Mystery and Crime Fiction posted September 2, 2024 Chapters:  ...23 24 -25- 26... 


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Danielle speaks to Max
A chapter in the book His Silence

His Silence - Chapter 24

by Jacob1395

The author has placed a warning on this post for language.



Background
When Harvey murders his parents, he refuses to say why he did it. Twenty years later, he's finally ready to talk.

Every half an hour, once Emma’s out of the house, I find myself checking the time. I try and focus on the emails piling up in my inbox, but my brain is a mess. How can I concentrate on work when I’m going to be speaking to Max this afternoon? I need to work out what I’m going to say to him.

At lunch I spend half an hour trying to find out more about Max. He’s got a big following on Facebook, around fifteen thousand followers. It says his podcast gets on average twenty thousand listeners a month. Twenty thousand, I sit back and try to imagine that number of people listening to me, ramble on for an hour; the first thing anyone listening would think would be, well she’s miserable, and switch off. His Facebook page seems full of armchair detectives and conspiracy theorists discussing old crimes and their own theories about what might’ve happened. I roll my eyes when I read some of the comments; no one appears to be discussing what happened to my family though. At least that’s something.  

Four p.m. at last, rolls round. My heart presses hard against my chest. I click on the Zoom link Max sent me. Come on Max, don’t leave me hanging. I straighten up in my seat, the calls connecting. Max’s face fills my screen he must be sitting in his bedroom. I can make out the side of a bed to the left of the screen with a blue duvet. He’s not how he looked in the photos I saw of him. His dark hair’s bedraggled. Glasses are balancing on his nose, and sweat’s shining on his forehead in the light. He’s at least ten years older than his photo on his website. There’s a blue folder on his desk, I shiver. My family’s name is printed in bold on the cover. In the background, on his wall, there’s a Coldplay poster from one of their world tours. Well, that would impress Callum; he’s a massive Coldplay fan. He dragged me along to one of their concerts once. I don’t mind a couple of their songs, but Callum’s more into their music than I am.

‘Danielle, are you there?’ Max asks, leaning in closer to his screen. His glasses slip further down his nose.

Damn, I haven’t switched my video on. ‘Oh, yep, sorry, one sec.’ You’d think I’d be a master at Zoom since I work from home.

I click on the camera and my face appears on the screen. I shrink back, cringing. I hate seeing myself on video.

‘Hi,’ Max says, smiling, sitting back. ‘Wow, it’s . . . it’s great to talk to you, you have no idea how much I’ve thought about you and your family over the years. God, what some journalists would give for the chance to speak to you.’

I shift in my seat. He has no personal connection to me but he must feel he knows me. ‘Um, yep, it’s great to talk to you, I was listening to the podcast you did a couple of years ago again last night, that’s why I contacted you,’ I say.

‘How did you manage to listen to the podcast? I was asked to take it down,’ he asks, a slight hint of panic in his voice.

I frown. ‘I downloaded it, why were you asked to take it down?’ This is new.

His eyes dart around his room. What doesn’t he want to tell me? I lean in closer to the screen. ‘Erm . . . OK I got a lot of emails from fans asking why I’d taken the podcast down, and about what happened to the next episode I promised. I couldn’t reply to anyone I was . . .  I was threatened. I thought . . . I thought it was going to be the end of the podcast, all my hard work built up over the years over in the blink of an eye.’ His voice cracks, his gaze flickers to his desk for a second. He takes in a breath. ‘Sorry.’

‘Threatened, I don’t understand, who threatened you?’ I ask. This is crazy.

He shakes his head, and rubs his hands together. ‘I don’t know, although I have a theory. A couple of weeks after the podcast went live, I started receiving these . . . Erm . . . letters in the post. They were threatening to come after everything. It made me think I’d accidentally stumbled across something incredible without realising. I was excited at first, I thought I could prove what happened, but when I didn’t stop investigating, they started threating my family. They sent stuff to my parents, my grandparents, horrible stuff. My Nan, who’s in her eighties, was terrified. It made me really ill, and I lost a load of weight. I did have to think before replying to your email, but I couldn’t pass up on this opportunity.’ He wipes his eyes.

‘I did notice you’ve not discussed what happened to my family since that first podcast you did.’

Max lets out a heavy sigh. ‘Yeah, you hear of cases of people being threatened, but you never think it’s going to happen to you. I’ve covered some big, well known cases since I set up my podcast, and I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before. So, why . . . why did you want to contact me?’

I keep thinking of what Callum would be saying to me if he knew what I was doing. Don’t think of what Callum would do. This is your choice. ‘I wanted to find out more about the other man who Harvey . . . my brother . . . murdered, Ian . . . you said in your podcast, if we found out more about him, it would bring us closer to finding out the truth. I also . . . I spoke to Harvey in prison a few weeks ago.’

Max’s mouth drops open. ‘You . . . you spoke to your brother.’

I nod. Should I be telling him this? ‘I’ve been trying to speak to my brother since I was eighteen, but he’s always refused my request to see him, up until now. He wrote to me on my birthday the other week.’

‘What did he say?’ Max asks, the pitch rising in his voice.

‘He . . . he didn’t tell me why he killed them, he, he told me to go to this place, he says if I went there I would find out what happened, but, I did go there and still I don’t know the full story. Bits and pieces are coming together, but there are a lot of gaps missing.’ I can’t tell him Harvey said he thinks innocent; not yet, I need to hear what Max has to say first.

Max wipes his brow. ‘Jesus, I thought he was never gonna talk about what he did, he’s remained silent for twenty years, that’s why I named the series His Silence. Well, I did do some digging into his life, Ian’s life. I was all set to do another episode, I thought it was going to be my most popular podcast ever, but that’s when the letters started arriving. At the time I decided to dig a bit more. I put a teaser about it on my Facebook page, saying I might’ve uncovered something huge. My fans went nuts.’

‘What did you find out?’ I ask. He’s glancing off to the left. He doesn’t want to tell me. ‘Please, Max. This might help me.’

He sighs. ‘OK, I’ll tell you everything I found out.’





Characters:

Danielle (protagonist)
Callum (Danielle's best friend)
Harvey (Danielle's brother)
William (Danielle's adoptive father)
Emma (Danielle's adoptive mother)
John Cole (Danielle's biological father)
Laura Cole (Danielle's biological mother)
Ian Jones (third person who Harvey killed)
Max Hardy (podcaster)
Jeremiah (works with Oliver)
Oliver Adams (Marsh View House owner)
Mary (works with Oliver)
Abraham (Marsh View resident)
Abigail (Marsh View resident)
Isaac (Marsh View resident)
Noah (Marsh View resident)
Eve (Marsh View resident)
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