‘Not that I know of, I tend to move in different circles for my...activities. That’s kind of lucky, the woman who wrote the story, and the first person you talk to in Memphis is a keen Occultist.’
‘Isn’t it though, what are the chances?’ Nightingale couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
‘Coincidences happen.’
‘Sometimes they do,’ said Nightingale. ‘Sometimes we get pushed in the right direction. I’ll see how it plays out. I don’t have many other ideas. Look, Joshua, the only thing I can think of doing is to put a cordon around your niece.’
‘We can’t do that without telling my sister and Matthew, and I can’t see them believing a word of it. He doesn’t trust me. Guess he can maybe sense I’m in the opposite camp. But I’ll do what I can do.’
‘Meanwhile I guess I’m waiting for the next name to be crossed off, see if it throws anything up. Plus I suggest we try to do something at the source.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning we both have some contacts in the Occult world, it’s time to use them, try to find a pattern behind this, see if there’s any more information available on Abaddon, figure out who might want to get at us through hurting kids.’
‘I’ll get to work. Can you think of anyone?’
‘The ones who chased me out of England, The Order Of The Nine Angles. They specialised in ritual child killing. And they worshiped Proserpine.’
‘You have kind of a direct line to her, don’t you?’
Nightingale paused and lit a cigarette, in direct contravention of Hertz rules. He’d never told Wainwright the full story of his connection to Proserpine, and didn’t plan to.
‘She’s been known to communicate with me, but it’s usually on her terms. It could be a last resort, but I’m not about to summon her in a hotel room. I’d prefer to deal with people who can’t blast me into Hell on a whim.’
‘Makes sense. Besides, if she’s part of this, she’s not likely to tell you how to stop it.’
‘Probably not. Though she does have a tendency to be playing all sides at once.’
‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do. I’m in Haiti right now. A very good place to do some finding out that won’t involve Google. Stay in touch, Jack.’
Nightingale started the car and headed back to the Peabody. At the moment he was stuck, and when that happened he usually tried a beer.
CHAPTER 12
Dudák lay in bed, next to the strange creature that slept now, after its exertions. Dudák had once again diffused a little energy into the creature, and it had reacted as it always did, writhing in paroxysms of frenzied pleasure and pain, before finally collapsing, sobbing and spent, into an exhausted sleep.
Dudák had felt nothing, a different kind of energy would have been necessary for that, but the creature was useful, and needed to be kept compliant. It could have been forced to do Dudák’s will, but, it was simpler if it co-operated freely.
First, of course, the creature had made its report.
The first target had arrived, as expected, and been pushed in the right direction. It seemed to suspect nothing, not that it would make any difference. Its course had been decided, and it would not be possible to change it, even should it try.
There was no sign of the second target, and it might prove more difficult to ensure its presence, but Dudák was confident in the arrangements which had been made. Not that the arrival of either target would affect his enjoyment, but it was important that the plan succeed. Failure might have unpleasant consequences, even for one as powerful as Dudák.
Dudák needed no sleep, and was not conscious of the passing of time while the creature slept on. At a new time, it would wake and be given fresh instructions.
The creature was his slave.
But Dudák too was little better than a slave in all this.
There would always be those with more power.
CHAPTER 13
Nightingale still had half of his bottle of Corona in front of him when he finished his meal in Huey’s Burger. He’d asked the concierge at the Peabody to recommend a nearby place with no live music and Huey’s fitted the bill. He’d chosen the ‘Heart Healthy Mahi-Mahi Plate’ since he had a tendency to bolt down too much fast food, or forget to eat altogether, if a case got hectic. Fresh fish seemed a good idea.
A waitress in a black t-shirt whose name-badge identified her as Diane arrived as he finished the last mouthful. She looked around twenty years old and radiated waitress charm. ‘Everything okay for you there?’
‘My heart’s never felt better,’ said Nightingale, and then, seeing her puzzled expression, ‘Joke.’
