Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (34 page)

‘Never wrote about it?’

Robbie shook his head and put the phone back in his pocket. ‘Nope. Not a word. Looks like he was after an exclusive, he’d be able to sell the story and pictures for a lot of cash, maybe not in the UK but the foreign papers would have bitten his arm off.’

‘Like you said, the big question is how did she know who he was. He was dressed like a doctor, right?’

‘I haven’t seen the CCTV footage but I spoke to the detective who did and yes, you can see him walking through the hospital in his white coat with his stethoscope around his neck. Looked like any other doctor and no one paid him any attention.’

‘But she knew he was a reporter.’

‘And she knew his name, Jack.’

‘Did he have a badge on? With his name on it?’

Robbie shook his head. ‘I asked that. No.’

Nightingale sat back in his chair and swirled his lager around in the bottle. ‘So somehow she knew his name and that he was lying about being a doctor, and then she wants to whisper something about Jesus to him?’

‘Do you have any idea what’s going on here, Jack?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘I’m as bemused as you are.’

‘I’m not bemused, I’m fucking gob-smacked. Who the hell drinks drain cleaner? And why? He was short of cash and owed a few grand on his credit cards but who doesn’t these days?’

‘Woman trouble?’

‘He was gay, and gays don’t tend to top themselves over a love affair gone wrong.’

‘Do the cops have a theory?’

‘To be honest, mate, it’s a suicide plain and simple. They’re not going to bust a gut trying to find out why.’

‘Case closed?’

‘It’s not even a case. The Bella Harper thing made them prick up their ears but that’s all.’ Robbie sipped his lager. ‘You heard about the headmistress, right?’

‘Bella’s headmistress?’

‘Yeah. She hanged herself. Her bloody head came right off, Jack. She tied a rope around her neck and jumped off the school building. You won’t have heard about the dentist yet, though. The cops are keeping that under wraps until all the relatives have been informed.’

‘What happened to the dentist? This is Bella’s dentist, right?’

Robbie nodded. ‘Guy called Malcolm Walton. Goes home and stabs his wife to death. Sits down and finishes his dinner. When his two teenage kids come home he butchers them. Then he goes into the kitchen and starts smashing wine glasses. Half a dozen of them. Uses a rolling pin to crush the glass and then swallows it. All of it. Not a nice way to die, Jack.’

Nightingale stared at his friend in horror.

‘So I’m guessing this isn’t a series of coincidences,’ said Robbie. ‘You ask me to see if anyone close to Bella Harper has died in strange circumstances and I find them piling up like a serial killer’s convention. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’

‘You won’t believe me, Robbie.’

‘Try me.’

Nightingale sat back in his seat, ran his hands through his hair and groaned. ‘If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy.’

‘That ship sailed some time ago. Who is your client?’

‘There’s no client.’

‘Pro bono? You’re helping someone out for free?’

‘Sort of.’ He picked up his Corona again. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ve been told. That doesn’t mean I believe it, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Nightingale groaned again. ‘This is going to sound stupid, I know.’ He took a deep breath. ‘A friend of mine, someone I’ve known for a while, someone I trust, told me that Bella Harper has been possessed.’

‘Possessed? By what? A ghost? A devil?’

‘By something. Something bad. And this friend said that whatever it is wants to do … Bad things.’

‘Bad things?’

‘She wasn’t specific. In fact she wasn’t specific about much, just that something had possessed Bella. I wanted to see if she was right or not.’

‘The girl’s with her parents, Jack. If there was something wrong, they’d have seen it.’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘I don’t believe in ghosts and that nonsense but surely, if there was a demon or something there’d be signs.’

‘I know as much about possession as you do. I was just asking around to see if it was possible.’

‘Several people who came into contact with her have killed themselves, that’s true enough. But how does a nine-year-old girl come to be responsible for that?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. The nurse was definitely murder-suicide.’

‘You spoke to the Sussex cops?’

‘I did a bit of detecting on my own.’

‘Bloody hell, Jack, be careful. They throw away the key for impersonating a cop these days.’

‘I played it by the book, more or less,’ said Nightingale. ‘I went to see the neighbour. She told me that the nurse suffocated his family and then slashed his wrists. But before that he was a loving father and husband.’

