak.

  If the voices had been there every night, it would have been unbearable. But they came only occasionally, perhaps once every few weeks. There had been times, early on, when he'd thought they had finally ceased, when the gap had increased to a month, two months, sometimes even three. He had thought that, finally, he was free of whatever condition or curse this might be. But then, for no evident reason, they'd returned, as overwhelming and insistent as ever.

  He could barely recall when this had begun. He had no clear recollection of the first time it had occurred. All he knew was that there had once been a time, a decade or more before, when it had not been part of his life. Now it seemed it always would be.

  He had never worked out what made them come. What prompted them to begin their insistent whispering. There was no warning, no obvious trigger. They just came. Sometimes he thought the occurrences were becoming more frequent. At other times, he thought they might be diminishing. The truth was he had no idea. There was no pattern, no sequence.

  In some respects, that was the most disturbing part. He was accustomed to recognising patterns, to identifying relationships and connections. It was what he did. Taking a range of apparently unconnected data and phenomena and translating it into meaning. Drawing the lines on the chart to explain why this alignment of stars and planets informed that sequence of human events. Explaining why the coincidence of your birth at some random point determined the person you were and the life you could expect to lead.

  He ought to be able to make sense of this. He should be capable of finding some correlation that would explain why this was happening and what it might be telling him about himself, or his life, or his future.

  For all his efforts, he could find nothing. Just temporal white noise. As far as he could tell, the whisperers came randomly. There was nothing he could do even to predict their arrival, much less prevent it.

  All he knew was that once the whispers came there was no point in trying either to ignore or fight them. If he tried to return to sleep, the whispers would still be there, insistent as ever, not quite inside his head, not quite outside it. If he tried to close his ears to the sound, it would seem to grow – not louder, he thought, but somehow more present, more invasive.

  There was no solution other than to get up. Go downstairs, busy himself with something else. Something that required a degree of attention, though he knew from experience that the whispering would not allow him to focus on anything too demanding. The whispering wouldn't cease, not tonight, not until the first light of morning was filtering through the blinds downstairs.

  He dragged on his dressing gown and stumbled downstairs, pausing in the kitchen to make himself a mug of coffee. He was resigned now to no further sleep before morning, and made his way to the corner of the living room he used as an office. There were a couple of charts he was working on for clients. It was work that required some concentration but which, after all these years, he could carry out even when his mind was partly elsewhere.

  The whispers were quieter down here, or at least a little less insistent, but they were still there. Still telling him something he couldn't quite discern. He was accustomed to this by now, knowing he would be capable of focusing on the work. He turned on his laptop and waited for it to boot up.

  It had never occurred to him to wonder about the source of the whispers. This was just how his life was. Filled with unexplained and, as far as he was concerned, inexplicable phenomena. Moments when he felt or saw or heard something that lay outside the physical world. Sometimes the moments were significant. More often, they were not – or, if they were, their significance passed him by. Some, like the whispers, were recurrent. Others occurred once and then never again.

  He only knew that whatever lay behind these experiences was also what made him good at his work. For that reason alone, he was never inclined to question or analyse his experiences. He had a semi-superstitious fear that, if he applied too much rationality, everything would simply evaporate to nothing. It was better to accept it, and work with it as best he could.

  He opened the relevant files and began to work on the charts. This was another quality he couldn't begin to explain. It was a mix of learnt knowledge – he'd read the books and acquired the qualifications, such as they were – and something he could only call intuition. Perhaps it was simply a different form of knowledge, the experience he had accrued through his years of working with countless clients. But it was somehow more than that. He could look at this mass of data and see through it or beyond it to some more profound truth. That was what distinguished him from many of his more workaday competitors.

  Not that his qualities were always appreciated. Many of his competitors were successful precisely becaus
e they didn't offer the insights he could provide. They simply trotted out what they knew their clients wanted to hear. He could do that too, of course, and quite often did. If a client was seeking reassurance, you offered them reassurance. If a client wanted good news, you gave them good news. You might add a few reservations or conditions, but those were only to provide an excuse if events subsequently turned out badly. But, by and large, you played the game. That was why clients returned.