‘Oh, right. Still, I guess you need to take care of yourself, don’t you. My dad checks his blood pressure and cholesterol almost every day. But he still smokes, we all hassle him about it. What can you do? Can I get you another beer? Dessert?’
Nightingale sighed, and wondered if he really looked as old as Diane’s dad. It must be the stress. ‘No thanks, just a cup of coffee, please. Regular, with milk.’
‘Have that right up for you,’ she said, and departed with his plate.
Ten minutes later his heart still felt fine, the coffee was gone, and his attempts at thinking had got him nowhere, so he paid the bill, with an extra twenty percent for Diane, despite her making him feel old.
He headed back to the Peabody. As he walked through the entrance, a pretty black woman in a red coat almost bumped into him.
‘Why, Mr. Nightingale,’ she said. ‘There you are.’
He gave a puzzled frown, before recognition dawned. It was Wainwright’s sister. ‘Mrs. Fisher, sorry, didn’t recognise you with your hair down.’
‘It’s a good disguise, huh?’
‘Certainly is.’ he said. ‘Are you visiting someone?’
‘I’m visiting you. Just about to give up waiting too. You care to buy me a drink? If Joshua’s paying you, you can certainly afford to pay for a poor old preacher’s wife.’
She laughed at that, and Nightingale assumed that no sister of Wainwright’s would be left short of money. He returned her smile. ‘Oh I don’t know, should a poor old preacher’s wife risk being seen with a dashing young Englishman?’
She looked him up and down. ‘If I let you have the ‘dashing’ and ‘young’, do I get the beer? I think my reputation can stand to be seen with you. Besides, I could always claim you were a homeless guy who’d asked me to buy you some new shoes.’
Nightingale looked hurt. ‘Hey, don’t you start in on my Hush Puppies. I get enough grief from your brother about them.’
‘Quite right. Is it even legal to sell those things in Tennessee?’
‘I like them, they’re comfy.’
‘I’ll assume that’s a good thing. Anyway, I didn’t come down here to offer you fashion advice, so let’s sit.’
Making a mental note that Sarah Fisher could be every bit as direct as her brother, Nightingale followed her to a table. A tall waitress in a black uniform was with them almost immediately.
‘I’ll take a cappuccino,’ said Sarah Fisher.
‘Sounds good,’ said Nightingale, ‘same here.’
Their coffees arrived almost immediately. Sarah Fisher took a sip of her coffee and leaned forward in her chair.
‘Well, I can’t say I was expecting a visit,’ said Nightingale. ’What can I do for you, Mrs. Fisher?’
‘Sarah.’
‘Jack.’
‘Well, it’s not exactly a social visit, Jack. I have a few questions I’d like answered.’
‘I’ll do my best. What’s on your mind?’
‘Well, first of all, and hoping it never reaches my husband’s ears that I said it, what in the Blue Hell are you doing in Memphis?’
Nightingale made a surprised face, and hoped it looked genuine. ‘Well, I told you Sarah, I’m looking...’
‘...for books, you said. Bullshit. You don’t look like the reading type to me, and, let me warn you now, I am very good at telling when somebody’s lying to m
e. You were and you are. Why exactly did Joshua send you up here?’
‘You’re pretty direct,’ said Nightingale. ‘Must be the Brownsville upbringing. Joshua’s like that too.’
She sniffed, and looked daggers at him. ‘I’m also very good at spotting someone changing the subject. Answer the question.’ She forced a smile. ‘Please.’
Nightingale always hated lying, it was so difficult to remember everything and keep it up. On the other hand, Wainwright had been very clear that Sarah and her husband should not be told the truth, even if there was any chance they’d believe it. He improvised desperately, in the face of her penetrating look. ‘It’s nothing sinister, he knew I was coming up here, so he asked me to drop by and say hello.’
She was shaking her head. ‘No. My guess is you’re bought and paid for, and if you’re up here it’s because he told you to come, and visiting us wasn’t incidental, it’s the reason you came. Now why?’
Nightingale was out of ideas. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah, that’s all there is to it. I can’t tell you anything else.’