‘People snap. Happens all the time. And most murders are domestic, that’s a fact of life.’

Nightingale nodded. ‘I know. But something must have kicked him off. Same with this guy Barker. You don’t just one evening decide to drink drain fluid.’

‘And you’re suggesting that Bella Harper was involved.’ He shook his head. ‘Both times she was tucked up in her hospital bed when it happened.’

‘I get that,’ said Nightingale.

‘So what’s your friend claiming, that a little girl somehow forced them to kill themselves?’

‘Maybe that’s what the whispering was about. You can’t hear what she says at the end.’

Robbie’s eyes widened and he put down his lager. ‘What, you’re saying she hypnotised him? A nine-year-old girl hypnotised Barker to go away and drink drain cleaner?’

‘She whispered something to him. About Jesus. So what the hell was that about?’

Robbie threw up his hands. ‘Mate, what could she possibly have said that would have led him to kill himself two hours later? She’s a kid.’

‘I said you’d think I was crazy.’

‘If you’re actually considering this then yeah, you are out of your mind.’ He leaned forward again. ‘Look, people snap and kill themselves. Sometimes they take out their anger on someone else before they do it. Shit happens. You were in the job, you know that.’

‘So what’s the connection with the girl?’

‘Maybe there is no connection,’ said Robbie. ‘Maybe it’s a coincidence. A nasty little coincidence.’

‘I hope so.’

They both drank in silence for a while.

‘It’s not a coincidence, is it?’ said Robbie eventually.

‘I don’t think so, no.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah. And some.’

‘We can’t tell anyone, can we?’ said Robbie. ‘No one’s going to believe us. And it would pretty much kill my career dead.’

‘Even if they did believe it, and that would be one hell of an if, what could they do? Arrest a nine-year-old-girl? And charge her with what?’

‘You know about this spooky stuff? Can’t a priest do an exorcism or something?’

‘I’m told not. Whatever is inside her isn’t a spirit as such. It’ll take more than a few Hail Marys and some Holy Water.’

‘Like what?’

Nightingale picked up his Corona and drank as his mind raced. He didn’t want to lie to his friend, but there were some things better not said. Killing a child was definitely high up on that list, even if the child was already dead. He put down his bottle. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But before we get to the stage of doing something we need to be one hundred per cent sure.’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘If there are two, there could be more. If there are more …’

‘Then we’ll know for sure. But that doesn’t take us any further forward, does it? Even if we have absolute proof that a nine-year-old girl can make grown men kill themselves, what do we do?’

Nightingale nodded but didn’t say anything. Robbie wouldn’t have to do anything. It would be down to Nightingale. Mrs Steadman had made it painfully clear what he was supposed to do – thrust knives into the eyes and heart of Bella Harper.

‘Is this connected to what’s going on up in Berwick?’ asked Robbie.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What about Marcus Fairchild?’

Nightingale shook his head.

‘Your life is bloody complicated, Jack.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Nightingale. ‘I need a cigarette.’

They went outside to the terrace overlooking Kensington Gardens and sat near a propane heater. ‘You know the history of this place?’ Nightingale asked Robbie.

Robbie shook his head.

‘It’s been around for ever,’ said Nightingale, lighting a cigarette. ‘The sixteen hundreds anyway. They used to bring prisoners here for a drink before taking them over to Marble Arch to the hanging tree.’

‘Nice,’ said Robbie.

‘That was back in the day when they hanged you for stealing a loaf of bread or looking at the squire wrong.’ He shrugged. ‘The good old days.’ He took another long pull at his cigarette. ‘Did you turn up anything about Fairchild?’

‘I looked, mate. But there’s nothing known, certainly nothing along the lines of what you were talking about.’

‘Okay.’

‘I did see if he’d worked on any paedophile cases, like you said, but couldn’t find any cases at all, not for the prosecution or the defence. He specialises in company law – I doubt that he would have been involved in anything involving paedophiles.’

‘Yeah, I think he was lying about that.’

‘Jack, are you sure he’s what you say he is?’

‘No question.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

Nightingale smiled ruefully. ‘Best you don’t know,’ he said.