  But he was capable of much more than that. Not always, but often enough. He could offer insights the client didn't expect. He could challenge their expectations, and at times he could accurately predict a future they wouldn't otherwise have foreseen. Few of his clients fully appreciated his talents. But the astute minority who did understand returned to him again and again, and were prepared to pay premium rates for what he could offer. For the moment those clients were relatively few in number, but he knew that, as he learned to use his talents to the full, he could gradually grow that client-base and finally make some real money. It was only a matter of time.

  The two charts he was working on at the moment did not fall into that category. This was just routine work at his basic rate, applying the standard principles, going through the motions. Churning out the same formulaic anodyne nonsense as all his competitors. Vague assertions that could never be fully verified or denied. Ambiguous predictions that resonated with the recipients' own wishful thinking. It was the game they all played, and he was skilled at it.

  He worked away at them assiduously, trying to ignore the whispering voices around his head. Tonight, they seemed more insistent than ever, more intrusive than he could recall. It wasn't exactly that they were louder. It was somehow as if their message was growing more urgent, more pressing.

  For an hour or so he fought against them, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand. He looked over at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was still not yet 4.00am. It would be a while yet before first light. He rose and returned to the kitchen, intending to make himself another coffee.

  His unease was growing. Tonight was feeling different, as if something had changed, as if the whispering, whatever it might be, had shifted to a new level, a new intensity.

  Seeking respite, he unlocked the back door and stepped out into the garden at the rear of the house. It was still early in the year, but he could smell the first scents of spring in the air. It was a mild night, although the sky was clear, with a sickle moon visible above the swaying woodland behind the house. The sky was dotted with stars, though many were lost in the pale orange glow of Manchester in the north.

  He had hoped that the intensity of the voices might reduce as he stepped outside, but their urgency seemed only to have increased.

  He took another step forward into the darkness, pulling his dressing gown more tightly around him. The ground was cold through his thin slippers.

  It was only then that he sensed he wasn't alone. The whisperers were there, of course, but they were incorporeal, insubstantial. But suddenly, he felt that someone else was present.

  He peered into the darkness. He could see nothing but the movement of the shrubbery along the edges of the garden. 'Is anyone there?'

  His voice sounded feeble in the darkness. He hadn't wanted to call loudly for fear of disturbing the neighbours in the houses that were clustered around in the cramped estate. When he finally started to make some real money from all this, he'd find himself somewhere decent to live. Somewhere that was his own rather than rented. Somewhere where he could have some space.

  He walked cautiously over to the corner of the house, where the narrow entryway led out to the main road at the front. Of course, there was no-one there.

  But the whispers were growing louder, and he still couldn't shake the feeling of another presence. He took a few steps along the passage, looking out towards the main road. It was as if the whisperers were warning him now, trying to draw his attention to something. He glanced back over his shoulder, but the passageway behind him remained deserted.

  He hesitated for a moment, then walked towards the road, unsure what was motivating him. The whispers were growing increasingly intense, more than he'd ever previously experienced. He felt as if they were almost inside his head, invading his thoughts.

  He reached the end of the narrow passage and gazed out across the tiny front garden towards the street. There was nothing, of course. Just the rows of surrounding houses, the road lined with cars, the pale orange of the streetlights.

  He was growing cold, wearing only shorts, t-shirt and dressing gown, his legs bare to the morning chill. He turned to make his way back into the house and, as he did so, he heard a movement behind him. He had no opportunity to react. The whispering rose to an unexpected climax in his head, suddenly almost painfully loud, as if someone were screaming silently into his ears.

  Then the whispering stopped and there was only silence and darkness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  'Aye, aye. Love's young dream.'

  There were times, Murrain thought, when Paul Wanstead behaved and spoke as if he were thirty years older than he really was. He said the kind of things your father might have said, using idioms that most people had forgotten years before. Murrain recalled his own father adopting the same tone of voice when criticising the 'lack of tunes' in his son's teenage record collection, a combination of disapproval and mild bemusement at how the world was changing.