She put her coffee cup down sharply and clicked her tongue at him. ‘Can’t, or won’t? Comes to the same thing. Guess you know who’s pulling your strings and who’s paying the bills. Let’s try this another way. How long you worked for my brother?’
Nightingale smiled, glad to be back on firmer ground, if only for a while. ‘About three years,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Not so long,’ she said. ‘And how long you known him altogether?’
‘Maybe five years.’
‘I see. Well, Mr. Nightingale, I have known him nearly thirty-five years now. So maybe listen a while, and I’ll tell you a few things about Joshua Wainwright.’
Nightingale smiled and nodded. He decided he might find it interesting to have some of the blanks filled in on the billionaire man of mystery. ‘Go right ahead,’ he said. ‘I’m a good listener.’
‘Good, because so far I haven’t been impressed with your talking. You know we’re from Brownsville, right?’ Nightingale nodded as she took a sip of coffee. ‘One of the poorest cities in America, they say, though I hear things are getting better these days, what with the port expanding,’ she continued.
‘Yes, I think he told me once that his father ran off before he was born and his mom used to take in laundry.’
She gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Took in washing? In 1982? Even in Brownsville they had washing machines. Next you’ll be telling me he used to pick cotton. The man was messing with you. He likes to do that.’
‘Yeah, I knew that,’ lied Nightingale.
‘Sure you did. Anyway, Brownsville wasn’t too bad to us. I don’t get back there much, probably not at all anymore since my folks died. ‘On the border, by the sea’ they say about it, it’s the last city in the USA before you reach Mexico. My dad had a good office job at the port and mom taught Junior High, so we did okay. Josh is two years older than me, and always took care of me. We were pretty close, until he got to be sixteen. Then he changed almost overnight.’
She paused and waved at the waitress for another coffee. Nightingale had barely touched his.
‘Changed how?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know how to explain it. Up until then, he’d been a typical Brownsville kid, for good or bad. Had some friends my parents didn’t approve of, there’d been the odd whisper that he’d been seen drinking, maybe taking a few small things from stores, not much of a student. But then he suddenly got a whole lot more serious, and all that kind of thing stopped.’
‘What do you mean by serious?’
‘He started reading a lot more, bringing home a lot of books from the library and sitting up reading them in his room. He dropped all his old friends he used to run around with, took up with some of the weirder kids at school.’
‘How weird?’ asked Nightingale.
‘Oh not the gun-nuts or the religious ones, but maybe the Goths and the Dungeons and Dragons crowd. But then after a while, he dropped them too, and became very solitary and quiet. And he dropped me too.’
‘How?’
‘Well, there was no fight or anything, but we’d always been close and we shared everything. But he just seemed to close down and move away from me. Almost as if something in him had gone missing, and the warmth wasn’t there anymore. And then he hit it big.’
‘Hit it big?’ said Nightingale, puzzled.
‘He never told you? On his eighteenth birthday, as soon as it was legal, he bought a Texas lottery ticket, and won a Jackpot share. A million dollars.’
Nightingale raised his eyebrows. ‘I never knew that.’
‘Well, like I said, it was shared, six or seven people, I guess, so he didn’t make the news, but it was big for us. He paid off my parents’ mortgage, put enough in a fund to pay me through college, and then he was gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Pretty much. He left High School and bought himself a place in Houston, and went into whatever it is he went into.’
‘Which was?’
‘I don’t know, nobody did. All we know is that he made an obscene amount of money at it very quickly. If we ever asked him about it, on the rare occasions when he visited, he’d say he was in property. He must have been damned good at it. These days, I guess the money makes money for him. Funny thing, though, his name never got mentioned in any kind of deals, or business. You never see him on rich lists. You try Googling him, and it comes back with no hits.
Nightingale nodded. ‘I know he doesn’t like any kind of publicity.’
‘We barely see him now. He came to our wedding, sat through the service, staring into space, then went missing for the photographs. I saw him for about ten minutes, he gave me a huge cheque, but there was no warmth in him, Jack. Like I said, still that something missing from the kid I used to know.’