N
ightingale sat staring down at the gun on his coffee table. It was a matt black Taurus .45, small enough to conceal in a pocket. It would make a loud noise, but Fairchild’s Sussex house was a good half mile from his nearest neighbour. It was Wednesday, and on Friday Fairchild was due to take Jenny for dinner. Nightingale was sure that Fairchild had more than dinner in mind, so if he was going to stop the man it had to be done that night or the next.

He took a deep breath, put the loaded gun into his raincoat pocket and went downstairs to the street. His car was back in the lock-up and he headed towards it. He looked left and right and then jogged across the road. A bus heading his way seemed to accelerate towards him but it still missed him by yards. The driver glared at him as the bus went by and Nightingale realised that the acceleration had been deliberate. He turned up his collar against the wind as he walked by a Halal butchers. Two women swathed from head to foot in black niqab went by and they also seemed to be glaring at him through the slits in their headcoverings.

A traffic warden in a fluorescent jacket looked up from the car he was checking and his upper lip curled back into a snarl. Nightingale hurried on his way. A group of three young men in hoodies and low-slung jeans turned to stare at him with undisguised hostility.

He stopped at an intersection and looked both ways before crossing over. Two middle-aged housewives in cheap cloth coats stopped talking and frowned at him as he passed. He scratched his head, wondering if he was imagining all the hostile looks.

‘Got any spare change, mister?’

He turned to see Proserpine, sitting on the pavement with her legs drawn up to her chest. Her dog was sitting next to her, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth, Proserpine was holding a cardboard sign with ‘ANY SPARE CHANGE MUCH APPRECIATED’ scrawled in capital letters.

Nightingale stopped and looked down at her. She smiled up at him. Her hair was spikier than the last time he’d seen her, and she was wearing more black mascara than before, making her face appear even paler. She was wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket with silver studs in the form of small crosses and there was a heavy silver inverted cross hanging from a thick chain around her neck.

‘Penny for your soul, mister,’ she said, and winked.

‘Are you here for me or is this just one of those awkward coincidences?’

‘It’s all about you, Nightingale,’ she said. ‘It always is. So is that a gun in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’

‘What do you want, Proserpine?’

‘I sense hostility in your voice, Nightingale. Aren’t we friends any more?’ The dog growled and she rubbed it behind the ear and made a shushing sound.

Nightingale took out his pack of cigarettes and tapped one out.

‘Those things will kill you,’ said Proserpine.

‘Everybody dies,’ said Nightingale. He lit the cigarette and took a long pull on it.

‘That’s not strictly speaking true,’ said Proserpine. ‘But there are different ways of dying, and lung cancer isn’t a pleasant way to go.’

‘Death is death,’ said Nightingale.

‘True, but there’s a big difference between death and dying. Wouldn’t you rather die happily in your sleep, dreaming of fluffy clouds and puppy dog tails or whatever floats your boat?’

‘What do you want, Proserpine?’

‘A cigarette for a start.’

‘Not scared of cancer, then?’

‘Not much scares me.’ She reached out her hand. There were thick silver rings on her fingers, studded with what looked like runes.

Nightingale gave her a cigarette. He was about to take his lighter out of his pocket but she smiled up at him. ‘No need,’ she said. She glanced at the cigarette and the end glowed redly and began to smoke.

‘Nice trick,’ said Nightingale.

‘It’s not a trick,’ she said. ‘You sound stressed. In a rush? Somewhere to be? And you still haven’t answered my first question. That is a gun in your pocket, isn’t it?’

‘You know it is, don’t you?’ he said, putting the cigarette pack back into his coat pocket.

She smiled. ‘Not much gets by me, Nightingale.’

‘So you know where I’m going and what I’m going to do.’

‘You’re going to kill Marcus Fairchild.’ It was a flat statement and not a question.

‘He deserves it.’

‘People don’t always get what they deserve, do they?’

Nightingale kept his eyes on Proserpine as he took another long pull on his cigarette and held the smoke deep in his lungs.

‘Cat got your tongue?’

Nightingale blew smoke up into the air. ‘I’m waiting for you to tell me what it is you want.’

‘We have a deal, remember?’

‘Of course.’