The Whisper Man

by Stephen Leather

  ‘So what is his name?’

  ‘He doesn’t have a name. Or a sigil. So he cannot be summoned. He’s a one-off, a glitch, by rights he shouldn’t exist.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Not to you, no, of course it doesn’t.’

  ‘Please don’t use the earthworm trying to understand nuclear physics analogy, it’s insulting.’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘You’re not taking this seriously.’

  ‘Because I don’t understand what it is you’re telling me. You can’t even say what it is that I should be afraid of.’

  ‘Because it can take your soul, if you allow him to get close. You don’t do a deal with him, you don’t summon him and tell him what you want and sign a contract and reap the benefits. He just takes.’ She took a pull on her cigarette and blew a plume of smoke up at the night sky. It swirled and then solidified and formed itself into a serpent that hissed at Nightingale before dissipating back into smoke that was whipped away by the breeze blowing down the street. ‘Your soul is mine, Nightingale. It has been since the day you were born. I am not prepared to allow him to take it.’

  ‘I’m not going to kill myself, Proserpine.’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘You really don’t understand, do you? He doesn’t give you a choice. He’ll whisper to you and what he whispers will make you kill yourself. That’s what he does. He whispers and people die.’

  ‘And what does he say?’

  She shrugged. ‘No one knows because everyone he whispers to ends up dead.’

  ‘So I won’t listen.’

  She smiled. ‘Well good luck with that,’ she said.

  ‘So what are you saying? I’m investigating these suicides so the demon responsible is going to come after me?’

  ‘I already said he’s not a demon,’ she said. ‘You need to pay attention, Nightingale. But yes, he will come for you.’

  ‘Why? What’s he got against me?’

  ‘He knows you know about him.’

  ‘How?’

  She looked at him scornfully. ‘Because he knows you’ve been asking about him. You used to be a cop, right? Back in the days when you had a real job. What would happen if you accessed the police data base to look at the file of someone of interest? Someone who was being monitored by other agencies?’

  ‘The file would be red-flagged and someone would be informed that the file had been accessed.’ His eyes widened. ‘That happens in your world?’

  ‘You sound surprised. But yes, when you – a mere mortal – start messing around with crystals or Ouija boards or dark mirrors, word gets around. So The Whisper Man will know you spoke to the woman who died. And he will come for you, Nightingale, you can trust me on that. He lives in the shadows and the last thing he wants is for you to shine a light on him. And if you let him whisper to you, you will lose your soul.’

  ‘You keep saying ‘he’. So it’s a man, is it?’

  ‘It’s a suicide spirit, it can take any form it wants, but this one is usually a man. But its gender is self-determined, and he could just as easily appear as a woman if he wanted to.’

  ‘You said it was a one-off. Now you’re saying there are more of them.’

  ‘They are each one-offs. Sometimes there is a glitch in the universe and they appear. Without rhyme or reason. Do try to keep up with me, Nightingale.’

  ‘So this thing, it’s The Whisper Man, right?’

  ‘That’s as good a name as any. If I told you its real name, it wouldn’t mean anything to you.’

  ‘And how do I stop it?’

  ‘Stop it?’ she repeated, frowning.

  ‘How do I kill it?’ he asked. ‘What is its weakness?’

  ‘When it’s in human form, you kill it the same way that you would kill any human,’ she said. ‘But if you are close enough to kill it, it’s close enough to whisper to you.’ She shrugged. ‘You need to drop what you’re doing, Nightingale. If you leave it alone, maybe it’ll leave you alone.’

  Nightingale blew smoke down at the pavement. ‘Thanks for the advice,’ he said. ‘It’s good to know you’ve got my back.’

  ‘As I said, I’m not prepared for anyone – or anything – to steal your soul from me.’ She finished her cigarette and flicked the butt away. It hit the pavement in a shower of sparks, then morphed into a spider that scuttled away and disappeared down a drain. When Nightingale turned back to look at Proserpine, she and the dog had gone. The piece of cardboard was still on the ground. The words had changed, though. Now it read BE LUCKY, NIGHTINGALE. As he stared at the sign the letters began to burn and within seconds the cardboard was alight, burning fiercely and producing a thick cloud of black smoke. The cardboard was quickly reduced to ashes which were blown away by the wind.