Nightingale thought he might be able to shed some light on what was missing, but that wasn’t his choice to make. ‘So you don’t see much of him now?’
‘Almost never. Matthew never really approved of him. He seemed to like the guy fine, but there was always a barrier of some kind between them. He calls every couple months, always asks after Naomi, but he usually seems to call when she’s out. Shame, the few times she met him, she loved him.’
She took a long sip of coffee. ‘Which brings us back to square one, and you. My brother sends you up here to see us out of the blue, he never visits himself, much less sends a so-called friend. What’s happening, and what are you here for?’
Nightingale shook his head. ‘Sorry, Sarah, I only know what I told you. I can’t help you any more.’
She gave him a look that seemed to pierce right through to his soul, and Nightingale stared over her shoulder. She dropped her voice almost to a whisper.
‘Funny,’ she said. ‘I got a bad feeling about you, like you’re bringing a lot of trouble to me and my family. At the same time, I get the feeling that you’re a good man, and you don’t want to hurt anybody. Maybe you bringing trouble without meaning to. Maybe you making some bad decisions here. Maybe you need to give some thought about what you doing and who you doing it for, Jack Nightingale.’
Nightingale said nothing, but still couldn’t meet her searching gaze, She got up, fumbled in her purse and left a ten dollar bill on the table.
‘And maybe it’s better I buy my own coffee,’ she said, and headed for the door. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in your debt.’
CHAPTER 14
David Robinson turned off his iPad. He had been looking at it under his bedclothes, placed it on the floor by his bed, then swung his legs out, and headed for the door, a happy smile on his freckled young face. He walked carefully down the stairs from his bedroom, tip-toed across the hall, his Nike sneakers muffling his footsteps, and opened the front door without a sound. Once outside, he walked past the garage, then down the side of the boundary fence to where he’d hidden his bike behind a bush just after dinner. He wore his black jeans and his white ‘Memphis Grizzlies’ t-shirt with the br
ight blue bear’s head on the front. It was a chilly night, but he paid no attention to the temperature, just straddled his bike and set off into the empty, moonlit street, at a steady, unhurried pace. He had plenty of time.
The journey took him just over twenty-five minutes, through side-streets and quiet suburban roads until he was close to his destination. The old building on Main Street still stood where it had for over a hundred years, though these days its original purpose was almost a sideline, with much of it converted into meeting areas and condominiums, as part of the renovation of the downtown area in which it stood. But still, twice a day, it performed the role it had been built for, and David had just ten minutes to wait.
He propped his bike up against a tall lamp in the parking lot. There was a lock hanging round the saddle, but he paid it no attention, and stood under the lamp, staring with unfocused eyes into the distance. Nobody seemed to notice him in the few minutes that he stood waiting there. Finally he saw the light moving towards him, and started to walk.
Prompt at ten pm, the City Of New Orleans train pulled into Memphis Central Station, nine and a half hours after leaving its home city, and with over ten hours and five hundred and thirty miles to go until it reached its destination in Chicago.
Every other day except this one.
This night witnesses saw the young boy in the Grizzlies tee shirt walk quietly from the parking-lot onto the platform, stop for a moment, nod at a blonde woman who stood a few yards away from him and then walk straight off the platform and under the huge grey and blue diesel locomotive as it inched its way into the station.
The train was barely moving at the time, its brakes slowing it to a halt a few moments later, but speed wasn’t a factor. A hundred and thirty-four tons of metal rolled over David’s body before the first passenger even had chance to scream. It took another thirty seconds before anyone pulled out a mobile phone and frantically punched 911.
The first police car arrived three minutes later.
Nobody paid any attention to Dudák, leaning back against the station wall, the blue eyes rolled up so that only the whites showed, the red flush slowly creeping up the neck. Then the eyes closed, and a muffled sigh of satisfaction escaped the closed lips.
Tennessee Night (The 8th Jack Nightingale Novel) Page 6