  His father had been sincere enough, Murrain supposed, but with Wanstead it was mainly an act. Part of his dull but dependable Detective Sergeant persona. He'd very successfully carved out a niche for himself here as the one who held everything together. Others might have more creativity, imagination or even simple intelligence, but Wanstead was the one who'd keep the show on the road.

  He was good at it, too. Murrain knew only too well that, when it was really needed, you couldn't find a safer pair of hands. If Wanstead said he'd do it, it would get done – thoroughly, on time and in budget. In a place that sometimes felt like a barely functional madhouse, it was a rare gift.

  Wanstead's current focus of attention was the apparently burgeoning relationship between two other members of the team, DI Joe Milton and DS Marie Donovan. If it was indeed burgeoning, it had been doing so very slowly and over a very long time. But maybe they both had reasons to be cautious, Murrain thought. Milton was still on the rebound from an equally protracted but still painful breakup with his partner. Donovan was a young widow with a complicated history as an undercover officer that Murrain knew had left her scarred in numerous ways.

  If Wanstead was right, at some point Murrain ought to have a chat with the two of them. It always complicated matters when two officers were in a relationship, although Murrain had every confidence that Milton and Donovan were sufficiently professional not to allow it to affect their work. Even so, it wouldn't do any harm to check where things stood and remind them of their responsibilities. So far, he'd chickened out of initiating any discussion partly because he wasn't even sure if Wanstead was right. Although, in fairness, Wanstead was rarely wrong when it came to appraising his fellow human beings.

  'Love's young dream?' Murrain echoed. 'That's what you reckon, is it?'

  'Well, youngish. Younger than me, anyway.'

  'That's a low bar. You reckon it's getting serious, then?'

  'What do you think? They turn up at pretty much the same time every day.'

  'That's your only evidence, is it, DS Wanstead? Punctuality?'

  'Nah. You can tell. Just look at them.'

  Milton and Donovan had just returned from making coffees in the small kitchen down the corridor, and were now engaged in an animated conversation at the far end of the open-plan office. Murrain watched them for a moment from behind his own desk, before turning back to Wanstead. 'They could just be discussing business.'

  'They probably are,' Wanstead conceded. 'But it's the way they're discussing it.'

  'They're both smiling, I'll grant you that,' Murrain said. 'Not something y
ou see much of round these parts.'

  'There you go then. Case proven.'

  'If you say so, Paul.'

  'Anyway, I thought you were the one with the magical insights.'

  Murrain allowed Wanstead a smile in response. He always felt uncomfortable when people raised that subject and all the more so when they did so humorously. But he'd known Wanstead long enough to be confident no mockery was intended. 'I don't have any insights about this team, magical or otherwise. You're all unreadable enigmas to me.'

  That was true enough. Even Wanstead had turned out to have unexpected hidden depths in the case they'd dealt with over the previous winter. They were still dealing with the repercussions of that one, and there'd been a hell of a lot to untangle. Murrain was not looking forward to it going to trial, but that was a worry for another day. For the moment, all they could do was ensure they did their job in terms of collating and managing the evidence.

  As always, they were juggling a seemingly impossible workload – the usual mix of ongoing enquiries, cases that were being prepared for trial, cases that had come to trial, and the usual endless administration that underpinned all that. They were somehow more or less keeping the show on the road, but sooner or later someone would mess something up. Then the powers-that-be would be looking for a scapegoat, rather than recognising the impossible demands they were placing on officers and staff. The last thing they needed was yet another major enquiry, but that was what they seemed to be faced with.

  'Okay, enough office gossip,' Murrain said. 'Let's get back to the important stuff. When was this called in?'

  'Early this morning. About seven.'

  'Who called it?'

  'We've got the details, but just some passer-by, apparently. On their way to get the train to work.'

  'Nice way to begin your day. With a dead body.' Murrain paused. 'Even I'm not keen on it, and it's my job.'

  'I'd have been tempted to walk on by,' Wanstead said. 'Leave some other poor bugger to deal with it.'