  Nightingale turned up the collar of his raincoat, smoked the last of his cigarette, flicked it into the gutter, and walked into the Savoy. The American Bar was to the left and he headed up a short flight of stairs. He stopped at the entrance to the bar and looked around. Jenny was sitting at the bar next to a good-looking guy in a dark blue suit that looked as if it had been made to measure. The man was laughing, showing perfect teeth, and as he reached over to touch Jenny’s shoulder Nightingale got a glimpse of an expensive watch.

  Jenny was laughing, too, and she didn’t seem to resent the fact that he was touching her.

  ‘Can I help you, Sir?’ asked a porcelain-skinned girl with waist-length black hair.

  ‘I’m here to see my friend,’ said Nightingale.

  The man moved his head closer to Jenny. She was still laughing. The greeter turned away to talk to a middle-aged couple who had just walked into the bar.

  The hand was patting Jenny on the back now, and seemed to be gently pulling her towards him. Jenny’s eyes were sparkling and she used her left hand to brush a stray lock of hair over her ear.

  The man moved even closer. Then the realisation that he was about to whisper to her hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. He sprinted forward, his raincoat flapping behind him. The hand was bringing her closer to his face. His mouth was opening. Her eyes were widening and her lips were parting. Nightingale smacked into a table as he ran and it overturned and the two ladies sitting there shrieked in surprise.

  The man started to turn to look at the source of the noise, but his hand continued to push Jenny towards him.

  ‘Jenny, no!’ shouted Nightingale. He reached the bar and grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck and hauled him off the stool. The man’s arms flailed for balance and one of his legs buckled. Nightingale swung him around, drew back his fist and aimed a punch at the man’s head. The man managed to get a hand up, deflecting the blow, but he fell backwards and hit the floor hard.

  Jenny was staring at Nightingale, open mouthed.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ he said, gasping for breath. ‘You’re safe now.’

  He tried to put his arms around her but she shrugged him off. ‘What the hell are you playing at, Jack?’

  Nightingale pointed at the man on the floor who was staring wide-eyed up at them, his chest heaving as he panted. ‘He’s The Whisper Man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s The Whisper Man, He whispers to you and you lose your soul.’

  Jenny shook her head contemptuously. ‘Jack, that’s Matt Roberts, I was at uni with him.’

  Roberts sat up and rubbed his chin. He stared up at Nightingale, a look of confusion on his face. Jenny hurried over to him and helped him up. ‘Matt does part time work with the Samaritans, I thought he might be able to help us with some background on suicide.’

  The greeter came up behind Nightingale. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ she said. ‘Sir,’ she added as an afterthought.

  ‘It was a misunderstanding,’ said Nightingale. He turned to look at her and saw two big men in black suits standing behind her, arms folded.

  ‘Obviously,’ she said, and motioned to the door.

  ‘It’s
okay,’ said Roberts, rubbing his chin. ‘Just some horseplay that got out of hand.’

  ‘Well if you would take your horseplay outside, it would be much appreciated.’

  Jenny slid off her stool. ‘Emma, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Please, I can absolutely guarantee that it won’t happen again and that the boys will be on their best behaviour. And if we’ve caused any of your lovely guests any inconvenience I’ll happily buy them a glass or a bottle of whatever they’re drinking.’ Jenny flashed the greeter a sweet smile that would have charmed a serial killer, and the woman sighed.

  ‘Best behaviour,’ she said.

  ‘Cross my heart,’ said Jenny.

  She smiled at Jenny and nodded, flashed Nightingale a warning look, then led her two heavies away.

  ‘How old are you?’ Jenny asked Nightingale.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not me you need to apologise to,’ said Jenny, sliding back onto her stool.

  Nightingale held out his hand to Roberts. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all good,’ said Roberts. The two men shook. ‘I suppose you were defending her honour.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Good to know,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I mean, if I thought her honour needed defending, then of course I’d defend it,’ said Nightingale. ‘I thought you…’ He left the sentence hanging as he looked at Jenny, wondering just how much she had told him.

  ‘I’ve explained your theory to Matt,’ she said. ‘The bits that don’t make you sound like a blithering idiot, anyway.’ She waved at the stool next to her and he climbed onto it. Roberts took the stool next to Nightingale.

  ‘Jenny says that you think someone is grooming people to kill themselves,’ said Roberts.

  Someone. Not something. So Jenny had been careful how much she had said to him. ‘It looks like several people have killed themselves after talking to this guy,’ said Nightingale.

  Jenny waved over a barman and ordered Nightingale a Corona. ‘No glass, he likes it au naturale,’ she said.

  ‘I’d suggest that’s probably a coincidence,’ said Roberts. ‘People have been talked into suicide, I’m not denying that, but it tends to be a long, drawn-out process. Say someone is in a cult and the cult leader wants them to kill themselves, for instance.’

  ‘Like Jonestown?’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Roberts. ‘More than nine hundred men, women and children died after their leader Jim Jones told them to drink cyanide. Some had to be forced to do it, but most did it willingly. But those people had been under his influence for years. I don’t see that establishing that sort of control could be done in a day.’

  The barman put Nightingale’s drink down in front of him.

  ‘Jenny says you were a police negotiator?’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘Yeah, in another life.’

  ‘So you must have dealt with a fair number of suicides.’

  ‘People in crisis they call them. Yes.’

  ‘So you know the things that can drive a person to take their own life?’

  Nightingale nodded again. ‘Depression, a break-down in a relationship, money troubles, drug use. They’re the main causes.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Roberts. ‘And from my experience it’s usually a mental health issue at the centre, compounded by drugs or a stressor like a break-up or losing a job. Or with kids it could be bullying. But usually at the heart of it, there’s a clinical issue.’

  ‘You’re not saying that only mentally ill people kill themselves are you?’ asked Jenny.

  Robert grimaced. ‘Studies have shown that ninety per cent of suicides were suffering from depression.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Jenny.

  ‘You have to remember that the vast majority of the people who call out helplines don’t kill themselves,’ he said. ‘They want to talk. The fact that they call shows that they don’t want to die.’ He looked at Nightingale. ‘I’m guessing it’s the same with you. If they hang around waiting for the negotiator to arrive, they’re probably not that serious about doing it.’

  Nightingale grimaced. He knew what the man was saying, and in the main he was correct, but there had been several occasions when people he’d been talking to had killed themselves. They hadn’t been cries for help in any way, shape or form. ‘Usually, yes,’ he said.

  ‘You hear what I’m saying, right? If someone was serious about killing themselves, they’ll just do it. They’ll hang themselves in the hallway of their house or they’ll jump in front of a train or they’ll get into a hot bath and slit their wrists.’

  ‘Nice images, Matt,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Something like six thousand people kill themselves in the UK every year,’ said Roberts. ‘Most of the ones that do, don’t ask for help. We get five million calls a year. Five million. That’s one every fifty seconds or so. So the vast majority of people who have suicidal thoughts don’t act on them.’

  ‘Which is what makes this case so strange,’ said Jenny. ‘A guy talks to them and within a day they kill themselves.’

  ‘A guy? The same guy?’

  ‘We’re not sure. But all the victims mentioned meeting someone shortly before they killed themselves.’

  ‘We meet new people all the time,’ said Roberts.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Jenny. ‘But one of the women called him The Whisper Man and made it sound like he was talking her into killing herself.’

  Roberts pursed his lips. ‘I can accept that someone can groom another person into killing themselves. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are something of experts in that field. But it takes time and the victim usually has to be susceptible in the first instance.’ He frowned and rubbed his chin. ‘How do they do it?’

  ‘Two have jumped from tall buildings,’ said Nightingale. ‘One jumped in front of the Tube. One swallowed a bottle of sleeping tablets. One drank bleach. The latest is a student who slashed her wrists with a kitchen knife.’

  ‘So six?’

  ‘Six that the police know about,’ said Nightingale. ‘There could well be others.’

  ‘And the woman who mentioned this Whisper Man? What did she say exactly?’

  ‘She wrote about him on social media. She talked about meeting The Whisper Man.’ He looked over at Jenny. ‘What was it she wrote?’

  ‘The Whisper Man tells it like it is,’ said Jenny. ‘He knows how the world is, how it hates me and why I’d be better off elsewhere.’

  ‘Elsewhere?’ repeated Roberts. ‘Was she religious?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Maybe she thought she was going to heaven,’ said Roberts.

  ‘Except that suicide is a mortal sin,’ said Nightingale. ‘A belief in religion, Catholicism anyway, would work against suicide. According to the cops, several of the women who killed themselves met a man in the days before they died. A handsome guy, an interesting guy, something that attracted their attention. It could just be a coincidence.’

  ‘Were any of the other five religious?’

  Nightingale shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe Heaven is the wrong word to use,’ said Roberts. ‘Suppose they did all meet the same man. Maybe he was able to convince them that the next life would be better. In the same way that Muslims can believe that if they blow themselves to kingdom come they’ll get seventy two sloe-eyed virgins in the next life.’

  ‘I’ve never found a lazy eye attractive, myself,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘That’s S-L-O-E,’ said Roberts. ‘Sloe. It means dark.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive Jack,’ said Jenny. ‘He thinks he’s being funny.’ She punched Nightingale on the shoulder.

  Nightingale raised his eyebrows. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t “what” me, Jack. Matt’s a very busy man, don’t play silly buggers.’

  Nightingale put a hand on his heart and bowed at Roberts. ‘My apologies,’ he said.

  Roberts laughed.
‘My problem for taking you literally,’ he said. ‘That comes with being a Samaritan. You have to assume that everything said is the truth, or at least that what is said comes from the heart. And the honesty has to be a two-way street.’

  ‘I have a strange sense of humour,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘No,’ said Jenny. ‘You have what passes for a sense of humour. That’s not the same thing.’

  ‘We won’t argue about semantics,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘We won’t argue at all because I’m right and that’s the end of it,’ said Jenny. ‘Go on, Matt. You were saying?’

  ‘I’m really just thinking out loud,’ said Roberts. ‘It could well be a coincidence. Plus suicides do tend to occur in clusters. Partly because of the publicity and the copycat effect.’

  ‘Sure, but the cops know that. If they suspect that there’s a connection, that’s probably because there is one.’

  ‘And you think this Whisper Man is the connection?’

  Nightingale shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He didn’t know the man well enough to tell him about the dark mirror in the basement of Gosling Manor, or that he’d spoken to the spirit of the woman who had thrown herself under the wheels of a Tube train. And the fact that Jenny hadn’t mentioned it, suggested that perhaps she didn’t know him well enough either.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been much use,’ said Roberts.

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘No, you’re helping me to get my thoughts straight,’ he said. ‘I’m maybe too close to the wood to see the trees.’ He looked over at Jenny. ‘We should eat. I’m starving.’

  CHAPTER 19

  Nightingale got back to his flat in Bayswater just before eleven o’clock in the evening. Dinner had been excellent and afterwards Jenny and Roberts had wanted a nightcap back in the American Bar. Nightingale had left them to it. There was something he needed to do.

  He showered, twice, and changed into a white robe that had been dry-cleaned. He had cleared the furniture to the edges of his sitting room, and lit half a dozen white church candles that had been blessed by a priest.

  The small leather bag that Mrs Steadman had given him was on a chair, along with a recent photograph of Catherine Dixon and the item he had taken from her laundry bag. He removed his robe and carried everything to the middle of the room, where he knelt down. He untied the bag and took out the pink crystal, on its silver chain. The photo showed a tall smiling woman, who seemed about the same age as her late husband, leaning against a five bar gate somewhere in the country. He still wasn’t proud of stealing her underwear. On the floor he’d placed a large road map of the southern third of England. From around Luton down to the South Coast, and from the Welsh border across to the North Sea. He placed Mrs Dixon’s items in front of the map, closed his eyes, and said a short prayer, the crystal pressed between his palms. When he had finished he opened his eyes and let the crystal swing free on its chain. He pictured a pale blue aura around himself as he took slow, deep breaths. He began to repeat her name.